Most course creators don't think abandoned cart emails are for them and after working with 100+ creators all over the world, I can tell you that a very small percentage are actually employing this tactic. It’s a missed opportunity and I'll tell you more in a future case study.

But let’s look at what happens when you already have an abandoned cart flow and you’re looking at optimizing it. There’s a lot to test (trust me, I’ve done it) so where do you even begin?

This case study is about what happened when we added a third email to an already-performing abandoned cart flow — and what it's on track to generate over the next twelve months.

A bit of context

CRO work doesn't stop at frontend funnels. The biggest opportunity to stop revenue from leaking is what happens in the email flows.

Yes, it’s a lot harder, I’ll give you that, but if there’s one place to focus your efforts, if you're already receiving traffic (even more so if you're investing in ads), that's the abandoned cart flow.  

In this specific flow, there were two emails running (and I’ll tell you more about the tests performed in a future case study). They were performing well, with open rates consistently above 60%, a placed order rate that was generating real revenue every month, but a two-email sequence has a structural limitation: it gives up after two attempts on a buyer who was close enough to enter their checkout details.

That felt like an opportunity.

What abandoned cart flows actually do

Before getting into the strategy, it's worth being clear about what an abandoned cart sequence is solving, because it's not just a reminder.

When someone reaches your checkout page, they are not a cold lead. They've read the sales page, they've decided they want the thing, and they've started the process of buying it. When they abandon the purchase, it’s not necessarily a definitive NO, it’s more a sign of hesitation.

And hesitation has specific causes:

• Sometimes it's friction: the checkout felt complicated or the timing was wrong.
• Sometimes it's doubt: a voice asking whether this will actually work for them. 
• Sometimes it's distraction: they meant to come back and simply forgot. 
• Sometimes it's a final objection that the sales page didn't fully answer.

A well-structured abandoned cart sequence addresses each of these in turn. 

• Email one catches the people who just got interrupted (it's a simple, warm reminder).
• Email two goes a little deeper, usually adding urgency or addressing a common objection. 
• By email three, you're talking to a specific kind of person: someone who has seen two follow-ups and still hasn't bought. That person isn't on the fence anymore, they have a specific, named doubt, and that's exactly what email three needs to solve.

The strategy behind email three in the abandoned cart flow

Initially, the third email in this flow was built around one central question that this audience actually asks themselves: 

Can an online course really help me with this?

That's the doubt that survives two reminder emails. Not "is this too expensive" or "do I have time." It's a deeper skepticism about the medium itself, whether watching videos on a screen can actually translate into real results.

So instead of adding more urgency or repeating the offer, the email led with that exact objection.

Named it in the headline, then immediately dismantled it with social proof in the form of detailed, story-driven testimonials from real customers who had the same skepticism before they bought.

The structural logic was deliberate. 

By the time someone receives a third abandoned cart email, they're resistant to being sold to. The moment you come in with urgency or a pitch, you confirm what they already suspect: that this is just automated pressure. So this email didn't pitch, instead it stepped back, acknowledged the doubt, let other customers speak, and then offered aninvitation to return to the cart.

The tone throughout was calm and unhurried. 

The CTA — "Return to Your Cart" — was positioned as a favour, not a push. The footer addressed the three remaining friction points in one line each: a 60-day money-back guarantee, 160,000 satisfied customers, and instant lifetime access.

We also ran two A/B tests on this email. 

• The first tested the subject line — specifically whether framing it as an invitation to join a community ("Become Part of Our 160,000+ Community") would outperform the social proof angle ("160,000+ [Clients] Can't Be Wrong"). The community framing won by 7%, though not at statistical significance. 
• The second test focused on CTR — moving the CTA button above the testimonials and adding a second hyperlink mid-email to make it easier to act earlier in the read.  Results were not significantly different from the control

Let’s look at the results

Email three went live in October 2025. Here's what it generated in its first months:

October: $49 (first month, limited send volume) November: $519 December: $326 January 2026: $452 February 2026: $1,094

The trajectory is clear: as list volume grows and the flow receives more traffic, revenue from this single email scales with it. 

The placed order rate has held consistently between 1.16% and 1.63% across months with meaningful send volume — which is exactly what you want to see from a third touch on a warmed audience.

To put a number on the annual opportunity: at an average placed order rate of 1.4% and an average order value of roughly $65, every 1,000 people who enter this flow and reach email three represent around $910 in recoverable revenue. At current monthly send volumes averaging 300–400 recipients for email three, that's a run rate of roughly $2,700–$3,600 per year from this email alone — and that number grows proportionally as the list and ad spend scale.

In the months where send volume was higher — February 2026 saw over 900 recipients hit email three — the revenue from that single email crossed $1,000 in one month. Scale that consistently and you're looking at $12,000+ annually from one email that didn't exist before October.

Email three goes out 48 hours after the first abandoned cart email — roughly two days after someone walked away from the checkout. By that point, the urgency of the moment has passed, but the interest hasn't and the numbers reflect that.

• Open rates for this email have held between 56% and 67% across every month it's been running, which tells you that even on the third touch, people are still opening.
• CTR sits between 3.4% and 7.2% depending on the month — lower than the first two emails, as you'd expect, but meaningful enough to justify the send. The people clicking at this stage are genuinely reconsidering, they just needed the right reason.

What this actually means for your business

The math on abandoned cart isn't complicated. 

Some percentage of the people who reach your checkout will always leave and that's not a problem you can fully solve, but it's a problem you can partially solve, month after month, without running a new launch, creating new content, or spending more on ads.

Email three isn't a magic trick. 

It works because it's doing the right job at the right moment, addressing the specific doubt that's keeping the most resistant segment of your almost-buyers from completing the purchase with proof and patience. Of course, this is just one angle to take and in the bigger picture of CRO there is a lot more to test and refine.

The broader lesson from this ongoing CRO work is simpler than it sounds: once your funnel is working, the next gains don't necessarily have to come from building something new. 

Sometimes, they come from looking at where people are leaving and asking whether you've done everything you reasonably can to bring them back.

If this is the kind of work you want done in your business

CRO isn't a one-time project, it's an ongoing process of finding where revenue is leaking and systematically closing the gaps: in your funnel, your email flows, your checkout, your follow-up sequences.

The work I do with clients in this space is hands-on and strategic. I look at what you already have, identify the highest-leverage opportunities, and build or rewrite what's needed, whether that's a tripwire page, an abandoned cart sequence, a post-purchase flow, or a full funnel audit.

This is highly personalized work and every recommendation is built around your audience, your data, and where you are in your business right now.

If you have an audience that's engaging but not converting at the rate it should, or a funnel that's working but you know it could do more, that's exactly the kind of problem I work on. If you want to learn more, book a discovery call.