7 B2B abandoned cart email examples to recover lost revenue

Abandoned cart emails might be some of the highest-converting messages you ever send.

A series of well-timed, well-written messages can recover revenue that’s already half-earned from prospects that showed intent but didn’t convert.

In this article, you’ll discover seven B2B abandoned cart email ideas. You’ll learn why they work, what to include in your emails and three best practices to help you win more customers.

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What is an abandoned cart email?

An abandoned cart email is an automated reminder email sent to someone who adds items to a shopping cart, starts the checkout process or begins a sign-up flow but leaves before converting.

Here’s what a typical e-commerce abandoned cart email design looks like:

Cart recovery emails are prevalent across business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses, such as fashion brands.

While business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce organizations like office furniture suppliers and IT resellers also send these kinds of emails, it’s less common for SaaS companies to send them.

Whether you send a traditional cart abandonment email or a B2B alternative, they all include the following components.

When all five components work together, you create engaging, high-converting cart reminders like the abandoned cart email examples below.

7 best abandoned cart email examples for B2B brands

You can send a variety of cart abandonment emails, each with a different purpose and message.

Here are seven examples from B2B brands, along with abandoned cart email templates, to help you create your own effective email sequence.

1. The personalized email

Adding a few pieces of information about the prospect can make cart abandonment emails feel less transactional and more personal, increasing customer conversions.

The strongest abandoned cart emails reference the prospect’s name, the specific product or plan they were considering and the last time they engaged with your brand.

Here’s a great example from the AI voice-dictation software solution Wispr Flow, which includes the recipient’s name and the amount of time remaining on their free trial.

Personalize as many email components as possible, including the subject line, introduction, product imagery, recommendation and CTA.

Here’s a template you can use to send your own personalized cart abandonment email

2. The discount email

A small incentive, whether that’s a coupon code, free shipping or an extended trial, can encourage prospects to stop deliberating and start taking action.

That’s what file storage company Dropbox does by offering the recipient 25% off their first year of Dropbox Plus.

Use these promotional emails strategically; otherwise, you may train prospects to abandon their purchase on purpose.

For example, save discount emails for the second or third message in your shopping cart abandonment sequence, rather than sending them the first time. You could even segment customers by cart value or purchase history.

Here’s a template you can adapt to send your own discount cart abandonment email:

3. The product-focused email

Sometimes, the best way to encourage prospects to complete their purchase is to reaffirm their good taste and show them what they’ll miss.

In the example below, Calendly lists all the features users will miss out on if they don’t upgrade their plan after the free trial.

It even explains why the company believes the Standard plan is ideal for the recipient, based on their needs.

Images and video can make FOMO (fear of missing out) feel more visceral. For example, embed a video that shows recipients how easy your product is to use and what they can achieve with it.

Here’s a template you can use to send your own product-focused cart abandonment email:

4. The social proof email

Social proof, such as customer reviews, testimonials and case studies, can reduce perceived risk when making a purchase.

Incorporating social proof into your abandoned cart email can be particularly effective if you’re a startup or small business that may suffer from a lack of brand recognition or trust.

Even though Grammarly is a well-known brand, it still boasts how many professionals its software helps in this cart abandonment email:

Third-party reviews or opinions are particularly effective forms of social proof. For example, software brands may want to direct users to their review pages on sites like G2.

Here’s a template you can use to send your own social proof cart abandonment email:

5. The brand-aligned email

Brand-aligned cart abandonment emails lean into your voice and visual style, so the message feels familiar rather than transactional to recipients.

It means the look and feel of abandonment emails will vary drastically across industries. For instance, the abandoned cart email of a cybersecurity SaaS company should feel very different from that of a B2C streetwear brand.

In this example, Shopify reinforces an aspirational tone of voice that makes it popular with business entrepreneurs and owners.

Keeping brand identity consistent will also increase confidence that the rest of your product and experience will meet expectations.

Add your company voice to the template below to create a brand-aligned message:

6. The scarcity email

A sense of urgency prompts recipients to complete their purchase now rather than later.

Given that prospects have already put off converting once, your email should do everything it can to encourage them to convert now.

That’s what Slack does in this FOMO-filled, time-sensitive offer and stark warning about the data the recipient is set to lose:

There are several ways to create a similar sense of urgency in your email:

• Low stock

• Expiring trials

• Limited-time offers

• Time-bound pricing

Whichever method you choose, make sure the scarcity is genuine. An obviously false sense of urgency can erode trust, especially in long B2B buying cycles where prospects consider decisions over several days.

Use this template to create scarcity in your cart abandonment email:

7. The reassuring email

Reassuring cart abandonment emails address the common sales objections or concerns prospects have about your product head-on.

Finance management software Quicken includes an incentive and personalization in this example, but it’s the trust signals that set it apart.

It reassures cost and security-conscious prospects with a money-back guarantee and a robust data security policy. It even adds social proof by citing its user base.

Rather than sending a generic “we’re here to help” message, make your email specific by countering three or four objections you hear regularly. Link to additional resources to help users learn more.

Use this template to create a cart abandonment email that addresses common sales objections.

3 abandoned cart email best practices to increase conversion rates

There are several ways to improve your abandoned cart email strategy beyond the email copy and design.

Here are three abandoned cart email best practices that can increase your conversion rates.

Send more than one follow-up email

As with most sales emails, following up multiple times produces the best results.

While one email can easily be lost in a crowded inbox, multiple emails increase the chance that your message will be seen.

Best practice is to send a sequence of two to four emails over the course of a week. Here’s a sample flow you can copy using the types of emails discussed above:

• First abandoned cart email – a friendly reminder, sent within an hour of abandonment

• Second email – a reassurance or social proof email sent two days later

• Third email – an incentive or scarcity message sent five days after abandonment

Each email in the sequence gives recipients a reason to convert without overwhelming them with a long, unfocused email that covers everything at once.

Tweak your email sequence based on your unsubscribe rate. If it spikes after the third email, your sequence is too long or the email is unappealing.

A/B test your emails

Test and optimize your cart abandonment emails just like you would any other marketing message.

Rather than creating an automated campaign once and forgetting about it, run tests on every email component, including:

• Subject lines – try questions, personalization and incentives

• Timings – send emails at different intervals after the initial abandonment

• Call to action – change the wording, design and color

• Discount – test different amounts and types of incentives

Change one variable at a time and give each test enough volume to reach statistical significance.

Keep making tweaks as often as you can. Over several months, those small lifts compound significantly.

Try different channels

Email is the first and often only sales channel that brands use, but it isn’t the only one.

Depending on your audience and the data you collect, run abandoned cart marketing campaigns that include:

• SMS for time-sensitive messages if users opt in

• Push notifications for app users who have abandoned items in your app after a free trial

• Remarketing ads to convert prospects as they browse the web

• A sales call for high-value B2B prospects

Taking a multi-channel approach to cart abandonment gives prospects more chances to re-engage on the channel they prefer.

How to create an abandoned cart email flow in Pipedrive

While you theoretically could send abandoned cart emails manually, it’s much easier to automate them, either directly through your e-commerce solution or your email marketing automation platform.

Campaigns by Pipedrive is an email marketing add-on that lets you create, run and measure B2B email campaigns with support from your CRM’s sales data.

Here’s how you can use Campaigns to create an abandoned cart email flow in Pipedrive.

• Define a trigger to capture cart abandonment in your CRM. Start by selecting a condition that triggers the cart abandonment email sequence. Triggers could include a deal being struck at a specific stage for a predefined number of days or a deal moving to a certain stage, such as “Trial ending soon”.

• Create beautifully designed emails. Use Pipedrive’s drag-and-drop email builder to design each email in your sequence. Merge fields to pull sales data from your CRM and personalize each message.

• Set up the email sequence. Use Pipedrive’s email workflow automation feature to map out the order, timing and conditions for each email in the flow. Add branching logic that ends the sequence automatically if the recipient’s deal status changes to “Won”.

• Measure and refine. Use Pipedrive’s email analytics features to track open rates, click rates, conversion rates and other email engagement metrics for each message in your sequence. Cross-reference them with the cart abandonment rate of your online store or website analytics to track improvements.

This is what a cart abandonment email sequence looks like in Pipedrive:

For high-value B2B prospects, an automated email flow might not be enough to secure a conversion.

In that case, reps can use Pipedrive’s AI email writer to craft engaging messages in seconds from a simple prompt.

Pipedrive automatically enriches emails with sales data, allowing reps to deliver personalized emails to hundreds of prospects in record time.

Campaigns by Pipedrive is available as an add-on from $13.33 per month.

Final thoughts

The teams that get the most from abandoned cart email sequences treat them as ongoing projects.

They test email subject lines, adjust timings, experiment with incentives and add channels beyond email.

A CRM can turn those refinements into real gains.

When you run your cart abandonment campaign in your CRM, every email reflects the prospect’s buyer history and every recovered deal flows back into your pipeline.

Try Pipedrive free for 14 days to turn CRM-powered abandonment emails into conversions.

Abandoned cart email FAQs