If draft, you’re losing 8-12% of cart-abandoners we could recover. Audit KL-FLOW-001 fires.
At a glance
Live status of the merchant’s abandoned-cart flow:live,draft, ormanual. The single most consequential automation in any DTC Klaviyo account. If this flow is in draft state, the merchant is losing 8-12% of total store revenue that could be recovered with zero additional work. This is a binary health signal, not a performance metric.
| What it counts | The status field of every Klaviyo flow whose trigger_type = abandoned_cart (or equivalent: started_checkout, added_to_cart in some accounts). Returns the single best-matching flow’s status. |
| API endpoint | GET /api/flows?fields[flow]=name,status,trigger_type&page[size]=50. Klaviyo returns flow metadata directly. |
| Status values | live (active, sending), draft (built but not running), manual (sends only when triggered by a person, not automated). The card alerts on anything other than live. |
| Attribution model | Not applicable. This is a configuration card, not a revenue card. The downstream revenue (when the flow IS live) inherits the standard Klaviyo 5-day click + 1-day view PLACED_ORDER attribution. |
| Email vs SMS | The card identifies email-channel abandoned-cart flows. SMS abandoned-cart flows (often a 1-step companion) are counted separately. Most accounts run an email flow only; some run both with the SMS flow firing 30 minutes after the email. |
| Recovery rate context | Industry benchmark: a 3-step abandoned-cart flow (1h, 24h, 72h) recovers 8-12% of carts. A single-step flow recovers 4-6%. A draft flow recovers 0%. |
| Page cap | 50 flows per call. Most accounts have <20 flows so the cap doesn’t bite. Very large accounts with >50 flows may need to filter. |
| MPP impact | None on the status itself. Once the flow is live and sending, the standard MPP shape applies (open rates inflated, click rates clean, revenue clean). |
| Currency / refund handling | Not applicable to this card. Status is binary live/not-live. |
| Time window | RT (real-time, the card reflects the current Klaviyo flow status, not historical performance) |
| Alert trigger | not live (Audit KL-FLOW-001 fires when the flow is in draft or manual state) |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Klaviyo data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A skincare brand on Shopify connects Klaviyo for the first time. The agency runs an audit on 14 Mar 26 and finds the abandoned-cart flow exists but is indraft state. Looking at the prior 30 days of Shopify data:
| Shopify metric (30D ending 13 Mar 26) | Value |
|---|---|
| Total store revenue | £412,600 |
| Total orders | 1,840 |
| Average order value | £224 |
| Checkouts started | 4,920 |
| Checkouts completed | 1,840 |
| Cart abandonment rate | 62.6% |
| Carts abandoned | 3,080 |
draft to live). 30 days later, on 14 Apr 26, they read this card again:
| Klaviyo metric (30D after activation) | Value |
|---|---|
| Abandoned-cart flow entries | 3,150 |
| Klaviyo-attributed revenue from this flow | £42,800 |
| Estimated recovery rate | 10.3% (314 of 3,050 abandoners returned to buy) |
- A single status flip from
drafttoliveadded 10.4% to total store revenue. No new copy, no design refresh, no list growth. The flow had been sitting built-but-off for 11 weeks. This is the single highest-impact intervention available in most Klaviyo audits. - The recovery rate of 10.3% is squarely in the industry benchmark band of 8-12%. This tells the merchant the flow design is reasonable. If recovery had been 4-6%, the agency would investigate the email content (subject line, CTA, discount); if 12%+, they’d test removing the discount to preserve margin.
- Some of the £42,800 would have come back anyway. Klaviyo’s last-touch attribution claims credit for any conversion within 5 days of a click. Independent academic studies suggest the true incremental uplift from abandoned-cart flows is 60-75% of the attributed figure, so the real uplift is closer to £25,000-£32,000 per month, still very high ROI.
- The cart abandonment rate of 62.6% is normal but not great. Industry average is 65-70%, so this brand is slightly better than average. But that means 3,080 abandoned carts a month, even a 10% recovery on that is £42K. Do not optimise the abandonment rate before activating the recovery flow, the recovery flow is mathematically the higher-leverage intervention.
- This card answers a yes/no question, not a performance question. Performance lives on
klv_top_flow_revenue(this flow ranks the highest of any flow in any account that has it switched on). The card here exists purely to flag the merchant if the answer is “no, the flow isn’t running”.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Abandoned-Cart Flow Status is a configuration card. Pair it with these:| Card | Why pair it with Abandoned-Cart Flow Status |
|---|---|
| Klaviyo Welcome Flow Status | The other “must-have-live” flow. Welcome flow drives lifetime customer behaviour; abandoned cart drives immediate revenue. Both should be live; together they’re 70%+ of typical flow revenue. |
| Klaviyo Flow Status Breakdown | The portfolio view. If multiple flows are in draft state, this is where the merchant sees the whole picture. |
| Klaviyo Top 10 Flows by Revenue | When the abandoned-cart flow IS live, this card surfaces it (typically the #1 flow). Watch for sudden drops, often a checkout integration broke. |
| Klaviyo Abandoned-Cart Recovery Value (Cross-Channel) | The dollar value of what this flow is recovering, expressed against the commerce platform’s order volume. The “what’s at stake if this flow goes draft” number. |
| Klaviyo Flow Step Drop-off | When the flow IS live, this card identifies which step in the 3-step sequence loses the most subscribers. Most drop-off is between step 1 (1h) and step 2 (24h). |
| Klaviyo Flow vs Campaign Revenue Mix | The portfolio impact. Activating the abandoned-cart flow typically lifts the flow share by 10-15 percentage points. |
| Shopify Cart Abandonment Rate | The denominator. The recovery flow is more valuable for stores with high abandonment rates because there’s more revenue to recover. |
| Klaviyo Email-Attributed Revenue | Total Klaviyo revenue. Activating this flow typically adds 20-30% to total Klaviyo revenue and 8-12% to total store revenue. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Klaviyo: Klaviyo → Flows for the live list of flows and their statuses. The abandoned-cart flow appears in the trigger list withStarted Checkout or Added to Cart as the trigger event. The status badge (Live, Draft, Manual) shows in the right-hand column.
Other Klaviyo views that look like the same number but aren’t:
- Flows → individual flow → Performance: per-flow performance metrics (sends, opens, revenue), not the on/off status.
- Settings → Account Setup → Recommended Setup: Klaviyo’s onboarding checklist sometimes shows whether key flows are configured, but it doesn’t always update reliably.
- Reports → Flow Performance: aggregates revenue across all flows, not the status of a specific one.
| Reason | Direction of divergence |
|---|---|
Trigger-type matching. The card looks for flows with trigger_type matching abandoned_cart, started_checkout, or added_to_cart. If the merchant built a custom-event-triggered flow with a non-standard name (e.g. cart_lost_event), the card won’t recognise it as an abandoned-cart flow. | Card may report not configured when Klaviyo dashboard shows the flow exists. |
| Multiple matching flows. Some accounts have 2-3 abandoned-cart flows (different segments, different timings). The card returns the status of the first matching flow. If one is live and one is draft, the card reports the live one. | Edge case; affects very few accounts. |
Manual flows. Klaviyo’s manual status means “send when triggered by a person from a segment”. The card alerts on this because it’s not automated, but in some accounts manual flows are intentional (e.g. a B2B brand who manually selects which abandon-cart sends to fire). | Card alerts; merchant intent may differ. |
| Page cap. 50 flows per call. Accounts with >50 flows where the abandoned-cart flow is the 51st or later won’t be detected. | Affects very few accounts. |
| Recently-changed status. Klaviyo flow status changes propagate to the API within seconds, but rare cases see a 1-2 minute lag. | None on settled status. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
shopify.cart_abandonment_rate | When this flow is live, expect 8-12% of abandoned carts to recover. When draft, 0% recover (organic return notwithstanding). | Recovery rate varies by industry, brand affinity, discount strategy. |
shopify.total_revenue | Activating the flow typically adds 8-12% to total store revenue within 30 days. | Margin of error wider for low-volume stores. |
bigcommerce.total_revenue | Same expected uplift. | Same. |
adobe_commerce.total_revenue | Same expected uplift. | Same. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My abandoned-cart flow is in draft, what should I do right now? Activate it. Today. Do not wait to “perfect the copy” or “test the design”, a live flow with okay copy beats a draft flow with perfect copy by infinity to one. Klaviyo’s stock 3-step abandoned-cart template (no customisation) recovers 6-8% of carts; tuning the template later can lift that to 10-12%. Activate first, optimise after. The flow is live but Klaviyo says recovery is only 4%, what’s wrong? Three usual causes: (a) the first send is too late (>4 hours after abandon), most recovery happens in the first 1-2 hours; (b) the discount is too aggressive (15%+) which trains customers to abandon-cart on purpose to wait for the email; (c) the email goes to spam because cart-abandon emails fire to less-engaged subscribers (people who haven’t bought yet) and your sender reputation isn’t strong enough to reach the inbox. Checkklv_bounce_rate and klv_spam_rate first.
Should the abandoned-cart flow include SMS?
For most stores, yes, but only as a complement. A 1-step SMS firing 30 minutes after the email recovers an additional 2-4% of abandoners. Without SMS the email-only flow recovers 8-12%; with SMS the combined recovery is 10-16%. The catch is consent: only customers who explicitly opted into SMS at checkout can receive these. SMS unsub rates are 5-10× higher than email so the audience is smaller.
Why does the alert fire on manual status?
Manual flows require a human to trigger them from a segment. They don’t automatically fire when a customer abandons a cart. This is rarely intentional for an abandoned-cart flow, manual triggering defeats the purpose. The most common reason a flow is manual is that the merchant built it but never went through the Klaviyo activation workflow. Toggle it to live to start the automation.
My customer service team manually emails some abandoners, does that count?
Klaviyo doesn’t see manual outreach. Customer service emails sent from Outlook or Help Scout aren’t tracked and won’t appear in this card. If the merchant has a deliberate workflow where reps reach out manually, that’s a separate revenue stream, the abandoned-cart flow on top covers the long tail of customers reps don’t get to.
My checkout integration is BigCommerce, will this work?
Yes, Klaviyo’s BigCommerce integration fires Started Checkout events the same way Shopify’s does. The trigger type is identical. The flow card detects status regardless of commerce platform. If the integration is set up correctly, the flow can be live on a BigCommerce store with no other changes.
The flow is live but very few entries are showing, what’s going on?
Most common cause: the Klaviyo-Shopify (or Klaviyo-BigCommerce) integration is missing the Started Checkout event. Open Klaviyo Account Settings → Integrations and confirm the commerce-platform integration shows Started Checkout as a tracked event. If it’s missing, reinstall the integration or check the Shopify “Klaviyo Onsite” snippet is active in the theme.
Refunds reduce the recovery number, right?
No. Klaviyo records Placed Order revenue at order time and doesn’t subtract refunds. So if a recovered cart is later refunded, this flow still shows the original revenue contribution. For a net view, subtract the typical refund rate of the store (usually 5-15% for fashion, 2-5% for non-fashion DTC) from the gross recovery.
Will activating this flow tank my open rate?
No. Abandoned-cart emails are highly relevant (the recipient just expressed buying intent) and have inherently high open rates (40-60%, often higher than promotional campaigns). Activating will raise the account’s blended open rate, not lower it. The only deliverability risk is sending the cart-abandon email to addresses that bounce; Klaviyo’s standard double opt-in checkout flow handles this, suppressing addresses that have hard-bounced from any prior send.