Guide to sending abandoned checkout emails

In this guide, you'll learn how to send abandoned checkout emails to customers who added items to the cart and clicked the checkout button but didn’t complete the checkout process.

❗ This feature is only available in the Getsitecontrol app for Shopify.

📌 For general information on automations, refer to the Beginner’s Guide.

Create an abandoned checkout automation

First, create a new automation. Open the Automations tab in the dashboard, click + Create automation, and select Checkout abandonment as the automation trigger:

This automation is triggered when a customer abandons the checkout process. To be included in the automation, the customer must have previously provided their email address by subscribing to your email marketing or registering an account on your store. The automation activates 20 minutes after the customer clicks the checkout button without completing the purchase.

Choose the conditions for the automation

You can select conditions customers need to meet to receive this email automation. For example, you may want to send an abandonment email only if a customer had a certain number of items in the cart or their cart price reached a certain amount.

To add a condition to the automation, click +Add condition at the top of the automation screen.

You can use any conditions from the menu, but the most relevant ones are housed under the Order label. These conditions allow you to target:

• customers who were about to spend more than, less than, or a given amount on their order ( Total price )
• customers who were about to purchase more than, fewer than, or a given number of items ( Items count )
• or customers who were about to purchase a specific product or variant ( Product, Variant ).

You can find more information about conditions in the Beginner’s Guide to Automations.

❗ If you decide to apply multiple conditions to your automation, remember:

• Connecting the conditions with an ‘OR’ operator triggers the automation for customers who meet at least one of the conditions.
• Connecting the conditions with an ‘AND’ operator triggers the automation for customers who meet all the conditions.

If you want to target all customers who abandoned the checkout process at any point, leave the conditions section blank.

Craft your email

Let’s move on to crafting the abandoned checkout email. From the Actions menu, select Send email:

You can create emails from scratch or use one of the premade email templates and customize it to meet your needs. Here’s an example of what the final result can look like:

This email reminds customers that they’ve left items in the cart, informs them that the cart remains reserved for 48 hours, and encourages them to complete checkout by instilling a sense of urgency.

Add a ‘Continue checkout’ button

Make sure to add a button that allows customers to resume their checkout. Open the +Insert menu and select Button:

From the button settings, proceed to +Add action, and assign the Continue checkout action to the button:

After clicking the button, the customer is automatically redirected to the checkout page, where they will find all the items in their cart and any previously entered information.

💡 We recommend placing the CTA button at the beginning of the email, so it’s visible immediately without scrolling.

Offer a discount as an incentive (optional)

To encourage customers to complete their purchase, consider offering an incentive, such as free shipping or a small discount on their order. You can let them apply the discount to the cart automatically when they click the email CTA button. Just select the discount code in the button action settings: