Someone Almost Bought From You. Here Is How to Get Them Back

A follow up email for people who almost bought is the most effective automation a solopreneur, coach, or consultant should set up, and most of you are either not running one at all, or running one designed for a company 100 times your size. Let me show you the difference, and exactly what to do instead.

A detailed Decodo study landed on my radar recently, a breakdown of what major retailers do when shoppers leave without buying. My first read was: this is genuinely useful data. My second read was: my readers are going to implement every single number in this thing and it is going to cost them. So here we are.

What “cart abandonment” is (and why it affects you even if you do not have a cart)

You have experienced this from the other side. You go to buy something online, you get distracted, you close the tab. Two hours later, an email shows up: “You left something behind.” Maybe there is a 10% discount attached. Maybe the email says the item is selling fast.

That is a cart abandonment email, or what I prefer to call it in plain English: a recover lost sales email. It goes out automatically when someone browses or starts checkout and does not finish.

You do not need to sell physical products to use this. If you sell a coaching program, a course, a consulting package, a template, or a digital download, anyone who clicks on your offer page or your checkout link and leaves without buying is a candidate for this email. The mechanics are the same. The strategy, for your list size, is completely different from what the big brands do.

What big retailers do and why it works for them

A Decodo study analyzing cart abandonment strategies from 120+ major retailers breaks down exactly how brands like ASOS, Wayfair, and Sephora handle this. The findings are specific: fast fashion brands send a discount within 4 to 12 hours. Beauty brands wait around 24 hours. Furniture brands sit back for 24 to 72 hours before escalating. Some retailers run sequences of 4 to 6 emails. Discounts range from 10% all the way to 65% in certain categories.

This works for them for three reasons, and none of those reasons apply to you.

First, their lists have millions of subscribers. When a million-person list gets coupon-trained, when subscribers learn to abandon carts and wait for a deal, the brand never sees the pattern because the signal drowns in the noise. On your 800-person list, the pattern becomes visible within a few launches.

Second, their margins are built for this. A fast fashion brand that discounts 34% of the time has margins that absorb the hit. When you discount a $497 coaching program by 15%, that is $74.55 off an offer you spent months building. Multiply that across 20 buyers in a cohort and you have given away over $1,400 in revenue.

Third, they have inventory perishability and competition that creates genuine urgency. You are not an airline selling a seat that goes empty at takeoff. Your program does not spoil. Manufactured urgency on a small, personal list reads as pressure, not value.

Why copying the enterprise playbook will hurt your business

Here is the hidden cost that no enterprise study will tell you: on a small, engaged list, aggressive discounting trains your audience to be deal-hunters. Your subscribers are close enough to your business to notice the pattern across multiple launches. Once they figure out that waiting produces a coupon, full-price sales slow down. Your most engaged readers, the ones who trust you and would have bought anyway, start holding out.

This is the same reason luxury brands in the Decodo study never discount at all. It is not stubbornness. Their brand value lives in their price. For coaches and consultants, your brand value lives in the relationship you have with your list. A personal note from you is worth more than 15% off. And it costs you nothing.

The creator-platform data tells a different story than the enterprise retail research. Kajabi and Teachable both recommend capping sequences at 2 to 3 emails for small lists. Rejoiner’s analysis of 1,000+ brands found that a fourth or fifth email rarely produces additional recovered revenue, it produces unsubscribes. And for a small, trust-based audience, an unsubscribe is a real loss in a way it never is for a retailer with a six-figure list.

The DIYMarketers Small-List Recovery Method for the follow up email after someone almost buys

This is the framework I recommend for anyone running a list under 5,000 subscribers selling coaching, consulting, courses, or services. Three emails. No deep discounting. Sequenced for trust, not volume.

What to say in your follow up email for people who almost bought

Email 1 is not a sales email. It is a service email. Its job is to remove friction, not to close the sale. Write it the way you would text a friend who was about to buy something from you and disappeared. “Hey, I noticed you started the checkout for [offer name] and it looks like something went wrong. Here is a direct link if you wanted to get back to it.” That is the whole email. No scarcity. No countdown. No offer. Simple, direct emails outperform elaborate ones on small lists every time.

Email 2 is where you address hesitation. By the time someone has seen your offer, started to buy, and not finished, they have a reason. The most common reasons are: they were not sure the offer was right for them, they wanted to think about the money, or they got interrupted and forgot. Email 2 speaks to all three without being defensive. Reinforce what the offer does for them. Then add something that makes it easier to say yes, easier to say yes, not cheaper. A two-payment option. A bonus session. An extended guarantee. A personal note explaining why you built this and who it is specifically for.

Email 3 is the closer, not the pressure. If someone has seen both previous emails and has not bought, one of two things is true: they are not ready, or they are not the right buyer. Email 3 acknowledges this gracefully. “I am closing this out, if this was not the right time, no worries. If you want to talk about it, hit reply.” Then stop. A fourth email from a small-list sender reads as desperation, not persistence, and it costs you goodwill you need for the next launch.

What to offer instead of a discount

This is where most small business owners freeze. They see the enterprise playbook and think the only lever they have is price. They are wrong. There are four alternatives to a discount that do the same psychological work, reducing the hesitation to buy, without training your list to wait for a deal.

• A bonus. An extra module, a template, a resource, a session. Something that adds value without cutting your price. If your offer is $497, adding a $97 bonus in email 2 feels like a win for the buyer and costs you almost nothing.
• A payment plan. Breaking a $497 offer into two payments of $249 does not change your revenue. It removes the psychological friction of a large number and makes yes easier. This is almost always more effective than a percentage discount.
• An extended guarantee. If you offer a 14-day guarantee, email 2 extends it to 30 days for people who almost bought. This removes risk without touching price.
• A personal note. On a small list, you have something no retailer has: a real person behind the offer. A genuine, two-paragraph email from you explaining who this was built for and why you believe it will help them is worth more than 15% off. Write it like a person, not a marketer.

Your customer loyalty lives in the relationship you build with your list, not in the deals you run. Every time you train a subscriber to wait for a discount, you are borrowing against that relationship.

How to measure whether your follow up email for people who almost bought is working

Forget the enterprise benchmarks for a moment. Your goal is to measure against your own baseline. Here is the three-number scorecard for a small-list follow up email sequence for people who almost bought:

Recovery rate. How many people who triggered the sequence ended up buying? A 5 to 10% recovery rate is average for digital products. Anything above 15% means your copy and timing are working. Track this per launch, it will tell you whether your offer has a messaging problem, a trust problem, or a price problem.

Full-price purchase rate post-sequence. This is the number no enterprise study tracks, but it is the one that matters most for a small list. After someone goes through your recovery sequence, what percentage of people who received a coupon in email 2 go on to pay full price on their next purchase from you? If that number drops after you introduce discounts, you have confirmed coupon conditioning in your audience. Switch to a bonus or payment plan.

Unsubscribe rate from the sequence. If people are opting out at a higher rate from your recovery sequence than from your regular emails, your sequence is too aggressive. Shorten it to two emails and soften email 2. Watch your open rates across the sequence, a sharp drop from email 1 to email 2 means the first email is not landing the way you think.

If you do not have cart or checkout abandonment tracking set up yet, start with your email platform’s built-in automation triggers. Most platforms that serve small businesses have a “page visited but did not purchase” trigger or a “checkout started but not completed” trigger. Segment your list between first-time visitors and existing customers, someone who has already bought from you and almost bought again deserves a warmer, more personal version of this sequence.

And if you want to see the full picture of what is happening with your email engagement before you layer in a recovery sequence, do that audit first. A recovery sequence will underperform if your list is already disengaged. Fix the engagement foundation, then add the automation.

• How to Do Email Marketing (Even If You Think It Won’t Work)
• Why Retaining Customers Is More Important Than Chasing New Ones
• Wake Up Customers Who Already Know You

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