40+ Abandoned Cart Email Rates for E-commerce in 2024

Being an e-commerce brand, you must be facing cart abandonment all the time. It’s not necessarily a reflection of your strategies, at least not always. 

For one thing, customers abandon carts for a lot of reasons that may not have anything to do with how you set up your journeys. Conversely, you may have to reckon with a number of internal barriers to tilt customer behavior in your favor. 

Either way, cart abandonment is a fact of e-commerce. But why do customers abandon carts? How often do they do it? Is your industry somehow encouraging it? Or might the fault lie with how you’re optimizing email campaigns? 

The best way to answer these questions is to look at the data.

That’s why, we’ve collected the most relevant data on abandoned cart emails and cart abandonment in general: To give you a reliable compass for reversing unfavorable trends where possible. For our collection, we’ve relied on a number of authentic sources and we’ve also shared pro tips for each category

Speaking of which, let’s get started according to the following categories:

• Abandoned cart email rates by frequency 
• Abandoned cart email rates by subject line
• Abandoned cart email rates by CTAs
• Abandoned cart email rates by timing
• Abandoned cart email rates by sales recovery
• General abandoned cart rates overview 
• Abandoned cart rates by device
• Abandoned cart rates by industry
• Abandoned cart rates by cause
• Abandoned cart rates by revenue 

1. Abandoned cart email rates by frequency

• In a Rejoiner survey of 1000 consumer brands, 21% of brands sent no more than 2 cart abandonment emails.
  
• 16% sent 3 cart abandonment emails.
  
• 7% sent 4 cart abandonment emails
  
• Only 2% sent 5 or more cart abandonment emails
  

Pro tip: Finding the right frequency is not necessarily an exact science. When it comes to cart abandonment, you don’t want to keep pushing nor slacken off entirely. The best practice is to send a max of 3 such emails over a week or so. 

2. Abandoned cart email rates by subject line

Image source: Rejoiner

• 44% of those brands mentioned the word “offer” in their cart abandonment email subject lines.
  
• 18% used the word “cart” in the subject line
  
• 9% used the word “forgot” or “forget” in the subject line
  
• Less than 2% mentioned “low stock” in the subject line.
  

Pro tip: We don’t recommend incentivizing checkout completion. Customers know you’re going to, so it’s best not to reward such behavior. Simply mention the words “forget” or “forgot” in your subject lines. Or, you can also use the word “complete.”

3. Abandoned cart email rates by CTAs

Image source: Rejoiner

• 22% of those 1000 e-commerce brands mentioned the word “Complete” in the CTAs of their cart abandonment emails.
• 10% used the word “Shop” in the CTA.
• Only 7% used the word “Return to Cart” in the CTA button. 

Pro tip: Make your primary CTA prominent and place it above the fold. “Return to cart” is not as relevant as “Complete” since the latter is positively event-based.

Abandoned cart email rates by timing

• 5% of the brands sent the first cart abandonment email within 30 minutes of the abandonment.
  
• 98% sent their cart abandonment emails within 24 hours of the abandonment.
  
• Nearly 20% of second cart abandonment emails are sent within the first 12 hours of the abandonment.
  
• Over 90% of second cart abandonment emails are sent within the first two days of the cart abandonment.
  

Pro tip: How soon you should send the first reminder is debatable. You shouldn’t immediately because customers often check out later on their own. If you want to be absolutely certain, study the purchase behavior of repeat customers and trigger sends accordingly. For first-time buyers, we recommend waiting for a day at least.

5. Abandoned cart email rates by sales recovery

Image source: Omnisend

• Cart abandonment emails have a nearly 40% open rate and a 23.33% click-through rate. The open rate is particularly impressive in light of the average open rate for all emails, which is just 21.33%.
  
• Multiple cart abandonment emails tend to outperform one-time emails.
  
• Brands that sent 3 cart abandonment emails generated the highest revenue ($24.9 million), where those who sent just one generated $3.8 million.
  

Pro tip: From subject line to preview text to template design, every customer-facing email should be optimized for sales. Test your CTAs and redirects thoroughly.

6. General abandoned cart rates overview

• 70% of shoppers abandon their carts. So for every 10 of your customers, only 3 make it to the checkout process and complete the transaction.
  
• The cart abandonment rate varies by region, with the Caribbean clocking the highest at 92.2% and Asia & Pacific the lowest at 76.3%.
  
• Abandoned products in carts can amount to around $4 trillion annually.
  
• Retargeted ads can bring back 26% of cart abandoners to your website. 

7. Abandoned cart rates by device

• Desktop shoppers account for 73% of cart abandoners.
  
• On tablets, the rate is even higher, with over 80% of customers abandoning carts. Significantly, tables account for only 3% of online shopping sessions.
  
• Mobile cart abandonment rate is the highest at 85.65%.
  
• 40% of mobile shoppers leave, finding it hard to provide complete personal information. 

Pro tip: Usually, those who abandon carts on mobile finish the checkout on their desktop. It’s not necessarily lost revenue. Still, optimize your website for responsiveness. Make the checkout process intuitive and quick. Test load time.

8. Abandoned cart rates by industry 

Image source: Statista

• The Cruise and Ferry industry has the highest cart abandonment rate at 98% while Consumer Electronics and Groceries has the lowest at 50%.
  
• In Luxury and Fashion, the cart abandonment rate is roughly 88%, whereas in Retail, it can amount to 71.2%.
  
• The food and beverage sector enjoys the highest open rate for abandoned cart flows at 52%, followed by the sporting goods category at 51%.
  
• For the apparels and accessories industry, the average abandoned cart flow click rate is 6.25% — at par with the all-industry average. 

Pro tip: No, you don’t need to switch to a different industry. But you can drive more visits to your online store by optimizing for organic SEO, improving on-page experience, optimizing for mobile shoppers, offering free shipping, and leveraging social media marketing, email marketing, and influencer marketing.

9. Abandoned cart rates by cause 

Image source: OptiMonk

• Nearly half of cart abandonments (48%) occur due to extra costs, such as shipping tax, customs fees, and so on.
  
• Shipping-related concerns account for up to 60% of cart abandonments.
  
• 22% of customers abandon their carts due to protracted delivery. In addition, nearly the same percentage would rather abandon their cart than create an  account to complete the checkout process.
  
• A complicated checkout process makes 28% of website visitors leave. The lack of multiple payment options and declined credit cards also lead to cart abandonments, accounting for 9% of checkout abandons.
  
• Almost 50% of customers abort the burying process due to non-functioning coupon codes.
  
• 13% of shoppers abandon checkouts due to website crashes or errors.
  
• Another 12% leave because they don’t find the return policy favorable.
  
• For 23% of customers, failure to calculate or see the total order cost up-front led them to abandon the checkout.

Pro tip: The reasons already suggest what you need to do. Much of it goes beyond marketing, requiring you to double down on your core business strategies. Our advice? Start by listening to and documenting customer concerns and feedback.

10. Abandoned cart rates by revenue 

• A staggering $260 billion worth of revenue lost due to cart abandonment is potentially recoverable.
  
• Better-designed checkout flows could lead to a 35.36% increase in the average conversion rate for large-sized e-commerce websites.
  
• In the United Kingdom, 26% of shoppers who abandoned their carts went to a different retailer just after. 

Pro tip: Since so much of lost sales is recoverable, the best way to do that is to send good, timely, and well-optimized cart abandonment emails. 

Next steps…

Now that you’ve a fair idea of how you should optimize for abandoned cart emails, catch our blog post on the top 6 email automation flows for e-commerce.