There are two real schools of thought on combining email and SMS for abandoned carts. The first is to weave them together in a single, alternating sequence. The second is to keep them mostly separate, using each channel for what it does best.
Camp A: The Alternating Flow
This approach builds one cohesive journey that uses both channels. Think an SMS at 30 minutes, an email at four hours, another SMS at 24 hours, and so on. The goal is to create a single, seamless experience, reaching the customer on the right channel at the right moment. Chase Dimond explained this on an episode of Honest Ecommerce, suggesting a rapid-fire sequence in the first 72 hours where you go back and forth. He gave the example of a text at 10 minutes, followed by an email an hour later, and another text if there's no purchase.
Tom Kacevicius, also on Honest Ecommerce, supported this with data, suggesting you might send one message at the 30-minute mark and the next at 50 minutes, using email for one and SMS for the other. The core idea is to treat the customer contact as a single thread, preventing message fatigue on any one channel and increasing your chances of getting their attention. It's a holistic approach to Abandoned Cart Recovery Automation.
Camp B: The Independent Channels
This camp believes in using email and SMS for their unique strengths, not necessarily intertwined in a complex sequence. The best summary of this thinking comes from Jimmy Kim on Shopify1Percent: "Email is the marathon. SMS is the sprint." Email is used for longer-form storytelling and multi-step nurturing, while SMS is for immediate, urgent calls to action. For cart abandonment, that means using SMS for a single, powerful shot to get the quick conversion.
Aaron Orendorff made a similar point on the Up Arrow Podcast, contrasting robust, personalized email flows with a much simpler SMS strategy of just
