How do I follow up with shoppers who abandoned their cart on Shopify?
Who this is for: Shopify store owners and the people who run marketing and sales for them.
What you'll learn: where Shopify's abandoned checkout tools stop, how Bread & Butter sees the visitors who leave before checkout, how it names people who enter their email at the start of checkout, how to get the email earlier, and how completed orders are tied back to the journey that led to them.
Shopify's abandoned checkout tools only know who a customer is once they've entered their email at checkout. The visitor who browsed six product pages, added two items to their cart and left before checkout is exactly the person you most want to follow up with, and to your store they were never there.
In short: Shopify can only follow up with people who reached checkout and gave their email, and all it sends them is a reminder. Bread & Butter records the journey from the first visit and scores it as it happens. Someone who enters their email at the start of checkout becomes a named lead the next time they open a page of your store, even if they never pay. For the people who leave before checkout, it asks for the email sooner through one-click social login and your existing forms. Either way, your team gets a researched profile and a reason to write.
Where Shopify's recovery stops
Shopify's abandoned checkouts guide defines an abandoned checkout as one where "the customer has provided their email information".
So the recovery email is really an abandoned checkout email. It sends one automated reminder to the person who got to checkout and stopped. It can't reach the visitor who left one page earlier, because there's no address to send it to and no record they were there. Most abandonment happens before checkout. That's the gap.
What Bread & Butter sees that your store doesn't
Bread & Butter starts recording on the first visit, before anyone has told you who they are: every page viewed, every return visit, the campaign that brought them in, the product they kept coming back to, and the moment they opened their cart.
Focused Score runs from that first visit too. A visitor who has viewed a product three times, opened the cart and left is scoring high long before they reach checkout, and appears on your Focused Tab with the whole journey attached.
You can't email them yet, because they haven't given you an address. But you can see how many visitors are close to buying, what they wanted and where they came from, and the journey is waiting for the moment they do tell you who they are.
Named earlier in checkout
When someone enters their email at the start of checkout, before paying, they become a named lead with their cart attached the next time they open a page of your store, even if they never complete the purchase.
Shopify keeps its checkout separate from your store, which is why it waits for that next page. Someone who enters their email at checkout and never comes back to your store isn't named this way.
Getting the email before checkout
Shopify asks for an email at checkout. Bread & Butter asks earlier, in ways people are far more likely to say yes to:
- Subscription Booster: a newsletter or offer opt-in that appears after a visitor has shown interest. See Subscription Booster
- Content Gate Preview: a size guide, lookbook or care guide unlocked with one click. See Content Gate Preview
- Form Booster: one-click social login added to the forms you already have. See Form Booster
- Account Widget: a one-click social login button in your store's header, so returning customers are known on every visit. See Account Widget
The moment someone opts in, their profile is researched and everything Bread & Butter recorded beforehand is already attached. So when they leave with a full cart a week later, you're looking at a named person with their full browsing history, not a blank record.
When an abandoner comes back
People who leave often return, and a return visit is one of the strongest buying signals there is. When a known visitor comes back, the new visit joins their journey and your team is alerted on the mobile app, in Slack or in your CRM while they're still on the site.
The person who left their cart on Tuesday is back on the same product page on Friday. That's no longer a cold follow-up. It's a warm one, with timing on your side.
The follow-up
If you've connected your CRM or Slack, the Intelligence Brief for that person arrives when their visit ends, no later than an hour after their last activity. It carries the journey, the products they looked at, the research on who they are and three outreach starters, so your team knows what to say.
If you'd rather send from Bread & Butter, a draft is waiting in your Nurture Action Queue, ordered by Focused Score so the people most likely to buy are at the top.
Connecting completed orders back to the journey
Shopify's checkout runs separately from your store's theme, so completed orders are recorded through Shopify's own Customer events, the same custom pixel that names people who start checkout. You add it once under Settings in your Shopify admin. The steps are in Install Bread & Butter on Shopify.
Once it's in place, each completed purchase is recorded with the buyer's email and tied to the full browsing history that led to it, including visits from before they ever gave you an email. That closes the loop on attribution, so you can see which campaigns brought buyers rather than just visitors. Mark buyers Won/Closed and Focused Score gets sharper at spotting the next visitor who looks like them.
What this adds up to
Shopify's recovery email sends one reminder to the people who nearly finished. Bread & Butter names people who start checkout and return to your store, shows you the ones who left before checkout, gets the email earlier, alerts you when they come back, and gives your team a researched reason to reach out.