You automatically send abandoned cart emails using programs designed to detect if the customer has completed the purchase, and if not, the abandoned cart campaign is sent.
1. Create your email
In Dotdigital, go to Automation > Triggered emails.
Select ADD NEW.
Choose a template or start from scratch with a blank template.
Enter a name and choose a location.
Enter your campaign details.
Select SAVE & CONTINUE.
2. Design
In EasyEditor, drag a Title block onto the canvas.
Select the block, then enter your title.
Drag a Text block onto the canvas.
Select the text block, then enter some text for your abandoned cart campaign.
From the Ecommerce building blocks, drag an Abandoned cart block onto the canvas.
Select the Abandoned cart block, then expand the Price options drop-down menu, and choose how you want the price to display. In this example, we'll select Show special price with price.
To preview your campaign, select PREVIEW.
Select SAVE & CONTINUE.
On the plain text campaign page, select SAVE & CONTINUE.
You can't create a plain text version for abandoned cart campaigns because they contain Liquid, which is not available in plain text.
Want to do more?
At this point you might be looking to do a bit more with your campaign than we do in this basic guide. Check out our extras at the bottom of this article to learn how to do more:
3. Test
You can send your abandoned cart campaign to your test contacts or run an inbox and spam filter test to check that it looks exactly how you want it. In this example, we send to test contacts.
For an abandoned cart block to show its contents to a test contact, that contact must have at least one cartInsight record stored against them.
To add a cartInsight record, log into your website as the contact you want to use for testing, add some items to your cart, then log out.
To send a test abandoned cart campaign:
For Send to your test contacts, select CHOOSE CONTACTS.
For Test send, select The HTML version only.
This is because abandoned cart campaigns only work as HTML.
Select SELECT TEST ADDRESS, then find and select the test email address you want to send to. You can SELECT MORE if you need to add more test addresses.
If you need to add a test address, select + NEW TEST ADDRESS and add the new address.
Select TEST SEND.
Select CONTINUE.
Check the details of your campaign.
That's it! You've set up an abandoned cart email. You can now add it to your abandoned cart program.
Learn more in Create an abandoned cart program.
Extra: Add tracking analytics
If you want to track the performance of your abandoned cart emails, you can add UTM tracking parameters.
Tracking information can be added using any of the UTM parameters you have set up in your account. If you have set link tracking at a campaign-specific level, you see the campaign-level tracking parameters. Otherwise, you see your account-level parameters.
Learn more
To add UTM tracking parameters to your abandoned cart email:
On the EasyEditor canvas, select the Abandoned cart block.
In the side panel, expand the Analytics menu.
To apply your default tracking values to links in the product block, select the Reset to defaults checkbox.
To change the values applied to your tracking parameters for links in your product block, clear the Reset to defaults checkbox, and enter the values you want to use in each text field.
Extra: Style your button
By default, the abandoned cart button inherits the styling of your campaign. But if you'd like to customise it further, here's how.
To style the button of your abandoned cart block:
On the EasyEditor canvas, select the Abandoned cart block.
In the side panel, expand the Button settings menu.
Choose either Button or Border depending on what you want to edit. You can then edit the following settings:
Button settings:
Colour
Enter a HEX colour code, or use the colour picker, to choose a colour for your button.Alignment
Expand the alignment drop-down menu, then choose either Right, Left, Centre, or Full width.Padding
Enter padding values, in pixels, for both the horizontal and vertical padding.Minimum width
Enter a minimum width, in pixels, for your button.
Border settings:
Colour
Enter a HEX colour code, or use the colour picker, to choose a colour for your border.
Border width
Enter a value, in pixels, to set the thickness of your border.
Border radius
Enter a value, in pixels, to set the radius of your border.
Next steps