Anatomy of a flow: Abandoned cart

Depending on what you sell and how you run promotions on your site, you may have product categories that contain non-product items or things that you don’t want to emphasize somebody return to their cart for. An example could be the Gift Card category.

Structure your flow to exclude people who leave a gift card in their cart by using a trigger filter with the following condition:

• Product Categories > is > Gift Card

Any user who adds a gift card to their cart without adding any additional products will not qualify for this flow.

You may want to create different experiences for shoppers depending on how many items they have in their cart. To achieve this, you can use a trigger split.

Let’s say you want to encourage folks with only a single item in their cart to add more items and check out. Add a trigger split to your flow with the following condition:

• Item count > is > 1.

If someone only has 1 item in their cart, they will go down the YES path. If someone has more than 1 item in their cart, they will go down the NO path. You can tailor the messaging in the YES path to incentivize recipients to add 2 more products to their cart in order to earn 15% off their whole order. Folks in the NO path will just receive a cart reminder with no incentive.

This works well for brands who sell products that are all in a similar price range. If you have a few products that are priced much higher than the rest, you may want to also add a trigger filter to this flow to only allow cart values under a given amount.

You can tailor messaging paths based on whether or not someone has made a purchase from your brand before. Simply use a conditional split to branch your flow into 2 paths using the following condition:

• What someone has done or not done > Person has Fulfilled Order at least once over all time.

This way, existing customers will go down the YES path and new customers will go down the NO path. For new customers, you might put more focus on why someone should purchase and include social proof like reviews and testimonials. You may even extend a special new customer discount to incentivize the purchase.

For existing customers, you may choose to forego an incentive all together since they are already interested in your products.

If you have a rewards or loyalty program, you can add a conditional split to create a path for customers who are part of your program. Within this path, you can add customer data like how many points they have earned, what tier they are, or even show loyalty members how much they could earn if they complete their purchase.

The conditions that you use will depend on whether you are using a third-party app to manage your loyalty or rewards program. Your conditions may look something like this:

• If someone is in or not in a list > Person > is > in VIP subscriber list.
• OR Properties about someone > Loyalty member > is true.

Now, customers who are part of your loyalty program will go down the YES path. In this path, you can remind VIP customers about the items in their cart and highlight any rewards or exclusive offers they get with a purchase. If your loyalty app has different tiers, you can further branch this flow based on the recipient’s current tier and customize the messaging to help push them to the next tier.

For customers who go down the NO path, you can send a standard cart reminder email as the first message. After that, you can send them additional messages that highlight the potential benefits and rewards they could earn if they complete their purchase and join your loyalty program.

If you want to send reminders with different offers based on the value of someone’s cart, you can use a trigger split.

Add a trigger split with the following condition:

• Value > is at least > 100

Shoppers with carts totaling more than $100 will go down the YES path. You can remind them about their cart and give them an incentive to check out. Try offering a fixed dollar off of their order because dollar-based discounts tend to be more appealing to consumers when they are applied to higher-value purchases.

Shoppers with cart values totaling $100 or less will go down the NO path. For these folks, you can send a reminder and include product reviews to encourage a purchase. You may also include a small percentage discount, like 10%, in your second message.

If your company has several store locations in a state, country, or around the world, you can customize your abandoned cart flow to better support customers located near a store.

For example, you may need to send cart reminders with specific store location information. Splitting your branch by location will make it easier to include relevant information based on the recipient's location. Say your company has store locations in Georgia, USA and Sydney, Australia.

Add a conditional split in your flow based on the following condition:

• Properties about someone > state/region > equals > Sydney.
  

Recipients who meet the condition will go down the YES path, where you can invite them to visit the local Sydney location if they have questions or want to shop in person. All others will go down the NO path and receive messages with shop information for the Georgia location. This way, you make it clear to customers in those locations that in person shopping is an option (as many consumers actually prefer to shop in person when it comes to retail purchases).