Increase your conversion rates with abandoned cart emails!
These are emails that get triggered when a potential customer leaves items in their shopping cart without completing their purchase.
Abandoned cart emails can act as a gentle but effective nudge to remind your customer of what they were looking at, in case they may have simply gotten distracted. (We've all been there!)
Many e-commerce platforms have this built-in
The ability to send abandoned cart emails is included in many e-commerce platforms, either built-in by default or as an optional add-on. Examples include WooCommerce, ThriveCart, Shopify, BigCommerce, Ecwid, X-Cart, and more.
If you use your e-commerce provider's built-in abandoned cart feature, please note that those emails would be handled & sent via their own system, not via ConvertKit.
Using the abandoned cart feature built into your e-commerce provider is typically the way to go if you want the emails to include specifics (such as the exact items left behind, and so on—this will vary by provider).
However, depending on the provider you use, it can be possible to compose your own abandoned cart emails that are triggered to send via ConvertKit instead.
When ConvertKit can be used for abandoned cart emails
Sending abandoned cart emails via ConvertKit requires the use of Zapier (which in turn requires a paid ConvertKit account), and in most cases, your e-commerce provider must have 'abandoned cart' available as a Zap trigger.
Here are some example providers that have this trigger available:
This isn't an exhaustive list! We'd recommend referring to your e-commerce provider's knowledge base to see if this is an option they provide. (Please note that even if an e-commerce provider has their own abandoned cart functionality, it doesn't necessarily mean they've also made it available as a Zap trigger.)
NOTE: If your e-commerce platform doesn't have an abandoned cart Zap trigger, it may still be possible to trigger them using a combination of their other triggers. This is a more advanced approach and the feasibility will vary based on provider. One example where this is possible is with Teachable—they outline the method you can use at the bottom of this article.
Setting it up in ConvertKit
Using Shopify as an example, create a Zap where the trigger is 'New abandoned cart.' That Zap's action can then be to add the subscriber directly to the abandoned cart sequence you created in ConvertKit:
NOTE: You'll want to ensure that your abandoned cart sequence in ConvertKit is set to be repeatable if you want subscribers to be able to receive it more than once.
Alternatively, if you'd like to handle adding them to the sequence within ConvertKit (if you want to make use of conditions to customize which version of a sequence they receive, for example), you can set the Zap's action to add a tag to them instead:
In that case, you'll need to set up an automation inside of ConvertKit that gets triggered by that tag:
WARNING: If you choose to send abandoned cart emails via ConvertKit, we'd recommend disabling the abandoned cart emails from your e-commerce provider so you're not sending double reminders.