WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery: The Ultimate System To Get Shoppers Back To Your Store

Editorial Team
February 13, 2023
WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery: The Ultimate System To Get Shoppers Back To Your Store

Have you nailed your WooCommerce cart abandonment strategy yet? Are you sending out well-timed abandoned cart emails or SMSs to recover carts?

If not, then this WooCommerce cart abandonment guide is for you.

The cart abandonment rate has risen to an all-time high of 69%+ and it's not coming down any time soon.

Gone are those days when just having an email series was enough.

But today, you need a complete 'Smart Revenue Recovery' system - that speaks to your users with personalized scheduled emails and encourages them to complete their purchases.

In this post, we will look at the reasons people abandon their carts, components of the smart WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery system and how to set it up in your store.

Why Do Shoppers Abandon Their Carts?

Before we dig deep into the reasons, let us quickly understand what shopping cart abandonment is.

When the user adds items to their carts but does not complete the purchase process, the cart is considered abandoned.

Baymard recently did a survey on 2500+ people and found several reasons why people abandoned orders.

Here's a list of some of the most common reasons for WooCommerce cart abandonment:

Reasons of cart abandonments during the checkout process

The top three reasons are:

  • Unexpected additional costs such as shipping, handling fees and taxes
  • Checkout processes involving new account creation or logging in
  • A long or complex checkout process

This study does not even take into account the reasons related to buyer psychology in an online store.

Reasons such as:

'I was just browsing' or 'my toddler wanted my attention' or 'I thought I'll come back to it when I have some time'.

Uncertainty. Procrastination. Distraction.
These are also big reasons that lead people to abandon the checkout process.

The cart abandonment rate jumps to nearly 75% around Black Friday when the traffic is high and the urge to comparison shop is even higher.

That means you're going to lose potential customers around the holiday season.

But here's a piece of good news: Some of those people might come back to buy if you send out a well-timed cart abandonment email sequence.

The Problem With Most Automated Cart Recovery Systems

Most WooCommerce cart abandonment plugins treat all users equally, whether they're guest users or not.

You can either offer a blanket discount to everyone or no one!

You can't incentivize them based on the item(s) they were trying to buy, their order total, have already used a coupon code, etc.

But if you always offer a discount every time a user abandons their orders, your system trains them to expect a discount code all the time.

Take a look at this comment that proves this point:

The Problem With Most Automated Cart Recovery Systems
The strategy of offering same incentive to everyone, irrespective of their cart total, item(s) in cart etc. - backfires because it eats into your profitability.

Worst part? It trains users to expect discounts abandoned orders!

But let's say, their cart total is above a set threshold, then you may want to offer a handsome discount to convert them before your cut-off time.

The existing systems and free plugins aren't flexible and dynamic enough to consider any of this.

That right there is the problem!

Meet the Smart Revenue Recovery System

In this section, you'll get the answer to your 'how do you deal with cart abandonment?' query.

In order to solve this problem, we have created the Smart Revenue Recovery System.

This system allows you to create WooCommerce cart abandonment sequences by first understanding who's at the center of it with custom variables.

Meet the Smart Revenue Recovery System

Here are important components of the system that gives you a mindblowing framework for your WordPress abandoned cart strategy:

  • Multi-channel sequence: It means not just abandoned cart emails but using SMSs as well to recover your abandoned carts.
  • The timings: Timing your abandoned cart emails and SMSs for maximum impact, so customers don't just unsubscribe.
  • Smart incentive: It means offering a personalized and time-bound incentive on the basis of the rules you set to get some recovered carts.
  • Advanced conditions: Setting rule-based automations based on the user’s cart total, items in the cart, coupons used, and more.

Our users who are deploying this system with FunnelKit Automations are having great success with it, take a look:

Review of Wardee Harmon satisfied with the WooCommerce cart abandonment strategy of FunnelKit Automations

Another user, Borja reported a recovery rate of 20%; that's insane! That's just with WooCommcerce cart abandonment cart emails and a series of SMSs:

Review of Borja Obeso satisfied with the WooCommerce cart abandonment strategy of FunnelKit Automations

Impressive? Isn't it?

How to Build a Smart Revenue Recovery System To Cut Down Abandoned Carts?

Let’s get down to how you can build a WooCommerce cart recovery system with FunnelKit Automations.

It's the best abandoned cart plugin for WooCommerce that lets you set up a timed sequence of automated emails to recover WooCommerce abandoned carts and offer discounts through personalized coupon codes.

Furthermore, FunnelKit Automations provides you with pre-built automated recipes that can be imported and used as it is with very little customization.

We have various recipes that are focused on achieving different use cases such as post-purchase workflows, cart abandonment automations, welcome sequences, and many more.

Pre-built automated recipes in FunnelKit Automations

Please note that FunnelKit Automations has both the Lite (free) version as well as the Pro (premium) version. Here, we’ll be using the Pro version for additional features such as creating coupons, adding conditions, setting up SMS, and more.

You can follow our documentation on how to install FunnelKit Automations on your WordPress website.

Follow the step-by-step process mentioned below to set up the WooCommerce cart abandonment workflow:

Step 1: Enable cart tracking

FunnelKit Automations live captures the email addresses of prospects as soon as they fill them out on the checkout page.

This is similar to other WooCommerce abandoned cart plugins, but it also captures what they were trying to buy and their cart total.

To enable it, go to the 'Settings' section in FunnelKit Automations.

Under Carts, check the box next to 'Enable Cart Tracking'.

Enable cart tracking in FunnelKit Automations

This works out of the box to help you capture the buyer’s email and cart details as soon as they start filling them out on the checkout page.

Step 2: Add a new automation

Under the Campaigns section, click on ‘Automations (Next Gen)’.

Go to Automations (Next Gen) from Campaigns

Hit the ‘Add New Automation’ button.

Click on Add New Automation

Here you’ll see various pre-built recipes available for the Lite (free) version as well as the Pro (premium) version.

Click on ‘Start from scratch’.

Here we will be creating the WooCommerce cart abandonment workflow from scratch

Name your automated campaign - ‘WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery’.

Name your automation - WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery

Clicking on ‘Create’ will set up a new automation campaign and you’ll get redirected to the workflow window.

Step 3: Select the ‘WooCommerce Cart Abandonment’ event trigger

Events are the triggers based on which your automation runs.

On the workflow screen, click on ‘Select Trigger’.

Click on 'Select Trigger'

Now, select the ‘Cart Abandoned’ trigger from the WooCommerce tab and click on ‘Done’.

Select the Cart abandonment event under WooCommerce

Configure this event by clicking on it and selecting ‘Multiple Times’ under the number of runs.

Click on ‘Save’ when done.

Well done! You have successfully set up the event trigger of your automation.

Step 4: Add a delay to your workflow

Here we will be creating a simple automation of 1 email to be sent after a 30 minutes of delay.

For that, click on the (+) icon and hit ‘Delay’.

Add a delay to cart abandonment workflow

Here we will add a 30-minute delay to our workflow.

Configure the delay to 30 minutes

Click on the ‘Save’ button once done.

Step 5: Specify the action to be taken

Actions are a series of steps that contacts have to go through when they enter your automation based on the event trigger you specified.

FunnelKit Automations provides a variety of actions such as creating contacts, adding a tag, sending emails and SMS, and many more.

To specify the send email action, click on the (+) icon and hit ‘Action’.

To send an email, click on Action.

Select the ‘Send email’ action under Messaging and click on ‘Done’.

This will be the email your users will receive when the WooCommerce cart abandonment event triggers.

Choose the 'Send email' action under Messaging

The email creation window will appear in front of your screen.

Email address

Here, we’ll be using the same email address as entered by the user on the checkout page.

To do that, go to 'Merge Tags'.

Go to Merge Tags

Copy the 'Cart Billing Email' merge tag.

Copy the 'Cart Billing Email' merge tag

Paste it into the email address field.

Paste the 'Cart Billing Email' merge tag into the email field

Subject line and preview text

Enter an attractive subject line and preview text for your WooCommerce cart abandonment emails.

You can refer to our post on abandoned cart subject lines and email preview text to get noticed quickly.

Enter the subject line and preview text

Email body content

Select the template type for simple text-based emails, HTML, or the Visual Builder to design beautiful emails.

Here we will select the ‘Rich Text’ template and start writing our content.

Select the email template type: Rich text, Raw HTML and Visual Builder

Here, we have used multiple merge tags to bring dynamic values to be shown on our email, such as the user’s first name, abandoned date, cart items in a tabular format, and more.

Here we have used multiple abandoned cart merge tags to bring in dynamic data values

Copy the ‘cart restore link’ merge tag from here.

Copy the cart recovery link merge tag

Hyperlink the recovery link merge tag on your WooCommerce cart abandonment email.

Hyperlink the cart recovery link merge tag

Once you’re satisfied with your email body, click on ‘Save & Close’ to lock all your changes and go to your workflow window.

You can also go one step further and design beautiful cart abandonment emails with FunnelKit Automations’ visual email builder.

Design beautiful emails with FunnelKit Automations's visual builder

Make sure to activate your automation by turning the toggle to ‘Active’.

Make your automation active

Now that you know how to create automation in FunnelKit Automations, let’s talk about setting up different components of the smart revenue recovery system.

Adding the Smart Revenue Recovery System Components to Your WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Workflow

Let’s add each of the components of our Smart Revenue Recovery System to our workflow in FunnelKit Automations:

1. Creating a Multi-Channel Sequence (Email + SMS)

According to SaleCycle, text messages are opened on average within 90 seconds, compared to 90 minutes for email. 

Also, SMS has an open rate of 98%+ with 90% of messages opened within three minutes.

Therefore, adding SMS to the mix can increase the effectiveness of your campaign, especially when paired with great email templates for your WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery emails.

SMSs have a way higher click-through rate of 36%, as compared to 3.2% of emails:

SMSs have a way higher click-through rate of 36%, as compared to 3.2% of emails

Send the SMS within 2-4 hours of sending your first email for the best results.

To make your WooCommerce cart abandonment SMS stand out in their cluttered inboxes, use emojis.

FunnelKit Automations connects with Twilio and Bulkgate, popular tools that provide services such as voice calling, messaging, and SMS.

Must Refer:


All you need to do is select the ‘Send SMS’ action from the workflow.

Select the ‘Send SMS’ action from the workflow

Now, create your SMS content to be sent to your users.

Create your SMS content to be sent to your users

Well done! Here we have created our automation that sends an SMS 4 hours after your cart recovery email.

Here we have created our automation that sends an SMS 4 hours after your cart recovery email

Quick Note: You need to have Twilio credits and the premium version of FunnelKit Automations to access the Twilio connector.

Plus, you can send images by SMS if you’re residing in the US and Canada.

2. Timing your campaigns for maximum impact

Timing your recovery emails is the key to getting lost sales back.

It’s crucial to send your first email within an hour for optimal conversions.

As per the statistics from SaleCycle, a cart recovery campaign saw an uplift of 19% in conversions when it sent the first email just after 30 minutes of cart abandonment.

Furthermore, the best practice is to send a total of three abandoned cart recovery emails with set delays.

Here’s an example with the stats:

Timing your WooCommerce cart abandonment campaigns for maximum impact

Follow this simple strategy:

  • Send your first WooCommerce cart abandonment email within 30 minutes because the purchase is still very fresh in their mind and store owners can help remind them. Use the first email to ask them if they need any help simply.
  • Send the second email within the next 24 hours; use this email to either offer a discount with a single click button to simply nudge.
  • The final email can go within 72 hours, reminding them that their coupon's validity is set to expire in a few hours.

FunnelKit Automations lets you set up well-timed emails by adding delays to your workflows.

Here's how you can set up the delay in your WooCommerce cart abandonment sequence:

Configure delays in FunnelKit Automations

FunnelKit Automations lets you set delays in the contact’s time zone to serve users in multiple locations.

Brilliant, isn’t it?

3. Luring in customers with attractive incentives

Everybody loves discounts!

Therefore, offering limited-time discounts is a brilliant strategy to create a sense of urgency and boost conversions.

You can easily do that in FunnelKit Automations and even further!

FunnelKit Automations lets you create time-bound, personalized coupon codes to encourage them to come back and complete the purchase.

You don't have to go to WooCommerce to set your coupons - FunnelKit Automations takes care of that too!

Click on the (+) icon and hit action.

Click on the (+) icon and hit action

Add ‘Create Coupon’ action to your workflow.

Add ‘Create Coupon’ action to your workflow

Take a look at the coupon creation window in FunnelKit Automations:

Take a look at the coupon creation window in FunnelKit Automations
  • Discount Type: Enter the type of discount you want to offer such as percentage discount, fixed cart discount, signup fee discount, recurring product discount, etc.
  • Coupon Code Prefix: Add a personalized prefix to the discount code
  • Coupon Expiry: Set the coupon expiry as after specific days, on a specific date, or never expire.
  • Free Shipping: Allow free shipping with this coupon code
  • Spending Limit: Define the spend limits with this coupon code
  • Limitations for Product/Categories: Limit this code to some specific products or categories
  • Coupon Restrictions: Restrict this code to any specific email addresses, and many more options.

It’s a complete package!

4. Setting up smart rule-based conditions

FunnelKit Automations lets you set up advanced conditions to serve the right audience.

What if you want to send discounted coupon codes to shop abandoners with high-value carts or who are just new users in your ecommerce store?

This is what rule-based offers are - Offering discount coupons whenever users meet a certain condition.

It’s a brilliant strategy of not training your users to become price sensitive or unwilling to buy any item without a discount.

You can do this with FunnelKit Automations’ smart rule engine.

Let’s say we want to offer a 10% discount only to shoppers with a cart total of $50 at the time of abandonment.

All you have to do is click on the (+) icon and select ‘Condition’.

Add condition

Click on the 'Cart Total' rule under Carts.

Select the cart total condition in FunnelKit Automations

Now, select the drop-down to ‘is greater than’ and enter the value of ‘50’.

Now, select the drop-down to ‘is greater than’ and enter the value of ‘50’.

Next under ‘Yes’, add the ‘Create Coupon’ action and create a coupon value of 10%, as we discussed in Pt. 3 (above).

Next under ‘Yes’, add the ‘Create Coupon’ action and create a coupon value of 10%, as we discussed in Pt. 3 (above)

Once done, add the ‘Send Email’ action next to the coupon node.

Then, include that coupon code in your email.

Include that coupon code in your email

That’s it! This is what your WooCommerce cart abandonment workflow will look like:

This is what your WooCommerce cart abandonment workflow will look

Now a dynamic coupon will be sent to the users who have abandoned their cart with a total value of more than $50.

Tracking and Measuring WooCommerce Abandoned Carts

Track stats so that you know how many carts getting abandoned and how many of those are being recovered.

Knowing your numbers will help you tweak your strategy.

Maybe you find out that offering a higher percentage discount will be a better strategy for you- then be it, do that.

Maybe it pays off to write product-aware abandonment emails.

Here's where you can see the analytics for cart abandonment:

Analytics in FunnelKit Automations to track your abandoned carts

These stats will help implement your cart abandonment strategy to the next level.

No room is left for any confusion.

Crazy-Good WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Email Examples to Get Inspired

We studied several cart abandonment emails that you can refer to.

And we've created a mini-library of some well-written emails that deserve a mention.

1. The reminder email (checking in)

The first WooCommerce cart abandonment email example is from the popular store, Top Shop, who sends this email to customers abandoning their carts.

The good thing about this email is that it looks nice and simple.

The email serves as an instant reminder to users that their cart is saved and are so close to getting their favorite item.

Cart abandonment example from Top Shop

They've put the phone number too, in case someone wants to get in touch - they have the option!

The ‘Continue Shopping’ button takes people straight back to their cart.

2. Product-aware abandonment email

Here's an example of a well-written product-aware recovery email from Beardbrand:

WooCommerce Cart abandonment example - product aware email from Beardbrand

The major plus point of this email is the P.S. section that gives a stamp of approval to the product they intend to buy.

Being able to send product-aware emails is an important use case that you can achieve through FunnelKit Automations.

Personalization will increase your recovery rates against your WooCommerce abandoned carts.

3. Incentive email for abandoned users

Another brilliant WooCommerce cart abandonment email example from Morphe.

They're offering an incentive in the form of a 20% discount:

WooCommerce cart abandonment example from Morphe

It's a pretty decent attempt at converting visitors. But you must note that their system will send this discount email to just about everyone - whether their cart total is $50 or $20.

You can change that in FunnelKit Automations.

4. Cart abandonment email offering free shipping

What a brilliantly well-written email from Rudy’s!

This email is offering free shipping as an incentive for customers to complete their purchase:

WooCommerce Cart abandonment email example - offering free shipping

It uses the catchy heading - ‘Don’t put this off like a software update’.

Secondly, the email is short, crisp and to the point; there are no unnecessary images or HTML content.

Finally, the free shipping coupon that is about to expire - conveys a built-in urgency.

Overall quite an action-producing email, and we’re sure it converts high too!

5. Checkout page-aware abandonment email

We’re incredibly impressed by this email from Billy Gene. It's very contextual and serves as a powerful reminder.

This email literally came within the first hour of abandoning the cart:

WooCommerce Cart abandonment email example - Checkout page-aware abandonment email

Do you know what works in favor of this email?

The user is instantly able to connect the dots and know what they need to do next.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Related to WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery and Emails

Here are the answers to some commonly asked questions about cart abandonment recovery in WooCommerce:

1. What is cart abandonment recovery for WooCommerce?

Cart abandonment recovery for WooCommerce is a strategy to recover lost sales when shoppers abandon their carts and leave without completing the purchase.

2. Does WooCommerce have abandoned cart?

Yes, WooCommerce has abandoned carts. But, you have to install an extension plugin for $59 that lets you send cart abandonment emails only.

However, FunnelKit is an all-in-one CRM that lets not only lets you set up the smart abandoned cart recovery system. But also, you can automate your entire WooCommerce store, send email/SMS broadcasts, and more.

3. How do I find abandoned carts in WooCommerce?

WooCommerce alone doesn’t have the feature to provide details about abandoned carts without an additional extension.

However, you can see these details in FunnelKit Automations. Go to the ‘Carts’ section in FunnelKit Automations - Under the ‘Recoverable’ carts - you'll see this:

See abandoned carts in FunnelKit Automations

This is the section where you can see all the data about your recoverable, already recovered and lost carts, along with details such as contact name, email ID, date the user abandoned the cart, items in the cart, cart total, status, and more.

This is how you can check your WooCommerce abandoned carts in FunnelKit Automations.

4. How do I send abandoned cart emails in WooCommerce?

You can send abandoned cart emails in WooCommerce with FunnelKit Automations. It lets you track abandoned carts, set up abandoned cart automated sequences with timed delays, coupons, actions, conditions, goals, and more.

Ready to Create Your WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Strategy?

Cart abandonment is a serious issue for all of us - some business owners acknowledge it, while others keep ignoring it.

In this post, we helped you acknowledge it and understand the concrete steps to combat it. 

While there are cart recovery solutions offered by various plugins, they aren’t as flexible as FunnelKit Automations.

FunnelKit Automations is the best automation builder plugin in the market that keeps WooCommerce as the priority.

You can set up all kinds of automated workflows such as cart abandonment, post-purchase follow ups, welcome sequences, shipping-related automations, and more.

With pre-built automation recipes, discount coupon creation, advanced rule-based workflows, and many more features, FunnelKit Automations is the best WooCommerce cart abandonment plugin that you can wish for.  

Here's to recovering abandoned carts and dollars with your WooCommerce abandoned cart recovery strategy!

Put a smart cart abandonment email sequence into play, today >>

Author: Editorial Team
The Editorial Team at FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) is a passionate group of writers and copy editors. We create well-researched posts on topics such as WordPress automation, sales funnels, online course creation, and more. We aim to deliver content that is interesting and actionable.

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