20 Best Abandoned Cart Email Templates to Recover Lost Revenue

Cart abandonment is a massive cost for e-commerce. 

The average rate is 70%, and on mobile phones, it increases to 83%. This is millions of dollars on the table. According to a study, these abandoned carts result in approximately $18 billion in annual costs.

This is not just a loss of a one-time sale, but an opportunity that you spent a significant amount on to acquire. The good thing is that these abandoned carts can be recovered, and email is one of the potential channels.

In this article, we discuss the email route in detail, including abandoned cart email templates of various categories and purposes. This should help you recover lost opportunities before they lapse. 

What You Need Abandoned Cart Email Templates?

An abandoned cart email is an automated, personalized follow-up sent to shoppers who have added items to their cart but haven’t completed the checkout process. It typically recaps the specific items left in the cart, often accompanied by product photos, and encourages the customer to return and complete the purchase. 

Defined events trigger these emails. For example, when a user triggers an “Item Added to Cart” event without subsequently making a purchase. 

Key triggers include:

• Timing: Typically, the first email is sent shortly after the cart is abandoned.
• Cart value: Offering incentives only on higher-value carts.
• Product context: Tailoring the design to the items and offering personalized recommendations. 

In these emails, the messaging and design are crucial. The subject must grab attention, the copy is supposed to stay on-brand, and the layout needs to spotlight the abandoned products with a prominent CTA. That’s why you need abandoned cart email templates to make sure the messaging aligns with your brand and you stand out in an already overcrowded inbox.

20 Effective Abandoned Cart Email Templates and Examples

Below are some real examples of abandoned cart emails and templates inspired by them. Feel free to reuse the copy with necessary modifications for your brand. 

Gentle Reminder Abandoned Cart Email Templates

The gentle reminder approach is ideal for the initial contact. It feels organic and friendly, simply nudging customers with a helpful reminder rather than a hard sell. Check out these examples that deliver such reminders seamlessly: 

1. Sending a Friendly Nudge

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Dyson sells high-end tech, and aesthetics and brand trust matter when you’re pushing high-ticket purchases. The company’s email strategy reflects that with its minimalist design and high-quality product photography. 

If you’re selling high-end tech or appliances, this is relevant for you. Use plenty of white space and subtle accent colors for CTA. Here’s a template you can use: 

2. Leveraging Dark Humor

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A humor-driven, bold reengagement attempt when a user hasn’t acted after initial reminders. You need to use such abandoned cart email templates carefully, and only if it goes with your brand’s usual style and messaging. 

The example from Liquid Death uses bold and striking visuals with a dark background and contrasting text. It uses humor in images and illustrations, too, with a strong and noticeable CTA. Here’s a template you can reuse:

3. Adopting Simplicity

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This is a good example to remind shoppers about their abandoned carts in a gentle manner. It’s much earlier in the abandonment cycle before the urgency gets heavy. Cotopaxi, a brand selling innovative outdoor products, does this perfectly well. It utilizes nature and lifestyle visuals, along with a friendly tone in the copy, which complements its brand’s style. 

It uses brand accent colors for the CTA while displaying the exact cart items with images and names. If you like this format, here’s a template you can reuse: 

Urgency and Scarcity Abandoned Cart Email Templates

When a gentle reminder doesn’t convert, adding urgency or scarcity can motivate the customer to act fast. These emails highlight deadlines or low inventory. 

4. Creating FOMO with Fast Selling Stock

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This is a good example of an abandoned cart email to use after some delay, highlighting that inventory may not last. It creates Fomo for shoppers to complete their purchases. To do this effectively, use scarcity cues, such as “Only two left…” or countdown timers and progress bars. 

It’s advisable to keep the design warm with energetic color accents accompanied by images and stock indicators. Here’s a template you can use, if you like this design: 

Here’s another example of the emails that focus on selling fast to create urgency. This time, it’s Google putting up a show to recover abandoned carts. 

Check this out: 

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Suppose you include a social signal indicating the number of people viewing an item in this email. In that case, it will further enhance the product’s popularity, increasing its chances of selling quickly and creating more urgency. 

Disclaimer: The strategies to recover abandoned cart emails aren’t exclusive. You can design your email using one, some, or all strategies relevant to your brand. 

5. Delivering Time-Sensitive Offers for Urgency

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Such emails tie a seasonal or limited-time sale to cart abandonment. It’s best for the time when you’re campaign is near the end of a promotion window and the urgency is high. 

In these emails, it’s best to use countdown timers with sale banners and price slashes. If you want to recreate this, there’s a template you can use: 

Social Proof Abandoned Cart Email Templates

Building trust through social proof reassures undecided shoppers. This social proof can be in the form of customer reviews, ratings, or testimonials.  Usually, anything that shows customers are taking an interest in a product or service can be treated as social proof. 

6. Enveloping Trust Signals In Your Email

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Some items have a longer decision cycle. For example, a bike or high-ticket electronics. In such cases, make use of abandoned cart email templates that come with gentle extension reminders while displaying trust signals to reinforce buyers’ consideration of your products or services. 

Use gentle and patient language here while showcasing awards, recognition, and everything that logically sets you apart when offering the same value as other market players.

Here’s the template: 

7. Showcasing Customer Reviews and Ratings

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It’s great for a brand that is comfortable with playful and slightly offbeat messaging. It uses playful visuals with bold and friendly fonts. At the bottom, it shows how people are reviewing and rating Adidas products to build trust. 

If you want to take inspiration for this, here’s the template for the copy:

8. Displaying Expert Recommendations

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Expert recommendations are most effective when selling products or services that require specialized knowledge. It appeals to logic the same it nurtures trust. It’s advisable to mention the expert’s credentials and include customer reviews to provide more logical evidence. 

Feel free to use this template, inspired by the example above: 

Discount-Based Abandoned Cart Email Templates

A small discount or incentive has the potential to turn an “maybe” into a sale. The key is to make it obvious. Check out the templates below. 

9. Combining Humor and Discount for Youth

In fashion and retail, customers often wait for discounts to make purchases, especially when they are aware that brands frequently offer promotions. A customer leaving an item in their cart can be wooed with a special or unique discount if they’re not convinced by the one you’re serving them already. 

In these emails, you can adopt a playful and slightly humorous tone that resonates well with young people, who are potentially your target audience. Use this as a mid-sequence nudge when early reminders haven’t yielded positive outcomes. 

Learn how to write the most effective abandoned cart email subject lines.

10. Delivering the Best Offer in The First Fold

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This is preferred when you want to guarantee a reserved cart and offer it as an incentive. Best used in the mid-to-late sequence of the cart recovery process. It shows the discount code at the top. You can encourage faster action on them by making expiration data clearly visible, possibly with a countdown timer. 

Here’s the template: 

Mobile-Optimized Abandoned Cart Email Templates

A significant portion of cart abandonment occurs on mobile devices, so ensure your emails are optimized for mobile use. Use single-column layouts, big touch-friendly buttons, and concise copy. The CTA should be above the fold on small screens.

Here’s how to do it perfectly: 

11. Using Abandoned Cart Email Templates Built for Mobile Shoppers

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For sin goods, like alcohol or cigarettes, you can set a bold tone in your email marketing (if you’re legally authorized to advertise or market them). These can be mid-sequence reminders, optimized for mobile users, as people often make such purchases more through personal devices. 

It’s not limited to only sin goods; all of these email reminders work optimally when they’re optimized for mobile. Use a single-column layout, and follow these best practices for optimizing the creatives and copy for mobile.  

Here’s the template you can use for the above example: 

Free Shipping Abandoned Cart Email Templates

Shipping costs often block purchases that could have gone smoothly. It doesn’t deliver value, as buyers often weigh it by purchasing the product from a nearby store impulsively without paying the shipping fee, but still getting instantaneous pleasure and excitement. 

When free shipping is offered, it makes the value comparison more even, giving you a better chance to close a sale. Check out the examples below.

12. Delivering a Loyalty Program Pitch With a Free Delivery Benefit

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Nike does this reasonably well with a clean and straightforward design. It subtly promotes its loyalty program, making free deliveries exclusive to members. The design uses confidence and simplicity to remind shoppers about the  items left in the cart. 

It’s best to use such emails, mid in sequence, appealing to brand trust and known product lines. 

Here’s a template you can use for copy: 

13. Promoting Free Express Shipping

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Specialized bicycle components use a promotional incentive (free shipping) to sway incomplete buyers. This is best for user journeys that drop just before checkout. Chances are, they’re looking for a better deal or free shipping to go through the purchase. 

Use abandoned cart email templates that help shoppers move through the hesitation of price or shipping concerns:

Multi-Product Cart Templates

For carts with multiple items, use templates that showcase the whole haul. The idea is to remind them of all they were getting and cross-sell related products. With various items, it’s often effective to have a single “View Cart” CTA near the top rather than multiple buttons. The visuals should clearly convey the value of the bundle. 

Here are a few examples that do it perfectly: 

14. Cross-Selling Different Products with the Ones in the Cart

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Lifestyle or niche brands typically offer a range of products. If someone has added a shirt to their cart, they might not mind purchasing a contrasting pair of jeans or a shoulder bag to complete the look. The above example provides shoppers with other products in the abandoned cart recovery email, reminding them about what they might be missing out on. 

Use this template for copy and keep the design on-brand while reusing: 

15. Offering Product Recommendations

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Novelty products or gift items often use FOMO to persuade shoppers to explore other options they might be missing in their shopping journey. When you send them an abandoned cart reminder, it’s best to stock the email with other recommendations and available options. 

Include product imagery and social proof to develop trust, and convey urgency with fast-forward cues. It’s best to maintain consistent navigation links with prominent CTAs. 

Here’s a template you can use: 

Abandoned Cart Email Templates with Cart Recovery Ideas

Below are some creative and technologically driven ways to create abandoned cart email templates that work. 

16. Leverage Behavior-Based Dynamic Template

These templates vary their content based on user behavior and profile. For example, you can segment customers by recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) or by cart size. 

CleverTap’s dynamic variables enable you to automatically insert customer names, product details, or personalized images into each email. Similarly, the platform allows you to filter who can view specific content. For example, if the cart value exceeds a threshold value, offer a particular tier discount. 

Read the full blog on RFM analysis.

Here’s a template you can use: 

17. Use Playful Nostalgia

This is especially valuable for a younger audience in the lifestyle and e-commerce sectors, where humor is effective. These type of abandoned cart email templates are best to use with a retro, sci-fi theme to create Back to the Future vibes. 

It’s best to put an animated clock or a time-travel progress bar and style the CTA button like a glowing portal. 

18. Anthropomorphize the Cart Items

In the copy, let the cart items write you a letter. This type of abandoned cart email templates dabble with creativity, which is valuable in lifestyle, apparel, and quirky DTC brands. When designing these emails, consider using a handwritten font style and incorporating speech bubbles from product photos to complement the theme. 

Here’s the template you can use: 

19. Frame It Like a Case File

Frame missing checkout as a crime. It would work for edgier brands, gadgets, and subscription boxes. You can use a black and white dossier-style theme with a red color accent to create a confidentiality stamp effect. 

20. Personalize The Reminder as a Horoscope Prediction

Wellness, beauty, or lifestyle brands targeting younger, astrology-savvy shoppers would benefit most from this template. It’s best to use a celestial background in design, and a horoscope-style typography in the design. 

How to Choose the Right Abandoned Cart Email Templates for Your Brand

Every brand and audience is different, so tailor your abandoned-cart emails accordingly:

• Audience Segmentation: Use your customer data to determine which template best suits each individual. For example, high-value or repeat customers might get a more personalized or urgent email, while first-time visitors receive a simple, friendly reminder. 
• Product/Cart Characteristics: The type of products should guide the style. For fashion or home goods, use big images and style-focused copy. For tech or utilitarian items, emphasize features or specs. 
• Timing Strategy: Plan a sequence that starts at 1 hour, 24 hours, and 72 hours after abandonment to escalate reminders gently. It’s best to send the first email within an hour. 
• Tone of Voice: Match your brand’s personality. A playful, informal tone might suit a lifestyle brand, while a more professional tone fits B2C tech or appliances. Be a little cautious if you’re using dark humor. It works only when your brand has set the stage for it. If it does, it works fantastically. 
• Incentive Logic: Decide whether to offer a discount/free shipping and to whom. You might only offer coupons in the 2nd or 3rd email to customers who have not yet converted, or only for carts with a value exceeding a specific threshold. 

Pick the right templates and use them with CleverTap’s email automation to recapture lost revenue with minimal manual work. 

Automate Cart Recovery With CleverTap

CleverTap serves you technologically through a multi-channel journey to fully automate the recovery workflow. The journey starts with the items being added to the cart. If they’re not purchased within an hour, it triggers a reminder considering the cart value threshold. 

In each email, you can use dynamic variables to personalize content. Then A/B test subject lines and CTAs to optimize engagement. You can build a Journey with multiple email nodes. A typical setup involves sending three emails: the first reminder at 1 hour after abandonment, the second at 24 hours, and a last-chance email at 72 hours. 

The platform also allows you to include fallback logic. If the user converts or clicks a link, exit the flow. This is monitored under analytics, which also tracks the funnel for drop-offs and conversions. Overall, CleverTap empowers you to ensure your recovery emails are timely, targeted, and highly effective.