How to set up a post purchase automation

Overview

Post purchase automations are a great way thank customers for their order, introduce them to your brand, recommend products, offer a discount, ask for a review, and more. Read on to learn how to set up the perfect post purchase automation.

In this guide

Background on triggers

You should use the Order Placed trigger for your post purchase automation unless your store’s unique setup requires a different trigger.

Other triggers commonly attempted for post purchase automations, such as product purchased and checkout complete, do not provide as much utility as the order placed trigger.

The product purchase trigger is unsuitable for most post purchase flows because it fires on the product level instead of the order level; an order with more than one product will trigger the automation once for each product, with no way to reference all products in the order in an email. The order placed trigger fires when an order is placed and retains information about all products in the order.

The checkout complete trigger fires on the order level, but as soon as a checkout is complete, information about the products that were in the cart during checkout is moved out of the checkout table of Sendlane’s database and into the order table of the database. This means that the checkout completed trigger doesn’t retain information about the contents of the checkout.

1. Create a post purchase 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 your eCommerce integration’s tab
  8. Click Order Placed

2. Order placed trigger settings

When you select the Order Placed trigger, you’ll see its settings in the left-hand sidebar. These settings are the criteria contacts need to meet to be sent through the automation.

  • Store - Select the store you’re creating an order placed automation for
  • Limit Per Contact - No Limit is recommended for post purchase automations.
  • Order Status - We suggest selecting unfulfilled
  • Frequency - If you want contacts to be sent through the automation every time they purchase, select Any. If you want contacts to be sent through the automation only on their first, second, or third purchase, select the corresponding option.

3. Prevent contacts from continuing through pre-purchase automations

The first node of your post purchase automation should be an update automation node that ends your abandoned browse and abandoned cart automations. Since placing an order is the last step in the pre-purchase journey, you don’t want contacts to keep receiving pre-purchase content about orders they’ve already completed.

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 browse automation
  6. Click Done
  7. Repeat steps 1-6 and select your abandoned cart automation for step 4
  8. Repeat steps 1-6 and select your abandoned checkout automation for step 4

4. Post purchase automation content

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.

💡 Optional: Add a conditional split to create nodes for specific products

Conditional Splits allow you to target specific products for specialized content! If you'd like to create specific content for specific products or product groups, create a Conditional Split node under your final End Automation action and set the conditions for:

  1. Condition: Your eCommerce integration
  2. Resource: Order
  3. Filter: Product or Product Collection, depending on what you want to target
  4. Operator: Select In to specify products or product groups present in the order
  5. Select Items or Groups
  6. Click Done
  7. Create nodes under each path:
Yes Path No Path
Customers who had the selected products or product groups in their order Customers who DID NOT have the selected products or product groups in their order

5. Test and activate your automation

You can test your abandoned browse automation by placing a test order in your store with an email address that is opted in to your account. To test your abandoned browse automation:

  1. Activate your email nodes
  2. Activate your automation
  3. Place a test order
  4. Check your inbox to ensure you received the first email in your post purchase automation
  5. If you received the email, your automation was set up correctly and should stay activated

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.

Example of a complete abandoned checkout automation

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