Location: Marketing > Email Automation

Overview: There are number of reasons why a visitor to your site may abandon their shopping cart before completing their order.  For example, they may be comparing prices with competitors, or a question about a product might arise that they cannot find the answer to.  Either way, their interest is strong enough to get as far as placing your products in their shopping cart, now it's just a matter of sealing the deal for order completion. 

With Precis' new email automation tools, you can schedule automatic mailers to specifically target those shoppers and win them back with incentives custom tailored to them.

If you haven't already done so, the first step in this process is to create your Abandoned Shopping Cart mailer.  Keep it short and sweet.  Remind them of your great offerings and customer service.  Don't forget to include their incentive (x-amount off, x% discount, etc.), and a way for them to contact you if they have questions.  Of course, you need to create the coupon for them to use at check out.  The link to return to their shopping cart is http://www.YOURSITE.com/commerce/index.asp. As long as your customer allows Cookies in their browser, returning to that URL will take them back to exactly where they left, products and all.

Now that the mailer is ready, it's time to schedule the automated mailings. 

From your Marketing Dashboard, access the Email Automation link from the Useful Tools section.

Click the Create New Automation button in the screen that follows.

1. Name your Automation - ex.  Abandoned Shopping Cart Mailers
2. Applies To:  Order - this is an order in process, yet not completed.
3. Marketing Campaign:  Assign this automation to a marketing campaign for tracking purposes.  Best is to create a campaign specifically for Abandoned Cart mailers.

Save this new Automation.  In the following screen, you can now set your rules and timing by clicking the Create New Communication button.

1. Message and Content

1. Enter a name for the communication.  This name will not be seen by your contacts, it is for your organizational purposes only.  For example,  "Abandoned Shopping Cart Automation."
2. Select your Abandoned Shopping Cart mailer from the dropdown.
3. Enter a "Subject."  Your contacts will see the subject in their email clients upon receipt. For example, "Return to your shopping cart for an additional discount."
4. Enter a "From Name" for the communication.  Your contacts will see this in their email client.
5. Enter a "From Address".  Note, this must be a valid email address or your communication will likely be flagged as SPAM.

2. Timing

1. You want to reach those who have left their shopping carts while your site and products are still relatively fresh in their minds.  From the Send dropdown, select the amount of time the mailer should wait until sending.  Statistics show 2-3 days is best to recapture the customer.
2. If you have selected a lag time for the communication, you may also select a time of day for the system to run.  Statistically, a mailer is best received and viewed during business hours.

3. Filters - Now we will configure the metrics to target only those who have abandoned their shopping carts.  Luckily, the default automation settings already fit for Abandoned Carts. 

1. Bind to Phase - Seeing how the customer has yet to complete their order, they do not qualify for a specific phase (pending, approved, etc.), select "Allow Communication in all Workflow Phases."
2. Send on Decision Point & Send on Outcome Phase - A Decision point is considered the phase between the customer submitting their order, and the order being processed -  Outcome Phase (declined or approved) from the back-end.  Since we are targeting those who have not completed their order, they do not fall into either of these categories, therefore, we will select "No" for both.
3. Suppress with Other Conversions within - if a contact has placed an order or otherwise converted into a lead, order, or goal within the given time frame, they will be excluded. In order words, they returned to their cart and completed their order inside of the 2-3 day period for the abandoned cart mailer to be sent.
4. Suppress with Previous Views within - if a contact has received the mailer within a given time frame, they will be excluded.  If they have abandoned more than shopping cart and have already viewed one automated Abandoned Cart mailing, they will not receive more.
5. Status - only active communications will be fired.  Setting a communication to inactive will remove it from the system query.

The Advanced Profiling section need not apply to this specific automation.  The metrics and logic within Precis will automatically query those contacts for you.

Click the Save New Communication button.  Your abandoned cart mailers will now automatically be sent within the time frame you have determined.