Abandoned cart benchmarks 2026: what good actually looks like
Two live benchmark pages from the same vendor report two different abandoned cart open rates. One says 37.12%. The other says 35.75%. Neither is wrong — they're measuring different years, and almost nobody quoting them says which.
So here's the direct answer first. In 2026, a healthy abandoned cart sequence opens at roughly 37%, gets clicked by about 4% of everyone sent, converts 1.7% of recipients, and earns $2.50 to $3.60 per email sent depending on whose year you're reading. Those are the abandoned cart benchmarks worth measuring against — and the year attached to each matters more than the decimal.
This piece is the numbers. For copywriting and sequence structure, see how to write abandoned cart emails.
The core abandoned cart benchmarks, by year
Every figure below carries its publication year. Read the columns side by side instead of picking one number and calling it "the average."
| Metric | 2026 figure | 2025 figure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 37.12% | 35.75% | Omnisend 2026 / Omnisend 2025 |
| Click-to-sent rate | 4.13% | 3.84% | Omnisend 2026 / Omnisend 2025 |
| Click-to-open rate | 11.12% | — | Omnisend 2026 |
| Conversion rate | 1.72% | 1.51% | Omnisend 2026 / Omnisend 2025 |
| Click-to-conversion | — | 39.46% | Omnisend 2025 |
| Revenue per email | $3.59 | $2.54 | Omnisend 2026 / Omnisend 2025 |
| Unsubscribe rate | 0.45% | — | Omnisend 2026 |
| Average order value recovered | — | $168 | Omnisend 2025 |
The most useful row is click-to-conversion: 39.46% in Omnisend's 2025 data. Nearly four in ten people who click go on to buy. That's why this automation earns its setup — the intent is already there, and your email is a door, not a pitch.
Why the open rate figures disagree — and which to use
Not a contradiction, exactly. Omnisend's 2026 automation benchmarks report 37.12%; its 2025 abandoned cart data reports 35.75%. The plausible reading is a real year-over-year lift of about 1.4 points plus slightly different dataset cuts.
The problem is that both pages are live and neither shouts its vintage at you. That's how a 2025 number ends up quoted as "current" in a 2026 deck. Use 37.12% for 2026, 35.75% for last year's comparison — and say which, every time.
Treat all open rates with suspicion anyway. Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images and registers opens that never happened. Open rate is the softest metric in the table; revenue per email is the hardest.
What's a good abandoned cart email click and revenue rate?
Omnisend's averages tell you the middle. Klaviyo's 2026 abandoned cart benchmarks tell you the ceiling, which is more useful — "average" includes every half-finished flow nobody has touched in a year.
| Metric | Average | Top 10% | Source year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email click rate | 6.0% | 11.3% | Klaviyo, 2026 |
| SMS click rate | 10.3% | 18.5% | Klaviyo, 2026 |
| Revenue per recipient, email | $6.77 | $13.70 | Klaviyo, 2026 |
| Revenue per recipient, SMS | $4.48 | $8.69 | Klaviyo, 2026 |
The gap between average and top decile is roughly 2x on every row. That's not a talent gap — it's a configuration gap. Three emails instead of one, correct delays, buyers excluded on purchase.
Note the SMS inversion. SMS wins on clicks (10.3% vs 6.0%) while email wins on revenue per recipient ($6.77 vs $4.48), both 2026. People tap texts and buy from emails. Run both if you can; if you can run only one, run email.
Your vertical moves the number more than your copy does
Blended averages are where small businesses get discouraged for no reason. Top-decile revenue per recipient by category, all Klaviyo 2026:
| Industry | Email RPR (top 10%) | SMS RPR (top 10%) |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware & home improvement | $35.24 | $28.27 |
| Home & garden | $28.76 | $16.57 |
| Automotive | $27.48 | $18.77 |
| Electronics | $24.72 | $17.72 |
Against a $13.70 all-category top-decile figure, hardware clears $35. That's basket size, not email skill — a $900 power tool order is worth more to recover than a $22 candle. Sell low-ticket items and sit under the blended average, and you may already be in your category's top decile. Check the vertical first, the same way you would with email benchmarks by industry.
How many carts actually get abandoned?
Most carts never reach checkout. The figure usually quoted sits around 70%, though it moves by vertical and by who's counting — and the circulated versions rarely carry a traceable methodology, so treat it as an approximation, not a measurement.
Better documented is how little of it gets chased. Omnisend's 2026 data found only 22.5% of brands with active automations had deployed an abandoned cart flow by the end of 2025. Fewer than a quarter. For a solo creator, that's an opening, not a crowded field.
Automated emails make up roughly 2% of sends but around 30% of all email-attributed revenue, and abandoned cart plus welcome series together account for 76% of automation-generated orders (Omnisend, 2025–2026).
How to tell if your sequence is underperforming
Four checks, in order. They catch most problems.
1. Count your emails. Klaviyo's 2026 data shows three-email sequences generating more than 6x the revenue of single sends. Running one email? The benchmark comparison is beside the point — fix this first.
2. Compare revenue per email, not open rate. Aim for the neighbourhood of $3.59 (2026) or $2.54 (2025), adjusted for your AOV — the $168 recovered-cart average Omnisend recorded in 2025 is the implied baseline, so a $40 AOV store should expect proportionally less and that's fine.
3. Check click-to-open against 11.12% (2026). Weak opens plus a healthy click-to-open points at your subject line or deliverability. Healthy opens plus weak clicks points at the email body or the offer.
4. Watch unsubscribes against 0.45% (2026). Materially above that and your delays are too tight, or the sequence isn't exiting on purchase.
At low volume, trend beats any single reading
Ship 40 orders a month and a benchmark table is a direction, not a grade. Maybe a dozen carts enter the flow — one extra recovered order swings your conversion rate by points, and a slow week looks like a catastrophe.
Measure quarters, not weeks. Three months against the previous three tells you something true. One month against a published average tells you almost nothing.
Where benchmarks mislead you
- Recovery falls off a cliff after 72 hours. Omnisend ends the sequence there for a reason — email 1 at 30–60 minutes, email 2 at 24 hours, email 3 at 72 hours. A fourth email on day seven doesn't recover a cart; it collects an unsubscribe.
- Discounting in email 1 poisons the well. Omnisend keeps the first message discount-free deliberately, escalating only if needed. Lead with a code and you've taught your best customers to abandon on purpose.
- Judging yourself against the blended average. Verticals differ 2–3x on revenue per recipient in Klaviyo's 2026 breakdown. Find your row.
- Skipping SMS. It clicks at nearly double email's rate (10.3% vs 6.0%, 2026) — cheap clicks left untouched.
- One send window for an international list. Omnisend's 6am–9pm window, opens peaking near 8pm, is local time. Three continents need three windows.
- Mobile rendering failures. A broken cart image on a phone is a conversion problem dressed as a benchmark problem.
- Not exiting on purchase. Omnisend treats auto-exit as baseline. Emailing someone who already paid costs more trust than the sequence earns.
Why this flow earns the trouble: behaviour-triggered emails made about $2.87 per send versus $0.18 for scheduled campaigns in Omnisend's 2025 data — roughly 16x.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good abandoned cart email open rate in 2026?
Around 37% is the current mark — Omnisend's 2026 automation benchmarks report 37.12%, up from 35.75% in its 2025 abandoned cart data. Treat open rate as the least reliable figure in your dashboard, since Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates it. Compare your own trend line month over month instead of chasing a published decimal.
What conversion rate should an abandoned cart sequence hit?
Omnisend measured 1.72% of recipients converting in 2026, against 1.51% in 2025. The more encouraging number is click-to-conversion: 39.46% of people who clicked went on to purchase in Omnisend's 2025 data. Getting the click is the hard part, not closing the sale.
How much revenue should an abandoned cart email generate?
Per email sent, $3.59 in 2026 and $2.54 in 2025 from Omnisend. Measured per recipient entering the flow, Klaviyo's 2026 data shows $6.77 average and $13.70 for the top 10%. Scale those expectations to your own average order value before judging your results.
Is SMS better than email for cart recovery?
It depends which metric you care about. Klaviyo's 2026 figures put SMS ahead on click rate (10.3% vs 6.0%) but behind on revenue per recipient ($4.48 vs $6.77). Running both captures the texters and the buyers; if you only have budget for one channel, email returns more per person.
Can a small store with 40 orders a month use these benchmarks?
Yes, but as a direction rather than a score. At low volume a single recovered order moves your conversion rate by whole percentage points, so one month's reading is mostly noise. Compare a rolling quarter against the previous quarter, and use the benchmark tables to sanity-check the gap rather than grade yourself weekly.
Final thoughts
The benchmark that should worry you isn't 37.12% or $3.59. It's 22.5% — the share of brands with active automations running a cart flow by the end of 2025, per Omnisend. Most stores compare themselves to averages they never built the machinery to hit.
Three emails, correct delays, exit on purchase. That configuration alone separates average from top decile in every dataset above.
Doxiboo builds AI-assisted multi-step email campaigns for small businesses and solo creators — drafted and scheduled without the enterprise setup overhead. Start your free trial and give yourself a trend line worth benchmarking.
