Welcome the community @ISOOSI 

To answer your questions regarding the abandoned cart flow:

1. Unless you add any other qualifying flow conditions, messages are sent to any contact that enters the flow (that’s triggered on a checkout-started event) except for contacts who have unsubscribed.
2. A checkout-started event occurs when a contact enters their email address during checkout. The checkout-started event + their email (and any other personal data if provided), is captured. This creates a new profile in Klaviyo if it’s a new contact. If it’s an existing contact, their profile is updated with the checkout-started event.

Hope that helps

Andy

Hi Andy, 

Thank you so much for your prompt response - it is very helpful! 

Just to clarify - if a customer who has not subscribed to my email list adds to cart and does not enter their email (i.e does not proceed to checkout and abandons the website entirely), they will not receive the abandoned cart flow? 

If a customer who has subscribed to my email list, adds to cart and does not enter their email or proceed to checkout (i.e abandons the website entirely after adding to cart), they will receive the abandoned cart flow? 

Hi @ISOOSI 

Good questions. I think clarifications would help on a customer “subscribes to an email list” and “adding to cart” as I think they’re confusing the issue a bit.

When a contact subscribes to a list, they are giving their permission for you to send them marketing emails. It also means that Klaviyo can identify them by their email, and it sets a 2-year ‘identifying’ cookie (7-days for Safari) on their device; you will now see the various events they trigger captured in their Klaviyo profile (including checkout-started).

‘Add-to-cart’ is an event before checkout. Unless you take additional steps to configure this, there isn’t one in the standard configuration. More info on that here for Shopify; https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001396711. That event also needs the identifying cookie to be set for it to trigger.

So, in your first scenario (new contact), you are correct: if no email is entered at checkout, the identifying cookie is not set and there won’t be a checkout-started event, so they won’t trigger your flow.

In your second scenario, for an existing Klaviyo profile, an email address must also be entered for a checkout-started event to trigger. As with your first scenario, adding the email address signifies an explicit checkout started. There are occasions when the email has to be entered manually by the contact, or it may be autofilled. The result is the same: no email, no checkout started event, no abandoned cart flow trigger!

Does that answer your questions?

Regards

Andy