Recover abandoned checkouts
See in the Abandoned carts tab who left their email in a checkout and did not pay, send a recovery email to one person or many at once, ask the agent to do it, or set up a workflow.
An abandoned checkout is a visitor who typed their email into a checkout and left without paying. Zanfia keeps their checkout saved, collects these people in the Abandoned carts tab and lets you bring them back with an email that links to their saved checkout: to one person, to many at once, through the agent or automatically.
What counts as abandoned
A checkout session becomes abandoned after a few minutes without activity on the page. Only sessions with a captured email matter for recovery: without an address there is nobody to write to. The same person on the same checkout is counted at most once per day, so a visitor who comes back and leaves again does not trigger a second recovery. A recovery email is skipped when the visitor has meanwhile resumed the checkout or completed the purchase.
A visitor counts as a buyer when the same email address or the same browser bought the same product after leaving the cart, or up to 30 days before it. This holds even when they paid in a different checkout session, for example after reloading the page, logging in midway or switching devices. Buyers get no recovery email, manual or automatic.
Contact details saved before payment
To show abandoned carts, the checkout saves the email and name a visitor types in before they click pay. While this is on, the checkout shows one line under the email field: We save your email to remind you about an unfinished purchase. The data is deleted after 90 days. The default information clause at the bottom of the checkout says the same. Zanfia clears these details from the checkout session, and their copy in the Abandoned checkout workflow's run history, 90 days after the visit; orders are not touched. An Abandoned checkout workflow run that is still running or waiting at that point (for example on a delay longer than 90 days) is ended: the run list shows Ended after 90 days (buyer data protection). Keep the delays of this workflow under 90 days.
You can turn it off in Your site → Settings → Privacy & legal (/site/privacy), section Abandoned carts, switch Save contact details before payment. Off means nothing is saved before payment: new visits never reach the Abandoned carts tab, recovery emails or the Abandoned checkout workflows. The switch is also in the Workspace API and MCP (captureContactBeforePayment in the checkout settings) and the agent can change it after you approve its card.
See your abandoned carts
Open the Abandoned carts tab
In the left sidebar open Offers and choose Abandoned carts (/abandoned-carts). The list
shows people who left their details in a cart and did not pay, and what happened since. Each row
has the columns Person (name and email), Product / offer, Step reached, When and
Status.
Narrow the list
Pick a period: 7 days, 30 days (the default) or 90 days. You can also pick one product instead of All products and find a person with Search by email or name. The status buttons below show counts and filter the list: All, Abandoned, Recovery email sent, Bought later and Dismissed. When there are more rows, click Show more under the list.
The Step reached column says how far the person got: Form, Payment started or Payment declined with the reason, for example Payment declined · insufficient funds. With the status Recovery email sent you see when the email went out and how: by hand, by the agent or by an automation. Bought later means the person paid after abandoning the cart.
Recover one cart
Send the email from the row
Click Recover on the row. The Recovery email window shows the exact email the customer will receive: the recipient under To:, the Subject: and the body with a link back to the saved checkout. You can change the subject, and clicking into the body lets you edit it. Click Send email. A message confirms Recovery email sent - the customer got a link back to the checkout. The row gets the status Recovery email sent and the button changes to Send again. If the cart was bought or resumed in the meantime, the window says so instead of sending.
Each row has two smaller actions. Copy email copies the address, if you prefer to write from your own mailbox. Dismiss moves the cart to the Dismissed status; Restore brings a dismissed cart back. A dismissal applies everywhere, including the Operations view of the dashboard.
Recover several carts at once
Select the carts
Tick the boxes of rows with the status Abandoned. Carts that someone already wrote to, that were bought or that were dismissed cannot be selected. Click Recover selected at the top of the page. One send takes up to 100 carts.
Write one text and send
The window shows the recipients under To: and two options. Your text is one text for
everyone: the Subject and Message fields start with a draft in the language of most of the
carts. The + First name, + Product and + Cart link buttons insert {{ firstName }}, {{ productName }} and {{ checkoutUrl }}, which each person gets with their own details. Without
the link in the text, a Finish your order button is added at the end. Under the text you see a
Preview for the first person. Standard email sends everyone the ready-made email in their
cart's language, the same one as Recover on a row. Click the send button with the email count,
for example Send 12 emails. Each person gets a separate email with the link to their own cart.
After the send, the Recovery emails sent window says how many emails went out and how many were skipped, with the reason for each group.
Who is skipped
Zanfia checks every cart right before sending and skips it when an email makes no sense or could do harm. Skipped people get nothing, and the rest of the send goes ahead.
| Reason in the result window | What it means |
|---|---|
| already paid | The person bought the product after abandoning the cart. |
| already got a recovery email | Someone already wrote to this cart: you, the agent or a workflow. A bulk send leaves it out. |
| came back to the checkout | The cart is no longer abandoned. |
| the offer has no public checkout link | There is no link to bring the person back to. |
| address bounced or is blocked | The address is on the list of addresses Zanfia does not send to. |
| unsubscribed from your marketing emails | The person unsubscribed from your marketing emails. |
| address got too many emails lately | This address has received too many emails from you recently. |
Send again on a row lets you write once more to someone who already got a recovery email, but it also skips blocked and unsubscribed addresses and addresses that got too many emails lately. Every recovery email has a link at the bottom to unsubscribe from your marketing emails.
Recover carts with the agent
The agent sees the same list. Ask it, for example: "Show my abandoned carts from the last 7 days and help me recover them." It lists the people, products and statuses, and when you ask it to send, it shows the recipients and a draft email. Nothing goes out without your approval: you approve the whole send with one click on the card in the chat, and the agent then tells you how many emails went out and how many were skipped. The same skip rules apply as in the tab. On the dashboard, the Ask agent button (or Ask with your agent's name) next to the abandoned-carts hint asks this question for you.
Send recovery emails automatically
Create the ready-made workflow
When you have no active recovery workflow, the Abandoned carts tab shows a Set up the
automation button. You can also open Workflows (/workflows), open the menu next to New
workflow and choose Recover abandoned checkouts. The recipe creates a workflow that waits 15
minutes after a visitor abandons a checkout, then emails their saved checkout link. Workflows are
available on every plan.
Review and publish
The workflow starts with the Checkout abandoned trigger and contains a Recovery email with
the subject You left {{ productName }} waiting and a body that uses {{ firstName }}, {{ productName }} and {{ checkoutUrl }}. Edit the text as you like, then publish the workflow.
Until it is published it does not recover anything; the tab and the dashboard remind you about an
inactive recovery workflow. A workflow only writes to carts abandoned after it was published; you
recover older carts from the tab.
Before every email or SMS step of the workflow, Zanfia checks the visitor again. Someone who has come back to the checkout is not emailed at that step. Someone who has bought the product is not emailed either, and their run ends there, so no later reminder reaches them. You do not need to add a "did they buy" condition for this; the run log shows "Skipped: this person already bought the product, the run ended". See Workflow runs and retries.
What the customer gets
The link in the recovery email opens the visitor's saved checkout with their details already filled in, so they can pay in one step. Once they pay, the order appears under Transactions like any other, and the cart gets the status Bought later in the tab.
Good to know
The dashboard also suggests abandoned carts: in the Pulse view, the line N high-intent carts
were abandoned this week with a Recover button shows carts from the last 7 days, and the
Operations view lists them in its Checkouts section. A checkout's own Analytics view
(/checkouts/<id>/analytics) lists its sessions, including the ones marked Abandoned.
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