Create an Abandoned Cart Customer Journey Map

When contacts leave items in their shopping cart, invite them to complete their purchase with an automated email using the Customer Journey builder.

Use an abandoned cart starting point in your Customer Journey to send custom emails to contacts who don’t complete the checkout process in your store. Add additional journey points to your map so each contact’s behavior determines their path in the journey map.

In this article, you'll learn how to use the Customer Journey builder to create an abandoned cart workflow.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• Depending on your pricing plan, you may have limited access to Customer Journey tools. To learn more, check out our pricing page. To change your plan type, visit the plans page in your account.
• The Abandons cart starting points are available to users who have connected a supported e-commerce store or custom API 3.0 integration. To find out if your store supports these starting points, visit the Integrations page, click the name of your integration, and check for Abandoned cart email in the Features list.
• An Abandons cart starting point can’t be combined with other starting points in the Customer Journey builder.
• Any contact who abandons their cart can receive an abandoned cart email. If you add additional Send email journey points to your customer journey, only subscribed contacts will receive those. Unsubscribed or non-subscribed contacts will continue through their journey but won't receive any marketing emails along the way. To learn more about your contacts and the emails they can receive, check out About Your Contacts.
• To learn more about Customer Journeys, how they work, and your pricing plan’s capabilities, check out About Customer Journeys.
• This article shows you how to build an abandoned cart Customer Journey map. To learn more about creating an abandoned cart email using the Classic Automation tool, check out Create a Classic Abandoned Cart Email.

Create an abandoned cart Customer Journey map

To create an abandoned cart Customer Journey map, click Automations, then click Overview. Choose between using a pre-built abandoned cart journey, or start from scratch. A pre-built journey will include a starting point, journey points, and rules, making this the perfect choice for someone looking for a quick setup. The Recover abandoned carts pre-built journey will also include the option to use Intuit Assist to build an email draft in the journey.

To create an abandoned cart Customer Journey map, follow these steps.

1. Click Automations, then choose Overview.
2. Click Build from scratch.
   
3. Enter a name for your journey. Use the drop-down menu to choose an audience if you have more than one.
4. Click Start Building.
5. Click Choose A Starting Point.
6. Click Shopping Activity, then choose Abandons cart or Abandons cart with specific products.
   
7. Click the Store Name drop-down menu and choose the store you want to connect to your abandoned cart customer journey.
8. Click the Customer Cart Contains drop-down menu and choose Any Products or Specific Products.
   
9. If you selected Specific Products, choose to include or exclude specific products.
   
10. Select your specific products in the Include or Exclude carts with any of these products drop-down menu.
    
11. Choose your Abandoned Cart Wait Time by entering the number of hours, days, or weeks you’d like to wait before the abandoned cart email is sent.
12. To choose a segment of your audience to send to, click Filter who can enter this journey. Choose up to 5 segment conditions, and click Save.
    
13. Click Save Starting Point.

Add an abandoned cart email to the journey map

Once you’ve saved your Abandons cart starting point, add a Send email journey point and select your abandoned cart email template. This email will include a link to your contact’s cart so they can complete the checkout process.

1. In your customer journey map, click Add a journey point.
   
2. Select Send email in the action panel.
   
3. Edit your email name, the To & From details, Subject line, Schedule, and Tracking settings.
4. Click Select a template.
5. Choose the abandoned cart template you’d like to work with.

Great job! Now it’s time to design your abandoned cart email.

Design email

You’ll use Mailchimp’s classic email builder to design your abandoned cart email within the Customer Journey builder. The abandoned cart email must include the contact’s cart information from your connected store. To do this, we’ll add a Cart content block to your email.

We’ll also include a Button block within the email that links to your contact’s abandoned cart. Click on this block in the email editor to change the button text or link to something other than the contact’s cart.

Add, edit, or remove content blocks in your email as needed. For help with designing your abandoned cart email, check out Design an Email with the Classic Builder.

When you’re done designing your email, click Save and Return to Journey.

Now you can add additional journey points to your customer journey map. To learn more, check out Create a Customer Journey.

Activate your journey

To activate your abandoned cart customer journey, follow these steps.

1. When your customer journey map is ready, click Continue.

Note: If you’ve already added a marketing objective in your journey settings, click Turn On to activate your customer journey immediately.

1. Choose a marketing objective. This will help Mailchimp provide more personalized recommendations and reporting. You can edit this later in your journey settings if necessary.
2. Click Turn On.

Nice work! Now contacts will begin this abandoned cart customer journey when they abandon their cart at checkout and meet the starting point conditions you’ve set.