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How to set up an abandoned cart automation

Two reminders to somebody who left something behind, and it stops the moment they buy.

The workflow

1. 1Delay: 1 hour
2. 2Goal: Bought it
3. 3Send email: no campaign chosen yet
4. 4Delay: 1 day, held to 10:00 their time
5. 5Goal: Bought it
6. 6Send email: no campaign chosen yet
7. 7Exit flow

Before you start

The sequence is easy and the goal step is the whole thing. An abandoned cart flow that keeps emailing somebody who already bought is the most expensive automation mistake there is: it reads as incompetence, it generates support tickets, and it is the single most common complaint about e-commerce email. Set the goal before you write a word of the copy.

You will need: a connected store, two campaigns, a tag applied on purchase.

How to set it up

1. 1Decide how your store marks an abandonment. Most apply a tag or call a webhook when a cart sits for an hour.
2. 2Choose the Abandoned cart template and set the trigger to that tag.
3. 3Set a second tag on the goal steps for what happens on purchase. If your store does not apply one, add it to the order-confirmation step first, because without it the goal cannot fire.
4. 4Assign a campaign to each of the two send steps. The first reminds; the second gives a reason to decide.
5. 5Activate, then put something in a cart yourself and abandon it.

What goes wrong

• A first email that goes out in minutes. Somebody who is still browsing gets an email about the thing they are looking at, which is unnerving rather than helpful. An hour is the floor.
• No purchase tag, which makes the goal step inert and turns the sequence into a nag. Check the goal fires before you activate.
• Offering a discount in the first message. You have trained the customer to abandon the cart every time.

A variation worth knowing

An abandoned CHECKOUT, where somebody entered payment details and stopped, is worth a separate flow with a shorter wait. They were further along, so the reason they stopped is more likely to be a problem you can fix than a change of mind.