UrbanRoots recovered 19% of abandoned carts on WhatsApp
A D2C plant and decor brand added a WhatsApp abandoned-cart flow that recovers nearly one in five carts — paying for itself many times over at utility pricing and a 95% open rate.
“Email abandoned-cart flows recovered 4%. WhatsApp now recovers 19%. It's not even close.”
UrbanRoots sells plants and home decor online, mostly through their own Shopify store. Like every D2C brand, they had an abandoned-cart problem — customers adding to cart, then leaving. Their email recovery flow recaptured about 4% of carts. They suspected WhatsApp could do better.
Building the flow
UrbanRoots connected AiConva to their store so that an abandoned cart triggers a WhatsApp message one hour later: a friendly, single-template nudge with a direct link back to the cart. The message is marketing-category (it nudges a purchase) but only sends to customers who'd already opted into WhatsApp updates at checkout — fully compliant.
The flow respects the 24-hour rule strictly: it only fires for carts abandoned within the last 24 hours, when a recent customer interaction keeps the service window open or the opt-in permits a marketing send.
The numbers
Within six weeks, the WhatsApp flow recovered 19% of abandoned carts — nearly five times the email flow's performance. At an average order value of ₹1,800 and roughly 940 abandoned carts a month, that's ₹3.2 lakh in recovered revenue monthly.
The message cost is trivial against the return: even at marketing rates, the spend is a small fraction of recovered revenue. The payback period was under a week. UrbanRoots has since layered two more flows — a post-purchase review request and a 60-day re-engagement — and treats WhatsApp as their highest-ROI retention channel.