The Baymard Institute maintains a running average of documented cart abandonment research: across 50 studies, 70.22% of online shopping carts are abandoned. That is the single largest pool of nearly-earned revenue most stores have, and the recovery email is the cheapest instrument available for reaching into it. It is also frequently built to fix the wrong problem.
Read the abandonment reasons before writing the emails
Baymard’s survey of US shoppers who abandoned during checkout puts extra costs at the top by a wide margin: 40% cited shipping, tax, or fees added at the end. Delivery being too slow came next at 20%, security concerns about entering card details at 19%, forced account creation at 18%, and a checkout that was too long or complex at 17%.
% of abandoners citing
Baymard Institute, cart abandonment research (US shoppers, reasons excluding browsing).
Notice that none of the top five reasons is "forgot." Most abandonment is a decision, not an accident, and it is a decision about something specific your checkout did. That reframes the recovery email: its job is to answer the objection that caused the abandonment, and a discount only answers the first one.
If 40% of your abandoners left because the shipping cost appeared at step four, the fix is showing it at step one. The recovery email is what you send to the ones you could not fix.
What the flow is worth
Omnisend’s 2025 benchmark analysis, covering more than 20 billion campaign emails and 470 million automated sends across over 27,000 brands, reported abandoned cart emails at a 37.12% open rate, a 4.13% click rate, and a 1.72% conversion rate. Against the same dataset’s campaign baseline of 0.08% conversion, that is more than twenty times the conversion rate on a message you write once. These are one platform’s averages skewed toward e-commerce, so use them to size the opportunity, not to set a target.
A three-email structure, each with a different job
- Email 1, about one hour after abandonment. The reminder. Show the exact items with images and prices, and a single link that restores the cart without a login. No discount, no urgency, no argument. A meaningful share of recoveries happen here for the simple reason that the person was interrupted.
- Email 2, 24 hours later. The objection handler. This is where the Baymard reasons earn their place: total cost stated up front, delivery timeframe, returns policy, payment security, guest checkout available. Answer the reasons people actually leave rather than repeating the product.
- Email 3, 48 to 72 hours later. The incentive, if margin allows. Free shipping usually outperforms a percentage discount here because it addresses the number one abandonment reason directly rather than discounting the product you already priced.
Free shipping usually beats a percentage off
If extra costs are the leading reason for abandonment, removing the extra cost is a more precise response than reducing the price of the item. It is also usually cheaper: 10% off a basket is often more margin than the shipping you would absorb, and it trains a different expectation. Discounting the product says your prices are negotiable. Absorbing shipping says the checkout total was the problem, which is what the shopper told you.
Whatever incentive you choose, keep it in the third email only. If every abandonment produces a discount, a segment of your customers will learn the pattern and abandon deliberately. Track repeat abandoners and exclude them from the incentive step.
Exit conditions and collision control
Remove the shopper from the flow the instant an order is placed, including an order placed through a different device or channel. Suppress the flow entirely for anyone who purchased in the last 24 hours. And apply a frequency cap across your automations, because an active shopper can simultaneously qualify for browse abandonment, cart recovery, and a scheduled campaign, and receiving all three in one afternoon reads as harassment rather than helpfulness.
The service business version
The mechanism is not specific to carts. Any multi-step form that people start and do not finish, a booking, a quote request, an application, produces the same recoverable intent. Capture the email address at the first step rather than the last, then run the same three-message structure: reminder, objection handler, and a reason to finish now. The objections differ but the shape does not.
Key takeaways
- Baymard’s running average across 50 studies puts cart abandonment at 70.22%, and the top reason at checkout is extra costs, cited by 40%.
- Most abandonment is a decision about your checkout, not forgetfulness. Write the emails to answer the decision.
- Omnisend’s 2025 data puts cart emails at 1.72% conversion against 0.08% for campaigns, roughly twenty times better.
- Free shipping addresses the leading abandonment reason more precisely, and often more cheaply, than a percentage discount.
- Keep the incentive in email three only, exclude repeat abandoners, and exit on purchase across all channels.
Related reading
Sources
- Cart abandonment rate statistics (average of 50 studies), Baymard Institute
- Email marketing benchmarks: open rates, clicks and conversions, Omnisend (2025)
- Email marketing statistics for ecommerce, Omnisend (2025)
- Automation
- E-commerce
- Conversion
Written by
Valter Brandt
Chief Marketing Officer
Valter Brandt is the Chief Marketing Officer of ThisCom, working with clients across the United States and internationally. He has led marketing strategy through the major shifts in social advertising, mobile, content marketing, programmatic media, and marketing automation.
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