The Abandoned Cart Flow: Why You Need Two, Not One

The abandoned cart flow fires when someone adds a product and leaves without starting checkout. It is not the same flow as checkout abandonment, it needs a different trigger, and in most Klaviyo accounts it does not exist at all. Three emails, spread over 3 days.

Two events, two flows

Klaviyo tracks these as separate metrics, as long as your Shopify integration is set up properly.

Abandoned cart Abandoned checkout Trigger metric Added to Cart Checkout Started What they did Put something in the cart Entered their email at checkout Intent Interested Committed Volume Higher Lower Revenue per email Lower Higher

One moment happens before someone commits. The other happens after. Same product, same person, completely different state of mind, and the email that works for one is wrong for the other.

The flow most accounts are missing

Here is the part worth checking today.

Klaviyo's default templates are built around checkout abandonment. If nobody on your team deliberately created a flow triggered on Added to Cart, that audience is getting nothing.

That is the larger of the two groups. Everyone who reaches checkout has already added to cart. The reverse is not true, and the gap between those two numbers is the people you are not emailing.

Go and look. Open your flows, find the abandonment one, and check what its trigger metric says. If it says Checkout Started, you have one flow where you should have two.

Even Klaviyo's own answers conflict

This is not a case of brands being careless. The guidance is contradictory, and it comes from the same place.

One Klaviyo community answer tells you to run both flows, one on each trigger, and gives you the exact filter to keep them from overlapping. Another tells you that if you have the Add to Cart trigger running, the Checkout Started metric is redundant, because those people already triggered the first flow.

Both answers are from Klaviyo. Both are reasonable. They are solving different problems.

The "redundant" answer is right that the same person can trigger both. It is wrong that this makes the second flow pointless. Someone who typed their email at checkout and stopped is in a different situation than someone who clicked add to cart and wandered off. Treating them identically means writing one email that is too pushy for one group and too soft for the other.

Run both. Then filter properly, which is the next section and the part that breaks accounts.

The filter that stops double-sending

Without this, a single shopper gets both flows at once and receives 6 emails about one product.

On the abandoned cart flow, add this filter:

What someone has done (or not done)
  > Started Checkout
  > zero times since starting this flow

That removes anyone who progresses to checkout. They move to the other flow instead, which is where they belong.

Add a second filter to both flows:

Placed Order zero times since starting this flow

Obvious, and still missing from plenty of accounts. Without it you email people about the thing they already bought.

The spec

Field Value Trigger Added to Cart Filters Started Checkout zero times since starting this flow; Placed Order zero times since starting this flow Emails 3 Timing 4 hours, 24 hours, 72 hours Exit condition Placed order One job Recover the cart

Checkout abandonment runs faster than this. Someone who reached the payment step has a shorter window of live intent, so that flow starts in 30 to 60 minutes rather than 4 hours. It gets its own article.

Email 1, at 4 hours. A reminder, not a pitch. Show the product, show the cart, one button back to it. No discount.

Email 2, at 24 hours. Handle the objection. Reviews for that product, the returns policy, the guarantee, shipping timelines. This is where you answer the thing that made them hesitate.

Email 3, at 72 hours. The last one. This is where an incentive can go, if you use one at all.

Why email 1 should not carry a discount

The reason people abandon is not that your product costs too much. Baymard Institute's ranking of fixable abandonment reasons puts extra costs at checkout, meaning shipping, tax and fees, at 48%. Forced account creation is second at 26%. A checkout that felt too long is third at 22%.

Look at that list. A discount in the first email solves none of them.

Worse, it trains people. Abandon a cart, get 10% off. Do it often enough and your best customers learn to leave a cart on purpose. If you are going to discount, put it last, and fix the shipping display instead.

The gap in both flows

Both flows can only reach people Klaviyo can identify. That means someone who already subscribed, already bought, or clicked through from one of your emails.

An anonymous visitor who adds to cart and leaves is invisible. No profile, no email, no flow. On most stores that is a large share of cart abandoners, and no amount of email copy fixes it.

Which is why the conversion work matters first. Every reason from that Baymard list is a thing you can remove from your checkout, and removing it helps everyone, including the people you cannot email.

Where this sits in the system

The abandoned cart flow is 2 of 12. It is one of the two flows that catch money already in motion, which is why the build order puts it first.

It also has a ceiling. A recovered cart is still a first order. The flow that turns that order into a habit is the post-purchase flow, and that is a different job.

Get the whole system

This is 1 flow of 12.

12 flows, 37 emails, one job: repeat purchases. Every trigger, every send delay, every exit condition, written out so you can build them this month.