When Should You Send an Abandoned Cart Message? Delay, Time of Day and the Second Message

For most stores, a sensible starting point is to send the first reminder about an hour after the cart is abandoned. By then, the customer has usually left the payment step but still remembers the product. If the cart value is high or the product is one people think over before buying, extend the delay to a few hours or even to the next day; if a message would land late at night, hold it until morning. On WhatsApp, start with a single message and send a second one only when you have something new to say.

The cost of sending the first reminder too early or too late

Send too early, and the customer may get your message while still on the site. They may be looking for their card, checking the shipping fee in another tab or waiting for the 3D Secure code on the payment page. A “you forgot your cart” message that arrives at that moment does no good and, worse, makes the customer feel watched. While the customer is on the site, use an on-site prompt such as an exit-intent popup instead of a message. Send too late, and the customer may already have bought what they needed from another store.

Also find out when your tool starts the clock. An hour counted from when the last item was added to the cart is not the same as an hour counted from when the customer left the site.

There is one more reason not to message right away. In a Baymard Institute survey of US online shoppers, 42% of respondents say they abandoned a cart in the past three months because they were just browsing and not ready to buy. Not every abandoned cart is an unfinished order; some are price comparisons and others are shopping lists saved for later. Messaging the owner of a cart like that within a few minutes will most likely get you nowhere.

In Pushouse’s WhatsApp cart recovery module, the message goes out when the set waiting period ends and is not sent to a customer who has completed their order. We covered the reminder itself, and how it is set up, in our article on what WhatsApp cart reminders are.

Waiting time by product and cart value

The faster the buying decision, the sooner the message should go out. The delays below are not based on any measurement, so use them as a starting point and adjust them using your own data.

For low-priced products bought on impulse, such as cosmetics, accessories, snacks or phone cases, do not wait more than an hour, because that impulse fades quickly. An hour is also enough for mid-priced products that involve choosing a size or color, such as clothing, shoes and home textiles. Customers often browse several stores at once, and an hour later they will have finished comparing. For products people buy on a regular basis, such as pet food, coffee, diapers or supplements, the need is already clear, and the customer wants to restock before running out. If they have not come back on their own within an hour, remind them; leave it any later and you may lose the order to another store.

High-priced products such as furniture, major appliances, electronics and jewelry are a different story. The decision is talked over at home, measurements are taken, installments are worked out; a message that arrives within the hour feels like pressure. For these products, wait 3 to 4 hours or save the reminder for the next day. For a cart left in the morning or around midday, send the reminder the same day; for one left in the evening, send it before noon the next day.

If your store sells both low-priced and high-priced products and your tool lets you define only one waiting period, choose the delay to suit the group that makes up most of your orders. If you are not sure, start with the longer delay and shorten it based on the results; a message that arrives early can annoy the customer.

Avoid sending reminders at night

A WhatsApp notification does not sit quietly in an inbox the way an email does; it makes the phone buzz. That is why the time the message lands matters as much as the waiting period. The reminder for a cart abandoned at 23:40 should not go out at 00:40. Hold any reminder that would land late at night or early in the morning, and send it later in the morning instead. Also check whether your automation tool restricts sending hours.

A message held until morning goes out after a longer gap, so write the text with that in mind. A phrase like “the items you just added to your cart” reads oddly nine hours later. Instead, use a sentence with no time reference, such as “the items in your cart are waiting for you.”

Should you send a second message?

For most carts, one message is enough. Guides written for email usually recommend a series of several messages spread over a few days. Do not carry that setup over to WhatsApp unchanged. An extra email often just goes unread, while an extra WhatsApp message can get you blocked. Pushouse’s cart recovery module does not repeat the reminder for the same cart either.

A second message also faces a technical obstacle. Meta’s template categorization documentation lists a reminder sent to a user who left items in their cart as an example of a marketing message. And according to the documentation on per-user marketing message limits, WhatsApp may limit the number of marketing messages a user receives from businesses in a given period. WhatsApp sets this limit based on factors such as the person’s recent read rate for marketing messages and the number of messages in their inbox. Your second message may never reach a customer who rarely reads marketing messages.

If your tool allows a second message, check three things before you send it:

1. Was the first message read? If not, do not send a second one.
2. Do you have something new to say? You do if stock really is running low, if the promotion ends tonight or if you are answering a question the customer has in mind. If all you would do is repeat the same sentence, you do not.
3. Is the cart value worth the cost of a second message and the risk of annoying the customer? For low-value carts, it usually is not.

If the answer to all three is yes, send the second message about 24 hours after the first, again during the daytime. There is no need for a third. Messaging again days later is not a cart reminder’s job. For customers who have bought from you before but have not come back in a long time, set up a separate win-back flow. That is what the We Miss You module is for.

Sample text for the first and second messages

The first message is only a reminder. It gives the link and applies no pressure:

Hello {{customer name}}, the items in your cart are waiting for you. If you would like to pick up where you left off: {{link}}

If you do send a second message, do not repeat the first. Try to remove the obstacle that may be holding the customer back:

Hello {{customer name}}, if you have any questions about the items in your cart or about delivery, just reply to this message and we will be happy to help. Your cart: {{link}}

Send this message only if you can respond to replies the same day. In both messages, include an option that lets the customer opt out with a single tap.

If you are thinking of adding a discount code to the second message, first work out how much of your profit the code will take. We go through that decision step by step in our article on whether to offer cart abandoners a discount code.

Test the automation and check consent before you turn it on

Even with the right delay, a reminder that goes to the wrong person does harm. Before you switch on the flow, run two tests with your own number. First, add a product to the cart and complete the order before the waiting period runs out; no reminder should arrive. Then abandon a cart and tap the link in the message you get on your phone; the page should open without a problem. For reminders that go out the next day, also check that the link still opens the cart with the items in it.

Next, make sure you have permission. WhatsApp’s Business Messaging Policy allows you to message a person only if they have agreed in advance to receive messages from you. Türkiye’s Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages also requires prior consent for commercial electronic messages sent for marketing purposes, so send the reminder only to customers who have given permission. Under the same regulation, once an opt-out request reaches you, you must stop sending within three business days. Do not wait that long. Remove customers who want to opt out from the list before another message goes out.

Finally, check whether the reminder clashes with your other messages. If a customer who got a promotional announcement in the morning also gets a cart reminder in the afternoon, the two together can feel like pressure. A cart reminder is only one of the flows within WhatsApp e-commerce automation, so plan them all on the same calendar. If your setup also sends an email or SMS reminder for the same cart, do not let both channels send at the same time; have one wait for the other.

Fine-tune the delay with your own data

Choose a waiting period and keep it unchanged for at least two weeks. Then change only the delay and compare how many reminders turned into orders in each of two periods of the same length. If you change the text and the delay at the same time, you will not know which one made the difference. Leave promotion weeks and paydays out of the comparison, because customers may come back on those days even without a message.

If the number of blocks or “I want to opt out” replies is rising, look at the delay and the sending time first. If you would like to try the reminder in your own store, you can take a look at the Pushouse cart recovery module.