How to set up an abandoned checkout automation

Overview

Recover potentially lost sales with Sendlane's abandoned checkout automation trigger!

Read on to learn about the triggers commonly associated with abandoned checkout automations, and guidance on setting up your abandoned checkout flow.

Background on triggers

 You’re probably used to referring to this automation as an “abandoned cart” flow and using an automation trigger that fires when someone adds a product to their cart and doesn’t check out for a specified period of time.

At Sendlane, we recommend a slightly different setup that has consistently led to better revenue performance for the majority of Sendlane customers.

Let’s investigate why, starting with the following table describing each trigger associated with “abandoned cart” automations:

Unlike the abandoned checkout trigger, the added to cart and abandoned cart triggers do not capture or store data for the other products your contact may have added to their cart. These two triggers use site tracking data from Beacon to tell Sendlane that a tracked contact clicked "add to cart." This means that when you add an abandoned product block to an email, only the first product that the contact added to their cart will appear in the email they receive.

The abandoned checkout trigger doesn’t fire until the contact starts the checkout process on your website (and the amount of time you select for “consider abandoned after” has passed), which means it has the context of your contact’s entire cart. This data is sent to Sendlane from Shopify and does not require the contact to be tracked via Beacon. Abandoned product email blocks in automations using the abandoned checkout trigger will populate with information on all the products in a contact’s cart when they begin checkout, meaning contacts will be reminded of each item in their cart when they receive the email.

The abandoned checkout trigger targets contacts who have actively initialized the checkout process, rather than contacts who added an item to their cart. When you use the abandoned checkout trigger, you’re targeting contacts who are much more engaged and ready to buy!

Step One: Create an abandoned checkout automation

Start your abandoned checkout automation setup by creating an automation and selecting the abandoned checkout trigger:

1. Click the Automations icon

2. Click New automation

3. Click Start From Scratch

4. Enter a name for your abandoned checkout automation

5. Click Start

6. Click Add Trigger

7. In the lefthand sidebar, click the Shopify or BigCommerce tab

8. Click abandoned checkout

Step Two: Configure abandoned checkout trigger settings

When you select the abandoned checkout trigger, its settings appear in the left-hand sidebar. These settings determine the criteria contacts must meet to be sent through the automation.

• Store - Select the store you’re creating an abandoned cart automation for

• Limit Per contact - Not in the last, Once per day, or Do not trigger when already in automation are recommended for abandoned checkout automations.

• Consider abandoned after - Select a time period of at least one hour. The 5-minute and 30-minute settings are intended for internal testing and may inundate contacts with messages if used in a live automation.

You can specify individual products that should trigger the automation by searching for and selecting products in the For Products section of the trigger settings. If you do not select specific products, all products will trigger the automation.

Shopify, BigCommerce, and custom store users can use trigger filters or apply a product tag of sl-exclude to any product that should not trigger the automation.

Using the sl-exclude tag removes the product from Sendlane entirely. Read more about excluding products from your account here.

Step Three: Prevent contacts from being sent through multiple pre-purchase automations

The first node of your abandoned checkout automation should be an update automation node that ends your abandoned browse and abandoned cart automations when contacts trigger the abandoned checkout automation. Because checkout is further in the purchasing process than browsing and adding to cart, you don’t want contacts to receive both browse and checkout abandon content.

To add an update automation node:

1. Click the + icon below the abandoned checkout trigger

2. Click Update automation

3. Click End Other

4. From the automation dropdown, select your browse abandon automation

5. Select a time period wait before allowing contacts to re-enter the browse abandon automation once they've completed the abandoned checkout automation

6. Click Done

7. Repeat steps 1-5 and select your abandoned cart automation for step 4

Step Four: Filter out contacts who purchased after triggering the automation

Use end automation settings to pull contacts out of the abandoned checkout automation if they make a purchase.

End automation settings are accessed through the trigger and appear below the trigger's settings.

These settings will check for orders placed by the contact at any point after they've triggered the automation:

• Condition - Select Shopify or BigCommerce

• Store - Select the store you’re creating an abandoned cart automation for

• Resource - Order

• Order Status - Unfulfilled

• Filter - Order Date

• Operator - In the last

• Relative date range - The total length of time of your automation, determined by wait nodes (for example, if your automation includes an email node, a three day wait node, and another email node, your automation is three days long)

Learn more about end automation settings in 📄 How to configure end automation settings.

Step Five: Abandoned checkout automation content

Now that the logic for your abandoned checkout automation is in place, you can add nodes for emails and SMS messages. For more information on optimizing your email and SMS nodes, check out our guide to automation nodes.

We highly recommend placing a wait node between messages to prevent contacts from receiving too many messages too quickly.

Step Six: Test and activate your automation

You can test your abandoned checkout automation with an email address that is opted in to your account. To test your abandoned checkout automation:

1. In your trigger's settings, set the "consider abandoned after" setting to 5 minutes

2. Activate your email nodes

3. Activate your automation

4. Visit your website

5. Add a product to your cart

6. Start checkout

7. Wait at least five minutes

8. Check your inbox to ensure you received the first email in your abandoned checkout automation

If you successfully completed your automation, you're all set! If you didn't receive messages you expected to receive, or otherwise didn't experience your automation the way you want your contacts to, deactivate your automation while you troubleshoot.

Troubleshooting