AI Workflow for Abandoned Cart Recovery

Difficulty: Intermediate · Setup time: 40 min · Steps: 4

On average, 70% of shopping carts are abandoned — and most businesses only recover a fraction because their follow-up is too slow or too generic. This workflow triggers a personalized recovery sequence within 60 minutes of abandonment, using the customer's cart contents to write specific copy that converts browsers into buyers.

What to Expect

  • 15–25% — of abandoned carts recovered with a 3-email sequence
  • $4.80 — average revenue recovered per dollar spent on this automation

Tools Used in This Workflow

  • Shopify — Cart abandonment trigger
  • Make — Sequence orchestration
  • Klaviyo — Personalized email sequence
  • Slack — Recovery reporting

How It Works — Step by Step

  1. Step 1: Detect cart abandonment in Shopify

    Tool: Shopify

    Make connects to Shopify's Abandoned Checkouts API and checks every 30 minutes for checkouts that were created over an hour ago but never completed. Customer email, cart items, cart value, and checkout URL are captured.

  2. Step 2: Check against existing Klaviyo profiles

    Tool: Klaviyo

    Make checks if the customer is already in a Klaviyo suppression list or has already converted, preventing duplicate or unwanted messages. Only genuinely abandoned carts with valid email addresses proceed.

  3. Step 3: Trigger personalized Klaviyo sequence

    Tool: Klaviyo

    The customer is added to a Klaviyo abandoned cart flow with their specific cart items passed as dynamic properties. Klaviyo sends Email 1 at 1 hour (gentle reminder), Email 2 at 24 hours (social proof), and Email 3 at 3 days (discount offer if cart value exceeds $50).

  4. Step 4: Track recoveries in Slack

    Tool: Slack

    A daily Slack digest shows abandoned carts triggered, emails sent, click-throughs, and recoveries with revenue attributed. Your team can monitor the sequence performance without logging into Klaviyo.

Pro Tips for This Workflow

  • The first recovery email should have no discount — just a genuine reminder. Save the discount for email 3. Leading with a discount trains customers to abandon carts deliberately.
  • Include the exact product image, name, and price in every recovery email — Klaviyo's dynamic content blocks make this straightforward with the cart data passed from Shopify.
  • A/B test your discount threshold ($40 vs. $75 minimum cart value) — for many stores, offering discounts on small carts loses more margin than it recovers.

What You'll Need

  • Shopify account — Cart abandonment trigger
  • Make account — Sequence orchestration
  • Klaviyo account — Personalized email sequence
  • Slack account — Recovery reporting
  • Basic automation experience, or a vetted expert to build it for you

Related Video Tutorial

Recover Abandoned Carts Automatically with Klaviyo and Make

Frequently Asked Questions

Why not just use Shopify's built-in abandoned cart emails?

Shopify's built-in abandoned cart feature is limited to one email, sent once, at a fixed time. Klaviyo allows multi-email sequences with dynamic timing, A/B testing, conditional logic (e.g., show different content to repeat customers), and detailed performance analytics that Shopify's native tool doesn't provide.

How does Make know a cart is truly abandoned and not just in progress?

Make polls Shopify's Abandoned Checkouts API for checkouts created more than 60 minutes ago that haven't converted to an order. A checkout becomes 'abandoned' when 60+ minutes pass without payment — well past the point where normal purchase intent would have completed.

Can I target different recovery sequences for different cart values?

Yes — add a Make router step that branches on cart total. High-value carts (e.g., $200+) go to a premium sequence with a personal video from a sales rep; mid-value carts get the standard 3-email sequence; low-value carts (under $20) may not justify a discount offer.

How does this workflow handle cart abandonment for returning customers vs. new visitors?

Check the customer's order history via Shopify API — if they have previous orders, use a 'We miss you' loyal customer angle without a discount. If they're new, a small first-purchase incentive typically converts better. Make's router handles this branching based on the order count returned from Shopify.

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