Bring opted-in shoppers back to unfinished checkouts
A shopper who reaches your checkout and stops has not necessarily decided against buying. When your own shop system decides that checkout has gone cold, it calls Endelir, and Endelir sends one approved Marketing template with a link back to the purchase they had started. It goes only to contacts who gave you marketing permission, and the trigger comes from your side, not ours.
The order that got as far as the checkout
A shopper picks two items, opens the checkout, and stops. The card is in the other room, the delivery charge was a surprise, the phone rang. Nothing about that is a decision not to buy — it is an interruption, and by the evening the tab is closed and the whole thing is forgotten.
The usual answer is an email an hour later, which lands in a promotions folder next to nine others. Meanwhile the shop's own record is clear enough: it knows the checkout was started, what was in it, and that no payment ever arrived. The gap is not knowledge. It is that nothing acts on what the shop already knows.
Your shop decides; Endelir does the asking
Endelir gives your workspace a REST API. When your shop decides a checkout has gone cold — after whatever delay you settle on, and only after it has confirmed no order was placed — it calls Endelir with the shopper's number, the approved template to use, and the values that go into it: the item, the amount, the link back to their checkout. Endelir sends it and logs it against the contact.
Endelir is not the shop and does not watch it. There is no cart-tracking screen here, no rule that says a checkout is abandoned after forty minutes, and no packaged Shopify or WooCommerce switch to turn on today. Those two are built and held closed until each passes live acceptance, and what they carry is order events rather than abandoned checkouts. The timing and the still-unpaid check belong to your side. What Endelir owns is the permission, the send, and every reply that comes back.
How it works
- 1 A shopper starts a checkout Your shop records the attempt in the ordinary way — items, amount, phone number, and a link that takes them back to it.
- 2 Permission is already on file The number is a contact in Endelir with recorded marketing consent. Without that consent the reminder is refused, so the permission is collected at the shop, before any of this.
- 3 Your delay runs An hour, four hours, a day — the wait is set in your system, because your system is the one holding the checkout.
- 4 Your shop checks the order is still unpaid This is the step that matters most. The reminder is only worth sending while it is still true.
- 5 Endelir sends the approved template One call to the API. The template is in the Marketing category, approved by Meta in advance, and it carries the item, the amount and the link you passed in.
- 6 The shopper taps the link It takes them back to the checkout they had started, not to your home page to begin again.
- 7 A completed order ends the sequence Once payment lands, your shop stops calling. Nothing in Endelir will keep reminding someone about a cart they have already paid for.
What this looks like in practice
A retailer selling homeware takes the shopper's number at checkout, with a clear tick box asking permission to send offers and reminders on WhatsApp. That tick is written to Endelir as recorded consent on the contact, along with the shopper's name.
Four hours after a checkout is left unfinished, the shop's own job runs, confirms no payment arrived, and calls Endelir once for that shopper. The message names the two items and carries a link back to the same checkout. One shopper replies to ask whether the lamp comes in black; that question lands in the shared inbox and is answered by a person on the same thread as the reminder.
What happens when the shopper replies
Who this suits
What to know before you set it up
An abandoned-cart reminder is a Marketing message. Meta names it as one, and it does not become a Utility message because the shopper chose the items themselves — no order exists yet, so there is no transaction for a service update to be about. Submit the template in the Marketing category and treat it as promotional throughout. Endelir refuses to send a Marketing template to a contact with no recorded consent, and refuses it for anyone who has opted out, so the permission has to be collected honestly at the shop and written to the contact before the first reminder is due.
The trigger is a call from your side. Endelir cannot see your checkout, does not decide when a cart has gone cold, and cannot tell you whether the item is still in stock. The Shopify and WooCommerce integrations are built and switched off in production, and what they carry when they open is order events — created, updated, paid, fulfilled, cancelled — not abandoned checkouts. So budget a little developer time on the shop for the delay, the still-unpaid check and the API call. If you already run an email recovery sequence, the same job usually knows enough to make this call too.
Restraint pays here. One reminder is a service; three is a nuisance, and the opt-outs after each send will tell you which you sent. A discount on every abandoned cart teaches shoppers to abandon one, so start with a plain reminder and keep an incentive for a later step if you use one at all. Templates are reviewed by Meta before they can be used and that decision is Meta's, not ours. How many messages your plan includes is on the pricing page, and the software enforces it exactly.
What to watch
- How many unfinished checkouts get a reminder at all
- How many sends are refused for want of recorded consent
- Orders completed after a reminder, counted by your shop rather than by us
- How long after the checkout the message actually goes out
- Replies per reminder, and what the objection turns out to be
- Opt-outs in the days after each send
- Reminders that went out for a cart already paid for — this should be zero
Related
Questions people ask
Are WhatsApp abandoned-cart messages Marketing messages?
Yes. Meta names abandoned-cart reminders as a Marketing use case, and the template should be submitted in that category. It is tempting to argue they are Utility, on the grounds that the shopper picked the items themselves — but no order exists yet, and a Utility message is about a transaction that has actually happened. Sending a promotion under a Utility template is the sort of thing that costs a business its template approvals, and sometimes more. Category it honestly and the rest of the workflow is straightforward.
Do customers need to opt in before I send an abandoned-cart WhatsApp message?
Yes. Business-initiated marketing on WhatsApp rests on permission, and a phone number typed into a checkout is not permission on its own — it was given so you could arrange delivery. Ask separately and plainly at the checkout, in words the shopper can understand, and record what they agreed to. Endelir enforces this at the send: a Marketing template to a contact with no recorded consent is refused, as it is for anyone who has opted out. That refusal protects you more than it inconveniences you.
How soon should an abandoned-cart WhatsApp message be sent?
There is no single right delay, and any number quoted as one is somebody's guess. A small impulse buy and a sofa are not abandoned for the same reasons, and a shopper who stopped ten minutes ago may simply have gone to find their card. Pick a delay that matches how long your customers normally take to decide, then change it once you have watched a few weeks. The technical rule matters more than the timing: whatever delay you choose, your shop must confirm the order is still incomplete immediately before each message. Endelir sends what you ask it to send, so that check is yours to make.
What happens if the customer completes the order before the reminder?
The sequence stops, because your shop stops calling. Endelir has no standing job that keeps reminding people — every message is a call from your side, so an order that completes at minute fifty simply means the call at minute sixty is never made. Getting this right is worth the small amount of code it takes. Telling someone their cart is waiting when they paid an hour ago reads as carelessness, and it invites a reply your team then has to apologise for.
Can the WhatsApp message take the customer back to their cart?
Yes, when your shop can produce a link that reopens the checkout. Endelir does not generate that link — your system passes it in with the rest of the template values, and the message carries it. Most shop platforms expose a recovery URL of some kind, and the same one your email sequence uses will usually do. How much of the URL can vary from message to message is decided when the template is approved, so agree the shape of the link before you submit the template rather than after.
Should every abandoned-cart message contain a discount?
No, and the habit is expensive. If a code arrives every time someone leaves a checkout, shoppers learn to leave the checkout — you end up paying a discount on orders that would have completed on their own. A first reminder that names the items and links back to the same checkout removes the friction that actually stopped most of them. If you want to use an incentive, keep it for a later step, for higher-value baskets, or for the shopper who replied and told you the price was the problem.
Can I send more than one abandoned-cart reminder?
A short sequence is possible — your shop simply makes a second call after a longer delay — but two is usually the sensible ceiling and one is often enough. Every step has to earn itself. Before each call, check the order is still incomplete, that the contact still has marketing consent and has not opted out, and that what you are about to say is still true: an item that has since gone out of stock makes a reminder worse than no message at all, and Endelir cannot see your stock to catch that for you. Watch the opt-outs after each step. They are the clearest signal you have that a sequence has gone one message too far.
Give unfinished checkouts another chance to become orders.
Connect your business number, and let the system that already holds your checkouts send the reminder. We set the number up with you on a call, and we will tell you honestly what your shop has to do on its side.
14 days free. No credit card. We call you to set the number up.