Create a Classic Abandoned Cart Email

When customers leave items in their shopping cart, encourage them to complete their purchase with a custom email that includes product links or special offers.

In this article, you'll learn how to create an abandoned cart email.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• The abandoned cart email is a Classic Automations feature. Classic Automations are only available to accounts that have previously created a classic automation.
• Abandoned cart emails are available to users who connect a supported e-commerce store or custom API 3.0 integration. To find out if your store supports this automation, visit the Integrations page, click the name of your integration, and check the Features list.
• Single abandoned cart emails use your account's default email builder. To learn more about our email builders, check out Design an Email with the New Builder and Design an Email with the Classic Builder.
• You can have one abandoned cart email per connected store.
• This article shows you how to send a single follow-up email to customers who abandon a shopping cart. You can also create an abandoned cart Customer Journey map or send a sequence of abandoned cart reminders with a classic abandoned cart series. To find out what features are included in each plan, check out our pricing page. To change your plan type, visit the plans page in your account.
• To make sure your customers don't receive redundant emails, we recommend you disable abandoned cart automations created outside Mailchimp.
• You must include the Cart content block in your abandoned cart email.
• Custom-coded templates are not compatible with the abandoned cart email.
• If a customer in the abandoned cart email queue makes a purchase before the email is sent, they'll automatically be removed from the queue.

Create an abandoned cart email

To create an abandoned cart email, follow these steps.

1. On your account dashboard, click the Automations icon.
2. Click Classic Automations.
   
3. Click Turn on an abandoned cart email.
4. On the Single Email tab, type in a Campaign Name and choose a store.
   
5. Click Begin.
   

Now you're ready to edit your recipients, delay , and other settings.

Review your settings

We'll display a checklist with your abandoned cart email settings. Review the checklist, and make any necessary changes to your automation, like From name, email address, subject line, and sending delay.

Set delay

You can choose to send your abandoned cart email 1 hour, 6 hours or 24 hours after the customer leaves their cart.

To change the sending delay for your abandoned cart email, follow these steps.

1. In the Sends to section of the builder, click Edit Recipients.
   
2. In the Hours drop-down menu, choose the delay you want.
   
3. Click Save.
   

After you've reviewed your settings, you're ready to design your email.

Design email

Abandoned cart emails use the new email builder. The email must include the customer's cart information that we pull from your connected store. To include this information, we add a Cart content block to your email by default.

We also include a Button block that links to your customer’s abandoned cart. Use the Link to dropdown menu to set the link to the Abandoned cart page, a Web address, or an Email address.

To design your email, follow these steps.

1. In the content section of the checklist, click Edit Email.
   
2. Design and preview your campaign. If you need help, check out Design an Email With the New Builder.
3. Click Continue to return to the checklist.
4. When you are ready to activate the abandoned cart email, click Start Sending.
   

Customers who leave items in their shopping cart will now automatically receive your abandoned cart email.