Abandoned cart

When a buyer adds your listing to their cart and doesn’t complete checkout, Etsy can automatically send them a follow-up email a few hours later with a discount code you’ve configured. This is one of the highest-ROI marketing levers most sellers ignore - it’s set-and-forget, and the buyers who get the email already have intent.

How to set it up

1. Shop Manager > Marketing > Sales and coupons.
2. New sale > “Abandoned cart” type.
3. Pick the discount (10% off, free shipping, or fixed dollar amount).
4. Save. Etsy handles the rest.

What works

• Free shipping recovery often outperforms percent-off, because shipping shock is a major cart-abandonment cause.
• Modest discount (10%) beats aggressive discount (30%) for most shops - you want to recover the order, not eat all your margin.
• Always-on, not seasonal. Carts are abandoned year-round.

What to watch

• The recovery email goes only to buyers who have an Etsy account and were signed in. Guest checkouts are not recoverable this way.
• Abandoned cart discounts stack with other coupons. Be careful with high-percentage codes if you also run shop-wide sales.

Adjacent: favorited but not bought

Etsy doesn’t have a “favorited but not added to cart” recovery email. Some sellers run periodic shop-wide sales partly to pull favoriters off the fence - those buyers get notified when you discount a listing they’ve favorited.