The abandoned cart campaign

This article addresses users of the Scenario module. If you are using Campaigns, step 2 of this article is for you as well. For all other steps, please refer to our dedicated article.

What - Definition & context
It can happen that some of your customers fill in their shopping carts in online stores without completing the purchase. With the help of Splio you can not only analyse abandoned carts, you may also want to nudge your clients to maybe decide to check the cart out and buy the items in it. For this reason, Splio allows you to set up a commercial message to remind your clients that the shopping cart they left at an online store. The message can even list the products in the cart.

How to - Steps

Step 1 - Creating the sales filters: abandoned cart ⁽¹⁾ (inclusion) and contact ⁽²⁾(exclusion)

1 - The abandoned cart filter

First, you will need to create an abandoned cart filter, for this, use the condition 'date of creation'. "Event fixed date" allows you to select any specific day as the point of reference, whereas with "Event rolling date" you can set a date relative to the time of calculation. Using this type of filter will allow the campaign to target contacts who are not subscribed to a list (but it will not target the ones in blacklists).

For those types of campaigns, we usually recommend the following:

Your filter based on "abandoned cart" scope, returning all abandoned carts that have been generated less than 90 minutes ago. Abandoned carts sync in real time through API.

2 - The contact filter 

This is useful only if, in your data import process, you are not transforming abandoned carts into orders.

Once your first filter has been created, you will need to create a contact filter to exclude people who have purchased since they abandoned, in your campaign scenario:

This filter, based on the contact scope, is targeting the contacts who purchased less than 85 minutes ago. The timing in minutes is available only if you are importing your data with API. 

Step 2 - Adding variables to your design

Splio gives you a tool, in the form of transactional loops, to present data directly connected not to a contact, but to an order or an abandoned shopping cart. Below, you will find some examples of abandoned cart loops to be able to show products left in your customers basket, before the checkout process.

To learn more about loops you can use in campaigns targeting your contacts, see the article about products and store loops.

Abandoned cart loops

You can refer to abandoned carts using the BASKET keyword. This creates a loop which is then processed once for each product which has been placed in the current abandoned cart.

<table>
<tr>
   {SPLIO FOREACH PRODUCT IN BASKET SEPARATOR="</tr><tr>" EVERY="3"}

   <td>
       <h3>Product ID: $product.sku$</h3>
       <p>
         Name: $product.name$ ($product.brand$) <br/>
         Price: $product.price$ 
       </p>
       {SPLIO IF $product.img_url$ !=""}
           <img src="$product.img_url$" />
       {SPLIO ELSE}
           [no image display]
       {SPLIO ENDIF}
   </td>

   {SPLIO ENDFOREACH}
</tr>
<tr>
   <td>$basket.total_price$</td>
</tr>
</table>

Explanation:

1. Splio processes the loop once for every product (item) in the current basket (abandoned cart).
2. Each item becomes a table cell, and every 3 cells are gathered into a table row.
3. The name, brand, and price data are written into the cell, and a product image is added too.
Once all products have been displayed, the total value of products in the cart is written below in a separate row.

When uploading your product prices, you must enter two decimals after the dot (i.e 10.99).

Step 3 - The campaign creation

Once your filters created and your design updated with its relevant variables, you will be able to move forward with the campaign creation.

You will be able to find your filters in SCENARIO > Automatic Campaign > add sequence: You can select your filters in the sales' filters in the population menu of scenario (see below). You will need to include your abandoned cart filter with the ‘+’ symbol.

Scenario > New Campaign > Select automatic campaign

Automatic campaigns types

It is important to distinguish the different types of automatic campaigns you have available in the Splio platform. One of them is the trigger campaign, all trigger campaigns are only ever launched once per every object (usually used for contact, order, or abandoned cart) in the filter or list on which they are based. They are divided into two sub-types of trigger campaigns, real-time and ''plain'', depending on how they are launched.

Never modify the filter!
Make sure that your filter works as intended before launching any trigger campaigns. You should never, ever modify a trigger campaign filter once the campaign is running. This is because trigger campaigns are sent to all contacts (or, e.g., owners of orders) entering the filter. All contacts added to the filter due to your modification will be targeted immediately! Which you would rather avoid.

Real-time triggers

These campaigns are launched immediately after the object (contact, order, or abandoned cart) is updated via the API. This can happen only once, and further updates to the same object will not launch the campaign.
The three classic use cases here are the Welcome, Purchase confirmation, and Abandoned cart campaigns.

This type of campaign needs an API upload of data to work. In this case the time schedule set in the campaign is ignored and it can be launched at any moment, and as many times as needed per day.

For trigger campaigns, if you decide to update the design, this change will only be taken into account once per day regardless of the send out of the campaign (event triggering).

Triggers

The other type of trigger campaign or what we called earlier the ''plain'', or “non-real-time” trigger campaigns are also launched once per object. However, in other aspects, they are processed like automatic campaigns. When an object lands in the target filter, it gets queued and the message will be sent the next time the campaign is processed. The timing and frequency of the campaign are defined in the scenario. This type of campaign can be sent from the minimum of once per month to the maximum of once per day.

A common misunderstanding takes place when clients update their data via batch (e.g., DataHub). Contrary to some expectations, such campaigns are sent on schedule, once per day maximum.
Again, this is because batch uploads work with plain triggers, the real-time sending is reserved to API connections.

Step 4 - (optional) adding a follow-up message

Openings: In this article, we are showing an example of filter using email openings. Please note that this metric will be impacted by the Apple Mail Privacy protection. 

It is not possible to directly add a sequence into the scenario of a Trigger campaign, however, it is possible to create a follow-up campaign linked to another one by using the campaign category.

Remember that you can not add a category to an existing campaign, you need to do it during its creation. Once created, a campaign category cannot be deleted.

The campaign category field is filled in during the first step of the campaign creation Scenario > New Campaign > Campaign category

Example of a filter condition using the campaign category

The time constraint set here, which means that only the contacts who opened the email within the last 24 hours will be targeted by the new campaign using this filter (which is perfect if the follow-up message is set up to go once per day).

You can find more information on re-targeting with the campaign category in our documentation.

When - Our tips to time your campaign well

The data import frequency to consider:

• Through SFTP/Data Hub: you will hit your customers the day after. We would recommend scheduling your campaign to start early in the morning (as soon as your customer checks their phone or just after breakfast. 8.00 – 9.30 AM): keep in mind that the start date of your campaigns shall be always after the data has been synced in Splio
• Through API: you can hit your customers in real time, a few minutes or hours after the event has happened, depending on your strategy.

Different strategies:

The different one:

• Reminding your customers to complete their purchase through personalized email by showing each shopper different ways to style the product in their cart.
• Reconnecting with customers who have abandoned a cart (or cancelled an order) with products visually similar to the ones they did not purchase (or they had cancelled). Bring them back to your site, understand the intent and get them closer to what they were looking for.

The organized one:

• Nailing down the right email frequency for your target audience helps you understand when to engage and when to leave your customer alone.
• Offering an expiring discount: saving money is much appreciated to any customer on the fence about buying. If they added your product to their cart, you know they are interested.

The standard one:

• Segmentation is the focal point to personalizing the post-purchase experience.