How to Set Up Abandoned Cart Emails in Omnisend

To set up abandoned cart emails in OmnisendOmnisendEmail and SMSOmnisend is an email, SMS and web push marketing tool built for online stores, with signup forms, pre-built ecommerce automations and campaign templates. Free plan, paid from $16/mo.Click for Scout's full analysis, go to Automation, click Create workflow, pick the Abandoned Cart preset, edit the emails, then click Publish Changes and Activate Workflow. Omnisend recommends running Abandoned Checkout alongside it, and you need to switch off Shopify's own abandoned checkout emails yourself so customers do not get two reminders.

What you need

• An Omnisend account connected to your store. Omnisend's help center names Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce in its abandoned cart guide.
• Any plan, including Free. Omnisend's Shopify App Store listing includes "Automate abandoned cart & welcome emails" on the Free plan. Keep in mind Free caps you at 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, and on Standard, contacts are removed from automations if you hit your email limit. See Omnisend pricing explained.
• Identified contacts. Omnisend can only email shoppers it can identify: people who clicked a link in an Omnisend email, signed up through an Omnisend form (popup, flyout or landing page), or entered their email at checkout. Anonymous visitors cannot receive these emails, so a signup form helps.
• For SMS steps, the Pro plan. New accounts since May 4, 2026 can only buy SMS on Pro.

Who this guide is for: Shopify store owners setting up their first cart recovery flow in Omnisend. It sticks to what Omnisend's help center documents.

Abandoned cart vs. abandoned checkout

Omnisend treats these as two workflows:

If a shopper moves from cart to checkout, they leave the Abandoned Cart workflow and only get the Abandoned Checkout messages. Omnisend recommends turning on both.

Step by step

1. Open the automations library

Go to Automation in the top menu and click Create workflow. You will see the list of pre-built workflows.

2. Choose the Abandoned Cart preset

Check the box for Cart Abandonment, select the Abandoned Cart preset and click Customize workflow. Omnisend's help center suggests starting with a preset for your first workflow, because its settings are already configured and you mainly need to edit the email content.

3. Check the trigger and exit conditions

Click the trigger block and confirm the trigger is "Added products to cart" and the exit condition is "Placed Order" or "Started Checkout." You can add Trigger Filters if you only want certain carts to qualify. Without filters, the sequence goes to all identified contacts.

4. Review the workflow channel settings

Under the trigger block, find Workflow Channel Settings and click Customize. This is where you set Audience Filters, Exit Conditions and frequency. By default, each contact can trigger an Abandoned Cart or Checkout workflow once every 24 hours. Omnisend notes that non-subscribers can enter the workflow by default, and you can change that here.

5. Edit each email

Click an email block and select Edit content. Fill in the Subject line, Preheader, Sender's name and Sender email address. Then:

• Make sure the email has the Abandoned Products block, which shows the items left in the cart. If it is missing, add it from the content items panel.
• Add a separate button, such as "Complete your purchase," that links to [[event.raw.abandoned_checkout_url]]. Omnisend's guide explains that the built-in "Shop Now" button only links to the individual product page, while this link takes the shopper back to the full cart.

6. Set your delays

Delays can range from minutes to months, and each one counts from the end of the previous block, not from the trigger. Delays use your store's time zone. Omnisend's FAQ recommends waiting at least 30 minutes before the first message, since a shopper may trigger "Added product to cart" more than once.

7. Add a discount for high-value carts (optional)

If you want to offer a discount only on bigger carts, Omnisend has a value split preset for Abandoned Checkout. Go to Automations, start a new workflow, choose the Cart Abandonment type and pick the split preset. By default it splits on order total: contacts above your threshold get emails with a discount and the rest get emails without one. In the email, add the recovery link to the Redeem Discount button in the Discount content block.

8. Set up Abandoned Checkout the same way

Go back to Create workflow and choose an Abandoned Checkout preset. Omnisend offers one with three emails and one with three emails plus one SMS. Confirm the trigger is "Started Checkout" and the exit condition is "Placed Order." You can adjust the Trigger Inactivity Time, which sets how long a shopper must be inactive before the workflow starts so the email captures the full cart. Omnisend's example uses one hour.

9. Turn off Shopify's own abandoned checkout emails

Omnisend does not do this for you. Its help center says to disable your platform's native abandoned cart reminders manually once the Omnisend workflow is on. If you skip this, customers can receive both.

10. Check alerts, publish and activate

Click Alerts in the top right. Errors must be fixed before activation; recommendations are optional. Then click Publish Changes, followed by Activate Workflow or Start Workflow. Publishing alone saves your edits but leaves the workflow disabled.

11. Test with a real cart

Use your store to add a product to the cart with a test email address. Omnisend's guide warns that test emails sent from the editor do not fill in the Abandoned Products block or the recovery link, so a real trigger is the only way to see the finished email.

Tips

• Set priorities if you run several abandonment flows. Omnisend has five: Search, Browse, Product, Cart and Checkout abandonment. One session can qualify a shopper for all of them. Omnisend has no built-in priority setting, so its help center recommends using Exit Conditions and the Skip Contacts option on every workflow, with Abandoned Checkout highest, then Abandoned Cart, Product, Browse and Search. It recommends a 7-day Skip Contacts window on all five.
• Do not turn off Skip Contacts on your top workflow. The help center warns against it.
• Expect email-only for first-time shoppers. Phone numbers sync only after a contact's first order, so a new contact's first abandoned cart gets email, not SMS.
• Wait before reading stats. Adding a new block resets its stats to zero. Omnisend suggests waiting 30 days without changes before judging block-level results.

Common mistakes the docs warn about

• Duplicate reminders because Shopify's native emails were left on.
• Retesting blocked by frequency. The 24-hour frequency rule stops the same contact re-entering. Use different test emails, or disable the setting while testing and re-enable it before launch.
• Expecting past carts to be emailed. Only abandonments after activation are captured.
• Segment-based audience filters missing people. Segments update with a short delay, so Omnisend suggests trigger filters or a split with a short delay instead.
• Removed items still showing. Omnisend does not track "product removed from cart," so removed items can still appear in the email.
• Edits not reaching people already in the flow. When you publish changes to a live workflow, Omnisend asks whether to let current contacts complete the old sequence or discontinue it.
• Emails after an order. Exit conditions can fail if a shopper changes email addresses or has several sessions open.

If you are still choosing a tool, our Omnisend review and Klaviyo vs Omnisend comparison cover what else to weigh.

Common questions

Is abandoned cart available on Omnisend's free plan? Yes. Omnisend's Shopify listing includes abandoned cart and welcome automations on Free, within its limits of 250 contacts and 500 emails a month.

Should I use Abandoned Cart or Abandoned Checkout in Omnisend? Both. Omnisend recommends enabling both: Abandoned Cart catches shoppers who never reach checkout, and Abandoned Checkout catches those who start it and leave.

Why didn't my Omnisend abandoned cart email send? The most common reasons in Omnisend's docs are that the shopper was not identified, the workflow was published but not activated, the frequency setting blocked a repeat, or the abandonment happened before you turned the workflow on.

Can I send abandoned cart texts in Omnisend? Yes, with SMS blocks in the workflow, but new accounts need Pro to buy SMS, and phone numbers only sync after a contact's first order.

How long should I wait before the first Omnisend abandoned cart email? Omnisend's FAQ recommends at least 30 minutes before the first message. For Abandoned Checkout, its example Trigger Inactivity Time is one hour.

How we put this together

We did not set this up hands-on. The steps come from Omnisend's help center articles "Abandoned Cart and Abandoned Checkout Automations," "Automation Setup (new editor)" and "Manage multiple abandonment automations," plus its pricing plans article and Shopify App Store listing, all read in November 2026. Omnisend's articles use slightly different labels in places (for example, "Automation" and "Automations"), and menus can change, so follow the labels you see in your account.