The abandoned cart flow, and the split that decides who gets an offer

An abandoned cart flow is an automated email sequence that fires when somebody adds items to their basket and leaves without paying. Ours runs three sends over roughly four days, with an order check before every one, so anybody who buys stops hearing about it. You don't have to guess at the intent here. Products picked, price seen.

A cart flow triggers on adding to basket. A checkout flow triggers later, once checkout has started and you've got an email address, which is a stronger signal and usually earns more per recipient. Most accounts want both. The checkout flow takes priority, so nobody gets worked twice.

We wait 45 minutes. Long enough for somebody mid purchase to finish on their own, short enough that the basket still means something. Two checks run before anything sends: whether a browse campaign went out in the past seven days, and whether the order has already landed.

Three is where we start: the plain reminder, a second send carrying either an incentive or urgency, then a closing send on the same line. Go beyond that on a basket nobody took to checkout and you lose the subscriber instead of winning the order.

Not in the first send, and not for everybody. The playbook splits the sequence down the middle: the basic version holds the incentive back from anybody who's used a coupon in the past 90 days, and the advanced version sends it only to baskets above a value threshold you set. Everybody else gets scarcity and a deadline. No money off.

Yes, on the same basis as any other marketing email. You need consent, or the soft opt in that covers people who've bought similar goods from you before, plus an unsubscribe that works in every send. This flow only reaches profiles that gave you an address knowingly: a signup, an order, or a checkout they started themselves.