Trigger: Customer Abandons Shopping Cart

Use this trigger in a Dialog activity to begin or continue the activity for customers who have abandoned their shopping cart for a specified number of days.

Customers abandon a shopping cart if they add one or more items to the cart but they do not check out during the visit, and then time passes. Use this trigger to identify those customers so that you can offer them incentives to come back to the store and complete their purchase.

Once a day, this trigger checks for customers who have abandoned their cart for the number of days you specify. You can then automate follow-up marketing actions for these customers, such as sending an e-mail or issuing a coupon or adding the customer to a customer segment. You can set the trigger to run every day or one time only.

Example

Here is an example of a Dialog activity that uses this trigger to automatically check every day for abandoned carts and then send the cart owner an e-mail message:

Check daily for customers who have abandoned a shopping cart for 3 days; then send those customers an e-mail message to remind them of their recent shopping visit:

Example of Trigger: Customer Abandons Shopping Cart

Here is another example. This time, the trigger checks one time only (not daily) for customers with abandoned carts; the activity runs on that day only. Note that the example activity also contains the Shopping Cart target so that only customers with high-value carts receive an e-mail and coupon.

Check for all customers who have abandoned a shopping cart for at least 3 days but not more than 30 days. If the abandoned cart has a total value of at least $200, then:

Send each customer an e-mail offering a coupon for 10% off orders placed in the next 7 days.
Issue each customer the coupon.

Prerequisite for using this trigger

Make sure your site is configured to support the Management Center marketing features.

Guidelines for using this trigger

When setting up this trigger, you must specify the following options:


Option	Description
Frequency of check for abandoned carts	Options are: Daily: Use this option for an ongoing campaign to follow up with customers who have abandoned their cart. Each day that the activity is active, the server will check for customers with carts abandoned for exactly the number of days you specify. As a result, the activity is triggered daily for any customers whose abandoned carts meet the criteria. Typically, this is a different set of customers each day. One time only: Use this option for a one-time dialog with customers who currently have an abandoned cart. On the first day that the activity is active, the server will check for customers with carts abandoned within a minimum and maximum range of days you specify. As a result, the activity is triggered only one time for any customers whose abandoned carts meet the criteria. The server does not perform the check again. By default, the server performs the check at 2:00 a.m., but a Site Administrator can change the time.
Number of days that the customer has abandoned cart	If you choose the One time only frequency option, you must specify a range of days.

Considerations if you are using this trigger to send e-mails

If you are using this trigger to send e-mails with the Send Message action, you have two options for specifying when the server sends the e-mails on the days the activity runs. You control these options by selecting or clearing the Send immediately check box in the properties for the Send Message action.

Option 1: Send e-mails immediately following the daily check for abandoned carts. To set this option, select the Send immediately check box for the Send Message action.
A Site Administrator configures the time of day that the check for abandoned carts occurs; by default the time is 2 a.m. each day. If your abandoned cart criteria will match a large number of abandoned carts on a given day, this option is not recommended because it can affect server performance.
Option 2: Send e-mails at the time of day that all marketing e-mails are scheduled to be sent in the Administration Console. To set this option, clear the Send immediately check box for the Send Message action. This option is preferable because it has less impact on server performance; however, this option requires a Site Administrator to ensure that the daily check for abandoned carts is scheduled earlier than the send time for the e-mail messages. For instructions for the Site Administrator, see Changing the daily scheduled time for marketing triggers and lists.