Around 70% of online shopping carts get abandoned. Someone adds your product, gets to checkout, and disappears. The cart sits there waiting; the sale evaporates.
For South African e-commerce stores, that abandoned-cart number is often higher. Delivery anxiety, payment hesitation, and the load-shedding-and-back-tomorrow habit all conspire against you. Which is why abandoned cart emails are one of the single most valuable things you can set up.
Done well, they recover 10% to 30% of those lost carts. That’s pure incremental revenue from a sequence you build once.
Why abandoned cart emails work
The reason these emails recover so much money is simple: the person was already going to buy. They got distracted, hit a snag, or chickened out. A well-timed reminder gives them an easy off-ramp back to the purchase.
This is not cold sales. This is helping someone finish something they started.
The basic three-email sequence
Three emails, spaced over two to three days, covers most of the recovery you’re going to get. More than three usually nets less return and risks annoying people who genuinely changed their mind.
Email 1: The reminder (1 hour after abandonment)
Short, friendly, no pressure. Subject line names the product or mentions “your cart”. Body shows the item(s), the price, and a clear button back to checkout.
The job here is to assume good faith. Maybe they got interrupted. Maybe their phone died. Don’t lead with a discount; you don’t need one yet. Just make it easy to come back.
Email 2: The friction-remover (24 hours)
If they didn’t return, something stopped them. This email’s job is to address whatever it was. Common friction points to handle directly in the copy:
- Delivery questions. “Free shipping over R500, delivers in 2-4 working days nationwide.”
- Payment options. “We accept all cards, Snapscan, Zapper, and PayFast EFT.”
- Returns. “30-day returns if it doesn’t fit, no questions asked.”
- Social proof. One short customer review or a star rating for the product they were looking at.
You don’t need all four. Pick the ones most likely to be the actual blocker for your business.
Email 3: The incentive (48 to 72 hours)
This is where you offer a discount, if you’re going to. A small code (5% to 10% off, or free shipping) is usually enough. Make it time-limited (24 to 48 hours) to give them a reason to act now.
One word of warning: customers train themselves to abandon carts on purpose if they know a discount will arrive. So don’t make this predictable. Use it for the bigger purchases or first-time customers. Repeat customers can often be coaxed back without one.
SA-specific considerations
Most abandoned cart templates are written for the American or British market. A few tweaks for the SA audience:
- Address delivery anxiety up front. South African buyers are often nervous about whether items will actually arrive. Naming your courier and your delivery timeline in email 2 makes a real difference.
- Show local payment methods. Mentioning Snapscan, Zapper, PayFast, or instant EFT alongside card payments reassures buyers who don’t love putting card details into another new site.
- Consider load-shedding timing. If you can, schedule emails to send outside peak load-shedding windows for your customer base. A reminder email that arrives during a 6pm outage isn’t helping anyone.
- Use rands. Make sure your platform is showing prices in ZAR throughout the email, not USD. It happens more than you’d think on stores that imported a US theme.
Mistakes to avoid
- Sending the first email too late. An hour is right. 24 hours is too late; they’ve moved on.
- Leading with a discount. You’re giving away margin you didn’t have to. Save it for email 3, if at all.
- Being too apologetic. “Sorry we missed you!” emails read weakly. You haven’t done anything wrong. Just remind them, helpfully.
- Sending the same template forever. Refresh the copy every six months. Test new subject lines. Watch what your specific audience responds to.
How to set them up
Almost every serious e-commerce email platform handles abandoned cart automatically once it’s connected to your store. Klaviyo does it best (it’s built around exactly this kind of behavioural email). Mailchimp, Brevo, and MailerLite also support it for Shopify and WooCommerce stores.
The technical setup is the easy part. The copy and the timing are where most stores leave money on the table.
Read next
If your subject lines are letting the sequence down, read our subject line guide. And to make sure these emails actually land in inboxes rather than spam, deliverability basics here.
Want this built for your store?
Abandoned cart sequences are the single highest-ROI piece of e-commerce email work, and most stores are leaving them on default templates. If yours could be doing more, see our email marketing service, or get in touch.
