Sending abandoned cart emails is a bit of a grey area, depending on which contacts you send them to and how you categorize them. The article dives into this in more detail and explains how you can send them
Abandoned checkout emails can be sent but to whom and with what content depends on whether you categorize them as marketing emails or transactional emails.
Abandoned cart emails would be more obviously classed as marketing emails since their purpose is to drive a sale. If you class them as marketing emails then they can be sent to anyone who has subscribed or is marked marketable by Dataships. The legal basis will depend on how that contact was marked marketable in the Dataships product. But that limits stores to only sending abandoned cart emails to marketable contacts, not everyone.
If you want to send them to everyone you could argue they are transactional emails since they are one-to-one and contain information that prompts a user to complete a transaction or process the customer started (usual examples for transactional emails are reset password, confirm email address etc.).
If you class them as transactional emails then the legal basis relied on to send abandoned cart emails is legitimate interest and they can be sent to anyone who has abandoned their cart. But there are a few requirements around this:- The email can only relate to the abandoned checkout, it shouldn't contain any additional marketing information about other products or discounts because then it would be a marketing email not a transactional email.
- You would need to do a Legitimate Interest Assessment (LIA) to show you have considered the impact to customers and that your legitimate interest outweighs any impact to customers. Dataships can provide an LIA template to you on request, you will just need to adjust it to your specific scenario.
- Abandoned cart email addresses should not be subscribed to any other marketing lists.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are for informational purposes only, and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your legal counsel to obtain advice with respect to any particular issues or problems.