You can use an abandoned browse program to automatically send reminders to your contacts after they view products, but don't complete a purchase.

An abandoned browse is an event that’s triggered when:

Contacts who click through from a Dotdigital email campaign browse items, and then leave the store without completing an order.
Visitors submit their email address or mobile number, browse items and then leave the store without completing an order.
Logged-in customers browse items and then leave the store without completing an order.

When an abandoned browse is triggered, the details of the last browse are stored as a record in the contact's WebInsight data collection in Dotdigital. The WebInsight data includes items such as product name, product SKU, product price, and more.

See a complete list of the last browsed variables.

Before you start

Things you need to know:

You must have Dotdigital Tag installed on your website, with web behavior tracking enabled, to track page visits from your contacts.
You must extend the Dotdigital Tag to support sending the browsed product data from your website to Dotdigital.

Learn more

1. Create your campaigns

When you create your abandoned browse program, you need to choose the SMS or email campaigns you want to send.

While it’s possible to create the campaigns after creating your program, it’s simplest to get your campaigns ready first, so that your program is ready to start enrolling contacts as soon as you’ve completed the setup.

Email

Create an email campaign which contains a Last browsed product block. This block contains a link back to the contact’s browsing history on your store, allowing them to easily complete their purchase.

Learn how in Create an abandoned browse email.

SMS

Create an SMS message which uses Liquid markup to add a link to the customer’s cart to the SMS message body.

Learn how in Create abandoned browse SMS.

2. Create a program

You can create an abandoned browse program either from scratch, or using a program template.

Go to Automation and select the Quick create (+) icon for Programs.
On the Choose a template page, select the template you want to use or select Blank template to build from scratch.
Enter a name for your program, and choose a location.
Select CONTINUE.

3. Configure the Start node

Select the Start node.
Select SET SCHEDULE and then select No scheduled enrollments.

This is because enrolment in the program is configured through the Dotdigital Tag.

Select APPLY, then APPLY again.

4. Add a Decision node

You should add a Decision node immediately after your Start node to check:

that the contact visited any of your selected URLs.
that page_viewed > product_name is not empty.
whether the contact has an order.purchase_date for the last calendar day.

You don't want to send an abandoned browse reminder to a contact who doesn’t have relevant product data to display, or who has made a very recent purchase, so we use the Decision node to exit such contacts from the program.

Select the Decision node.
For Condition, select CHOOSE CONDITION, then select Present in the selected segment.
Select CREATE NEW.

Set up the segment

Drag an Insight data block into the Include dropzone, and select [click to select insight data].
Expand the Insight data collection drop-down menu and select WebInsights.
1. Contact filter: Number of records is greater than or equal to 1
2. Record filters:
  1. page_url contains [text]
    Use this filter to specify the pages of your site you want to target for abandoned browse. If you don’t want to specify any particular pages, skip this filter.
  2. product_name is not empty
    This filter ensures that the contact record has product data to display in the abandoned browse messaging.
Select OKAY.
Drag a second Insight data block into the Include dropzone and select [click to select insight data].
Expand the Insight data collection drop-down menu and select Orders.
1. Contact filter: Number of records is greater than or equal to 1
2. Record filter: purchase_date does not occur today
Select OKAY, then select APPLY, then APPLY again.
For Maximum wait time, select IMMEDIATELY, then select APPLY.
Drag an End node onto the program canvas, and attach it to the NO path of the Decision node.

5. Select your campaigns

Drag in an SMS/MMS or Email campaign node and connect it with the YES path of the Decision node.
Select SELECT CAMPAIGN and choose the abandoned browse campaign you want to send.
Select APPLY.
Connect the Campaign node to the End node.
Select SAVE.

That's it! Contacts will exit the program when they reach the End node.

This is an example of a simple program to send just one campaign. Of course, there are lots of options for further actions or messaging for contacts enrolled into your abandoned browse program.

Learn more in Last browsed WebInsight data in programs and the Program builder section of the Help Centre.

Test the abandoned browse process

Once you’re happy with the program you’ve built, you must thoroughly test the process before finalising your changes.

You can do this by adding a Decision node immediately after the Start node, and before the Decision node you created in Step 4, which exits any contact from the program who doesn’t match the test contacts you specify.

Log into your website as the test contact, browse some pages, then leave the site. After the delay time you’ve specified, the test contact should be enrolled in your program.

Tip

Enrol multiple test contacts in the program who both do and do not meet the criteria you specify in your Insight data rules. This allows you to double check that the rules are working as you intended.