Deliver a unique discount code for Shopify in a Mailchimp cart abandonment email

A common way to add an incentive to an abandoned cart is to offer a discount. Mailchimp and Shopify are often used together, so we’ve built a feature to make it simple to provide a unique code to cart abandonment emails in Mailchimp.

It works by replacing the link that usually redirects the user to their abandoned cart with a custom link from Coupon Carrier. When this link is clicked, the recipient gets a unique discount code automatically applied to their cart — no need to copy any discount codes or click multiple links.

This currently only works for the classic cart abandonment emails in Mailchimp. It’s not compatible with Mailchimp Journeys because of how it handles merge tags (hopefully, this will change soon).

This article assumes that you already have a cart abandonment automation in Mailchimp. Here's more information from Mailchimp on how to set up this automation.

Here’s how to add this link to your cart:

1

Create a new configuration and select the “Mailchimp/Shopify Cart Abandonment Link” template.

2

Connect to your Mailchimp account by selecting an existing connection or creating a new one. You can then go down to the code source section and choose to create a new autogenerated code list. In this case, we recommend that you use an Autogenerated code list that's connected to your Shopify store. You can read more about that feature here.

3

Copy the URL provided in your configuration. You'll need to add this to your Mailchimp email later on.

4

Save your configuration and activate it. If the link isn’t active, a message will appear when someone clicks the link saying it’s inactive.

5

In Mailchimp, go to Integrations in the sidebar, then Manage your sites and choose to Add or Edit your Cart Abandonment Email. Next, open the designer and replace the cart link with your custom Coupon Carrier link.

6

You can test the cart link by sending a test email from within Mailchimp’s editor to yourself. The link should redirect you to your store since it doesn’t have a specific cart to redirect to. The best way to test it is to activate the email is to add something to your cart in your store and abandon it (once you’ve added your email address).

7

Optionally enable the link validation feature. This ensures that everyone that clicks their link is an actual subscriber on your email list. It prevents someone from trying to modify the link in order to get additional codes. Having this feature enabled will cause the link to break when sending a test email.