Abandoned checkout follow-up: who gets a message, when, and when it stops
Updated · By Ecomsellertool editorial team
To follow up abandoned checkouts on Shopify, sort each one before any message goes out: who agreed to marketing, who already ordered, who already got a code, what is still in stock. Rules send a plain reminder first and hold any discount for a later message. The workflow stops on an order, an opt-out or your message cap, and a person sets the discount rules.
- Shopify treats a checkout as abandoned when it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer gave an email address (checked November 13, 2026).
- Shopify's Recover abandoned checkout automation keeps your earlier abandoned checkout settings when you opt in; a second automation defaults to a 10-hour wait. By default it sends only to email marketing subscribers.
- Shopify sends no recovery email when the customer entered a phone number instead of an email, already completed a sale, or none of the products are available.
- Shopify deletes abandoned checkouts older than three months from the admin, and abandoned checkouts are turned off by default for Shopify B2B.
- The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says commercial email must tell recipients how to opt out and include a postal address, and opt-outs must be honored within 10 business days.
- In this recipe rules do every check and send; a person decides the discount rules, the message cap and every high-value follow-up.
The step map: who runs each step
Trigger: Shopify's Customer abandons checkout event, a wait before each message, and a recheck of the order, stock and opt-out status right before every send.
| Step | What happens | Who runs it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | When Shopify marks a checkout abandoned, rules read the checkout: the contact given, marketing consent, the cart lines and total, any discount code already entered, and the sales channel. | Rule |
| 2 | Rules place the checkout on one row of the follow-up decision table: send, hold for a person, or do not send, with the reason logged. | Rule |
| 3 | After the first wait, rules recheck that the customer has no order or draft order since the abandonment, the items are still available and the person has not opted out, then send a plain reminder with the cart link. | Rule |
| 4 | After the second wait, the same recheck runs. If your discount rules allow it, the second message carries a code; a customer who got a code inside your repeat window gets a reminder without one. | Rule |
| 5 | High-value carts, B2B buyers and checkouts with a payment error go to a person as a task with the cart, the customer's history and the reason, instead of an automated discount. | Person |
| 6 | The workflow stops for that checkout on an order, an opt-out, a bounce, the message cap or the end of your follow-up window, and logs why. | Rule |
| 7 | A weekly report compares messaged checkouts with a holdout group that got no message, and shows orders, discount cost and net contribution per message. | Rule |
6 rule steps · 0 AI model steps · 1 person step. A rule follows fixed logic you approve; an AI model handles messy input and its output is checked by rules; a person makes the calls listed below.
What stays with a person
- Whether any message carries a discount, how much, on which message and how often one customer can get one
- Whether people who did not agree to marketing get a reminder at all, decided with your own counsel
- Every follow-up on a high-value cart, a B2B buyer or a checkout that failed at payment
- The message cap, the waits and the size of the holdout group
- Message wording, the opt-out text and the SMS consent language, with your own counsel
Which tools can run it
- Shopify's own Recover abandoned checkout automation in Shopify Messaging, for one reminder to subscribers
- Shopify Flow on the Customer abandons checkout trigger, or your email platform's flow, for extra conditions, tags and a second message
- Custom code on your accounts, for discount rules per customer, a holdout group, stock checks, routing to a person and the net report
Systems it connects
- Shopify checkout and orders
- Shopify Messaging or your email platform
- Shopify Flow
- SMS platform, if you send texts
- Consent and opt-out records
- Product cost per item
- Slack or email for tasks
Build size: Medium
Shopify sends the basic reminder itself; the work is the stop rules, one discount rule per customer, the holdout group and a report that nets out discount cost.
Someone fills in their email, gets as far as shipping or payment, and leaves. Shopify can email them a link back to that checkout, and most stores switch that on and stop there. The harder questions come later. Should a person who never agreed to marketing get the email? Should the customer who abandons every month get a code every month? What happens when the item sold out in between? This recipe turns those questions into a table a person owns, with rules that send, hold or stop. It is one page of our automation library.
Which abandoned checkouts should get a message, and which should not?
Sort every checkout onto one row before anything is sent. The table below is the heart of the workflow: copy it, change the timings and the discount column to your own rules, and you can run it by hand this week. The "Shopify" notes come from Shopify's recovering abandoned checkouts page, which describes its legacy recovery emails (checked November 13, 2026). The timings are starting points to test, not benchmarks.
| Checkout situation | Send? | Timing | Message type | Discount? | Who decides |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email given, agreed to email marketing | Yes | Message 1 after your first wait (Shopify's default for a newly added automation is 10 hours); message 2 a day or two later | 1: plain reminder with the cart link. 2: reminder, with a code if your rules allow | Not on message 1; message 2 only | Rule sends; a person sets the discount rules |
| Email given, no marketing consent | Shopify's default: no. Your choice: one reminder | Once, after the first wait | Plain reminder with the cart link, an opt-out and your postal address; no other promotion | No | The owner, with counsel |
| Phone number only | No email is possible; a text only with recorded SMS consent | Once, inside your sending hours | Short text with the link and opt-out words | No | Rule checks consent; counsel approves the wording |
| Customer has ordered since | No. Stop at once | None | None | None | Rule |
| Repeat abandoner who already got a code inside your window, for example 90 days | Yes, the reminder only | Message 1 only | Plain reminder | No | Rule; a person sets the window |
| High-value cart, above a total you set | Hold the automated flow | Same business day | A personal email or call from a named person | A person's call, case by case | Sales or support lead |
| An item in the cart is out of stock | No reminder for that cart | None, until stock returns | Offer the back-in-stock waitlist instead | No | Rule |
| B2B buyer or a draft-order checkout | Not in this workflow | The rep's own follow-up | A message from the account's rep | Contract price only | Sales rep |
| Payment error or a payment blocked as high risk | No automated message | Review first | A person replies if the order is real | No | Fraud or support reviewer |
| Address the shop does not ship to | No | None | None | None | Rule; demand by country goes in the report |
| Opted out, bounced or asked for data deletion | Never | None | None | None | Rule |
Several rows only repeat what Shopify does itself. Its page says no recovery email is sent when the customer completes a sale first, when a payment processing error occurred, when the shop does not ship to the address, when the customer entered a phone number instead of an email, when none of the products are available, when everything in the checkout is free, or when Shopify Payments blocked the payment as high risk. It also says abandoned checkouts are turned off by default for Shopify B2B, and that recovery covers the Online Store and Buy Button channels, not Shopify POS or third-party channels.
The rows Shopify does not cover are where the money leaks: the repeat abandoner, the high-value cart and the cart with one sold-out item. Send the out-of-stock row to the waitlist in our back-in-stock notifications recipe, the wholesale row to B2B quote requests, and blocked payments to the high-risk order review queue. A card that fails on a subscription renewal is a different job, covered in failed subscription payment follow-up.
What does Shopify do on its own, and where does custom work start?
Shopify offers three levels, and a store should use the lowest one that covers its table. This comparison uses Shopify's own pages only, all checked November 13, 2026: the legacy page above, the opt-in page for the new automation, the marketing automations overview, its requirements page and its list of automation templates.
| Question | Legacy abandoned checkout emails | Recover abandoned checkout automation (Shopify Messaging, editable in Flow) | Custom workflow on your accounts |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A recovery email with a link to the cart, set with "Send to" and "Send after" | A marketing automation built on a Flow workflow; templates also exist for abandoned cart and abandoned product browse | Your own rules reading Shopify's checkout data, sending through your email and SMS tools |
| Who gets it | The visitor category you pick in "Send to" | Customers subscribed to email marketing by default; the email's To field can be changed to All customers | Whoever your decision table allows, with consent checked per channel |
| Timing | The delay you pick in "Send after" | Your earlier settings carry over when you opt in; a second automation defaults to a 10-hour wait; the wait can be edited in Shopify Flow | Any waits, with a recheck before each send |
| Channels | Email, SMS or WhatsApp; SMS and WhatsApp go only to subscribers of that channel and cannot be overridden | Email, SMS, or a task for a person | |
| Discount | A code added to the checkout link in the email template | A discount can be added to the email | Rules per customer: which message, how often, never on some carts |
| Plan and cost | Not stated on the legacy page | Basic plan or higher, with the Flow app for full functionality; these emails do not count toward your monthly Shopify Messaging emails; SMS and WhatsApp are charged per message | Build cost, plus your sending tools |
| Where it stops | One setting for who and when; no rules per customer | Flow's own conditions and actions; switching to it cannot be undone | You maintain it |
Two details matter before you switch. Shopify's opt-in page says you cannot change back to the legacy emails after opting in to the new automation. And the templates page says that turning an automation off cancels any workflows sitting in a wait step, so pausing during a sale also drops the reminders already queued.
For anything past the template, Shopify Flow has a Customer abandons checkout trigger. It passes the customer and the abandonment, lists actions such as adding customer tags and updating a customer note, and notes that checkout attempts Shopify flags as suspected card testing or bot activity do not create abandoned checkouts (checked November 13, 2026). The Get abandoned checkout data action returns up to 100 checkouts per run for a scheduled summary. Our guide to what Shopify Flow automates covers its limits.
When must the workflow stop?
Every send is preceded by a recheck, because a lot changes in ten hours. Shopify's Abandonment object carries the fields a rule needs: whether the customer has completed an order since the abandonment, whether they have a draft order since, whether the products are still available, the days since the last abandonment email and the email's state (checked November 13, 2026). The AbandonedCheckout object adds the recovery URL, the discount codes the buyer entered, the totals and the time the checkout was completed, and needs the read_orders scope.
- The customer placed any order, through the link or on their own
- The person opted out, the email bounced, or a data deletion request arrived
- The message cap is reached, for example two messages per checkout
- The customer got an abandonment email recently for another checkout
- A cart item is no longer available
- A person took the checkout over as a task
- The follow-up window closed
The window has a hard edge. Shopify's help page says abandoned checkouts older than three months are deleted from the admin, so a workflow that needs longer history keeps its own log. The same page warns that anyone who opens a recovery link can continue that checkout and that a link cannot be disabled or expired after it is sent. Send the link only to the address on the checkout, and never paste it into a shared inbox or a chat.
Should the message carry a discount?
Start without one. A code on the first message pays people who were coming back anyway, and it teaches regular customers to abandon on purpose. The decision table holds the code for the second message and caps how often one customer can receive one. Give the recovery code a separate name and a campaign record, so our discount code leak alerts recipe can watch it; a checkout code posted on a coupon site is still a leak.
Shopify's page on discounts in recovery emails explains the mechanics for the legacy template: the code rides on the checkout link, so the customer returns to a cart that is already discounted (checked November 13, 2026). It carries two cautions. If the customer had entered a different code before leaving, the recovery code replaces it. And no message telling the customer about the discount is added for you; the email has to say it.
How much do the follow-ups really recover, net of discounts?
Shopify counts a checkout as recovered when the customer completes the order after an email, and its report shows the sessions, completed orders, conversion rate and sales that came from the reminder emails. That is orders after a message, not orders because of one. To see the difference, hold back a small share of eligible checkouts that get no message at all, and compare. The base number is contribution margin per order.
Incremental orders = orders from messaged checkouts − (order rate of the holdout group × messaged checkouts)
Net recovered contribution = incremental orders × contribution per order before discount − orders that used the code × average discount − message cost
An illustrative example, not a client result and not a benchmark. Picture 400 eligible checkouts in a month, an $80 average order and $32 of contribution per order before any discount. The holdout group suggests 16 of these customers would have ordered with no message. The recovery code is 10%, or $8 per order. Email cost is left at zero.
| Setup (illustrative) | Orders after a message | Would have ordered anyway | Incremental orders | Orders using the code | Discount cost | Net recovered contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reminder only, no code | 28 | 16 | 12 | 0 | $0 | $384 |
| 10% code on the first message | 36 | 16 | 20 | 36 | $288 | $352 |
| Reminder first, code only on the second message | 36 | 16 | 20 | 8 | $64 | $576 |
In this made-up month the code on the first message brings more orders than the plain reminder and still nets less, because all 36 buyers took $8 off. Holding the code for people who ignored the first reminder keeps the extra orders and pays the discount only eight times. Your numbers will differ; the point is to count discount cost on every order that used the code, not only on the incremental ones.
What do email and SMS rules require?
The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide for business sorts email by its primary purpose. Commercial email must tell recipients how to opt out and include a valid physical postal address; the opt-out must keep working for at least 30 days after the send and be honored within 10 business days; the guide puts each violating email at up to $53,088 and says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email (checked November 13, 2026). Its transactional category covers messages about a transaction the recipient already has agreed to. An abandoned checkout is a purchase nobody has agreed to yet, so this workflow treats every reminder as commercial email.
For texts we state only what the rule says. The FCC's 47 CFR 64.1200 says the term call includes a text message, requires prior express written consent for certain calls that include an advertisement or constitute telemarketing, and lets a person revoke consent by any reasonable method, honored within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days (checked November 13, 2026). The workflow texts only numbers with a stored SMS consent record and treats a reply such as STOP as an opt-out on every channel.
Who builds abandoned checkout follow-up?
Ecomsellertool builds workflow automation on your own Shopify store and the tools around it; we have built software on Amazon's seller APIs since 2017. For checkout follow-up we write the decision table and the discount rules with you first, then build the rechecks, the stop rules, the tasks for a person and the net report. Send a project brief below, or read how our workflow automation service works.
No case study we have published is an abandoned checkout project. The building blocks are work we have shipped:
- Discounts inside profit per order. For Seller7 we helped build one order list across Amazon, Walmart, Target Plus, Shopify and Mirakl, with an estimated profit on each order that counts promotion discounts next to shipping, product cost and marketplace fees.
- Next-step alerts instead of manual follow-ups. For EzBookPrep we built prep software with automated notifications for the next action on each book, which replaced the manual follow-ups that had made the client the bottleneck.
The report can run on Ecomsellertool Growth OS beside your order and margin data, and our page for Shopify brands covers the rest of the store's operations.
Get your checkout follow-up built
Send us your follow-up rules and your discount limits
Describe the workflow you want automated. We reply with a written plan: scope, timeline and a fixed price.
Frequently asked questions
How long should I wait before sending an abandoned checkout email?
Shopify gives one number: a second abandoned checkout automation defaults to a 10-hour wait, while the first keeps the settings you already had, and you can change the wait in Shopify Flow. There is no single right answer. Pick a first wait, hold back a small group that gets no message, and compare orders between the two groups before you change the timing.
Should an abandoned checkout email include a discount?
Not in the first message. People who planned to come back will take the discount anyway, and you pay for orders you already had. Send a plain reminder first, then offer a code only to people who still have not ordered, with a limit on how often one customer can get one.
Does Shopify send abandoned checkout emails automatically?
Yes, once you turn it on. Shopify's Recover abandoned checkout automation sends an email with a link back to the checkout. By default it goes only to customers subscribed to email marketing, and you can change the email's To field to All customers.
Can I send abandoned checkout emails to people who did not subscribe to marketing?
Shopify lets you change the Recover abandoned checkout email to All customers. Whether you should is a legal question for your own counsel. The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide requires an opt-out and a postal address in commercial email, and other countries have stricter rules. This is not legal advice.
When does Shopify not send an abandoned checkout email?
Shopify's help page lists these cases: the customer completed a sale before the email was sent, a payment processing error happened, the shop does not ship to the address, the customer gave a phone number instead of an email, none of the products are available, everything in the checkout is free, or Shopify Payments blocked the payment as high risk.
Can I send abandoned checkout reminders by SMS?
Only to people whose SMS consent you have on record. Shopify's SMS and WhatsApp automations send only to customers subscribed to that channel, and you cannot override it. The FCC's rule treats a text as a call and lets a person revoke consent by any reasonable method. Ask your counsel about your consent wording.
How do I know if abandoned checkout emails are really working?
Shopify marks a checkout recovered when the customer completes the order after an email, even if they would have come back anyway. To see what the messages add, keep a holdout group that gets no message and compare order rates, then subtract the discounts you gave.
