Cart Abandon Stage

This article is part of the Cortex Stage Guide.  For the Subscription Cortex Stage Guide click here.

Cart Abandon is, on average, the best converting of all Cortex stages.  It targets highly engaged users who have already expressed an interest in purchasing products through your online store by adding items to their cart.

Who will receive Cart Abandon?

Cart Abandon is activated after a user visits your online store, adds at least one item to their cart, and does not complete a purchase.  A user will receive a cart abandon email provided you do not override the send with a promo blast.  

When will Cart Abandon send?

Cart Abandon begins calculating the best time to send an hour after the user's last cart action.  It typically sends approximately 24 hours after an item has been abandoned and according to the user's best time to contact.  If the user does not qualify for a different Cortex stage Cart Abandon will follow up at the user's best interval over a 2-week period.

How do Product Recs work for Cart Abandon?

Cortex will populate the first recommendation as one of the items that was recently added to cart.  Cortex will select the remaining product recommendations based on the data that has been collected and analyzed for each individual’s purchase history and browsing behavior, the purchase behavior of similar customers, the popularity of items in the catalog, and more. This allows Cortex to predict the preferences of each individual and target them with the best recommendations.

You can learn more about adding dynamic product recommendations to your Cart Abandon emails here.
You can learn more about the Cart Abandon product recommendations here.

Best practices:

• Use a minimum of 3 dynamic recommendations per template
• Use language that reflects your brand and inspires engagement
• Remind the shopper of any standard incentive
  (i.e. "free shipping on all purchases")
• Try converting the customer without offering special discount or incentive.

Things to note:

• By default, the cart abandon email will fire approximately 24 hours after the abandon action and at the user's best time to contact. There is a setting for you to change this to fire more immediately after the abandon action, approximately 1-3 hours after the abandon and at the users's best time to contact. This setting is found here: Account Settings --> Stage Settings --> Cart abandon timing --> Send ASAP. 

Setting up your Cart Abandon email:

1. You will see the Cart Abandon stage tile in your account. 

2. Click on the Cart Abandon stage and select "New Email"

 3. Fill in the required email setting fields

Stage: The stage that this email will appear under

Email name: The name of your email.

From name, From email, Reply-to email address (optional): Update if you want to send emails from an address different than what was set up during onboarding.  

Email subject lines: Add multiple subject lines for testing.

Preview text (optional): Add the text you wish to display before the subject line when viewed in the inbox. More info here. 

Incentives (optional): Select the incentives you wish to populate or split test in the email. More info here. 

Recommendation Scheme (optional): If you want to select a specific recommendation scheme for your email, choose the scheme from the drop down. More info here. 

Segment targeting (optional): Select a segment from the drop down if you want a specific cohort to receive this email.

Send only once (optional): Enable this setting if you would like users to receive this email a single time. 

Select email type: Select how the email will be constructed. Selecting HTML Editor will allow you to build the email using HTML code. The other three selections will use the in-app Template Builder tool.

4. Click "Continue to Editor" to format and build your email.

5. After editing the email click "Continue" and then click "Save Email" 

6. Make sure to always send tests of your email before enabling. More info here on test sends before enabling. 

7. To enable the email, click on the drop down and select "Activate". 

8. Reporting on your new template is found in Insights --> Artificial Intelligence Stats --> Trend Details.