Day 95: Turnaround Plan: Cart Abandon Fix And CPM Rescue

Today is December 4th, Day 95, and it’s all about the plan for December.

Over the last few days I’ve been digging into the first three months of this challenge, comparing the original Riffs funnel with the new beginner funnel and trying to understand why profit has dipped even though the sales headline doesn’t look terrible.

The conclusion was pretty clear: Funnel 2 is leaking money in a couple of specific places.

Yesterday at least gave me a result that felt more like where I need to be.

Revenue came in at $947 with ad spend of £402 (around $532), leaving a profit of $415.

That’s not quite a full “double your money” day, but it’s a long way from the borderline break-even days I’ve had recently.

Today is still very early, with $116 on the board by half past eight in the morning, so the shape of the day is still unknown.

The bigger story, though, is structure and fixes.

My three-month review showed two clear problems: Funnel 2 had no cart-abandon sequence at all, and CPM on that campaign was significantly higher than on the original funnel.

December’s job is to patch those holes.

So yesterday I implemented a full cart abandonment email sequence for the second funnel and duplicated the ad set with broader targeting to start tackling CPM.

Today I’ll be adding more creatives—especially short video ads—to give the algorithm better options and hopefully push costs down even further.

What You’ll See

• Yesterday’s $947 in sales and £402 ($532) ad spend
• A healthy $415 profit after several borderline days
• Recap of the three-month sales vs profit gap
• Identification of Funnel 2’s two main problems: no cart-abandon sequence and high CPM
• Explanation of the existing cart-abandon system in Funnel 1
• New cart abandonment email sequence added to Funnel 2
• How the sequence is structured and what each email is designed to do
• CPM comparison: ~£21 on the new funnel vs ~£15 on the original
• Duplicated ad set with broadened geo and gender targeting
• First signs that CPM has dropped to ~£13 after the changes
• Plan to shoot and add multiple short video creatives into Funnel 2
• December objective: recover lost profit and close the sales–profit gap

Strategy Breakdown

The aim for December is not just “try harder” but to fix specific, structural weaknesses.

The first weakness was obvious once I compared the two funnels: Funnel 1 has a full cart-abandonment email sequence that quietly recovers a meaningful chunk of lost revenue, while Funnel 2 had nothing.

On the Riffs funnel, people who hit the order page, enter their details, and then drop out are followed up automatically with a sequence of five emails.

Over time, that recovered several thousand dollars in additional sales.

The new funnel, on the other hand, had been letting every abandoned checkout disappear.

Given that around 50–60% of people who start checkout don’t complete it, that’s a huge hole.

So I cloned the structure that already works.

Now, when someone starts the order form for Funnel 2 but doesn’t complete payment, they enter a sequence: a reminder 30 minutes later, another reminder at around an hour, and then a series of value-driven follow-up emails spaced daily.

Some of those emails link to tips and videos, some reinforce the offer, and the final one asks for feedback—what stopped them from buying and what questions weren’t answered.

That means the sequence does three jobs at once: recover revenue, build relationship, and gather insight for improving the offer.

The second weakness was traffic cost.

When I compared the campaigns, Funnel 2’s CPM sat at roughly £21, while the original Riffs funnel worked closer to £15 over the same period, despite targeting similar audiences.

That four-figure CPM difference is enormous over time.

It’s the main reason Funnel 2 hasn’t yet made the contribution to profit that its AOV and structure suggest it could.

Two main factors are at play here.

First, Funnel 2 has spent most of its life in the learning phase, which naturally inflates CPM as Meta explores who to show it to. It has only recently moved to “active” status after hitting enough conversions in a 7-day window.

Second, its targeting and creative mix were more constrained.

To address that, I duplicated the ad set and broadened targeting: instead of just the U.S. and U.K., I added Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and expanded from men 50+ to both men and women 50+.

The idea is simple: if the campaign has enough historical data, giving the algorithm a bigger audience should allow it to find cheaper impressions within the same broad interest bucket.

Early signs are promising. In the first day of this broadened ad set, CPM dropped from around £21 to about £13.

It’s only one day of data, so I’m not declaring victory yet, but it’s a strong signal that broader, less constrained targeting combined with an active campaign status can have a material impact on cost.

The third piece of the strategy is creative volume.

Meta’s current delivery approach thrives when there’s a wide variety of ads to rotate: multiple videos, multiple statics, and different hooks.

For Funnel 2, that means shooting a batch of short (10–20 second) video ads that lean into the “average guitarist” positioning and loading them into the campaign alongside the existing creative set.

The goal is to boost engagement, lower CPM even further, and give the system more paths to find profitable pockets of traffic.

Focus

My focus for December is to plug the profit leaks in Funnel 2—by recovering cart-abandon revenue, lowering CPM through broader targeting and an active status, and stacking more creative variations—so that the new funnel starts contributing healthy, stable profit instead of dragging down the monthly totals.

Insight

Funnel problems aren’t always about “bad offers” or “broken pages.” Often, they’re about missing pieces around the edges.

In this case, Funnel 2’s core metrics—conversion rate and AOV—are actually solid.

The leaks were in everything happening before and after: expensive traffic on the way in, and abandoned checkouts not being followed up afterward.

The lesson is that profitability is a system outcome.

If you only look at the front-end conversion rate, you’ll miss the fact that a simple email sequence or a tweak in targeting can be worth thousands over a month.

........................

Follow my daily journey to $240K as I build, test, and scale profitable funnels.

If you would like to learn how to create powerful Facebook Ads, check out my Course: https://www.jonathanhowkins.com/the-course

And if you're looking for a platform to build your sales funnel, the one I use and recommend is Systeme.io. You can set up and start making sales with their free account:

https://systeme.io/?sa=sa005182666557b5ccf999dfc8d9877207dc47da35

And you can ask questions and get support in my Facebook Group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/coursecreatorads