Abandoned cart recovery
Updated October 13, 2026
Email shoppers who leave checkout without paying, with up to three reminders, optional discounts and a cart restore link. This needs TierMint Pro.
Which carts TierMint can recover
TierMint creates a pending order when a buyer submits the checkout form. If the buyer leaves without paying, that pending order is the abandoned cart. Cart recovery works from it.
A cart qualifies when:
- The order is a new purchase, not a renewal.
- The order has the buyer's email address.
- The order is still pending, or has been marked abandoned.
TierMint does not check what kind of purchase the order is or whether a payment is in progress. A PayPal subscription with a free trial stays pending through the trial, and a PayPal payment that PayPal reports as pending also stays pending. Both can get recovery emails until the order completes or reaches the maximum cart age.
A visitor who only browsed, or put items in the cart but never submitted checkout, gives TierMint no email address, so TierMint cannot email them.
An order whose payment never started is marked Abandoned after 48 hours. Most checkout orders already have a payment started when they are created, so they stay pending. Recovery treats both the same, and emails can go out up to the maximum cart age you set.
Set up the reminder emails
Recovery is on by default, with one reminder an hour after checkout. To change it:
- Open TierMint → Settings → Recovery.
- Change the settings in the table below.
- Click Save.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Send cart recovery emails | On | Turns recovery emails on or off. |
| Enable email 1, 2, 3 | Email 1 on, 2 and 3 off | Turns each reminder on or off. You can use any mix, for example emails 1 and 3. |
| Send email (number) after (hours) | 1, 24 and 72 | The wait, counted from when the pending order was created. Each enabled email must wait longer than the one before it. |
| Email (number) subject | Blank | The subject line. Blank uses "You left something behind at (store name)". |
| Email (number) discount | No discount | A discount code to apply to the cart. Pick a code discount, not an automatic one. See Adding a discount to a step. |
| Maximum cart age (hours) | 48 | A cart older than this is never emailed. It must be at least one hour more than the last enabled email's wait. |
| Restore link lifetime (days) | 3 | How long the link in each email works. |
| Attribution window (days) | 3 | How long after the last email a purchase still counts as recovered. |
| Keep recovery records for (days) | 90 | How long recovered and expired records stay before TierMint deletes them. |
TierMint checks the settings when you save. The save is refused when two enabled emails are out of order, when the maximum cart age does not clear the last enabled email, or when a chosen discount no longer exists. For example, to turn on email 3 at 72 hours, raise Maximum cart age (hours) to at least 73.
TierMint looks for due reminders once an hour through Action Scheduler, so an email can go out up to an hour after its wait ends. The schedule needs WP-Cron or a real cron job on your server.
Each email has a Complete your purchase button with the restore link. One email is sent per step for each cart, and the sequence stops once the buyer pays. Each hourly run sends at most 50 carts per step, so a large backlog clears over several runs.
Adding a discount to a step
Any email can carry a discount to bring the buyer back. Pick one of your code discounts in that email's Email (number) discount list. The list shows up to 100 discounts and also includes automatic discounts, but checkout refuses an automatic discount's code, so do not pick one.
When that email goes out:
- It tells the buyer that a code has been applied to their cart, and names the code.
- The restore link applies the code, so checkout shows the discounted total when the buyer arrives.
The restore link applies the discount of the latest email sent to that cart. If that email had no discount, the link applies no code, even when an earlier email had one. To keep the discount on later emails, set the same discount on each of them. TierMint uses the discount's current code, so a code you renamed later still works.
A subscription cart cannot take a discount code: checkout refuses it with "Discount codes cannot be applied to subscriptions yet." Recovery emails go to subscription carts too, so if you sell subscriptions, a discount on a step reaches those buyers as a code that fails.
If the discount is deleted, switched off or outside its dates when an email is due, the email goes out without a discount. The same check runs when the buyer clicks the link: a dead code is left out and the cart is restored at full price.
A code from a recovery email meets automatic sales the same way as any code. The discounts page explains how they combine.
What the restore link does
When the buyer clicks Complete your purchase, TierMint:
- Replaces the buyer's current cart with the items from the abandoned order.
- Prices them from your current catalog. If you changed a price since, the buyer pays the new price.
- Leaves out any item that is no longer for sale, and restores the rest.
- Applies the discount of the latest email, if it had one.
- Opens your checkout page, ready to pay.
The link points at the page set as Checkout page under TierMint → Settings → General, or at your home page when none is set.
The link is signed for one cart. An edited link, or one older than the link lifetime, restores nothing, and the buyer lands on the checkout page with their current cart. The link only works when the buyer opens it as a page, not when another site loads it in the background. With Send cart recovery emails off, the link still restores the cart but applies no discount.
Track recovered carts
Open TierMint → Cart recovery. Anyone who can view TierMint reports can open it.
The top of the screen shows five figures for the period you pick: Carts tracked, Carts recovered, Recovery rate, Emails sent and Recovered revenue. Carts tracked counts carts that have been emailed. Period (the last 7, 30, 90 or 365 days) sets the range for those figures only. Below them, you can search by email and filter the table by Status.
The table lists each tracked cart with its order, email, item count, value, status, the number of emails sent and the time of the last one. Click Show details on a row to see:
- The cart contents: product, plan, quantity and total.
- The Email timeline: each email sent, its time, and the code it carried.
- A Freshly generated restore link, with a Copy link button.
The restore link is created when you open the row, so it works for the full link lifetime from that moment. Use it to answer a buyer whose emailed link has expired.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Emailed | At least one reminder has gone out. TierMint starts tracking a cart when its first email is sent. |
| Recovered | The buyer completed a purchase within the attribution window. |
| Expired | Closed without recovery. TierMint closes a buyer's other open carts when one of their carts is recovered. Nothing else moves an Emailed cart to Expired. |
Delete saved carts
Users who can manage TierMint, such as administrators, can delete saved carts. Users who can only view reports see the screen without these controls.
- Tick the carts you want, or the box in the header row.
- Pick Delete from Bulk actions.
- Click Apply and confirm.
Deleting removes the recovery record and its email history only. The order stays under TierMint → Orders. TierMint deletes each cart separately, and a notice names any cart it could not delete.
How recovered sales are counted
A completed purchase counts as recovered when:
- It uses the same email address as a cart that was emailed.
- It completes within the attribution window after the latest email to that address.
The buyer does not have to use the restore link. Renewals and plan upgrades never count as recovered sales.
Every day, TierMint deletes recovered and expired records older than Keep recovery records for (days), and any record whose order no longer exists. The figures at the top of the screen only look back as far as the records that are kept.
For developers
Most settings on the Recovery tab have a filter, and a filter value wins over the setting. The email switch, subjects and discounts have none. Time values are in seconds. TierMint enforces a minimum of 1 hour for the attribution window, the link lifetime and the abandoned order age, and 1 day for record retention.
| Filter | What it changes | Default |
|---|---|---|
tiermint_cart_recovery_delay |
The first enabled email's wait. TierMint never waits less than 5 minutes. | The setting, 3600 (1 hour) |
tiermint_cart_recovery_step_delay |
An email's wait. It also receives the step number. TierMint keeps the waits in order. | The setting for that step |
tiermint_cart_recovery_max_age |
The maximum cart age. | The setting, 172800 (48 hours) |
tiermint_cart_recovery_link_ttl |
How long a restore link works. | The setting, 259200 (3 days) |
tiermint_cart_recovery_attribution_window |
How long after the last email a purchase counts as recovered. | The setting, 259200 (3 days) |
tiermint_cart_recovery_retention |
How long recovered and expired records are kept. | The setting, 7776000 (90 days) |
tiermint_cart_recovery_url |
The page a restore link opens. | The checkout page, or the home page |
tiermint_abandoned_order_age |
How old a pending order is before TierMint marks it abandoned. | 172800 (48 hours) |
You can change the email's wording with a theme override at tiermint/emails/cart-abandonment.php in your theme folder.
Common questions
Why are no recovery emails going out?
Check these:
- Send cart recovery emails is on, and at least one email is enabled.
- The first email's wait has passed since the buyer submitted the checkout form.
- Your site's cron runs. The hourly check uses Action Scheduler, which needs WP-Cron or a server cron job.
- The order is a pending or abandoned purchase with an email address, and is younger than the maximum cart age.
How do I add a second or third reminder?
Open TierMint → Settings → Recovery, turn on email 2 or 3, give each a longer wait than the one before, and save. Raise the maximum cart age if the save asks for it.
A buyer says the restore link does not work. What can I do?
The link has probably expired. Open the cart under TierMint → Cart recovery, click Show details, and send the buyer the freshly generated link.
Does the restore link keep the price the buyer saw?
No. The cart is priced from your current catalog, and any discount from the email applies on top.
A buyer paid, but the sale is not marked as recovered. Why?
The purchase used another email address, or it came after the attribution window. It is then a normal sale.
Does deleting a saved cart delete its order?
No. Deleting removes the recovery record only. The order stays under TierMint → Orders.
Do I need to set anything in Stripe for cart recovery?
No. The pending order, the emails, the restore link and the recovery count all run inside TierMint. Stripe or PayPal is involved only when the buyer pays.