Abandoned cart emails are a crucial part of any e-commerce strategy. They are sent to customers who have left items in their online shopping cart to encourage them to complete the purchase.

To make these emails effective, it's important to personalize them with information about the shopper and the products they left behind. This not only helps to remind the shopper of the items they were interested in, but it also shows that the retailer values their business.

We have created a series of articles to help you automatically send abandoned cart emails:

• About abandoned cart emails
• Part 1: Create an abandoned cart email template - YOU ARE HERE
• Part 2: Automatically send your abandoned cart emails
• Part 3: Send abandoned cart emails in different languages (optional)
• Part 4: Calculate your abandoned cart conversion rate (optional)
• Troubleshooting and FAQs

⚙️ Step 1: Create and configure the abandoned cart email template

To create your abandoned cart email template, you have two options:

• [Recommended] Option 1: Use our default abandoned cart email template. The template already includes everything needed to remind the shopper about the products they abandoned: image, name, currency, price, variant, and quantity. It is also configured to display multiple products.
• Option 2: Create a new abandoned cart email template from scratch. This means you will need to design your template, add placeholders for abandoned cart data, and configure the Repeat option to ensure that your email template can display multiple products and interpret data sent by your website to Brevo.

🎨 Step 2: Design the abandoned cart email template

Like any other marketing email, abandoned cart emails should have a header that includes the company name and logo, a footer that provides the physical address of the company, contact information, copyright information, a link to the privacy policy, and most importantly, an unsubscribe link.

To design your template, you can add and format text, images, buttons, and other design elements by dragging and dropping content blocks into the template layout. To learn more about designing an email template using the Drag & Drop Editor, check our dedicated articles.

🖋️ Step 3: Personalize the abandoned cart email template

Abandoned cart emails should be personalized for each recipient. This means that each shopper should receive a slightly different version of your email template. For abandoned cart emails, the personalization typically includes the shopper's first name and the products they left in their cart.

To automatically populate your emails with this data, you need to insert placeholders in your email template:

👤 Placeholders for contact data

To insert placeholders for contact data in your email template, add a text block to your design and select the 👤 Add personalization option in the formatting bar. From there, choose which contact data you want to display in the email and what fallback text to use in case the data is missing for some contacts.

In our video below, we will show you how to insert the FIRSTNAME of your contacts and use fallback text in case you don't have this information for some contacts ⬇️.

Here is an example of what the personalized email template would look like if it was received by a shopper named Emily:

Email template	Email received

💡 Good to know

If your contacts' first names are stored in lowercase in Brevo and you want to display them in uppercase in your emails, you will need to manually type your placeholder and associate it with the "upper" filter: {{ contact.FIRSTNAME | upper }}. To learn more about filters, check out our dedicated article on modifying the formatting of your placeholders with filters.

🛒 Placeholders for abandoned cart data

To insert placeholders for abandoned cart data in your email template, add a text block to your design and manually type or copy-paste the placeholders based on the data you want to display, such as product name, size, price, etc. 

If you are using a Brevo plugin to connect to your website, you can use the following standardized placeholders in your abandoned cart email template:

Product data	Placeholder
Product name	{{ item.name }}
Product SKU	{{ item.sku }}
Product category	{{ item.category }}
Product ID	{{ item.id }}
Product variant ID	{{ item.variant_id }}
Product variant name	{{ item.variant_name }}
Product price	{{ item.price }}
Product quantity	{{ item.quantity }}
Product URL	{{ item.url }}
Product image	{{ item.image }}
Cart data	Placeholder
Affiliation	{{ params.affiliation }}
Date	{{ params.date }}
Subtotal	{{ params.subtotal }}
Discount	{{ params.discount }}
Shipping	{{ params.shipping }}
Total before tax	{{ params.total_before_tax }}
Tax	{{ params.tax }}
Total	{{ params.total }} Note: for WooCommerce, use {{ params.revenue }} instead.
Currency	{{ params.currency }}
URL to view cart	{{ params.url }}

❗️ Important

If you or a developer created your track events for abandoned carts manually, you need to create your own list of available placeholders for use in your email template. These placeholders will be defined by the structure of your track event and the name of your array. By default, Brevo's array is named "items".

In our video below, we will show you how to insert the placeholders for the name, price, currency, variant, and quantity of the abandoned products in the email template ⬇️.

Here is an example of what the personalized email template would look like if it was received by a shopper who abandoned a green yoga mat, which costs $29.99:

Email template	Email received

💡 Good to know

To round the price to the second decimal, you will need to associate your placeholder with the "floatformat" filter: {{ item.price | floatformat:2 }}. To learn more about filters, check out our dedicated article on modifying the formatting of your placeholders with filters.

📷 Placeholders for product images

To insert placeholders for product images in your email template and automatically retrieve the image used on your website, add an image block to your design and insert the {{ item.image }} placeholder in the Insert image from URL field.

In our video below, we will show you how to insert the placeholders for images of the abandoned products in the email template ⬇️.

Here is an example of what the personalized email template would look like if it was received by a shopper who abandoned a green yoga mat, which costs $29.99:

Email template	Email received

🔗 Placeholders for product or cart links

To insert placeholders for product or cart links in your email template, add an image, text, or button block to your design and insert the {{ item.url }} or {{ params.url }} placeholder as the URL.

🧐 Step 4: Display multiple products in the email template

After adding your placeholders to your email template, you have to enable the Repeat option for each section that contains placeholders for product data to ensure that your email template can display multiple products in the email template. This is not necessary for cart data as they should only be displayed once. 

1. Click a section in your email template that contains placeholders for product data, such as name, price, or quantity.
2. Click the three dots icon.
3. Select 🔁 Repeat.
   
4. If you are using a Brevo plugin, leave the Repeat for and Variable alias as is, with "items" and "item" respectively.
   
   ❗️ Important

   If you are not using a Brevo plugin, you can find the information that needs to be added to the fields in your event logs. To learn more, check our article Customize your emails using transactional parameters.
5. Optional: Add a limit to the number of products displayed in the email. For example, if a shopper has ten products in their cart, you may want to display only the first three to keep the email concise.
6. Click Add loop.
   

✅ Step 5: Activate the email template

After creating your abandoned cart email template, you have to activate it to be able to select it in an automation:

1. Click Save & quit to leave the design of your email template.
2. Click Save & Activate.

⏩ What's next?

• Part 1: Create an abandoned cart email template
• Part 2: Automatically send abandoned cart emails
• Part 3: Send abandoned cart emails in different languages (optional)
• Part 4: Record a conversion (optional)
• Troubleshooting and FAQs

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.