Recovery email
One friendly, branded reminder per abandoned cart, with product pictures, the total, a button that restores the cart in one click, and a built-in unsubscribe link.
- Sending card: Send Recovery Email, Send After, One Email per Address Every, sender fields
- Email Content below
- "Preview & Test" and Reset to Defaults in the sidebar
Sending
Off until you switch it on, so you can check the email with Preview and Send Test Email first.
How long to wait after a cart is marked abandoned. 0 sends at the next check, within five minutes. The total wait from the last activity is Abandoned After + Send After, so about one hour by default.
At most one recovery email per address in this time, whatever the cart, so the checkout can't be used to send someone repeated emails. 0 turns the limit off.
Leave empty to use the "From" name in WooCommerce → Settings → Emails, and failing that your site name.
Leave empty to use the WooCommerce "From" address. Use an address on your own domain so the email isn't marked as spam.
Email content
Default: You left something in your cart
The large title at the top of the email. Default: Your cart is waiting for you
The body text above the products. Blank lines start a new paragraph. Default:
Hi {first_name},
You left some items in your cart at {store_name}. We've saved them for you, so you can pick up right where you left off.
Default: Return to my cart
Shown under the button. Use it to say why the customer got the email. Default: You received this email because you started a checkout at {store_name}. If you have already completed your order, please ignore it.
A required field saved empty goes back to its default.
Placeholders
| Placeholder | Replaced with | Example |
|---|---|---|
{first_name} | The customer's first name, or "there" if unknown | Hi Sarah, |
{store_name} | Your site name | Northwind Outfitters |
{cart_total} | The cart total in the cart's currency | $129.00 |
{unsubscribe_url} | This customer's unsubscribe link | https://your-store.com/?siteryn-unsubscribe=… |
{coupon_code} Pro | A unique coupon, in campaign emails that include one | SAC-7KQ4MZRXHT |
The products and the button are added automatically, so you don't need placeholders for them. Placeholders also work in the unsubscribe Link Text.
Design
Your logo and colours. Anything left empty uses WooCommerce → Settings → Emails.
Shown at the top of the email. Click Choose Logo to pick an image from the media library, or Remove to clear it. A wide image about 300–600 pixels across works best.
The "Return to my cart" button. Its text turns black or white, whichever reads better.
Background of the email header with the heading.
Show a small picture of each product in the email. Products without an image get the WooCommerce placeholder.
With Pro, each campaign email can override these. See Email design.
What the email contains
- Store name and heading
- Product table with thumbnails and Cart total
- "Return to my cart" button, closing note and the unsubscribe link
- Your logo and the heading on your header colour.
- The message.
- A product table: a 48 px picture, the product name, quantity and price (line total incl. tax), and a Cart total row.
- The button in your button colour.
- The closing note, then a small unsubscribe link, then your WooCommerce email footer.
A plain-text version is attached automatically for email apps that don't show HTML. It ends with the unsubscribe link. The email supports right-to-left languages, and it is written in the shopper's own language on WPML and Polylang sites.
Admin notifications
Get an email when a customer comes back through a recovery email or link and completes their order.
One email per recovered order, with the order link, its value and which email or link brought the customer back.
One or more email addresses, separated by commas. Default: the site admin email. Invalid addresses are dropped when you save.
The notification has the subject "[Your Store] Recovered cart: order #1234" and the heading "A cart was recovered". It contains a table with the Order (linked), Value, Recovered by (for example a campaign email, "Recovery email" or "Recovery link"), the Customer's first name and the Cart (linked). It is sent once per cart, when the order is paid or put on hold.
Unsubscribe
Customers who unsubscribe never get a cart reminder again. Their address is kept only as a coded fingerprint.
Adds an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, plus the one-click unsubscribe header that Gmail, Yahoo and Apple Mail show next to the sender. Unsubscribed addresses are skipped even when this is off.
Default: Unsubscribe from cart reminders
What the customer sees
The link opens a simple page on your own store with your store name. Nothing changes until the customer clicks the button, so link scanners in mail systems can't unsubscribe anyone by accident.
| Step | Page title | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Confirm | Unsubscribe from cart reminders? | You will no longer get emails from your store about carts you didn't finish. Order emails are not affected. Button: Unsubscribe |
| Done | You're unsubscribed | You won't get any more cart reminders… Changed your mind? Button: Opt back in |
| Already | You're already unsubscribed | With the Opt back in button. |
| Opted back in | You're opted back in | You may get a reminder again the next time you leave something in your cart. |
| Broken link | This link doesn't work | The unsubscribe link is incomplete or was changed. Please use the link from your most recent email. |
| Too many attempts | Please try again in a few minutes | There were too many attempts from your connection. (20 requests per 10 minutes per visitor.) |
| Test email | This is a test email | This unsubscribe link came from a preview or test email, so nothing was changed. In a real cart reminder, this link lets the customer unsubscribe. |
- Click the unsubscribe link in a test email
- "Unsubscribe from cart reminders?" with the button
A mail app's one-click "Unsubscribe" button works instantly, without opening the page.
What happens next
- The address is added to the unsubscribe list: a keyed hash of the address, a masked hint such as
s***@example.com, how and when. - No recovery email, Free or Pro campaign, is ever sent to it again. The cart timeline shows "Customer unsubscribed from cart reminders", and later skipped emails show "Recovery email skipped: customer unsubscribed".
- You can also stop emails yourself from the Carts tab ("Stop emails").
- With Pro, the Unsubscribed card lists, searches and re-subscribes addresses. In the Free plugin, only the customer can opt back in, from the unsubscribe page.
Preview & test
The sidebar card Preview & Test uses your saved settings, so click Save Changes first.
- Preview Email opens the email in a dialog ("How the email looks in an inbox, with a sample cart."). Switch between Desktop and Mobile, or open it in a new tab.
- Send Test Email sends it to the address in Send a test to, which is your own email by default. You can send up to 5 tests per minute.
- The sample cart uses up to two of your published products (or a "Sample product" at 25.00), your first name and your store currency. In the test, the button links to your cart page, not a real recovery link.
- The test's unsubscribe link is inert: it opens a "This is a test email" page and unsubscribes nobody. Test emails also carry no one-click unsubscribe header.
- The "Email preview" dialog
- Desktop / Mobile toggle and "Open in new tab"
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| Test email sent to you@example.com. | Check your inbox, and your spam folder. |
| WordPress could not send the email. Check your site's email delivery (for example an SMTP plugin). | Your site's email isn't set up. Install an SMTP plugin, or ask your host. |
| Please enter a valid email address. | Check the address in Send a test to. |
| Too many test emails. Please wait a minute. | Tests are limited to 5 per minute. |
Sending limits
- One email per cart. The Free plugin never sends a second reminder for the same cart. For a sequence, use Pro campaigns.
- One email per address per interval. Within One Email per Address Every hours (24 by default), a second cart from the same address is skipped. The timeline shows "Recovery email skipped — Address already emailed recently".
- Never to unsubscribed addresses. The email is skipped and never retried.
- Fresh carts only. Carts abandoned more than 7 days ago are not emailed.
- Retries. If WordPress can't send, the plugin tries again on later runs, up to 3 attempts in total.
Customizing the template
For layout changes beyond the Design card, copy a template into your theme or child theme, keeping its path under a siteryn-abandoned-cart folder:
# HTML email wp-content/plugins/siteryn-abandoned-cart/templates/emails/recovery-email.php → wp-content/themes/your-theme/siteryn-abandoned-cart/emails/recovery-email.php # Plain-text email wp-content/plugins/siteryn-abandoned-cart/templates/emails/plain/recovery-email.php → wp-content/themes/your-theme/siteryn-abandoned-cart/emails/plain/recovery-email.php
The templates are version 1.0.0. Inside, $args holds cart, heading, message, button_text, footer, url, items (with image_url), total, total_text, logo_url, show_images, show_items, unsubscribe_url, unsubscribe_text and colors. See the Developer guide.