Overview

Abandon campaigns such as abandon cart/browse/search are great ways to send relevant message content to contacts at the moment they are engaged with your product or service.

Podium orchestrations make it easy to set up an abandon campaign series using an intuitive interface. Simply set a trigger, add a delay and audience filter, and build out your message content. You can also add additional messages based on time delays or a contact's real-time behavior.

Pass the trigger data

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" and add a delay for the message send. We can use an audience filter to exclude any contacts that placed an order during the delay. This will prevent contacts from receiving an abandon cart message if they purchased the item.

This strategy utilizes three primary pieces of data:

1. Cart attribute

• Purpose: Used to filter the audience based on items existing in the contact's cart at the time of send. Also used to personalize the message content with the actual items left in the cart.
• 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

• Purpose: This custom named event is used to trigger the orchestration. 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.
• Data type:  Event data stored in the Event (contactactivities) collection.

Note: The actual name of the event is up to you, but we typically recommend "cart".

3. Order data

• Purpose: This data will be used in an audience filter to exclude contacts that have made a purchase within a specified timeframe.
• Data type: An object stored in the Orders collection.

Implementations

There are two implementations you can use to send the data to Cordial:

• Javascript listener implementation: Javascript code placed on your website that sends data to Cordial from the client side browser. Learn more about setting up the core Javascript code.
• Rest API implementation: a server-side alternative to Javascript that sends data to Cordial via the API. Learn about updating contact records via the API.

Create the orchestration

1. Navigate to Message Automation > Podium Orchestrations and click New.

2. Give the orchestration a name (we'll name this orchestration Abandon Cart), and click Continue.

3. You will then be taken to the main orchestration page where you can set the trigger, delay, filter and message content.

Define the trigger

This abandon cart orchestration will be triggered by a contact adding an item to their cart.

To set this trigger in Podium, click the Trigger component and complete the following fields:

• Select the option for A contact’s real time behavior.
• Choose the custom event name (Cart in this example).

Initial message

Once the trigger is set, you can build out the automation by configuring the delay, the audience filter and the message content.

Define the delay

Clicking on the Delay component allows you to set a delay for the message send after the trigger is met.

For the abandon cart message we'll set the Delay for 2 hours. This will give time for the contact to potentially order the item after it was added to the cart.

Define the filter

Clicking on the Filter component allows you to set an audience filter to include or exclude contacts. You are able to create an audience from scratch or recall a saved audience.

For this message, we'll add an audience filter that will:

• Include contacts that have items in their cart. This will prevent a message from being sent to a contact that has an empty cart.
• Exclude contacts that have placed an order in the past 2 hours. This will prevent a message being sent to a contact that has ordered an item during the delay.

Define the action

Clicking on the Action component allows you to define the action for this automation. We'll be using the email channel for this abandon cart message, so we'll choose Send an Email.

Complete the fields for Message Name, Message Tags, and choose the Message Editor Type.

Clicking Continue will take you to the familiar Compose Message page.

Here you are able to configure the Message Header, Message Content as well as Goals & Tracking and Delivery Settings. If the message has been sent, you are able to view Message Performance for both individual and aggregate sends.

Message content

Using Smarty, you are able to personalize the message content with the items in the contact's cart at the time of send.

The following is a very simple example of rendering the cart items in the body of the message. You can apply additional markup and styling according to your brand.

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 the message has been created successfully, Publish the message.

Additional messages

While a single abandon cart message might be sufficient, it's easy to add additional messages according to your campaign strategy.

One strategy might be to send another message a day later with a discount offer for the item(s) in the cart. Clicking on the Plus button to the right of the initial automation allows you to add additional messages, each with their own delay, filter and action.

Additional triggers

It's also possible to add additional triggers by clicking the Plus icon below the initial automation.

When a secondary trigger is added, it will be labeled as Wait Until, denoting that the message will not be sent unless the specified behavior is performed by the contact.

There are options for:

• Do not wait
• Wait for previous message events (opened, clicked or bounced)
• Wait for other event (message event or custom named event)

For example, if a contact opens the initial message but doesn't make a purchase, you could trigger a follow up message.

Publish and enable

Once all components are configured and messages are published, you can publish the entire orchestration by clicking the Publish Draft button.

If any components are not complete or there are unpublished messages, you will see an error with the incomplete components highlighted.

After successfully publishing the orchestration, you can then enable it using the Enable/Disable dropdown.

Congratulations! You successfully created, published and enabled your abandon cart orchestration.

Once messages start sending, you'll be able to view message performance stats right in the orchestration.