Cart abandonment promotions: what works & what to avoid

Cart abandonment remains one of the most popular (and tempting) use cases for promotions. The logic is simple: someone liked your product enough to add it to their cart, then left without buying. A little nudge, often in the form of a discount, might just bring them back. After all, according to the research carried out by the Baymard Institute, the average online cart abandonment rate amounts to 69.99%.

But not all nudges are created equal. In this teardown, we explored how major brands approach cart abandonment offers. The goal? Understand how incentives are being used in the wild.

What are cart abandoned campaigns?

All types of e-commerce businesses have to deal with cart abandoners – retail, fashion, and travel. 

Accordingly, brands have come up with various cart abandonment strategies whose primary goal is to encourage customers to return to their abandoned carts and complete the purchase.

‍Cart abandonment campaigns refer to a series of marketing tactics aimed at reconnecting with customers who abandoned their shopping carts, which can be anything from improvements made within the checkout experience, retargeting ads, or, most popularly, clever abandoned cart emails containing discounts or special offers (such as free shipping). These campaigns are typically automated and triggered by specific customer actions – for example, leaving the checkout page without proceeding with payment. 

Offering time-limited discounts has become the perfect way to nudge the customers along the sales funnel and recover carts. Research suggests that the abandoned cart offers recover between 3% and 11% of orders. Importantly, instant messages with 5% to 10% discounts are usually enough to note a significant uplift in recovery rates.

Examples of email cart abandoned promotions

According to Sale Cycle, email marketing produces an average open rate of 21% and a click-through rate of 3.74%. As clever abandoned cart emails undeniably prove to be influential, below we gathered some inspirations for creating an email cart abandonment campaign which will effectively incentivize your customers to complete their purchases.

1. Amount discounts

TigerDirect have sent an email to cart abandoners with the subject line “Leave Something In Your Cart? Take $20 OFF!” offering $20 off their last viewed item or any order above $200 value. That is a very interesting condition. Most probably, that email was sent only to cart abandoners of carts above $200 value. They wanted to let customers choose what they can use the discount for, while ensuring the offer would only reach high-spending customers and would be valid only on $200 and above orders. Such limitations are a smart way to ensure that the marketing budget is well-protected. 

Promotion conditions:

• The promotion is valid only as long as the cart is valid (72h since creation). 
• The discount is non-transferable. 
• The discount is only valid for orders above $200.
• The prices of the items are subject to change (prices mentioned in the email are non-binding).
• The cart can only be recovered on the same device it was created on (probably a purely technical restriction). 
• It is an in-cart discount. It does not require using a coupon code at checkout.

Shinesty kills it with the on-brand, blunt copy of this cart abandoned email. They explain the offer clearly and even admit they are monitoring customer’s data to send that offer, all stated pretty bluntly. They even made a fun graphic to explain the offer better. Despite the email being funny and non-serious, it explains the offer very clearly and stays on-brand. Bravo to their copywriters! The offer consists of $10 off the abandoned cart. 

‍Promotion conditions: 

• $10 off the abandoned cart. 
• Promotion applied in-cart.

2. Percentage discounts

Rebecca Minkoff have launched an abandoned cart campaign with the subject line “15% Off | Complete Your Order!” offering a 15% off for the whole order (with exceptions, see the promotion conditions to learn more). They have focused on the offer urgency by highlighting it in the subject line, header, and email body. 

Promotion conditions: 

• To use the promotion, users have to use the unique coupon code provided in the email.
• The promotion is valid both online and offline.
• The coupon code can be used only once. 
• The promotion cannot be combined with other offers. 
• The promotion can be applied only to future orders and cannot be used retroactively for already placed orders. 
• The promotion expires in 30 days.
• The promotion can be used for any items* (not only for those that the customer “left” in the basket), meaning they can add even more items to their cart and use the promotional code for the whole order. 
• The promotion cannot be applied to luggage, sunglasses, and watches.

The final inspiration for an eye-catching cart recovery campaign comes from Bare Minerals is a cosmetics brand offering mineral-based, clean ingredients cosmetics, skincare, and accessories. They have sent an abandoned cart email offering 15% off the abandoned order with the subject line “We saved your cart + 15% off.” 

Promotion conditions: 

• Offer valid only online through the manufacturer’s website (bareminerals.com). The offer is not valid in bareMinerals Boutiques, bare+BEAUTY Outlets, or any other retail store, website, salon, or spa. 
• The offer expires in 30 days from the email reception. 
• The promo code has to be applied at the checkout to redeem the promotion. 
• The promotion cannot be applied on previous purchases, gift cards, or bareMinerals MADE-2-FIT Fresh Faced Liquid Foundation. 

3. Free shipping

Aden & Anais, Inc. have launched an abandoned cart promotion with the subject line “We added free shipping to your cart…” offering free shipping with a unique coupon code for cart abandoners. In addition, they have used that abandoned cart reminder to offer other items (boosting up- and cross-selling). 

Promotion conditions: 

• The promotion can be used only with the unique coupon code.
• The promotion is “expiring soon,” but the actual expiration date was not specified in the email.

For Bath and Body Works, the signed-up customers who have their carts full and then exit the page receive an email with a reminder that time is ticking and that customers should come back to their cart and proceed with the purchase. But! As actions speak louder than words, within the email Bath and Body Works also includes a special promo code for free shipping.

Promotion conditions:

• The promotion is only valid with a unique coupon code provided within an email.
• The minimum order value that qualifies for free shipping is $25. 

With such a strategy, not only are customers incentivized to come back and take care of their carts, but they also may eventually decide to buy a little more to get free shipping and spend money on products rather than postal fees. The encouraging CTA – “take me to my bag” – will certainly make customers not want to miss such a deal. 

4. Subscription offer

Another example of a successful cart abandoned campaign is BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. They sent an email to the membership subscription abandoners offering 60% off the 1st year subscription. They have used the subject line “Finish joining now – save over 50% off your Membership.”

Promotion conditions:

• The offer is valid online only. 
• The offer cannot be combined with any other offers. 
• The offer is non-transferable. 
• The offer is only valid for new members. 
• The offer is only valid for a specific payment method – upon enrolling in BJ’s Easy Renewal (directly charging debit/credit card first used at BJ’s after accepting the offer the first day the previous membership period expires). 

BarkBox uses a cart abandonment offer to incentivize customers to complete the purchase of a BarkBox subscription.

Promotion conditions: 

• If a logged-in customer abandons their cart mid-purchase, they receive an email offering a discount on their first subscription box. 

Best practices for cart abandonment campaigns

After reviewing 30+ cart abandonment campaigns, several trends stood out, some smart, some generic. Here’s what we observed (and what to do about it):

• Percentage-based discounts dominate, usually between 10–20%. These are easy to implement but often used as blunt tools. Consider using dynamic discounting based on cart value, product margin, or user segment to protect ROI.
• Short expiration windows are common, anywhere from 3 to 30 days. Shorter timelines can create urgency, but only if your customer is actually in-market. Test variations to find the sweet spot for your audience.
• Most offers rely on unique promo codes, applied manually at checkout. While this adds a layer of control, it’s also an opportunity to automate and personalize code generation based on session behavior or user profile.
• Many campaigns include upsell or cross-sell blocks, ranging from “bestsellers” to personalized recommendations. These can work well, but are most effective when powered by real purchase and browsing data.
• More personalized offers target only the cart contents or recently viewed items. Generalized offers apply to the whole cart. The former tends to perform better but requires a more flexible incentive engine.
• Copy matters. Branded, benefit-focused messaging clearly outperforms generic reminders. The tone, urgency, and visual framing all influence recovery rates.
• Additional restrictions, like minimum order value or product exclusions are often used but rarely tested. These should be seen as variables in your experimentation, not hard-coded defaults.

Great cart recovery isn’t just about sending a discount, it’s about sending the right incentive to the right person, at the right time, with the right controls in place. That means:

• Running suppression logic to avoid offering discounts to people who would convert anyway.
• Enforcing incrementality testing to ensure offers drive real lift, not just subsidized conversions.
• Using dynamic rules to personalize offers based on cart contents, user history, channel, and margin.