What a Dropped Basket Reminder Includes
What a dropped basket reminder email contains, and the times it is held back or skipped so the right customers are nudged at the right moment.
In short: each abandoned basket can trigger at most one reminder email, it only ever shows competitions that are still open, and it is quietly skipped in a few sensible situations. This page walks through exactly what the customer receives and when no email goes out, so you can tune your settings with confidence.
If you have not set the feature up yet, start with Dropped Basket Recovery.
What the customer receives
The reminder is a branded email that matches your site, so it looks like it came from you and not from a generic system. It uses your site name, your logo, your theme colour and button colour, and your currency. It greets the customer by their first name.
Inside the email, the customer sees a card for each competition that was still in their basket. Each card shows:
The competition title and its image.
The price per ticket.
The quantity they had chosen.
The line total for that competition.
The date that draw closes.
Below the cards, the email shows a short summary (the total number of items and the basket total), followed by one clear button that takes the customer straight back to where they left off.
The wording shifts slightly depending on how far the customer got:
If they added tickets but did not start checkout, the email leans on a "Your basket is still waiting" message and the button returns them to their basket.
If they started checkout but did not pay, the email uses a "Pick up exactly where you left off" message and the button takes them straight to checkout.
Only competitions that are still open are included
This is the part worth understanding. The reminder is built from the customer's basket at the moment the email is about to be sent, not from the moment they first added items.
That means only competitions that are still active, have opened for entries, and have not passed their closing date make it into the email. A scheduled competition that has not reached its start date is left out. If a competition in their basket sold out, was closed, or reached its end date during the delay window before the reminder sends, that item simply drops off and is not shown.
So a customer can receive a reminder that lists fewer competitions than they originally had in their basket. This is by design. It avoids nudging someone back towards something they can no longer buy.
When no email is sent at all
A reminder is held back or skipped entirely in these situations:
The order was completed. If the customer finished their order, including a free ticket order, there is nothing to recover, so no reminder is sent.
Nothing valid is left in the basket. If, by the time the reminder is due, every competition they had added has since sold out or closed, there is nothing to show. No email is sent and the basket stops being tracked.
The customer recently took a break. To protect anyone who has recently been shown a responsible play reality check, reminders are automatically held back for them.
In each case the basket quietly drops out of tracking. The customer is never chased about a basket that no longer makes sense.
One reminder per basket, plus a cooldown
Two safeguards stop a customer being chased repeatedly.
One reminder per basket. Each abandoned basket results in at most one reminder. Once that reminder has been sent (or once the customer completes an order, empties their basket, or the email is found to be no longer relevant), the basket stops being tracked.
A cooldown between reminders. On top of the above, the Cooldown setting prevents the same customer being sent another dropped basket reminder for the number of hours you choose, even if they start and abandon a brand new basket within that window.
Together these mean a busy customer who keeps browsing and abandoning baskets is not bombarded with emails.
How this should shape your settings
Use these behaviours to pick a delay that suits your competitions.
A longer delay gives customers more time to come back on their own. The trade-off is that popular competitions in their basket are more likely to sell out or close first and drop off the reminder, or that the reminder is skipped entirely because nothing valid is left.
A shorter delay catches more of the original basket intact, while the customer's intent is still fresh.
The cooldown is your guard against over-emailing the same person, so set it to a length that feels respectful for your audience.
If your competitions sell out quickly, lean towards a shorter delay. If your draws run for days or weeks, a longer delay is usually safe.
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