Cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges faced by eCommerce stores. It occurs when a potential customer adds items to their cart but needs to complete the purchase. According to recent studies, the average cart abandonment rate is around 70%, which means that for every ten customers who add products to their cart, only three actually complete the purchase.


With your account, you can run automated cart abandonment campaigns over multiple channels like WhatsApp, SMS, and email and nudge your customers wherever they are with personalized messages and offers to return to your store.

Check out this short video on “Abandoned Cart Recovery” to send reminders to shoppers to complete purchases with automated alerts on Whatsapp, SMS, and email.


Here’s a step-by-step instruction on how you can reduce cart abandonment rates and boost conversions by enabling the abandoned cart journey:


1. Enable the Abandoned Cart Journey

2. Choose the Channel

3. Create a Campaign    Whatsapp Campaigns

4. Monitor Campaign Performance

5. Run Multi-Channel Campaigns


Step 1: Enable the Abandoned Cart Journey
To get started, 

  1. Go to the Marketing Automation icon and select Customer Journeys.

  2. Search for abandoned cart in the search bar. Here you'll find templates for reaching cart abandoners on WhatsApp, email, or SMS, so you can choose the one your customers prefer. 

  3. Enable the journey and edit the playbook to suit your needs.



Step 2: Choose the Channel

The system offers templates for reaching cart abandoners on WhatsApp, email, or SMS. Choose the channel that works best for your customers.



Step 3: Create a Campaign

           Whatsapp Campaigns

Follow the steps below to enable the “Reclaim abandoned carts through Whatsapp”.

  1. Once you click ‘Enable journey’, provide a name by selecting the pencil icon to rename your journey.

  2. In the “On Shopify event” trigger block, the system checks the event “abandoned cart.” 

  3. In the “Wait for Shopify event” control block, the system waits one hour to see if the customer has placed an order. 

  4. If they haven’t, it triggers the “Send WhatsApp message” action block.

  5. If your WhatsApp Business account is connected to your account, you can choose from one of your existing WhatsApp campaigns or create one by clicking the “Select campaign” link.

  6. To create a new campaign, click the ‘Create campaign’ button.

  7. Enter the necessary details, and personalize your messages with relevant customer information like cart items, order value, etc. 

  8. Preview your campaigns before publishing them, and click ‘Start Journey’ to reclaim abandoned carts.

SMS Campaigns

You can also target cart abandoners via SMS. Make sure your account is connected to the mobile number sending SMSes. The setup is similar to the previous WhatsApp Journey. Select or create a new SMS Campaign and fill in the relevant information to start your Journey.

Email Campaigns

You can also target abandoned carts via email. 

  1. Once you click ‘Enable journey’, provide a name by selecting the pencil icon to rename your journey.

  2. Under the ‘Send email’ action block, click on the ‘Choose your email’ link to select or create a new email campaign.

  3. Select the' Create journey email' button if you wish to create a new journey email.

  4. You can choose from the available email templates to match your abandoned cart email's style and design in line with your brand. 

  5. Click on the ‘Use template’ button on the template of your choice to edit it.

  6. You can drag and drop to create new rows and add images, videos, buttons, and more.

  7. Add the abandoned cart block to highlight the products in your customers' carts to nudge them to purchase. 

  8. You can also add a button to claim discount coupons on purchases and configure the subscription types, subject line, and preheader. 

  9. Send a test email to see how your email would look for customers and verify your CTAs.

  10. Start the Journey, and your cart abandonment emails will get triggered when customers don't complete their purchase.

Step 4: Monitor Campaign Performance

View reports under the Analytics tab to understand how your campaigns are performing. You can use the insights to optimize your campaigns and improve their effectiveness.


Step 5: Run Multi-Channel Campaigns

You can also run multi-channel cart abandonment campaigns to nudge customers across more than one channel to increase your reach and conversions.

Multi channel engagement for cart abandonment campaigns in Freshmarketer.


You can also create a journey from scratch and configure it to send your customers a WhatsApp message if they don't purchase in the first hour and an email if they haven't purchased in the last 24 hours.



Following these steps, you can start recovering abandoned carts in real time on WhatsApp, SMS, and email. With personalized messages and offers, you can increase your conversion rates and reduce cart abandonment rates. 


Note: By default, we will check for abandoned carts 15 minutes after the checkout begins. You can also add a delay box to customize the wait time for the abandoned cart journey. We recommend setting a minimum wait time of 15 minutes before you trigger the journey. Click here to learn how the abandoned cart journey gets triggered in Freshmarketer.