We've designed this guide to introduce you to cart recovery automations including Browse Abandonment and Abandoned Cart, highlight strategies for targeting and messaging, and help you understand automation performance.
Overview
Below, we discuss two types of cart recovery automations, how they work, and what triggers they use. Each of these automations target subscribers differently based on where they are at in the sales funnel or customer journey.
Under the Browse Abandonment automation umbrella, there are two types of automations - Subscriber Viewed Product and Product Added to Cart. The first triggers when a subscriber adds a product to their cart, but does not begin checking out. This automation uses the trigger Product Added to Cart. Another Browse Abandonment automation triggers when a subscriber views a product. This automation uses the trigger Subscriber Viewed Product.
An Abandoned Cart automation fires when a subscriber adds a product or products to their cart, begins checkout, but does not complete checkout.
Cart Recovery Compliance
While Postscript has implemented guardrails so your brand can focus on running your SMS program, it's important to understand how compliance affects your cart recovery automations.
Cart Recovery automations can only contain one message, and this message must be sent within 48 hours of a customer abandoning their cart, viewing a product, or adding a product to their cart.
Postscript will only send one browse abandonment message within a 72-hour window. For example, if a subscriber views multiple products within a short timeframe, Postscript will only send one browse abandonment message to them in a 72-hour window.
Additionally, only visitors who have compliantly opted into your SMS program are eligible to receive your cart recovery automations. To contextualize this, if a site visitor begins but does not complete checkout and they have not already opted into your SMS program, they will not receive your abandoned cart automation.
Create a Browse Abandonment Automation Flow
- Select Messaging in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard, then select Automations.
- Select Create Automation in the top-right corner of the page, then choose Create Automation Flow.
- Select Use a template or select Create a new automation.
- Name the automation. Choose a name that will allow you to easily identify and track your Browse Abandonment flow in the future.
- Define the automation trigger. A trigger is an action that will begin the automation flow. In the example above, the flow will send to a subscriber who viewed a product.
- Add trigger filters. Trigger filters can help you fine-tune when an automation is triggered. The example above will only send to a subscriber who viewed a product that costs over $20.
- Add a subscriber frequency filter. The subscriber frequency filter allows you to choose how often a subscriber can enter a given automation flow for a certain period of time. While we have guardrails in place that will only allow a subscriber to enter a Browse Abandonment flow once every 72 hours, you can increase that timeframe. The example above will only allow subscribers to enter this flow every 30 days.
- Add a cancellation trigger. The cancellation trigger tells Postscript when to remove a subscriber from an automation flow. In the example above, a subscriber will be removed from receiving this automation if they begin checkout after viewing a product.
- Save. Select Save in the bottom right corner of the properties editor.
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- Add actions to your flow. You can begin building your flow by dragging and dropping a Send message action, a Delay (remember: this delay needs to be within 48 hours of the browse abandonment), an A/B split, trigger event split, subscriber event split, or update a subscriber. You can learn more about flow actions here.
- When adding a Send Message action to your automation flow, you may consider using some of our message enhancements located in the bottom right corner of the Message Editor to spruce things up.
- Add emojis by clicking the square smiley face icon.
- Add merge tags like subscriber first name, your shop link, or your shop name by clicking the overlapping tags icon.
- Add a Postscript-generated coupon by clicking the percentage icon.
- Add a Shopify-generated coupon and discount link by clicking the hyperlink icon. Note: Links and tags are trigger-specific. Not all link or tag options will be visible for all trigger types. For example, an abandoned cart link can only be added if the automation flow trigger is Checkout Started.
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If you're ready to send your flow, select Schedule or Activate in the top-right corner of the page. You have two options when sending a flow:
- Activate immediately: This option will immediately begin the flow allowing subscribers to enter the automation based on the selected properties.
- Activate at a scheduled time and date: Choose when you'd like the flow to begin allowing subscribers to enter.
Create an Abandoned Cart Automation Flow
- Select Messaging in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard, then select Automations.
- Select Create Automation in the top-right corner of the page, then choose Create Automation Flow.
- Select Use a template or select Create a new automation.
- Name the automation. Choose a name that will allow you to easily identify and track your Abandoned Cart flow in the future.
- Define the automation trigger. A trigger is an action that will begin the automation flow. In the example above, the flow will send to a subscriber who began checkout, but did not complete their order.
- Add trigger filters. Trigger filters can help you fine-tune when an automation is triggered. The example above will only send to a subscriber whose cart totals more than $100 worth of products.
- Add a subscriber frequency filter. The subscriber frequency filter allows you to choose how often a subscriber can enter a given automation flow for a certain period of time. While we have guardrails in place that will only allow a subscriber to enter an abandoned cart flow once every 72 hours, you can increase that timeframe. The example above will only allow subscribers to enter this flow every 30 days.
- Add a cancellation trigger. The cancellation trigger tells Postscript when to remove a subscriber from an automation flow. In the example above, a subscriber will be removed from receiving this automation when they complete their purchase.
- Save. Select Save in the bottom right corner of the properties editor.
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- Add actions to your flow. You can begin building your flow by dragging and dropping a Send message action, a Delay (remember: this delay needs to be within 48 hours of the browse abandonment), an A/B split, trigger event split, subscriber event split, or update a subscriber. You can learn more about flow actions here.
- When adding a Send Message action to your automation flow, you may consider using some of our message enhancements located in the bottom right corner of the Message Editor to spruce things up.
- Add emojis by clicking the square smiley face icon.
- Add merge tags like subscriber first name, your shop link, or your shop name by clicking the overlapping tags icon.
- Add a Postscript-generated coupon by clicking the percentage icon.
- Add a Shopify-generated coupon and discount link by clicking the hyperlink icon. Note: Links and tags are trigger-specific. Not all link or tag options will be visible for all trigger types. For example, an abandoned cart link can only be added if the automation flow trigger is Checkout Started.
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If you're ready to send your flow, select Schedule or Activate in the top-right corner of the page. You have two options when sending a flow:
- Activate immediately: This option will immediately begin the flow allowing subscribers to enter the automation based on the selected properties.
- Activate at a scheduled time and date: Choose when you'd like the flow to begin allowing subscribers to enter.
Understanding Automation Metrics
Metrics, or data, help you understand whether the messages you send are achieving the goals you've set. You can view the performance of your automation flows on your Flows Dashboard page or on a specific automation flow page. Simply select an activated flow to view overall performance metrics and metrics by a specific message.
- Sent Messages. View the total number of messages that have been sent.
- Unsubscribe Rate. Your flow's Unsubscribe Rate is calculated by dividing the total number of unsubscribes attributed to a flow message by the number of total messages sent in this flow Note: we attribute an unsubscribe to a flow if the flow message was the last message the subscriber received before unsubscribing).
- Click-Through Rate (CTR).CTR is calculated by taking total clicks on all links divided by the total number of messages sent.
- Conversion Rate. Your flow's Conversion Rate is calculated by dividing the total amount of orders placed within your shop's designated attribution window by the total number of clicks.
- Attributed Revenue. The amount of sales dollars earned from orders created within your shop's designated attribution window after a subscriber receives the automation flow. See your shop's attribution window here.
- Sent Messages indicates the number of this specific message that was sent to subscribers.
- Unsubscribe Rate is calculated by dividing the number of unsubscribes attributed to this message within the flow by the number of Sent Messages recorded for this specific message (e.g. 65,463). Note: we attribute an unsubscribe to a flow if the flow message was the last message the subscriber received before unsubscribing).
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) is calculated by taking the number of clicks on the links included in this message divided by the number of Sent Messages recorded for this specific message.
- Conversion Rate is calculated by dividing the number of orders placed by the number of clicks on the links included in this message (within your shop's designated attribution window).
- Attributed Revenue. The amount of sales dollars earned from orders created within your shop's designated attribution window after a subscriber receives this specific message within your automation. See your shop's attribution window here.
Extra Resources
- Need some inspiration? Check out Fantastic Texts to get Browse Abandonment inspo or Abandoned Cart inspo.
- Hoping to brush up on your understanding of Automation Flows? Peep our Guide to Automation Flow Triggers and Trigger Filters.
- Customize and Brand Your Messages. Learn how to further customize your messages by checking out this section in the Help Center!
Get Support
Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to our wonderful Support team at support@postscript.io or via live chat. You can also submit a support request here!
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