Abandoned cart emails: how many, when, and the rules

An abandoned cart email goes to a shopper who started to buy and stopped, with a link back to the cart. It is the cheapest recovery tool a store has: most store platforms can send one, and email apps include it in their plans. This guide covers when to send it, how many to send, how to set it up on Shopify, Klaviyo, BigCommerce and WooCommerce, and what the law in the US, the UK, the EU and Canada asks of it. Every recommendation comes from the platforms' own help pages and the regulators' guidance, read on 21 October 2026.

The short answer

• How many: two or three. Klaviyo says 2 to 3 messages “generally produces optimal performance”, and Omnisend calls three emails standard practice.
• When: the first within hours (Klaviyo recommends 2 to 4 hours after the checkout starts, Omnisend 30 to 60 minutes, BigCommerce defaults to 1 hour), the second about a day later, the last at around two days.
• What to expect: about 2% to 3% of recipients order: 2.68% in Klaviyo's November 2025 benchmarks, and 1.72% of delivered emails in Omnisend's 2025 data.
• Stop on purchase: every flow should end the moment the order is placed; Klaviyo's flows use a filter that drops anyone who has ordered since the flow started.
• The rules: treat it as marketing. In the US that means an honest subject line, your postal address and a working opt-out; in the UK, EU and Canada it also depends on how you got the shopper's email.

Abandoned cart, abandoned checkout or browse abandonment?

Three triggers, three levels of intent:

• Browse abandonment: the shopper viewed a product but didn't add it to the cart. Klaviyo recommends a lighter message here than the cart email (Klaviyo).
• Abandoned cart: the shopper added at least one product to the cart but didn't go on to checkout.
• Abandoned checkout: the shopper started checkout and didn't buy; Shopify counts it after more than ten minutes. This is the strongest signal, and the trigger behind Shopify's built-in email and Klaviyo's default “abandoned cart” flow.

Shopify's ready-made marketing templates keep shoppers from getting all three: they skip anyone who received an abandoned checkout, cart or browse email in the last 14 days (Shopify Help Center).

When to send: what the platforms recommend

The platforms agree on the shape and differ on the first delay. None of the pages we read publishes a measured comparison of one, two and three emails, or of different delays, so treat these as starting points and test against your own store:

From each platform's help center or guide, read 21 October 2026. Klaviyo's help page updated 7 October 2026; Omnisend's guide dated 19 February 2026.

Two practical points from Klaviyo's help page: wait at least 1 hour and 15 minutes so your store's order data has synced before the first email checks for a purchase, and switch off your store's own abandoned cart email if Klaviyo sends one, or shoppers get both (Klaviyo).

An example sequence

Omnisend's advice for the third message: test two emails against three to see whether the last one earns its place (Omnisend). A holdout, where a share of abandoned carts gets no email at all, shows what the whole sequence really adds.

What to write

We found no study from 2024 on that measures abandoned cart subject lines, discounts or images, so this is the platforms' advice plus the best older evidence:

• Name and products in the subject line. Klaviyo suggests starting with the recipient's first name and the products left in the cart (Klaviyo). In a field experiment with ordinary marketing emails, adding the recipient's name to the subject line raised opens by 20% and sales leads by 31%, and cut unsubscribes by 17% (Sahni, Wheeler and Chintagunta, published in Marketing Science in 2018).
• Show what they left. Put the items in the email with a link straight back to the checkout; Omnisend's advice is to always include the abandoned items.
• A discount later, if at all. Klaviyo's answer to whether a cart email needs a discount is “Not necessarily”: discounts can train shoppers to wait for one, and its example sequence keeps the discount for the second message. In Rejoiner's review of 1,000 direct-to-consumer brands, 18% of first cart emails carried an offer and 36% of second emails (Rejoiner, February 2025).
• Answer the reason they left. Extra costs, slow delivery and trust lead the reasons in Baymard's survey (see our cart abandonment statistics), so state the shipping cost, the delivery date and the returns policy in the email.

What results to expect

Two platforms publish benchmarks for abandoned cart emails, each measured its own way:

Klaviyo: October 2026 report from more than 110,000 customers (orders from its November 2025 benchmarks); its revenue per recipient divides revenue by messages sent. Omnisend: 2025 data from more than 27,000 brands, published 12 May 2026, per delivered email. Different customers and attribution windows: compare each with your own results, not with each other.

The only comparison of one email against a series we found is Mailchimp's, from 2017: a series brought an order for every 43 recipients, a single email one for every 54 (Mailchimp). Newer data from the platforms gives recommendations rather than comparisons, which is why the holdout test above matters.

Set it up on your platform

Shopify

Shopify counts a checkout as abandoned once it has been left incomplete for more than ten minutes. In the abandoned checkout settings you turn on Send abandoned checkout emails automatically, choose who gets it and how long to wait (Send after), and edit the template with Customize email; each email links to the shopper's cart. Shoppers who gave only a phone number at checkout can't get the email, and abandoned checkouts older than three months are deleted from the admin (Shopify Help Center). For more than one email, Shopify points to the abandoned checkout automation in its Shopify Messaging app, whose abandoned checkout emails don't count towards your Shopify Messaging sends (Shopify Help Center).

Shopify is moving this email into the Shopify Messaging app. The new abandoned checkout automation goes only to customers subscribed to email marketing by default, and you can switch its To: field to all customers. The old email under Settings > Checkout keeps working until Shopify removes it, and switching to the new automation can't be undone (Shopify Help Center).

Klaviyo

The usual Klaviyo flow is triggered by Started Checkout, which fires once the shopper has filled in their contact information. Klaviyo recommends running two flows: one on Added to Cart for shoppers who haven't reached checkout, and one on Started Checkout, with each flow's filters keeping shoppers from getting both (Klaviyo). On Shopify, the Added to Cart flow needs the integration setting Track behavioral events turned on, and Klaviyo's template comes as email only or email and SMS (Klaviyo).

BigCommerce

The built-in Abandoned Cart Saver needs a Plus plan or higher. A cart counts as abandoned after an hour with no activity; you can enable up to three emails, which by default send at 1 hour, 1 day and 2 days, edit each subject and body, and add a coupon code. On the legacy checkout, guests get no email even if they typed an address; on Optimized One-Page Checkout they qualify once they enter their email (BigCommerce Help Center).

WooCommerce

WooCommerce has no built-in abandoned cart email in current versions: an experimental one, off by default and limited to a single email, came in WooCommerce 11.0 and was removed in 11.2. Stores use extensions such as AutomateWoo or MailPoet for multi-step campaigns (WooCommerce documentation).

Comparing the tools, from free platform emails to Klaviyo, Omnisend and AI calls? Our cart abandonment software guide prices them side by side.

The rules: US, UK, EU and Canada

A summary of the regulators' own guidance, not legal advice. None of these regulators addresses abandoned carts by name.

United States: CAN-SPAM

The FTC treats an email as commercial when its primary purpose is “the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service”. Transactional messages are those that facilitate, complete or confirm a transaction “that the recipient already has agreed to”; an unfinished checkout isn't covered either way. A reminder that promotes the products or offers a discount fits the commercial definition, so send it as a commercial email (FTC):

• No false or misleading header information and no deceptive subject lines.
• Disclose clearly that the message is an advertisement.
• Include your valid physical postal address.
• Explain clearly how to opt out of future marketing email, and honor opt-outs within 10 business days; the opt-out must keep working for at least 30 days after you send.
• Each email in violation can cost up to $53,088.

United Kingdom: PECR

To email individuals you need their consent or the “soft opt-in”: you got their details while selling or negotiating to sell, you market only similar products, and you offered an opt-out when you collected the details and in every message. The ICO says a purchase isn't required, since “negotiations for the sale” are enough, but browsing a website is not: the person must actively express an interest in buying (ICO). Offer the opt-out on the checkout page where the email is typed, and in every email.

European Union: ePrivacy Directive

Marketing email needs prior consent, with one exception: a business that gets a customer's email “in the context of the sale of a product or a service” may market its own similar products, if the customer can object when the email is collected and in every message (Directive 2002/58/EC, Article 13). The EU text speaks of customers and sales, without the UK's “negotiations”, and each country's regulator applies it, so check the rules where your shoppers live.

Canada: CASL

An inquiry gives implied consent for six months and a purchase for two years; every message still needs your identification and an unsubscribe mechanism, and you should be able to prove the consent you rely on (CRTC). The CRTC doesn't say whether starting a checkout counts as an inquiry.

Beyond email

Email reaches only shoppers who typed an address. Texts reach those who gave a phone number with SMS consent: carriers allow one abandoned cart text per cart, within 48 hours, to subscribers who double opted in (Klaviyo). For high-value carts, some stores add a phone call; our guide to AI abandoned cart calls covers what they cost and the consent an AI voice needs in the US. And our cart abandonment statistics show why shoppers leave in the first place.