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Abandoned Cart Message

Abandon Cart Overview

A cart event trigger initiates an automated message that targets a customer who has shopped on your website, added items to their cart and then abandoned the shopping experience.

This message can be delivered automatically, and in a truly 1:1 fashion, to promote each of the unique items that were left in the cart. This may include images of the product, links back to the cart or product page and descriptions of the product.

Get creative! Incentivize customers with a discount, free shipping or a compelling call to action that rekindles their interest. The abandoned cart email, although a lower volume campaign, can yield high engagement and a great conversion rate.

Implementing the Trigger

In order for the abandon cart message to send, there needs to be data sent to the system that will trigger the automation.

In the case of an abandon cart message, we will use the trigger of when a contact adds an item to the cart. If the item is ordered, we will then cancel the message based on an order event.

This strategy utilizes 3 primary pieces of data:

  1. Cart attribute
    1. Purpose: Used to personalize the body of the message with the actual items left in the cart.
    2. Data type: An object stored as contact attribute data.   The object contains an array of cartitem objects each describing the items in the cart.
  2. "Cart" event
    1. Purpose: This named event is used to simply trigger the actual message sending process. It is not necessary to pass any properties along with this event as the details of the cart will be written to the cart attribute above.
    2. Data type:  Event data stored in the contactactivities collection.
    3. Note: The actual name of the event is up to the client, but we typically recommend "cart".
  3. "Order" event
    1. Purpose: This event will be used to cancel the actual message sending process if a purchase occurs during the timeframe between the cart event and the message send (per the custom delay).
    2. Data type: Event data stored in the contactactivities collection.
    3. Note: The actual name of the event is up to the client, but we typically recommend "order".

There are 2 implementations you can use to send the data to cordial:

Javascript Listener Implementation

Prerequisite - assumes the user's browser has a cookie which holds the contact ID.  There are 2 ways this cookie may be set:

  1. A cookie will be set when a contact arrives on the site via a tracked link clicked from an email. In this case, a first party cookie is automatically written with the contact ID.
  2. The second way a cookie may be set is by calling a basic identification function in javascript. When a customer logs into a site/store or provides their email address via a form submission (Ex: newsletter sign up form), a function may be called to pass the email address to Cordial.  The cordial.identify sets the cookie and the cordial.contact adds or updates a contact record. 
    cordial.identify(emailaddress);
cordial.contact();

    Learn more about the identify and contact methods.

When a cart is updated, run the following functions:

cordial.event('cart');
cordial.clearcart();
cordial.cartitem('action',[array of cartitemObjects]);

There are 2 possible actions for the cordial.cartitem method: 'add' or 'remove'.

  • 'add' - will add a new cart item record or increment the quantity of an existing record.
  • 'remove' - will remove an existing cart item (supports a single object of cartitems).

Full details on working with a single or an array of cart items.

Best practice for managing the cart state - Although we do support the ability to "add" or "remove" individual items to the cart object, most implementations simplify the management of the cart state by calling cordial.clearcart() and then cordial.cartitem('add',[items]); on each cart event, effectively clearing and repopulating the entire cart object. This assumes the front end has access to all of the items in a given cart.

When an order is placed (checkout), run the following functions:

cordial.clearcart();
cordial.order('action',orderObject);
cordial.event('order');

Full details on the order object

Note: the cordial.order('action',orderObject); call is optional, and not required for cart abandonment. However it is highly recommended that order data is passed using either this method or the REST API when an order is placed in order to take advantage of segmentation by purchase behavior.

REST API Implementation (server-side alternative to javascript)

Note: The REST API Implementation is an alternative method to the Embedded Javascript Listener. This is a server-side approach to sending the same data.

Assumes the contact has been identified as part of the session.

Methods to call when a cart is updated:

Methods to call when an order/purchase occurs:

Creating an Automated Message

Now that we have the appropriate data points (passed by either the js listener or the REST API) we can set up the event triggered automation template.

In the navigation menu choose "Message Automation" and click "Create New Automation".

In the left panel under "Sending Method", click "Event Triggered".

For "Trigger event", choose "Custom Event" and the choose "cart" (the "cart" option will appear in this menu as soon as the first event has been passed to the account).

For "Delivery Time" choose "Delay Sending". Set the delay to 2 hours (or whatever interval makes sense for your shopping experience).

For "Handling events triggered during delay", there are a series of conditions that can be set.

For the first condition: "If cart Then" select "restart the delay time" (this ensures the full 2 hour delay is respected if other cart events occur after the initial event).

Add a second condition: If "order" Then cancel sending (this ensures that the cart abandonment email is not sent if the customer actually completes the order before the delay time ends).

For "How often can this message be sent to an individual" select "Custom Interval" and set as 1 time per 7 days. The frequency limit can be set to whatever interval makes the most sense for the shopping experience you would like to create.  We recommend limiting these triggers to a once a week.

Save the trigger setting.  

Once this is saved and the message content is published you can "Enable" the message.  As soon as a message is enabled, the triggers are active and will send the message according to the rules applied.

Coding the Message Content

The following is a very simple example of the smarty script for printing the cart items in the body of the message. Apply markup and styling according to your brand or style guide.

You left the following items in your cart:<br> 

{foreach $contact.cart.cartitems as $item} 
<b><a href="{$item.url}">{$item.name}</a></b><br> 
SKU: {$item.sku}<br/> Description: {$item.description}<br>
Qty: {$item.qty}<br/> Price: {$item.amount}<br><br> 
<a href="{$item.url}"><img src="{$item.images.0}" /></a><br>
{/foreach}

Once your draft is tested and ready to be published, publish the content, set the headers, and enable the trigger sending method and your abandoned cart email will be enabled and active.

 

In the next article learn how to set up an order confirmation message.

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