Prompt · Abandoned cart
First abandoned cart nudge, no discount
Get them back to the cart. No discount on the first email.
- Email type
- Abandoned cart
- Business
- Ecommerce
- Tone
- Friendly
- Length
- 70-110 words
The abandoned cart email prompt
Write a plain-text abandoned cart email from [BRAND] to someone who left [THE ITEM] behind an hour ago. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes. Assume they got distracted, not that they hesitated. This is the first email in the flow. Rules: - 70 to 110 words. Three short paragraphs at most. - Open by naming the item. Not "you left something behind" — say what it was. - Do not offer a discount, and do not hint that one is coming. Discounting on the first touch trains the list to abandon on purpose. - Give exactly one reason to come back that is not price: [THE REASSURANCE]. - One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it. Send them to the cart, not the homepage. - Do not manufacture scarcity. Write about stock or a deadline only if I gave you one. - Never invent a number, statistic, review count or rating. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX]. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case. Write a subject line under 40 characters that names the item rather than the behaviour. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[BRAND]- Your shop name as a customer would say it.
[THE ITEM]- What they left. One product, named, even if the cart held three.
[THE REASSURANCE]- The one friction this shop actually has. Free returns, a size guide, a shipping cut-off.
[XX]- Leave as written. The placeholder for a figure you supply, never one the model supplies.
When to send it
About an hour after the cart goes quiet, as the first of two or three. An hour is late enough that they have genuinely moved on and early enough that the intent survives. The discount, if you ever send one, belongs in the last email of the flow, not this one.
What to change first
[THE REASSURANCE]. It is the whole email. Cart recovery that only repeats the product is a receipt
for something they did not buy — the line that recovers is the one that removes whatever actually
stopped them, and that differs by shop. Free returns for apparel, a shipping cut-off for gifting, a
size guide for anything fitted.
What good output looks like
Subject: The [THE ITEM] is still in your cart
Preheader: No rush, but it is sitting there.
You left [THE ITEM] in your cart. It is still there if you want it.
Worth knowing: returns are free for 30 days, so if the fit is wrong you are not stuck with it.
Here is your cart, exactly where you left it.
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.