Email marketing for ecommerce: 7 automated emails that sell

In short: email marketing for an online store is a set of emails to people who gave you their address themselves: a welcome email, an abandoned cart reminder, a post-purchase email, a win-back email and the newsletter. The seven automated emails sell the most, because each goes out when the customer is thinking about the purchase. The first cart reminder, for example, goes out about 60 minutes after the shopper leaves.

Written by the CloudCart team, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform, for stores selling in or from Bulgaria and across the EU. CloudCart has email, SMS, Viber and Web Push campaigns built in, so every email here runs from the store admin. CloudCart facts come from the platform documentation and the Campaigns, Subscribers and Pricing pages.

What email marketing for ecommerce is: the three types of email

• Transactional emails. Order confirmation, status changes, payment received. They are part of the order and need no marketing consent.
• Automated emails (flows). They go out by themselves when the customer subscribes, leaves a cart, orders or stops buying. You set them up once.
• Campaigns and the newsletter. One email to a chosen group at a chosen time: a new collection, a sale, Black Friday.

An email to your own list costs nothing per impression or click, the list is yours, and the order data is already in the store. That is why automated flows usually bring more orders than one-off campaigns. Since Mail Privacy Protection in Apple Mail inflates open rates, judge every email by clicks and orders.

Is it still worth it? With Marketing Suite from €19 a month for 1,000 subscribers and 4 emails a month to each, one email costs under half a cent, while an ad to the same person is paid on every click. The channel fails when the list is bought, everyone gets the same email, or the domain is not authenticated.

7 automated emails for an online store: when they go out and what they say

Start with these flows, ordered by how quickly they bring orders. Use the timings as a starting point and check them against your statistics after a month.

#	Email	Who gets it	When	Sample subject line
1	Abandoned cart	Products in the cart, no order	after 1 hour, Viber after 24 hours, email with a code after 72 hours	"Your cart is waiting"
2	Welcome	A new subscriber	right away, a second email on day 3	"Your 10% code is here"
3	Browse abandonment	Viewed a category, no order from it	after 2 hours	"Still thinking about the Ethiopian coffee?"
4	Thank you and review	A buyer whose order was delivered	3 to 5 days after delivery	"How do you like the French press?"
5	Cross-sell	A buyer of a specific product	7 to 14 days after the order	"The filters that go with your press"
6	Win-back	No order for 90 days	day 90, Viber on day 3, exit on day 7	"We miss you: 10% until Sunday"
7	Birthday	"Birthday" field filled in	on the day, one reminder after 5 days	"A birthday gift for you"

Important: give every flow the exit "Makes an order", so the customer leaves it as soon as they order through one of its links. Also add a "no order" condition to the flow's segment, so someone who ordered another way gets no reminder.

1. Abandoned cart

On average 70.22% of online carts are abandoned, according to Baymard Institute's summary of 50 studies. The email must open the same cart with the products inside, without logging in. In CloudCart the first email is part of the built-in abandoned cart reminders and goes out after 30 to 180 minutes, as you choose (60 is recommended). Send the first reminder without a discount and offer a code in the third at the earliest, or customers learn to wait. The full flow is in the guide to abandoned carts.

2. Welcome

The first email arrives right away and delivers what the form promised. The second, on day 3, shows bestsellers and answers what holds back the first order: delivery to an Econt or Speedy office (the two main Bulgarian courier networks) or a BOX NOW parcel locker, returns, cash on delivery. A sample for a coffee store:

• Subject line: "Your 10% code is here". Preview text: "Valid for 7 days on every coffee and press."
• Body: the code {$generate_discount_code:10%}, your delivery and return terms, and the three bestsellers with image and price.
• Button: "Choose your coffee", to the category. Footer: company address and a visible {$unsubscribe_url} link.

3 to 7. Browse, review, cross-sell, win-back, birthday

The browse email shows the viewed products plus two similar ones, only to subscribers with consent. Send the review request after delivery, since reviews with photos also sell to the next customers. Time the cross-sell to the usage cycle, for example 30 days for a 250 g bag of coffee. The win-back's second message goes by Viber (the messaging app CloudCart sends business messages through) with a personal code; with no reaction after a week, move the customer to the dormant group. The birthday email needs a "Birthday" field in the form or account.

How to write an email that sells: 8 steps

1. One goal. "Sell the new collection to buyers of the old one", measured in orders and revenue.
2. A precise segment. Ordered in the last 30 days, viewed the category, bought once. An email to the whole list gets fewer clicks and more unsubscribes.
3. A subject line of 40 to 50 characters. The benefit or product first: "New Rosa collection: 10% until Sunday". The preview text adds to it.
4. One button to the exact product or category.
5. Catalog products, not one banner image, which shows blank in some inboxes.
6. A test send opened on a phone.
7. Send time: when your orders usually come in.
8. A report after 48 hours. Clicks, orders, revenue. Unsubscribes above 0.5% mean the segment or frequency is off.

A/B testing: how to compare two subject lines or two offers

Change one thing at a time and send version A and version B in two similar campaigns to the same segment. Compare clicks and revenue per recipient, not opens. With a few hundred recipients, a difference under 10 to 15% is usually chance, so repeat the test before you change the rule.

How to set up email marketing in the CloudCart admin

Campaigns in CloudCart sit in the same database as customers, orders and products, so you export nothing. Email, SMS, Viber and Web Push run from one screen.

1. Accept the anti-spam policy the first time you open Marketing → Campaigns. It is saved once for the store, with date and IP address.
2. Connect your domain. In Marketing → Channels, on the "Email" card, go through profile, domain, a check of the DNS records (SPF, DKIM, Tracking CNAME, DMARC) and the sender address, for example news@yourstore.bg. The reputation is yours, not shared with other stores.
3. Add a signup form in Marketing → Subscribers → Subscribe Forms: popup, bar, corner slide-in, sidebar or full screen, shown immediately, on exit intent (desktop) or after a set time. Forms per plan: 3 on Starter Pack, 10 on CC Pro, 25 on CC Master (none on Baby Pack). See the guide to popups for an online store.
4. Build segments in Marketing → Segments, with over 60 conditions (orders, products, categories, views, wishlist, tags). Automated segments recalculate on every subscriber action and every 5 minutes, and AURA can build one from a sentence.
5. Start the ready-made flows. Click + Create campaign, choose Automated and pick a predefined automation: abandoned cart, welcome, post-purchase, win-back, birthday, seasonal. It is saved as a draft with steps and copy filled in.
6. Adjust the email in the block editor. {$generate_discount_code:10%} creates a unique code, {$cart_url} opens the cart, {$unsubscribe_url} unsubscribes.
7. Set up to 5 steps with waits and conditions (opened, clicked), and the exit Makes an order.
8. Watch the statistics: reached, clicked, orders and revenue, updated hourly.

Important: by default the email channel does not send to unconfirmed emails. Keep it that way if your list is old or imported.

How to build your email list

A few hundred people who signed up themselves usually sell more than thousands of bought addresses. Bought lists break the GDPR and the consent rule in Article 13 of the EU ePrivacy Directive (2002/58/EC), which Bulgaria applies through its Electronic Commerce Act: marketing email to consumers needs their prior consent. Subscribers come from:

• A form with a clear benefit: "10% off your first order", "early access to the sale".
• Checkout: a "Send me offers" checkbox, unticked by default.
• Your own customers who already gave consent; when you move platforms, they come with the store.
• Offline and social: a QR code in the parcel, a form link in your Instagram bio.

CloudCart saves consent with date, IP address and the exact text accepted, with optional double opt-in. An unsubscribe through {$unsubscribe_url} is checked before every send, including running campaigns. It applies per channel, so if someone wants to stop everything, exclude them from SMS and Viber too. More in the guide to GDPR and cookies in CloudCart.

How often to send a newsletter: frequency by engagement

The right frequency depends on how each subscriber responds. Silent subscribers hurt your sender reputation, so send by group:

Group	How you recognize it	How often
Active	Clicked or ordered in the last 30 days	1 to 2 emails a week
Cooling	Open, no click for 30 to 90 days	2 to 4 a month, a stronger offer
Dormant	No open or click for over 90 days	1 a month, the win-back email
Lost	No reaction for over 180 days, after 2 or 3 tries	Stop

In CloudCart these are automated segments. CC Pro and CC Master add RFM analysis, which ranks customers by how recently, how often and how much they buy (over 90 days by default) into groups like "champions", "loyal" and "lost", recalculated every 12 hours. Start with one email a week to the active group plus the flows.

Email marketing for Black Friday: the schedule email by email

Black Friday is the last Friday of November and Cyber Monday the Monday after. Raise frequency only for people who respond:

When	Email	To whom	Channel
A week before	"Black Friday is coming": categories on sale, no code	Active and cooling	Email
Friday morning	The launch: discount, deadline, products	Active and cooling	Email
Friday evening	"Until midnight"	Clicked, no order	SMS or Viber
Cyber Monday	A separate offer or the last day	No order since Friday	Email

1. The terms in every email. Since 28 May 2022, under Article 6a of the EU Price Indication Directive, a price reduction must show the prior price: the lowest price in at least the 30 days before. Bulgaria's Consumer Protection Act also asks which products, on what terms and until when. See Black Friday in CloudCart.
2. Exclude buyers with a "no order since Friday" condition.
3. Check the reminder quota. When it runs out, cart reminders stop without warning.

With CloudCart Pay the customer pays by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, with a 0% transaction fee through Dec 31, 2026. Approval takes a few hours to 2 business days, so switch it on early.

How to land in the inbox: SPF, DKIM, DMARC and Gmail's rules

Since February 2024 Gmail and Yahoo have set requirements for bulk senders (close to 5,000 or more emails a day to Gmail), and from November 2025 Gmail is ramping up enforcement with temporary and permanent rejections (Google's sender guidelines FAQ):

1. Authenticated domain: SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
2. One-click unsubscribe, honored within 48 hours (Google) or 2 days (Yahoo).
3. Spam rate below 0.3%, ideally under 0.1%.
4. A "From" address on your own domain, never a personal Gmail.

CloudCart's setup wizard covers the first and fourth; the third depends on your list. The Reputation button on the "Email" card in Marketing → Channels shows spam rate, bounces, opens and clicks. After the first 500 emails, the platform pauses the channel if spam goes above 0.5%, bounces above 5% or opens below 5%, which protects your domain. The pause lifts when the numbers improve or through support, and you restart paused campaigns by hand.

Email, SMS, Viber or Web Push: which channel when

Channel	Best for	What you need
Email	Newsletter, products with images, most flows	Consent, your domain
SMS	Short and urgent: "Your code is valid until 23:59"	Phone and consent; counts toward the channel limit
Viber	The second reminder, a personal code with an image	A verified business sender; your own sender name is a plan add-on
Web Push	Visitors with no email or phone: "Back in stock"	Browser permission

Each channel counts messages against your plan and warns you in the admin at 80% of the limit.

AI in email marketing: what it can take over

The AI Assistant button in the campaign list suggests campaigns by season and by what is selling, with subject line and copy ready; AURA builds segments from a sentence. A CloudCart store can also be run from Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Gemini CLI or Cursor with a personal access token (see an online store with AI and the store with an AI assistant page). You still check price, code expiry and delivery terms in every text.

Mailchimp or the campaigns built into your store

	Built-in CloudCart campaigns	Mailchimp connected to the store
Customer and order data	Live, same database	Synced hourly, one way, store to Mailchimp
Segments	Store behavior: viewed category, wishlist, RFM	The synced data
Channels	Email, SMS, Viber, Web Push	Email
Better when	New store, fast flows, one system	Your team already works in Mailchimp

The connection is in Apps → Mailchimp. Collect consent correctly in the store, because the connection takes it as given. Unsubscribes in Mailchimp do not sync back, so do not send those people CloudCart campaigns.

How to choose email marketing software for a store: 7 questions

1. Does it see orders and carts live?
2. Does its link restore the same cart?
3. Can it segment by store behavior?
4. Does it report revenue, not just opens?
5. Does it send SMS, Viber and Web Push too?
6. Does it check your domain's DNS records?
7. Do you pay for contacts who never open?

A "no" to the first two means cart and post-purchase flows need syncing and manual work. In CloudCart the first six are yes, and you pay by subscribers.

How much email marketing costs

Every CloudCart plan includes campaign subscribers (50 on Baby Pack, 100 on Starter Pack, 500 on CC Pro, 1,000 on CC Master) and abandoned cart reminders (100, 500, 5,000 and 10,000 per plan year). Marketing Suite starts at €19 a month for 1,000 subscribers; SMS and Viber count separately (see pricing). External tools charge by contacts, including those who never open.

A worked example: with a €40 average order, a cart flow that recovers 5 orders a week brings over €800 a month (5 × 4.3 × €40). Your own number is in the campaign's "Orders" and "Revenue" columns.

Which email marketing metrics to track

Metric	Formula	Act when
Click rate	clicked ÷ reached	Low: change the offer or segment
Campaign orders	orders credited to it	Low with good clicks: fix the landing page
Revenue per recipient	revenue ÷ reached	Send more of the best type
Unsubscribe rate	unsubscribed ÷ reached	Above 0.5%: less often, narrower segment
Bounce rate	bounced ÷ sent	Above 2%: clean the list

Clicks with few orders mean the problem is after the click; see how to increase online store sales.

7 email marketing mistakes to avoid

A bought list; newsletters with no flows; a code in every email; one email to everyone; buttons to the home page; a hidden unsubscribe link, which turns into spam complaints; and flows still showing an old price. Review your flows monthly.

Checklist before your first send

• SPF, DKIM, Tracking CNAME and DMARC are green; consent is recorded.
• Cart and welcome flows run, each with an exit on order.
• The test email works on a phone, with a visible unsubscribe link.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about the channel, the domain or the flows? Write to support@cloudcart.com.