Marketing · Updated June 2026
An abandoned cart email is an automated message sent to shoppers who left items in their cart without buying. A 3-email sequence (≈1h, 24h, 72h) typically recovers 5–15% of abandoned carts, making it the highest-ROI email automation in ecommerce.
Cart abandonment occurs when a shopper adds products to their cart but leaves without completing checkout. Across ecommerce, roughly 70% of carts are abandoned — making recovery emails and checkout friction reduction among the highest-ROI fixes available.
Email marketing is promoting and retaining via owned email lists — campaigns plus automated flows (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, winback). Top Shopify stores attribute 20–30% of revenue to email because it costs nearly nothing per send and compounds with list growth.