Contests and cart abandonment: following up without spamming

To follow up with an entrant who abandoned a contest partway through, you need to distinguish three situations: the person gave their email address without completing the requested action, they have already agreed to receive marketing communications, or they are an existing customer. Each falls under a different legal basis under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive. Follow-up is effective when it simply reminds the person of what they started, stays within the scope of the consent given, and stops as soon as the person no longer responds. This guide details the legal framework, a three-email sequence, CRM integration and measuring the real impact.

Why do so many entrants abandon a contest partway through?

A contest generally involves several steps: entering an email address, confirming registration, the requested action (sharing on a social network, clicking a partner link, answering a question, taking part in a video). Each step is a point of friction. Many people sign up out of curiosity about the prize, with no intention of completing all the actions. Others close the tab because the action requires logging into an account, or because the partner link doesn't work on mobile.

These abandonments are not all equivalent. Someone who entered their email but did not confirm their registration does not have the same relationship with the brand as someone who confirmed their entry and then ignored the partner link. Treating both as a single audience is the first mistake: the message fits neither case.

We recommend segmenting abandonments by the step reached, and only sending a follow-up to the person concerned by that specific step. A message like "you have one action left to confirm your entry" only makes sense for someone who is genuinely stuck at that action.

Entrant follow-up or customer follow-up: which legal basis?

This is the point most often mishandled. Having entered a contest does not automatically give you the right to send commercial communications. The framework depends on what the person agreed to at the time of registration.

Entrant without explicit marketing consent. If the box for accepting commercial communications was not ticked, you may only send messages strictly related to how the contest works: confirmation of entry, information about the draw, notification of a win, requests for documents needed to award the prize. A reminder to "finish your entry" falls under contest administration, so it is acceptable within that scope, but it must not contain any promotion of your products. The contest rules should also describe how the data is used.

Entrant who ticked the marketing box. In this case, you have consent for commercial communications, provided it is freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous, and the person can easily unsubscribe. You must be able to prove that consent (timestamp, text displayed, version of the terms).

Existing customer. If the person has already bought from you and their address was collected on that occasion, email prospecting may rely on the so-called "soft opt-in" exception in France, provided you offer a simple way to object to receiving these messages and limit prospecting to similar products or services. This case does not automatically cover someone who has only entered a contest.

It is important not to mix these three cases in a single sending tool. A "all entrants" list must never be sent a commercial message.

Check the interpretation with your data protection officer or a lawyer, as the rules also depend on the type of contest (competition, contest with a purchase requirement, prize draw) and on CNIL practice.

What three-email follow-up sequence should you use?

An effective sequence is short, progressive and stops quickly. Here is a structure we recommend for entrants who have given marketing consent, or for contest administration messages that are permitted under the rules.

Email 1 — the return to the contest (D+1 after abandonment). The message reminds them of the contest, states the remaining step and gives a direct link to that step. It does not mention a countdown or pressure. Example structure: a clear subject line ("You have one step left to confirm your entry"), one sentence about the prize, a single button, one unsubscribe line.

Email 2 — genuine urgency about the prize (D+3 or D+4). Only use urgency if it is real: contest closing date, limited number of prizes, end of the validity period. A fake countdown is a misleading practice and may constitute an unfair commercial practice. This message can add something concrete about the prize or the draw.

Email 3 — the final reminder (the day before closing). This message is explicitly the last one. Say so. It reminds them of the deadline, the remaining action, and states that the person will receive no further follow-up about this contest. This sentence reassures and improves trust in the brand.

Beyond these three emails, stop. Someone who has done nothing after three messages is unlikely to convert with a fourth. What is more useful is to bring them back into a standard newsletter, if their consent allows it, at a normal frequency.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Sending follow-ups to the entire entrant base, including those who have already completed or won.
• Repeating the same message with a slightly modified subject line.
• Using a fake deadline or a fake "last day".
• Forgetting the unsubscribe link, or making it hard to find.
• Failing to exclude from follow-ups people who have already complained or unsubscribed.

How do you integrate follow-up into your CRM?

The technical integration determines everything else. Without it, you don't know who abandoned where, and you risk following up with people who have already converted.

Here are the minimum fields to provide in the CRM or emailing tool:

• the contest ID and its closing date;
• the step reached (registration, confirmation, partner action, completed);
• the legal basis or marketing consent, with the date and version of the accepted text;
• the entry status (in progress, completed, winner, non-winner);
• the unsubscribe status, which must be synchronized across all tools.

The events to report are: registration created, action confirmed, action abandoned (without confirmation after a defined delay), contest closed. The delay before considering an action abandoned must be decided in advance, for example 24 hours, and documented.

One thing to watch: if an entrant completes the action during the sequence, the next follow-up must stop automatically. Test this case before launch, because it is the most frequent bug and the most visible to the reader.

Finally, entry data must follow the retention period set out in your privacy policy. Do not keep indefinitely the addresses of people who never completed the contest.

How do you measure the real impact on your conversion rate?

The classic trap is to measure the open rate of follow-up emails, which says nothing about entry. The right indicator is the completion rate: among the people who abandoned at a given step and received a follow-up, how many completed the action?

To isolate it, you need to compare with a control group: people who abandoned at the same step but received no follow-up. Without this group, you attribute to the follow-up entries that would have happened anyway. A random split, even a simple one, is enough for a test.

Indicators to track for each email in the sequence:

• the action completion rate within 48 hours of sending, compared with the control group;
• the unsubscribe rate, which is your warning signal about how aggressive the message is;
• the spam complaint rate, to be kept close to zero;
• the number of valid entries generated by the follow-up, relative to the cost of sending (writing time, tool).

If the unsubscribe rate climbs after the second email, reduce the urgency or remove it. If the completion rate is identical between the followed-up group and the control group, the follow-up adds nothing: it is better to fix the journey (broken link, action too long, page hard to read on mobile) rather than send more emails.

What we recommend: start with a test on a single step of a single contest, with a control group, before rolling out the sequence. Conclusions drawn from a single test are fragile, so compare several contests before permanently changing your practices.

What concrete scenarios for a fashion or cosmetics contest?

Take the hypothetical case of a cosmetics brand running a three-step contest: registration by email, sharing on Instagram, clicking a partner's link to discover a complementary product. Suppose many registrants stop after the sharing step, because the app requires a login they don't want to grant.

In this scenario, following up with everyone using the same "you have one action left" email would be ineffective and risk frustrating people who cannot share. The right response is first to fix the blocker (offer an alternative way to enter without logging in, or a replacement action), then follow up only with the people who actually confirmed their registration without completing, telling them about the alternative.

Another hypothetical scenario: a services company running a prize draw with no purchase requirement, with the marketing box left unticked by most entrants. Here, the commercial sequence cannot be sent to these people. Only the contest administration message is permitted, and the brand must accept that the follow-up volume will be limited. It is a constraint, but it protects the quality of the database.

Checklist before launching a follow-up sequence

• The contest rules describe how the data is used and the option to unsubscribe.
• Each entrant is tied to a documented legal basis.
• People without marketing consent receive only contest administration messages.
• The list excludes winners, entrants who completed, and unsubscribers.
• The sequence is a maximum of three emails, with an announced stop date.
• Any urgency displayed corresponds to a real date or stock level.
• A control group is planned to measure the effect.
• The end-to-end test has been carried out: a confirmed action does stop the follow-up.

Questions to ask yourself before following up

Is the follow-up necessary, or is the journey simply broken? Has the entrant given marketing consent that covers this message? Does the content provide useful information, or only pressure? If the answer to any of these questions is no, not sending the email is often the best decision.