This job is writing the short series of emails your store sends when someone starts checkout, enters an email address and leaves before paying. It takes a Tech and Skill shape and about an afternoon: the AI writes three notes in your voice, and your store or form tool sends them on a delay you choose. You give it what you sell, why people really hesitate, and your rules on shipping, returns and discounts. It gives back three subject lines and three short emails you paste into your tool's abandoned checkout setting. The writing is the quick part. The setup and a test checkout take most of the afternoon; the three emails then arrive over the next few days.
- Shape
- TechSkill
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Tech and Skill
This job has two halves, and they need different things from you.
The Tech half is the sending. An abandoned checkout email only works if it goes out automatically, at the right time, to the right person, and stops the moment they pay. No chat window can do that. Your store platform or email tool can, because it is the thing that knows someone entered an email at checkout and did not finish. Most store platforms have this as a built-in setting or an add-on app. Some form builders can do the same for a half-finished form, if they save partial entries. Find that setting before you write a word, because it decides how many emails you can send, how far apart, and what can go in them.
The Skill half is the writing. This is where the AI earns its place. A reminder email is short, but it is easy to get wrong: too pushy, too cute, or so generic it could be from any store. The AI is good at turning your notes about real customer hesitation into three plain notes that each do one job. It is not good at knowing what your customers worry about, so that part comes from you.
The split means you finish with something that runs without you. You write once, switch it on, and check it now and then. Keep the brief, and when your shipping or returns change, run it again with the new facts.
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat. Each one is something only you can supply.
- What you sell, in two or three sentences. The product or service, the price range in plain words, and who usually buys it.
- The three questions people ask before they buy. Look at your inbox, your direct messages and your product page comments. "Will it arrive before Saturday?" and "Does it fit a size 9 foot?" are inputs. "They have questions" is not.
- Your real shipping, returns and delivery facts. Shipping cost or the threshold for no shipping cost, delivery times, the return window, and who pays for returns. The AI will repeat these to customers, so they must be exact.
- Your discount rule. Either "no discounts in these emails" or the exact offer, the code and when it expires. Decide this yourself first.
- Three recent emails you sent to customers. Order confirmations, replies to questions, anything in your own words. These teach the AI how you sound.
- What your tool allows. How many emails, the delays you can set, whether it shows the cart contents automatically, and the placeholders it uses for the customer's name and the return-to-checkout link. Copy the placeholder names exactly from your tool's settings page.
- Your sign-off and the name the emails come from. A person's name usually reads better than a store name in this kind of note.
Do not paste customer names, email addresses or order details into the chat. The AI only needs the patterns, not the people.
What comes back
Paste this brief, then your inputs underneath it.
You are writing abandoned checkout emails for a small business.
Someone entered their email at checkout and left before paying.
Write three short emails that our store tool will send automatically.
Email 1, sent a few hours after they leave:
a plain reminder that their cart is saved, with the link back.
No pressure, no discount, no urgency.
Email 2, sent the next day:
answer the most common hesitation from our notes below, in our own words.
One question, one answer, then the link back.
Email 3, sent two days after email 2:
a short last note. If we gave a discount rule, use it here and only here.
Otherwise, offer to answer any question by reply.
Rules:
- Each email under 90 words, plain text style, no headings.
- One subject line per email, under 45 characters, that says what the email is.
- Use only the facts we give you. Do not invent shipping times, guarantees, stock levels or deadlines.
- No countdown timers, no "only a few left", no fake urgency.
- No exclamation marks.
- Use our tool's placeholders exactly as written for the name and the checkout link.
- Write the way we write in the sample emails.
- Sign off with the name and sign-off we give.
Then list any fact you needed and did not have, as a question for us.
Our notes:
[paste what you sell, the three questions, shipping and returns facts,
the discount rule, the sample emails, the tool's placeholders and the sign-off]What comes back is three subject lines and three short emails, ready to paste field by field. Read the question list at the end first. If the AI needed a fact you did not give, it will either ask or guess, and you want the ask. Answer in the same chat and ask for the three emails again.
If the result is close but not right, give one note at a time. "Email 2 sounds like an advertisement, make it sound like a reply to a friend" works better than rewriting it yourself.
How to judge it
A good result reads like three quick notes from a person who noticed you left something behind. You can reject a bad result in a minute. Push back or start again when you see any of these.
- It invents a fact. "Ships in 24 hours" or "lifetime guarantee" when you never said so is the most expensive mistake on this page. A customer will hold you to it.
- It manufactures urgency. "Your cart expires soon" or "only two left" when neither is true. It feels like a trick, and it usually reads as one.
- It leads with a discount. A code in email 1 trains buyers to wait for it. Move it to email 3 or cut it.
- It is long. Anything that needs scrolling on a phone is too long. The job is to get them back to checkout, not to sell the whole brand again.
- It sounds like a brand voice, not you. "We noticed you left something behind" with no name and no personality could be from any store. Compare it with your sample emails.
- It breaks the placeholders. A misspelled name or link placeholder sends a customer an email that says "Hi {first_name}" with a dead link. Check every one against your tool.
- All three say the same thing. Each email should do one different job: remind, answer, close.
A quick second check: read the three emails out loud as if you were the customer who left. If any line makes you feel watched or rushed, cut it.
What stays with you
The AI writes the words, and that is all it does.
You decide whether these emails are right for your customers at all. A store selling something private or sensitive may want a single, very discreet reminder, or none.
You own every fact in the emails. Delivery times, return windows, shipping costs and any discount must match your checkout page today, and they must change when your policies change. Put a note in your calendar to reread the three emails whenever you change shipping or returns.
You own the rules about who gets them. Whether you may email someone who started checkout depends on where you and your customers are and on what your checkout page says about email. Every message needs your business name and a way to stop receiving them; most store tools add the unsubscribe link for you, but check that yours does. If you are not sure, ask whoever advises you on privacy before you switch anything on.
You do the setup, and you test it. Paste each email into your tool, set the delays, and switch it on. Then start a checkout with your own email address, leave, and wait for all three to arrive; if your tool lets you, set the shortest delays for the test and put the real ones back after. Click every link. Then complete a purchase on a second test and confirm the series stops. A reminder that keeps arriving after someone has paid is worse than no reminder.
And you read the replies. Email 3 invites a question by reply, so someone has to answer it, quickly and as a person. That reply often does more than any of the three emails.
It also helps to look at why people leave in the first place. A long checkout or a long form loses people before any email can help, so our page on shortening your form is a good companion job. If your reminders land in spam, the email deliverability page covers the checks.
An editorial example
This is an invented business, used only to show the method.
Say you run a small online shop that sells hand-dyed yarn. Your inbox tells you the same three questions keep coming up: whether the colors look the same in person as on screen, whether the yarn arrives in time for a project deadline, and whether a skein is enough for a hat.
You give the AI those three questions, your shipping facts (ships in three business days, a flat shipping cost below a threshold), your return rule (unused skeins within 30 days), three replies you wrote to customers last month, and the rule "no discounts." You copy the name and checkout-link placeholders from your store's abandoned checkout settings.
Email 1 comes back with the subject "Your yarn is still in your cart" and four sentences: the cart is saved, here is the link, reply if you have a question, your name. Email 2 has the subject "Will the colors match the photos?" and answers it honestly: each batch comes out a little different, the photos are taken in daylight, and unused skeins can come back within 30 days. Email 3 says "One last note about your cart" and offers to help work out how many skeins a project needs.
You change one line in email 2, because the AI wrote "every batch is unique," which sounds like an advertisement, to "each batch comes out a little different." You paste all three into your store, set the delays, and start a test checkout with your own email and leave. All three arrive, the links work, and a finished test purchase stops the series. That is the job.
Which tool sends them
The choice is where the emails go out from, and it is usually already made for you.
| Where people leave | What usually sends the email | What to check first |
|---|---|---|
| A store checkout | The store platform's abandoned checkout setting, or an app for it | How many emails it allows and the placeholder names |
| A store checkout, with an email tool already connected | The email tool's abandoned checkout automation | That the store passes cart events to it, and only one of the two is switched on |
| A booking or quote form | The form tool, if it saves partial entries | Whether it keeps an email address from an unfinished entry at all |
| A payment link with no store | Often nothing | Whether a reminder is possible before writing one |
Switch on one sender only. Two tools sending reminders for the same cart is a common way to email a customer twice and annoy them.
When this one is done, the full list of DIY marketing jobs has the next one.
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