Klaviyo Added to Cart not working? How to find the break

This is for Shopify founders who opened their cart flow, saw almost nothing coming through, and want a straight checklist to find the break.

How does Klaviyo's Added to Cart event work now?

Klaviyo used to track Added to Cart with a code snippet in your Shopify theme. Now there's an automatic version. Per Klaviyo's help center, the new event syncs through Shopify pixels instead of a code snippet in your theme. Klaviyo also notes it isn't deprecating the old snippet yet, which is exactly why so many accounts end up with both.

So you can have two Added to Cart metrics side by side. Klaviyo marks them differently: the Shopify-branded event has a Shopify icon next to it, and the snippet event has a gear icon. When in doubt, check the metric's name and source too, not just the icon.

Why is my Klaviyo abandoned cart flow not triggering?

Here are the three causes, in the order I'd check them.

1. Tracking isn't on. The Shopify-branded event only comes through once "Track behavioral events" is checked in your Shopify integration settings. If it's off, your cart flow has nothing to trigger on.

2. Your flow is listening to the wrong metric. If your cart flow was built on the snippet version of Added to Cart, it keeps listening to that metric. Klaviyo doesn't move your flows to the new event for you. A flow triggered by one metric won't see events from the other, so if the snippet stopped sending and the flow is still on it, the flow goes quiet.

3. Klaviyo doesn't know who the shopper is. This is the one that surprises people. Klaviyo's troubleshooting note for this event says profiles have to be identified, for example by submitting a form, entering their info at checkout, or logging in.

So if someone adds to cart before Klaviyo knows who they are, there's no Added to Cart event for that person to trigger your flow. Nothing looks broken in your account. The flow just doesn't fire.

How do I check my Klaviyo Added to Cart setup, step by step?

Here's how I'd walk through it in your own account.

1. Turn on behavioral tracking. In Klaviyo, go to Integrations, then Shopify. Under Onsite Tracking, check "Track behavioral events" and click Update Settings. While you're there, confirm the Klaviyo app embed is toggled on in your Shopify theme, and turn it back on if you've switched themes since, because a new theme needs it re-enabled. I cover the rest of the integration in Klaviyo setup for Shopify.
2. Check which Added to Cart metric your flow uses. Open your abandoned cart flow and look at the trigger. Shopify icon means the new event. Gear icon likely means the snippet. If it's the snippet, Klaviyo's migration steps are: clone the flow, pick the Shopify-branded Added to Cart in the Trigger dropdown, click Clone flow, then set the old flow to Draft and the new one to Live. Before you go live, I'd send yourself a test of every email, since the new event's data looks a little different (more on that below).
3. Fix your segments too. Per Klaviyo, any segment that uses the old metric needs an OR condition that mirrors the original one with the Shopify-branded metric. If all the conditions are negative ("has not added to cart"), Klaviyo says to use AND instead.
4. Run a clean test. Klaviyo recommends waiting about 15 minutes after turning tracking on before you test. Identify yourself first: submit a form, enter your email at checkout, or log in. Then add a product to your cart. Open your own profile in Klaviyo and look for the Shopify-branded Added to Cart event. If you add to cart first and identify yourself after, you won't see it, and you'll think it's broken when it isn't.
5. Sanity-check the volume. More people add to cart than start checkout. So over the same stretch of time, your Added to Cart count in Klaviyo should usually be higher than the number of people entering your abandoned checkout email flow. If it's lower, or about the same, something upstream is dropping events.
6. Look at how shoppers get identified. If most of your traffic never fills out a form or logs in, most of your carts are invisible to this flow. Look at your signup form: is it showing early enough that people get identified before they shop? I go deeper on that in signup form conversion rate.
7. Remove the snippet last. Klaviyo's recommended order is: turn on the new tracking, update your segments and flows, then remove the snippet from your theme. If you use a product feed of cart items, switch it to "Products a customer has added to cart (Shopify)."

What else changes with the new Added to Cart event?

A few things catch people after the switch. All four come from Klaviyo's migration guide, checked today.

• It records one item, not the cart. The event tracks the single item just added and doesn't include other items already in the cart. If your cart email says "everything in your cart," it may only show the last thing they added.
• Price is a number now. Price comes through as a number (4 instead of $4.00), so you may need to add currency formatting in your template. Klaviyo's guide gives the formatting tag to use.
• The event data can't be customized. What Shopify sends is what you get.
• Consent can block tracking. Depending on your Shopify Customer Privacy settings, Klaviyo may not track visitors in the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland without consent.

Why is it worth fixing right away?

Because a cart flow isn't one email, and the later emails pull their weight.

Across 4 consumable brands I work with, cart abandon email #5 still earns about $0.25 per person, the same as email #3. That's why I keep cart flows long. It also means that when the trigger breaks, you're not losing one email. You're losing every email in the sequence, for every shopper who adds to cart and leaves.

It's also the gap your other flows can't cover. If shoppers make it to checkout, your abandoned checkout flow still catches them, because that runs on a different event. But anyone who adds to cart and leaves before checkout depends on this one. If you're fuzzy on which flow does what, I break it down in abandoned cart vs abandoned checkout, and you can see where the cart flow sits in the full build in Klaviyo flows for CPG brands.

Test it early, too. Abandonment emails are where you learn what gets people across the finish line when they're close to buying, and you can't learn anything from a flow that never sends.

Where these numbers come from

The cart flow numbers come from 4 consumable brands I work with: 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. It's a small sample, so treat it as directional.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.

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