Email cart recovery still matters. WhatsApp recovery works when the shopper already chose WhatsApp as a channel — not when you surprise them with a marketing template they never agreed to.
A sequence we implement, then tune: (1) a short reminder with the cart contents and a checkout link, sent after a sensible wait, not five minutes after they left to compare sizes; (2) a utility-style note if stock is limited, only when that is true; (3) a help offer — size, pincode, payment — with a path to a human; (4) a reminder with a reason to return that is not a mystery discount; (5) a quiet close and an easy STOP.
Templates have to get approved and they have to protect your quality rating. That means no ALL CAPS urgency, no fake scarcity, and a landing URL that matches the business. The sequence reads the cart from Shopify (or your OMS), not a generic “you left something behind”.
Connect the result: recovered orders should show up in the same reporting as the store, with UTMs and a WhatsApp attribution you can defend. Otherwise the channel becomes a faith-based line item.
Use the estimator on this site with your abandoned-cart count, AOV and a conservative recovery rate. Change the rate. The point is a planning range, not a promise. We would rather show you a modest number you can beat than a slide that does not survive contact with Meta’s policies.