According to Baymard Institute, almost 70% of eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned before checkout, resulting in many missed sales. Email has been the default recovery tool for over a decade, but because its results are limited, merchants are now trying other methods. According to Klaviyo’s 2024 benchmark data, the average abandoned cart email flow converts at 3.33%, with a 50.5% open rate resulting in fewer recovered carts because many customers never open the email.
That open rate is the biggest limitation, and it’s exactly what pushes more merchants toward a PrestaShop WhatsApp CRM Module for time-sensitive messages. A WhatsApp-based approach to cart follow-up doesn’t fix a weak offer or bad timing, but it does remove the step where half your recovery emails go unread in the first place.
Why the Gap Between Email and WhatsApp Keeps Growing
Multiple WhatsApp Business API providers, including Chatarmin and Recart, report open rates in the 90 to 98 percent range for opted-in WhatsApp messages, against roughly 20 to 25 percent for email campaigns. Those figures come from vendor-reported telemetry rather than an independent audit, so treat the exact number loosely, but the direction is consistent across every source that publishes one.
The mechanism is straightforward. A WhatsApp message lands as a phone notification next to texts from friends and family, with no spam folder and no promotions tab competing for attention. An email sits in an inbox against dozens of other unread messages, most of which never get opened at all.
The Response Rate Data Behind the Shift
Email cart recovery flows convert at 3.33% on average, per Klaviyo’s 2024 Benchmark Report, built from over 143,000 abandoned cart flows sent in 2023. WhatsApp cart-recovery case studies compiled by Recart in 2025 report recovery rates of 8 to 14 percent for opted-in contacts, roughly two to four times the email baseline, though that gap narrows once you account for opt-in coverage, since only a portion of visitors provide a WhatsApp number in the first place. The Knowband module’s Message Logs let merchants track the delivery status of every WhatsApp message, helping them see how many messages were successfully delivered.
What a PrestaShop WhatsApp CRM Module Actually Covers
A PrestaShop WhatsApp CRM Module connects a store’s admin panel to the WhatsApp Business API so order confirmations, shipping updates, and customer replies happen through WhatsApp instead of email or a separate helpdesk. The module is mainly designed for order-related WhatsApp communication rather than abandoned cart recovery, so it’s important to understand its actual purpose.
PrestaShop has no native WhatsApp messaging of any kind, so the starting point for any of this is a PrestaShop customer messaging module that can actually reach the Business API in the first place. Everything else, template approval, contact segmentation, live replies, builds on that connection.
The PrestaShop WhatsApp CRM Module Behind This Shift
Knowband’s PrestaShop WhatsApp CRM Module handles this flawlessly: automated order-confirmation and order-status messages the moment a status changes, a two-way CRM inbox where support staff reply to customers directly from the PrestaShop admin, and a Promotions tab that sends approved marketing templates to a segmented WhatsApp contact list on a schedule.
It does not send an automatic message the instant a cart is abandoned; there’s no cart-abandonment webhook built into it. What it does give a store is the underlying PrestaShop WhatsApp Business API integration and contact infrastructure, so a team can add known abandoners to a list and run a scheduled win-back campaign, or catch them live through the CRM inbox.
Setting Up WhatsApp Messaging Without Dropping Email
Message template approval is the first challenge, since every outbound WhatsApp message needs a pre-approved Utility or Marketing template before it can be sent, and approval can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Build and submit templates before you need them live, not the week a campaign is due.
Opt-in consent matters more here than in email marketing, since WhatsApp numbers are personal in a way that inboxes are generally not. Keep email running as the fallback for customers who haven’t given a WhatsApp number yet. A PrestaShop customer messaging module earns its cost by adding a channel, not by replacing the one you already have.
The Benefits of a Multi-Channel Communication Strategy
None of this data argues for abandoning email. It argues for adding a PrestaShop WhatsApp CRM Module as a second channel for the messages that are genuinely time-sensitive, order confirmations, shipping alerts, and direct replies, where a 50% open rate isn’t good enough.
If setting up the underlying PrestaShop WhatsApp Business API integration is the blocker keeping your store on email alone, that connection is the actual necessity, not a nice-to-have layered on top. Knowband built this specifically so PrestaShop stores could add that channel without hiring a developer to wire up the Meta API by hand.
