The Baymard Institute has been measuring e-commerce cart abandonment for years. The average abandonment rate is around 70%. For every 10 people who add something to their cart, 7 leave without buying.
For an art store running paid ads, that's a significant leak. You're paying to bring people to your site. Some of them are interested enough to start a checkout. Then they disappear.
Abandoned cart retargeting is the system that catches some of those people and brings them back. Done properly across both Meta ads and email, it's one of the highest-return automations you can set up.
Why People Abandon Carts
Before setting up recovery campaigns, it helps to understand why people leave. The reasons are different, and each requires a different response.
Price shock at checkout. The print is $80. Shipping adds $15. They didn't expect that. They bail.
Distraction. They added to cart on their phone during a commute, got interrupted, and forgot. The intent was real - they just never came back.
Comparison shopping. They're deciding between your botanical print and two others they found on Etsy. They're in research mode, not ready yet.
Not ready to buy. It's the end of the month. They're saving the cart to come back when they get paid.
Distrust. They haven't heard of you. They're not sure the quality will be there when the package arrives.
Each of these calls for a slightly different message. A distracted buyer needs a gentle reminder. A comparison shopper might need social proof. Someone who balked at shipping costs might need the math explained differently. Someone who doesn't trust you yet needs reassurance.
The Two-Channel Approach: Email and Meta Together
The most effective abandoned cart recovery combines both channels. Email is faster and more direct - it lands in someone's inbox with the exact item they were considering. Meta retargeting keeps you visible even for people who don't open emails.
Together, they increase the total recovery rate and reduce the chance someone falls through the cracks because they ignored one channel.
The Email Abandoned Cart Sequence
Set this up in Klaviyo. Three emails, staggered over 48 hours:
Email 1: 1 Hour After Abandonment
Keep this simple. The tone is helpful, not pushy. You're reminding them they left something behind, in case they got distracted.
Subject line examples:
- "You left something behind"
- "Still thinking about it?"
Content: show the specific item they had in their cart, with a direct link back to checkout. Short copy - two or three sentences at most. Don't lecture them about why they should buy. Just make it easy to come back.
Email 2: 24 Hours After Abandonment
Add social proof. This email does a bit more work. Someone who hasn't responded to the reminder might need a reason to trust you.
Include customer reviews, photos of prints hung in real homes, or a note about how many people have purchased that specific piece. If you have a good return policy, mention it here. Remove the "what if I don't like it in person" concern.
Subject line examples:
- "What people say about [print name]"
- "Here's what other buyers have said"
Keep the cart link visible and prominent throughout.
Email 3: 48 Hours After Abandonment
This is your last touchpoint in the sequence. You have two options here:
If you're willing to offer an incentive: A small discount (10% off, or free shipping) creates urgency without training people to always abandon cart for a discount. Keep the offer time-limited - "valid for 24 hours."
If you're not offering a discount: Create soft urgency around scarcity or inventory. If the print is a limited edition or has limited stock, say so honestly. Don't manufacture urgency that isn't real.
After the third email, suppress this person from the sequence. If they haven't bought by this point, more emails become irritating, not persuasive.
Meta Abandoned Cart Retargeting
Alongside email, set up a Meta retargeting campaign specifically for cart abandoners.
The audience: In Meta, create a Custom Audience using the "Website" source, filtered to people who triggered the InitiateCheckout pixel event but did NOT trigger the Purchase event in the last 7 days. This is your cart abandonment audience.
The creative: Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) work best here. Meta's catalog integration lets you show the exact product someone was looking at. The creative personalisation is built in - no need to create separate ads for every product.
If you're not running a full catalog yet, use a standard ad that features your most popular prints with copy focused on removing objections: quality guarantees, shipping expectations, your return policy.
Exclude purchasers: Critical step. Make sure your Purchase audience (people who've bought) is excluded from this campaign. You don't want to show "you left something in your cart" ads to people who already completed the order.
Window: 7 days is the right window for cart abandonment retargeting. Beyond that, the intent signal weakens.
Copy angle: Acknowledge they were close to buying without being aggressive about it. Something like "Still considering this one?" or "Your [print name] is still available" is low-pressure and matches the reality of why most people abandon.
Coordinating Email and Ads
One important thing to get right: consistency between what you're offering in email and what you're saying in ads.
If your email sequence offers a 10% discount at 48 hours, your Meta retargeting ad should either match that or not mention discounts at all. Someone who sees your Meta ad offering nothing, then gets an email with 10% off, will just wait for the discount every time. Someone who sees conflicting messages feels confused.
The simplest approach: don't offer discounts in either channel unless you've decided that's part of your strategy. Recovery can happen through reminders and social proof alone.
Expected Recovery Rate
A well-set-up abandoned cart sequence (email plus Meta retargeting) typically recovers 5-15% of abandoned carts. Where you land in that range depends on:
- How established your brand trust is
- Your price point (higher ticket items have lower recovery rates)
- The quality of your email copy
- How recently the person was considering the purchase
Even at 5%, the math is significant. If 100 people abandon cart each month at an average order value of $75, recovering 5 of those is $375 in additional monthly revenue - from people who were already interested enough to start checkout.
Setting This Up in Klaviyo
In Klaviyo, the abandoned cart flow is a built-in template. Navigate to Flows, create a new flow, and select the "Abandoned Cart" trigger (which fires when someone completes a checkout step but doesn't purchase).
Make sure your Shopify-Klaviyo integration is active and that the checkout started event is being tracked. Without this, the flow won't trigger.
Set your delays between emails (1 hour, 24 hours, 48 hours from the first trigger), customize the templates with your branding and product block, and test it by going through your own checkout and abandoning.
Abandoned cart recovery is one of the first automations Artvertise sets up for clients because the ROI is immediate and measurable. If you want to know what your current setup is missing - or how to connect your email and Meta strategies more tightly - our free audit is a good starting point. Book your free audit here.
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