Abandoned Cart Journey User Guide

The goal of the Abandoned Cart Journey is to entice a consumer to complete their purchase on your website by sending them a series of reminders that they have items in their shopping cart. The Journey allows you to incentivize them with special offers if they continue to hold out, with the goal to make the purchase.

Note: This template is compatible with events originating from both Cheetah Digital and Marigold Moments (signals or moments). Details of the specific events applicable in this template are provided below.

Abandoned cart Journey template

The following diagram depicts the basic flow for the Abandoned Cart Journey.

The Abandoned Cart Journey begins when the platform recognizes that a consumer has added one or more items to their shopping cart on your website, but then never completed the purchase. The consumer is added to the Journey.
The Journey separates consumers into two tracks based on their channel preference. If the consumer has installed your branded app on their mobile device, the consumer will progress down the Push Notification track. If not, the consumer will progress down the Email track. The platform then sends a reminder message to the consumer in their preferred channel.
The Journey will then wait to see if a purchase occurs, and if not, it grants the consumer a special promotion to incentivize the purchase. For example, you could offer a discount on the purchase, or free shipping, or double loyalty points. This promotion is presented to the consumer by means of an email message.
The Journey again waits to see if a purchase occurs. If not, the platform will remind the consumer one final time via another email message.
After all of the messages and wait times have completed, and the consumer still hasn't made a purchase, the platform removes them from the Journey, and records that no purchase was made. Likewise, if at any point during the Journey, the consumer empties their cart, the platform will wait to see if the consumer refills their cart and makes a purchase, before removing them from the Journey, and recording that no purchase was made.
If at any point during the Journey, the consumer makes a purchase, the platform will record that the goal was achieved, and then remove the consumer from the Journey.
The default Journey template contains three emails to be sent over four days and eighteen hours to remind the consumer of their cart and encourage them towards a purchase.

Implementation details

In the default implementation of this Journey, the objectives of the various steps are as follows:

Upon receiving a Cart Abandoned event, a Reminder Email or a Reminder Notification (if push messages are configured) is sent to the consumer.
After an 18-hours wait (configurable), an Offer Email is sent.
After a 2-days wait, a Last Chance Email is sent.
If there is still inactivity after this time, the Journey will reach the No Purchase exit state (with a Neutral Outcome)

If the consumer completes their purchase before this exit state, the Journey will instead reach the Purchase step, exiting with a Positive Outcome.

Resources from other Marigold applications

In order to complete this Journey, you will need to setup a few things in other Marigold applications such as Cheetah Digital and Marigold Moments. Some of these are optional and dependent on the actions you ask the Journey to perform.

An Abandoned Cart Reminder Email in Marigold Cheetah Digital
An Abandoned Cart Reminder Notification in Marigold Cheetah Digital
A Last Chance Email in Marigold Cheetah Digital
A Mobile Push Preference attribute in your recipient table in Marigold Cheetah Digital
An Abandoned Cart Event map in Marigold Cheetah Digital or Abandoned Cart Moment in Marigold Moments
A Purchase Event map in Marigold Cheetah Digital
An Empty Cart Event map in Marigold Cheetah Digital

Create the abandoned cart Journey

The process of creating the Abandoned Cart Journey comprises the following main steps:

Step 1: Prepare the Prerequisites: Journeys works through a close integration with other Marigold Solutions. Configure the assets (e.g.Event maps, Marigold Moments) and resources (Campaigns) that are required for your Journey in these applications. Refer Journey Prerequisites for more information.
Step 2: Create your Journey: Use the available template to quickly create your Journey and modify as required to suit your business needs. See Create from Template for more information.
Step 3: Configure the Journey settings: Configure your Journey settings if you need to change them from the default options specified in your account profile. See Journey Settings for more information.
Step 4: Configure the Journey Steps: Configure each of your Steps based on your objectives and customer data attributes for personalization. See Abandoned Cart Steps for more information.
Step 5: Validate and resolve warnings: Validate and test your settings with various tools provided in Journeys. See Validate and Test your Journey for more information.
Step 6: Save and publish the Journey: Publish your Journey to go live. See Publish Your Journey for more information.
Step 7: Reports and Insights about your Journey: Optionally, you can run various reports to measure the effectiveness of your Journey. See Reports and Insights for more information.

Other vertical market use cases

Industry sector	Use Case	Example	Customer Journey
Retail	Abandoned browse	Personalized recommendations based on browsing history	Abandoned Browse Journey
Travel and Hospitality	Abandoned booking	Booking reminder and offer expiry (if applicable) Destination inspiration	Abandoned Booking Journey
Ecommerce	Abandoned survey	Targeted communications Encouragement to complete the survey Offering rewards	Abandonment Survey Journey
Entertainment	Abandoned game	Targeted communications Encouragement to complete their actions Offering incentives such as extra game levels	Abandonment Game Journey