What Is Abandoned Cart Recovery and How Does It Work?
Abandoned cart recovery sends up to three automated emails to shoppers who added items to their cart but didn't check out — each with a one-click link back to their cart.
Abandoned cart recovery automatically emails shoppers who built a cart but left before paying. VeloCMS sends up to three emails in a drip sequence and restores the customer's exact cart when they click through — they don't have to re-add anything.
When does VeloCMS consider a cart abandoned?
A cart is flagged as abandoned one hour after the last activity — meaning the customer added something to the cart, didn't complete checkout, and hasn't come back. The one-hour window is intentional: it filters out people who are still deciding or dealing with a slow payment process. VeloCMS can only recover carts for customers who are logged in or who provided their email on a previous visit, since anonymous carts have no contact to email.
What do the three emails look like and when are they sent?
The first email goes out one hour after abandonment — a friendly reminder that lists the items left in the cart with images and prices, and a single big button to resume checkout. The second email arrives 24 hours later and adds a mild urgency note about stock levels if any cart items have limited inventory. The third email comes at 72 hours and can optionally include a coupon code to sweeten the deal — you configure this in Admin → Shop → Cart Recovery → Coupon. You can customize the subject lines and body copy for all three emails.
You can disable individual emails in the sequence. If you only want one recovery email, turn off emails two and three. If three feels aggressive for your brand, two is a sensible default.
How does the unsubscribe work?
Every cart recovery email includes a one-click unsubscribe link in the footer. The link is HMAC-signed so it can't be forged — clicking it marks that customer's email as opted-out of cart recovery emails and no further recovery sequence fires for them. This is separate from your newsletter unsubscribe list; opting out of cart recovery emails doesn't affect newsletter delivery or vice versa.
How do I measure whether it's actually working?
Admin → Shop → Cart Recovery shows a dashboard with total abandoned carts, total recovered carts, recovery rate, and revenue attributed to cart recovery emails over any date range you pick. A cart is counted as recovered when the customer clicks through from a recovery email and completes a purchase within 7 days. That attribution window is configurable in Cart Recovery Settings if you want a shorter or longer window.