The Klaviyo abandoned cart flow, and the browse abandonment flow beside it.

The two flows, and how they differ

An abandoned cart flow emails someone who got as far as checkout and stopped. A browse abandonment flow emails someone who looked at a product and left. The first is a reminder. The second is a suggestion, and it has to sound like one.

They are built in the same place and they share most of their settings, but they run on different triggers and they need different exclusions, because the biggest mistake with both is sending the same person two emails about the same visit.

What triggers the abandoned cart flow

In Klaviyo the trigger is a metric, not a page. For a Shopify store you have two:

• Started Checkout. The person reached checkout and gave an email address. This is the standard trigger, and it is the one to use first. Klaviyo knows who they are, and it knows what was in the cart.
• Added to Cart. The person put something in the cart and never reached checkout. It fires earlier and far more often, and it only works for people Klaviyo already knows, because an anonymous browser has no email to send to.

Start with one flow on Started Checkout. Add an Added to Cart flow later, if at all, and only with the exclusions in the next section, or the same person will get both.

Our adviceBefore you build anything, open Analytics and check that Started Checkout has events from the last 24 hours. If it is empty, the flow will look fine and send nothing. On Shopify that usually means the Klaviyo app embed is off in the theme editor, and no flow will fix that.

The filters that stop it emailing a customer

This is the part that gets skipped, and it is the part that makes a store look careless. Klaviyo separates the two:

• Trigger filters are checked once, when someone enters the flow.
• Flow filters are checked again before every single message.

The exclusion you cannot ship without is a flow filter: Placed Order zero times since starting this flow. It is checked before each email, so someone who buys after the first message never gets the second or the third. Without it, you email a paying customer to ask why they did not buy.

Then add Has not been in this flow in the last 30 days as a trigger filter, so the same person who abandons three carts in a week gets one series, not three.

Two settings that are not the same thing. A flow filter removes someone from the flow. Smart Sending skips a message because they got another email recently. Klaviyo’s default Smart Sending window for email is 16 hours, set under Settings, Email, Sending preferences. Leave it on and a cart email can be skipped because a campaign went out that morning. Turn it off for this flow and the cart email always sends. Pick one on purpose; do not find out by accident.

Our adviceAdd a fourth condition while you are in there: exclude anyone whose cart value is under your free-shipping threshold if the email offers free shipping. An offer that the reader does not qualify for is worse than no offer.

The timing

Klaviyo’s own guidance is a first message 2 to 4 hours after checkout was started, and a second 20 to 48 hours after the first. That leaves the shape most stores land on:

• Email one, 4 hours later. Long enough that they are not still deciding at the kitchen table, short enough that they remember the product.
• Email two, 24 hours after email one. A different reason to come back, not the same email again.
• Email three, 48 hours after email two. The last one. Three days from the cart, and then the flow stops.

If you sell something people buy in an afternoon, pull the first delay to 1 hour. If you sell something people talk to a partner about first, push it to 6. The delay is a guess about your customer, not a rule.

What the three emails say

• One: the cart. The item, the photo, the price, and a button back to checkout. No discount. Most people who come back come back on this one, and a discount here trains customers to abandon.
• Two: the reason they stopped. Shipping cost, delivery time, returns, sizing, whether the ring can be resized. Answer the objection in the email instead of making them go and look.
• Three: last call. Say the cart is about to be cleared, if that is true. A discount here is a business decision, not a default. If your margin cannot take it, say something else: stock is low, or the piece is made to order.

Our advicePut the product image in every one of the three, pulled from the cart, not a stock banner. And name the item in the subject line. “Your cart” is the same email every store sends; “Your 14k gold signet ring” is the one that gets opened.

What changes for browse abandonment

Same builder, different trigger and one more exclusion.

• Trigger: Viewed Product. It needs Viewed Product tracking switched on. On Shopify that comes from Klaviyo’s app embed in the theme.
• It only fires for people Klaviyo can name. The visitor has to be cookied, which happens when they give an email through a Klaviyo form or go through checkout. Anonymous visitors are not in this flow, so the volume is much smaller than the cart flow. That is expected, not a bug.
• Three flow filters, not one. Placed Order zero times since starting this flow, Started Checkout zero times since starting this flow, and Added to Cart zero times since starting this flow. The last two hand the person over to the cart flow the moment they go further, so they never get both.
• Add a trigger filter for intent. Klaviyo’s is a profile filter on Viewed Product at least a set number of times in a set number of days. Someone who glanced once at your size guide page is not shopping.
• Delay at least one hour, and one or two emails. Klaviyo’s minimum is an hour. Two emails is plenty. This person never picked anything up.

And write it differently. The cart email says “you left this”. The browse email cannot, because they did not. It says “you looked at this, here are three like it”.

Why this flow is worth building even though it is small. It reaches people the cart flow never sees, and it costs one afternoon once. The list it draws from grows every time your sign-up form does its job.

How to check the revenue number is real

Klaviyo will show a revenue figure next to each flow. It is an attributed number, not a bank statement, and there are four ways it goes wrong.

1. Check the conversion metric. Open the flow’s analytics and confirm the conversion metric is Placed Order and not something else. It is changed per flow, and a flow pointed at the wrong metric reports numbers that do not mean anything.
2. Check the conversion window. Klaviyo’s default is 5 days for email on accounts created after October 9, 2024. A longer window credits the flow with orders it may not have caused. Know which number you are looking at before you quote it to anyone.
3. Check that orders are arriving. In Analytics, look at the Placed Order metric for yesterday and compare the count to the Shopify admin. If Klaviyo is short, the integration is not syncing, and every flow number is understated.
4. Check for double counting. If you run a cart flow and a browse flow without the exclusions above, both can be credited for the same order. This is the most common reason a store’s flow revenue adds up to more than the store made.

Our adviceDo a real test order before you switch either flow on. Add to cart, start checkout with an address you control, wait for email one, then complete the purchase and wait through the window for email two. If email two arrives, your Placed Order filter is not working, and you have just found it on yourself instead of on a customer.

Five things these flows must never do

• Email someone who bought. The Placed Order flow filter, checked before every message.
• Email the same person twice for one visit. The 30-day flow entry filter, and the cross-exclusions between the two flows.
• Send with an empty product block. If the cart data is missing, the email renders a blank box. Klaviyo can hold that block back; check it in preview with a real profile, not the placeholder.
• Send to a draft or a test order. Filter out your own team’s email addresses and your test domain before go-live.
• Promise something checkout does not do. Free shipping in the email and a shipping charge at checkout is the fastest way to lose the sale twice.

What we do

We build both flows, with the filters above, and we run the test order ourselves before anything is switched on. You get the flow, the emails, the settings written down, and a note of what we checked and when. We do not promise an open rate or a revenue figure, because those belong to your products and your list, not to us. We promise the flows are built right and tested with real sends.