How many orders a mailing must win back
Email is usually discussed in terms of open and click rates. A shop owner needs a different number: how many orders the mailing has to bring in so that it does not lose money. It comes from two quantities.
- m: profit per order in hryvnias, after purchase cost, delivery, commissions, refusals and returns. How to calculate it is described in the article on the unit economics of an online shop. In its conditional example it is UAH 184 on a UAH 1,200 order.
- C: the monthly cost of the email service in hryvnias.
The monthly result of a mailing: Q × m − C, where Q is the number of orders that would not have happened without the email. Break-even: Q = C ÷ m.
No advertising is needed here: the email goes to an address you already have, so there is no acquisition cost. That distinguishes email from paid traffic, where each order also has to pay back a click, as in the calculation of an advertising budget.
The key phrase is "that would not have happened without the email". A buyer who would have bought anyway and simply got the email earlier is not counted in Q. How many there are depends on the shop; we did not measure it, and the tables below reflect it through scenarios.
Calculation: 500 × share × 184 − 279. Cart volume and shares are conditional; plug in your own. Plan: Pro for 500 subscribers on annual billing, per the SendPulse pricing page on 19.10.2026.
Break-even at m = UAH 184: a UAH 279 plan needs 1.52 orders, so two; a UAH 232 plan needs 1.26, also two. The service pays for itself almost at once if an email brought in even a couple of buyers.
A table for abandoned carts
An abandoned cart is the one case where the email goes to a person who has already chosen a product. A cart enters the mailing only if the buyer left an address (logged in or typed an email at the first checkout step). So count not all abandoned carts but those where you hold the address: that is the number A in the table.
We do not subtract the plan fee, so the table works for any service. Profit = A × share recovered × UAH 184.
| Carts with an address per month (A) | 2% recovered | 5% recovered | 10% recovered |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | 4 orders, UAH 736 | 10 orders, UAH 1,840 | 20 orders, UAH 3,680 |
| 500 | 10 orders, UAH 1,840 | 25 orders, UAH 4,600 | 50 orders, UAH 9,200 |
| 1,000 | 20 orders, UAH 3,680 | 50 orders, UAH 9,200 | 100 orders, UAH 18,400 |
The 2%, 5% and 10% shares are calculation scenarios, not measured industry figures: we found no reliable Ukrainian data on cart recovery, so we give a range and ask you to measure your own share over a month. How to measure: compare the orders of those who received the email with the orders of those you deliberately did not email, on a control group of 10–20% of addresses.
A table for the subscriber base
The second task is repeat sales: emails to people who have already bought or subscribed. Here the count is different: what share of the base will place an order that would not have happened without the email. S is the number of subscribers; profit = S × share × UAH 184 per month.
| Subscribers (S) | 0.2% order | 0.5% order | 1% order |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000 | 4 orders, UAH 736 | 10 orders, UAH 1,840 | 20 orders, UAH 3,680 |
| 5,000 | 10 orders, UAH 1,840 | 25 orders, UAH 4,600 | 50 orders, UAH 9,200 |
| 10,000 | 20 orders, UAH 3,680 | 50 orders, UAH 9,200 | 100 orders, UAH 18,400 |
The shares are conditional too. The conclusion from the table holds if they change: a base of 2,000 subscribers at 0.2% recovered orders a month already covers a UAH 279 plan almost three times over (UAH 736). The problem is usually not the plan but the absence of a base: addresses are not collected, or collected only at the moment of purchase.
A note on profit. If you send discounts, use the profit after the discount instead of m: (m − d) from the formula in the article on the Black Friday discount. A discount in an email follows the same arithmetic as a discount on the site.
Three emails to set up first
Do not start with weekly "shop news". Set up three automatic emails triggered by a buyer's action: they work without your involvement, and only their result is easy to count.
Intervals and order are our hypothesis for a first test, not a measured norm. Check them on your own buyers.
The cart email. Subject: what is in the cart and what comes next. In the email: a photo and name of the product, the price, a "return to checkout" button, delivery and payment terms. If the shop offers cash on delivery, mention it: fear of paying in advance often holds back an order, and how to count refusals is described in the article on cash on delivery. Do not put a discount in the first email, or you will teach buyers to abandon the cart for it. If a second email is needed, a discount is appropriate only in it, and its size must pass the formula from the previous section.
The welcome email. It gives what the sign-up form promised (a discount, a guide, a list of promotions), briefly describes the shop, delivery and return terms and where to write with questions. One email, not a chain of five.
The repeat-purchase email. It makes sense only for goods that run out or wear out: cosmetics, pet supplies, filters, consumables. Send it at about the time the product runs out; determine that interval from your own orders, not from other people's advice. For goods bought once every few years, this email is not set up: there is nothing to remind anyone of.
Making emails arrive
The best mailing brings nothing if the email lands in spam. In Google's guidance for senders who email Gmail addresses, from 1 February 2024 all senders must:
- set up SPF or DKIM authentication for the sending domain;
- keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.30% (Google recommends aiming below 0.10% and stresses that 0.30% or more should never be reached).
If you send more than 5,000 emails a day to Gmail addresses, the requirements are stricter: SPF and DKIM together, DMARC (the policy may be "none"), and marketing emails must support one-click unsubscribe and carry a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the body.
For a small shop with a base of up to a few thousand addresses the daily volume is usually below 5,000, but the first two requirements apply to everyone. In practice: set up SPF and DKIM in the DNS of the shop's domain (the email service gives you the record to add), do not buy address lists, and add an unsubscribe button even where it is not formally required: a "this is spam" complaint harms your reputation more than an unsubscribe does.
What the service costs
According to the SendPulse pricing page on 19 October 2026, the free plan allows up to 15,000 emails a month. Paid plans for 500 subscribers on annual billing: Standard is UAH 232 a month, Pro is UAH 279 a month; the page positions Pro for e-commerce projects and online schools. The price depends on the number of subscribers and the billing period, so your bill may differ: the page has a calculator.
This is one service. Compare on two criteria: whether it has an abandoned-cart trigger for your shop platform and what it costs at your number of subscribers. We did not check other services, so their prices are not given here.
The free plan's 15,000 emails covers, for example, 2,000 subscribers with seven emails a month (14,000). That is enough to start, and the break-even in the tables above is trivial for a free plan: C = 0.
Whether to launch a mailing now
- Do you collect buyers' addresses before payment, not only after?With no address at the cart stage there is nobody to send the cart email to. No → first add email to the first checkout step
- Do you know the profit per order after delivery, commissions and returns?Without it you cannot calculate break-even. No → calculate it, see the unit economics
- Is the domain set up with SPF and DKIM?Without it an email may not reach even Gmail. No → set it up before the first email
- Do you have at least 200 carts with an address a month or a base of 2,000 subscribers?A smaller volume gives a few orders a month, and the mailing barely covers the plan. No → build the base first, do not complicate the mailing
Our position
A shop with a profit per order of at least a hundred hryvnias and at least two hundred carts with an address a month should set up three automatic emails now: the service pays for itself with two orders, and the free plan is enough to start. Cart first, then welcome, and repeat purchase only for goods that run out.
The position does not apply in three cases. If the shop has almost no buyers with an address (orders in a messenger without email), a mailing will return nothing, and collecting addresses comes first. If your plan is noticeably dearer than UAH 279 or the profit per order is far below UAH 184, calculate break-even with the formula Q = C ÷ m on your own numbers, not on our example. And if you plan to buy someone else's address base, do not: spam complaints will reduce delivery for honest subscribers too.
Checked on 19 October 2026 on the SendPulse pricing page and in Google's guidance for senders; the arithmetic of the tables was recalculated in code. Sums, cart volumes and shares of recovered orders are conditional and are not data of a specific shop. Service prices may change without notice.