Abandoned cart and checkout emails sent dropped

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

A Shopify store experienced a significant drop in abandoned cart and checkout emails after switching from the Dawn theme to the third-party Shella theme on January 7th, 2025. The store uses Omnisend for automated email marketing triggered by cart additions and checkout starts.

Potential causes explored:

  • Theme compatibility issues with event tracking
  • AJAX/cart drawer functionality possibly not triggering proper events
  • Integration script problems between Shella and Omnisend

Key findings:

  • Omnisend Support confirmed their tracking embeds are present and functioning correctly in the new theme
  • Customer events are being delivered to Omnisend’s database
  • Email metrics (sent, opened, clicked) appear consistent before and after the theme switch according to Omnisend
  • The store owner has extensive customizations making theme reversion difficult

Current status:
The issue remains unresolved with conflicting data—the store owner observes fewer emails being sent while Omnisend reports normal operation. Omnisend requested specific customer examples to investigate potential edge cases. The discussion suggests this may involve AJAX implementation differences between themes affecting event triggers.

Summarized with AI on October 28. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi fellas,

After January 8th 2025, we noticed a sharp drop in the number of abandoned cart and checkout emails being sent. The day before, on January 7th, we switched our theme from Shopify’s “Dawn” theme to “Shella” (a third-party theme from ThemeForest).

We use Omnisend for email marketing. We have an automated email series set up for cart and checkout abandonment. These emails are triggered in two cases:

  1. When someone starts the checkout process but doesn’t complete their purchase.

  2. When someone adds a product to their cart but doesn’t proceed to checkout.

I’m not entirely sure how these email triggers work under the hood — whether they’re handled by Shopify, Omnisend, or a combination of both.

Could this theme change be affecting how the abandoned cart flow is triggered? Or what could possibly result in such dramatic drop?

Website traffic kept increasing during these date range.

I am really in need of any ideas. Anything comes to your mind, please leave a comment.

2

Hi Efe,

I would like to suggest some solutions and you can go through it or give a try to see where the problem occurs-

  1. Revert to the Dawn theme temporarily to confirm if the issue is theme-related.
  2. Contact Omnisend support and ask if events (e.g., Add to Cart, Checkout Started) are still being tracked after the theme switch.
  3. Ensure Omnisend scripts are installed in theme.liquid (look for omnisend-tracking.js or window.omnisend).
  4. If using an Ajax/cart drawer, ensure it triggers Add to Cart events — Shella may skip this.
  5. Add manual JS event tracking in the cart button if necessary (I can help with code).
  6. Use Chrome DevTools to inspect if Omnisend events are firing when adding to cart or starting checkout.
  7. Install Omnisend’s Shopify App again to reinject necessary scripts.
  8. Use Omnisend’s “Live View” to test whether a session is being tracked properly.
  9. Consider switching to native Shopify checkout only for better compatibility.
  10. Log traffic vs. event drops in analytics to prove it’s a theme-related issue.

Custom code fix: Work with a developer (or I can give you solution regarding the code) to re-add event tracking hooks that Omnisend requires.

3

Hi there Steven!

Thank you for your comprehensive respond. I will answer one by one.

  1. It is not easy to revert to dawn, because i have so much customizations on my new theme.
  2. Yes I checked with Omnisend, everything seems normal.
  3. No need to manually add scripts for omnisend, you just need to switch on the app in theme editor.
  4. Ajax is %99 used in the theme but I am checking with Shella now. This is my biggest concern now, AJAX is almost mandatory in modern themes but maybe it affects the events i don’t know.
  5. Let’s try other ways first, thanks again.
  6. Omnisend verified that customer events are delivered to omnisend database.
  7. Omnisend verified that we’re all set, if I can’t find a proper solution until tomorrow i am trying it.
  8. Yes it tracks pretty good for registered customers.
  9. Maaaayybe.
  10. How exactly?
4

Hi there :waving_hand:

We noticed Omnisend was kindly mentioned in this thread, and we hope you don’t mind us joining the conversation to share some insights that might help clarify the situation.

Our technical team took the liberty to have a closer look at your Omnisend account, and from what we can see so far, the key metrics for your abandoned cart and checkout automation flows — such as emails sent, opened, and clicked — have remained quite consistent before and after the theme switch.
Additionally, we double-checked the integration from our side, and the embeds responsible for tracking cart and checkout events are indeed present and functioning as expected within your new theme:

"embedBlocks" : {
				"isSnippetBlockEnabled" : true,
				"isSnippetBlockEnabledInActiveTheme" : true,
				"isSupported" : true,

Given this, everything seems to be running smoothly on the Omnisend side with the new theme in place.

That being said, if you or any of your customers noticed specific cases where they abandoned their cart or checkout and didn’t receive the expected email — that could help us narrow down if there is an isolated scenario or edge case worth deeper investigation.

As these details might be sensitive or contain customer data, we’d warmly encourage you to reach out directly to our support team either via the in-app chat or by dropping us an email at support@omnisend.com. Our team would be more than happy to give this a closer look for you.

Ensuring you catch every potential customer and don’t miss a single opportunity is extremely important to us — and we’ll gladly work alongside you to make sure your automations are firing on all cylinders.

Hope this helps and looking forward to hearing from you if you’d like us to dig deeper!