Feels like there are more options than ever now. Email, WhatsApp, SMS, push notifications… and every app claims it recovers more carts than the last one.
I’m less interested in marketing claims and more interested in what merchants are actually sticking with. What’s worked well for your store, and was there anything you tried that you eventually dropped because it just wasn’t worth it?
I have worked with a lot of Shopify stores and email marketing is always the one that does the best. If you have a welcome series and a flow for abandoned carts it can make a big difference.
I have also tried using push notifications. For a lot of stores they do not work well enough to keep using them. I think it is best to start with email marketing see how it goes and only try ways if they seem like a good fit, for the people who shop at your store.
The important thing I must say is to not use too many marketing apps. It is better to keep things and focus on a few things that work well rather than trying every new tool that comes out. This way you can make email marketing. Other things you choose to use work better for your Shopify store.
Thanks
I think it also depends on where your customers are most active. Email works really well for many stores, but for some businesses, WhatsApp or SMS can get faster responses, especially for order updates or abandoned carts. Rather than using every channel, I’d focus on the ones your customers actually engage with.
From what I’ve seen, email is still the channel most merchants consistently rely on for abandoned cart recovery because it’s cost-effective and easy to automate.
SMS can perform very well too, but it’s best used selectively since customers tend to be more sensitive to frequent messages. WhatsApp works well in markets where it’s widely used, especially for customer support and order updates, while push notifications can be effective if you already have an engaged audience.
The biggest improvements usually come from having a well-timed recovery sequence with personalized messaging rather than adding more channels. I’ve also seen merchants simplify their stack over time, dropping apps that overlap in functionality and focusing on the few channels that consistently deliver results.
Hey @Emiliano-Chatix ,
In my experience, email remains the channel that most merchants continue to rely on because it’s relatively inexpensive, easy to automate, and consistently delivers results over time.
SMS and WhatsApp can perform very well for some stores, especially when used sparingly and with clear customer consent, but they also come with higher costs and can feel intrusive if overused. Push notifications can be effective too, although their reach depends on whether customers have opted in.
Rather than trying every available channel, I’ve found it’s usually better to start with a solid email recovery sequence and then evaluate whether adding SMS or WhatsApp provides enough additional recovered revenue to justify the cost.
Ultimately, the best solution depends on your audience, so I’d focus on measuring actual recovery rates and return on investment instead of marketing claims from app providers.
If this helped, please mark it as the solution so others can find it more easily.
Thank You !
Agree on this, probably the biggest factor. A lot of people compare channels without looking at where their customers already spend their time.
Out of curiosity, have you seen any stores where switching from email to WhatsApp actually made a noticeable difference, or do most end up using both?
Keeping the stack simple is something I hear a lot too. It’s easy to end up with three different apps all doing similar things.
Have you seen many stores move beyond email, or do most eventually stick with it because it’s “good enough”?
Most stores use email to talk to their customers because it works well and does not cost a lot of money. Email helps stores get the results they want. Some big companies also use SMS or WhatsApp to talk to their customers.. They usually use these along, with email not instead of email. The thing is it really depends on the people they are trying to reach. For stores email is the main way they do their marketing. Email is the base of their marketing plan. They use email to reach their customers and get their message across.
@Emiliano-Chatix,
From what I’ve seen, most merchants seem to get the best results by using both. Email works well for longer marketing journeys, while WhatsApp is often more effective for immediate communication like order confirmations and updates. I think the right balance really depends on the audience and the type of business.
I would compare channels on incremental contribution profit per 100 eligible abandoners, not recovery rate alone:
(extra recovered orders × contribution per recovered order) − channel fees − incentives
Keep email as the baseline, then test one additional channel at a time against a holdout group. Separate checkout abandoners (where you usually already have contact details) from cart abandoners who never identified themselves, because mixing them makes channel performance look better than it is.
For each test, track delivered messages, recovered orders, recovered revenue, discounts, product cost, shipping subsidy, and channel cost. WhatsApp or SMS wins only when the extra contribution after all of those costs exceeds the email-only baseline. This also prevents a high recovery rate from hiding margin erosion.
The thing I’d tell anyone to drop When it comes to Whatsapp is the promo blasts. People let a business into WhatsApp for things they asked for, an order confirmation, and a delivery time. A 20% off announcement isn’t that. They mute the number or block it, and then you’ve lost the thread for the messages they did want.
What I have noticed stick is smaller than most apps sell you. An example is the order and shipping updates. These updates are what earn you the cart message. By the time it arrives, you’re already useful in that thread instead of turning up cold.
Same goes for running one cart sequence across all four channels. Four messages about one cart in an afternoon and you lose the person everywhere at once.
Where are your customers, and do you have phone numbers with opt-in? That decides it more than the app does. If they already message you on WhatsApp, easy, yes. If not, your email is probably doing more work than you think.
Disclosure: I build a WhatsApp Automation app on Shopify.
I like the point about measuring incremental impact instead of just recovery rate. It’s easy to credit the last message that was sent without asking whether that order would’ve come back anyway.
Out of curiosity, have you found any channel consistently adding incremental recoveries beyond email, or does it vary too much by store?
Adding a different angle — spent 10 years at Twilio in messaging. Worth knowing that RCS is quietly replacing plain SMS on iPhone and Android.
Difference for merchants: messages show up with your brand name, logo, and verified checkmark instead of a shortcode. On my own phone, Xfinity already looks like this (screenshot) while every other business is still a random number.
Doesn’t replace email, but if you’re paying for SMS and getting poor results, worth asking your provider if they support RCS.
(Disclosure: I work on RCS tooling.)
I would choose the recovery channel after diagnosing the abandonment, not before it. Email, SMS and WhatsApp are delivery mechanisms; they do not solve the same reason for leaving.
In CRO work I normally separate at least four patterns: shoppers who leave when total cost or delivery appears, shoppers who return to the product because they are still uncertain, shoppers who attempt payment and hit an error, and shoppers who show little meaningful checkout interaction at all. The same message should not go to all four groups.
Email is a sensible baseline because it is low-cost and easy to test. I would reserve SMS or WhatsApp for high-intent, consented cases where immediacy is useful, not simply add them because their open rates look higher.
The measurement also matters. Compare incremental recovered gross profit after discounts, messaging cost and cancellations—not just recovered order count. A channel can report many recovered carts while merely claiming orders that would have returned anyway.
The one I would split out before picking a channel: a slice of what shows up as an abandoned cart is not an abandoned cart. It is a card that got declined at checkout.
Both land in the same bucket in most setups, and they want opposite messages. Someone who wandered off is being asked to come back and decide.
Someone whose card failed already decided, already tried to pay, and got stopped. Sending that second person “still thinking it over, here is 10 percent off” is the worst message available, because you just discounted a sale you had already won and you did not fix the thing that blocked it.
Telling them apart is a payment provider question rather than a cart app question.
The decline reason is the useful part.
A soft decline, insufficient funds or a generic issuer decline is worth retrying, and when you retry matters more than what the message says.
A hard decline, card reported lost or stolen or the account closed, will never succeed no matter how many times you send it, and the only thing that works is asking for a different card.
Two practical things fall out of that.
Retry a soft decline on a different day, not a few hours later.
Insufficient funds on a Tuesday is often not insufficient funds on Friday.
Three attempts on the same card in one afternoon runs up fees and does nothing else.
Never send a discount to a payment failure. Send the same cart at the same price with a working payment link. If your recovery flow cannot tell the two cases apart it will discount both, and that cost is invisible, because it shows up in your margin rather than in your recovery rate.
On the holdout point further up, agreed, with one addition: hold out the payment failure segment separately. It behaves nothing like the browse and leave segment, and averaging them together will make whatever you conclude wrong in both directions at once.
Disclosure: I build payment recovery tooling, so I am biased toward the payments half of this question.
For me, email has still been the most reliable channel for abandoned cart recovery, mainly because it’s relatively low-cost and easy to automate.
Whatsapp and SMS can work too, but I think they depend heavily on the type of store and customer base.
I’ve also seen merchants try multiple channels at once, only to realize they were spending more on the recovery tools than the additional revenue justified.
The biggest thing I’d look at isn’t just the number of recovered carts, but the actual incremental revenue after app//message costs.
Some tools look great on paper but don’t make a meaningful difference in the long run.
