Who is written to
A checkout exists from the moment its page opens, with the buyer’s email on it. Cart Recovery writes to a buyer who left one unpaid, where:- it was started on your store, in an embed or in the Checkout Kit. Never an invoice or a payment link you sent;
- it was started after Cart Recovery was switched on, and in the last three days. Switching it on does not write to everybody who left a checkout last week;
- it is the buyer’s newest checkout at your store. A buyer who started three is written to about the last, and one who came back and paid is not written to at all;
- no payment for it is on its way: coins confirming, a bank that has not answered, or a custom payment method you are checking;
- the buyer has not unsubscribed from your store’s emails, from a Cart Recovery email, a Win-Back email, or by you.
The three emails
The first and the declined one read like a note from your store: “Hi,”, what was in the cart, the link back, where to get help, and your store’s name to sign it. Where to get help is a reply where your emails take replies, otherwise your support link from Settings, Links, otherwise nothing. The second is a card with a title and a button, since its coupon is an offer whatever it looks like.
Each has its switch and an edit button. Edit sets when it goes and, for the second, its coupon: none, or 5% to 25% off. Its subject and its words are in Email Templates. A coupon is made for each buyer, good for 48 hours and one use, and filed in the Cart Recovery category of your coupons, which you cannot rename and which does not count toward your store’s coupons.
They are sent in your store’s name, as every email to a buyer is, with no social icons under them, from a mailbox of their own and not the one receipts come from, so that a buyer who marks a reminder as spam does not teach their mail app anything about your receipts. Which tab Gmail puts a reminder under is Gmail’s to decide, for each message and each buyer: a plain email with few links and pictures, and a buyer who has opened or answered your emails before, are what it puts in the main inbox most.
Before each email the checkout is looked at again. Nothing is sent once the buyer has paid it, paid another, unsubscribed, or has a payment on its way, or once you switch it off. With the first switched off and the second on, a buyer gets the second only.
Send Test Email sends any of the three, about a made-up cart, to the address you type. One test every five minutes.
The link in the email
Return to Your Cart opens the checkout the buyer left, as long as it can still be paid. A checkout runs out: a cart nobody pressed Pay on after a day, an order at your time for unpaid orders. Then the link opens a new checkout with the same cart, at today’s prices, for the same address. Pressing it again opens the same one, not another. The second email’s coupon is put on the cart by the button itself. A checkout already being paid cannot take a coupon, so with one the button opens a new checkout too.Unsubscribing
Every email has Unsubscribe at its foot. It opens a page with one button, which stops these emails and Win-Back’s from your store to that address, and takes the buyer off your subscribers. Mail apps that show their own unsubscribe button (Gmail, Apple Mail) do the same with one press. Receipts and every other email about an order are not affected. A buyer who later ticks the box to get your emails, on an order they pay, gets these again too.The figures
The four figures cover the period in the page’s head:
A sale is recovered when the checkout that was left is paid after its first email, or when a checkout the email’s button opened is paid. These are paid orders like any other, already in your revenue: the Dashboard says how much of its revenue was recovered under the figure, and its Cart Recovery card, which you add with Add, shows the same by email.
The list under the figures is every checkout left in the period, newest first, with where it stands: Waiting, with when its first email goes; First Email Sent, Declined Email Sent or Second Email Sent; Recovered, with which email the buyer had last; Unsubscribed; or Not Emailed, with why. A row whose buyer clicked the email’s button says when, under where it stands. Search by the buyer’s address, and Show narrows it, to Clicked among others. A row opens its order, whose timeline says each email sent.
A click is counted when a browser opens the button’s link. Some mail filters and company inboxes open every link in a message to check it, and most of those are not counted, so the figure is close but not exact.
Your server
Three webhook events say what Cart Recovery does:cart.email_sent, each time it emails a buyer; cart.recovered, when a cart it emailed about is paid; and cart.unsubscribed. Each sends the cart: who left it, what was in it, which email it last had, and the order that paid.
With an API key, your server can read the settings and figures, change the settings, list the carts and read one. Reading needs Read Cart Recovery and changing them Change Cart Recovery. Send Test Email is the dashboard’s. See Cart Recovery in the API reference.