Klaviyo abandoned cart flow not sending? What to check
By Lee ·
An abandoned cart flow that quietly stops sending is easy to miss. The store keeps taking orders, so nothing looks broken, but the follow-up emails that recover lost checkouts aren't going out.
Work through these checks in order. The first three are the quickest to rule out.
1. Check every message is Live
Each email in a Klaviyo flow has its own status:
- Draft messages don't send, and nobody is queued for them.
- Manual messages queue people but wait for you to approve each send.
- Live messages send automatically.
A flow can be switched on while one or more of its emails is still Draft or Manual. Open the flow and check the status on every message, not just the flow itself.
If messages were set to Manual, you'll find queued people under Recipient activity → Needs review. Send or cancel them there, then set the message to Live.
2. Confirm the trigger event is being recorded
Abandoned cart flows usually start from Started Checkout, or Added to Cart if you run a cart-based flow. If Klaviyo isn't receiving that event, nobody enters the flow.
Go to Analytics → Metrics, open the metric your flow uses and look at when it last recorded activity. Then start a checkout on your own store with a test email address and confirm the event appears on that profile.
If the event isn't arriving:
- Check the Shopify integration in Klaviyo is connected and syncing
- Check the Klaviyo app embed is turned on in your Shopify theme, which onsite tracking relies on
- If you recently changed ecommerce platforms, make sure the flow uses the new platform's metric, not the old one
Klaviyo won't trigger a metric-based flow if the event arrives six hours or more after it happened, so a long sync delay can also stop sends.
3. Review the flow filters
Filters decide who stays in the flow. Abandonment flows normally exclude people with a filter such as "Placed Order zero times since starting this flow".
Common mistakes:
- Using OR instead of AND between exclusion filters, so the filters don't work as intended
- A frequency filter like "has not been in this flow in the last 30 days" that's longer than you meant
- Contradicting filters that no profile can pass
Use the preview in the trigger panel to test a real profile against your filters.
4. Look at who was skipped and why
Open each email, go to Recipient activity and select the Skipped tab. Klaviyo lists the reason for every skipped profile. The common ones:
| Skip reason | What it means |
|---|---|
| Fails Flow Filters | The person no longer matches the flow filters, often because they ordered. This is normal for abandonment flows. |
| Smart Sending | They received another email recently, so Klaviyo held this one back. |
| Person Suppressed | They've unsubscribed from email or their address hard bounced. |
| Missing Email | The profile has no email address. |
| Catalog Item Unavailable | A product in the email is out of stock or unavailable. |
| Error Retrieving External Data | A dynamic coupon or other external data couldn't be fetched. |
Lots of "Fails Flow Filters" skips are expected. Lots of anything else points to the problem.
5. Check Smart Sending
Smart Sending stops Klaviyo emailing someone who received an email very recently. For email, the window is 16 hours by default. Klaviyo's pre-built abandoned cart emails have it turned off, but if your flow was built from scratch or edited, it may be on, and it can block an abandoned cart email if the shopper received a newsletter that morning.
You can turn Smart Sending off for individual flow emails. If you do, add a filter that stops people receiving the same flow too often.
6. Check recent changes
If the flow worked until recently, open Flow history. It shows what changed in the flow, when and by whom. A renamed collection in a trigger filter, a deleted message or a changed metric often lines up with the day sending stopped.
7. Test the whole journey
Once you've made a fix, run a full test:
- Use a fresh email address you control and subscribe it.
- Add a product to the cart and start checkout without completing it.
- Confirm the event on the profile in Klaviyo.
- Confirm the profile appears in the flow and the first email is scheduled.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my abandoned cart flow showing lots of skipped profiles?
Most skips in an abandonment flow are "Fails Flow Filters", which usually means the person placed an order before the email was due. That's the flow working correctly. Check the other skip reasons for real problems.
Do abandoned cart emails go to people who haven't subscribed?
Klaviyo needs an email address it's allowed to send to. People who have unsubscribed or whose address bounced are suppressed and skipped. Check your store's consent settings and local privacy rules before emailing non-subscribers.
How long after checkout should the first email send?
Many stores send the first reminder within a few hours. Test timings for your own customers rather than relying on a single rule.
Should abandoned cart emails include a discount?
Not by default. Lead with a reminder and answers to common questions about delivery, returns and support. Add an incentive only if your margins allow it.
How Kleari can help
I set up and fix Klaviyo flows for Shopify stores, including abandoned cart, welcome, browse abandonment, post-purchase and win-back. If a flow isn't sending, I can check the triggers, filters and skipped profiles, fix the cause and test the journey end to end.
See Klaviyo email marketing, or read the five Klaviyo flows to set up first.