The checkout recovery glossary: every term in plain English

Every term you’ll meet in checkout recovery and recovery mail, defined the way we’d explain it across a table. Words in links go deeper.

Abandoned checkout

A checkout where the shopper entered contact details but never completed payment. Shopify records it — cart contents, value, email — the moment it happens; recovery starts from that record.

Attribution

Deciding whether a completed order counts as recovered. Honest rules match the same shopper and the same cart within a bounded window. The full logic.

Attribution window

The time limit on claiming a recovery — a completion weeks after the last touch is ordinary shopping, not your email’s trophy.

Bleed

Extra artwork past a print’s trim line (0.125″ per side) so cutting drift never leaves white edges. Design specs, explained.

Cancel window

The hold between queuing a recovery postcard and printing it. A completion inside the window cancels the card — unprinted, unbilled.

Capped amount

The ceiling on an app’s usage charges approved up front — Shopify refuses charges beyond it. How app billing works.

Cart value

The total of an abandoned checkout — the number that decides whether the cart earns the postcard rung or just the free emails.

DPI (dots per inch)

Print resolution. ~300 DPI prints crisp; below ~180 goes soft. A 4×6 card wants 1875×1275-pixel artwork.

Delivery-synced email

An email timed to a postcard’s physical arrival ("check your mailbox today") — paper and inbox reinforcing each other.

Holdout

A random slice of carts deliberately excluded from recovery so the touched-vs-untouched gap reveals what recovery caused. Why it matters.

Incremental recovery

Completions your recovery caused, above the carts that would have returned on their own. The honest version of "recovered revenue."

Live link (saved checkout link)

A durable URL that reopens the shopper’s exact saved checkout — contents, quantities, details intact. What the recovery QR encodes.

Minimum cart (threshold)

The cart value below which no postcard mails — the rule that keeps every card profitable. Set it with arithmetic.

Recovery ladder

The escalation sequence: nudge email → substantive reminder → decision-point email → postcard for high-value holdouts. The timing of each rung.

Recovery rate

Recovered carts divided by touched carts. Meaningful only alongside the rules that counted the recoveries.

Return address

The sender address printed on every card — required by postal norms, where undeliverable mail comes home, and the thing this app is named after.

Safe zone

The margin inside a print’s trim where content survives cutting drift — plus the reserved area on a postcard back where USPS prints the address and barcode.

Skip reason

The recorded explanation when a recovery deliberately did not send: completed first, under minimum, unsubscribed, unmailable address, spend cap reached.

Spend cap

A monthly mail budget set in the app and checked before each card — your self-imposed limit under Shopify’s capped amount.

Suppression list

Addresses the tool must never email again (unsubscribes, complaints). Outranks every sequence, forever.

Usage charge (usage record)

A per-piece fee recorded against your Shopify subscription as it happens — how pay-per-postcard billing lands on one invoice.