Abandoned checkout recovery that knows who it is talking to

Abandoned checkout recovery is the most commoditised feature in commerce. Every platform has it, every store runs it, and most of them send a near-identical message: you left something, here it is, have a discount.

What makes the difference

The message is not the lever. The targeting is. A recovery message that knows whether this is a first-time visitor or a customer with four previous orders, and what they actually looked at, is a different message even if the template is the same.

• A returning customer rarely needs a discount - they abandoned for a reason that a discount does not address.
• A first-time visitor who reached checkout is much closer to buying than one who only browsed, and should hear from you sooner.
• The products shown should be what they left, plus what your own customers actually bought alongside those - not your bestsellers.

The discount trap

Sending a discount to every abandonment trains your best customers to abandon deliberately. It is one of the few marketing mistakes that gets worse the better it appears to work in the first month.

What to do next

Split last quarter's abandonment recoveries by whether the person had bought before. If the discounted recoveries skew heavily toward repeat customers, you are paying margin for orders you were going to get anyway.