Cart Recovery
Abandoned Cart Flow
An abandoned cart flow is an automated series of emails or texts sent after a shopper adds something to a cart and leaves without buying. In Klaviyo it usually starts from the Added to Cart event, which is a separate trigger from Started Checkout and browse abandonment.
October 31, 2026
An abandoned cart flow is an automated series of emails or texts sent after a shopper adds something to a cart and leaves without buying. On Shopify brands using Klaviyo, it usually starts from the Added to Cart event.
Which flows count as abandoned cart flows?
People use the phrase loosely for three different flows. The trigger decides what the shopper has done and what you can link back to.
| Flow | Starts when | Native link back | Usual destination |
|---|---|---|---|
| Browse abandonment | A known visitor views a product | The product page | Product page |
| Abandoned cart | A known visitor adds to cart | None | /cart, a product page or a hand-built permalink |
| Abandoned checkout | A shopper starts checkout | checkout_url, which restores across devices |
The payment form |
What is an abandoned cart flow worth?
Klaviyo's 2026 Abandoned Cart Benchmark Report, based on more than 110,000 customers, puts attributed revenue per recipient at $6.77 on average and $13.70 for the top 10%. The average click rate is 6.0%, and the top 10% reach 11.3%. Abandoned cart texts come in at $4.48 of attributed revenue per recipient.
Attributed revenue counts orders that followed a message, including some that would have happened anyway. To learn what the flow adds, you need a holdout. Do abandoned cart emails add revenue? covers the difference.
What decisions shape a cart flow?
- Who enters it. The email can only go to someone Klaviyo can identify. Browser limits such as Safari ITP affect this.
- When it sends. A field experiment by Xueming Luo and colleagues, covering about 40,500 customers, found messages sent 30 to 60 minutes after abandonment were less likely to produce a purchase. A press summary of the study suggests one to three days worked best.
- What it offers. See whether to discount.
- Where the button goes. This one gets the least attention.
Why does the button link matter?
A shopper starts on a laptop and opens the email on a phone. The cart stayed on the laptop, so they find an empty cart or a product page and rebuild the order from memory. Your flow report still counts the click, so the report can't show you what they found. That's cross-device cart abandonment, and a quick test on a second device will show you what your own flow does.
How does reOtter work with a cart flow?
You keep your Klaviyo Added to Cart flow and change the button link to reOtter's cart recovery page. When reOtter holds that shopper's cart and knows who clicked, the cart goes back into the real Shopify cart on the device they're using, on a page inside your theme and domain. Carts are held only with analytics consent from your store's banner, and only for 30 days. If the cart isn't held or the clicker isn't known, the shopper sees the page with whatever cart that device has.
Key takeaways
- Cart, checkout and browse flows have different triggers and different link options, so they shouldn't be treated as one flow.
- Klaviyo's benchmark figures are attributed revenue, so a holdout is the way to learn what a flow adds.
- Trigger and timing get most of the attention, and the button destination deserves the same scrutiny.
See how reOtter restores the cart → Abandoned cart recovery
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between an abandoned cart flow and an abandoned checkout flow?
- A cart flow starts when someone adds a product and leaves before checkout. A checkout flow starts when they begin checkout and leave before paying. The links behave differently too: Klaviyo's Started Checkout event carries a checkout link that restores across devices, and its Added to Cart event has no native saved-cart link.
- How many emails should an abandoned cart flow have?
- There's no universal number, and the count matters less than whether each message has a reason to exist. Test one change at a time and compare orders against a group that didn't get the extra message. Attributed revenue alone will tend to favor sending more.
- When should the first abandoned cart email go out?
- Many flows default to within an hour. A field experiment by Xueming Luo and colleagues found messages sent 30 to 60 minutes after abandonment were less likely to produce a purchase, and a press summary of the study suggests one to three days worked best. Treat that as a prompt to test your own timing.
- Does reOtter send abandoned cart emails?
- No. reOtter never sends email. Your Klaviyo flow keeps doing the sending, and reOtter provides the page the button links to.