Walkthrough: Setting up a Commerce marketing automation campaign

Current version: 9.2

You use Commerce marketing automation campaigns to re-engage with customers who have visited your storefront but not completed a purchase or to automatically confirm an order when a customer has completed a purchase.

Before you start this walkthrough, you must have created a site with at least one Commerce MA Campaign selected. If required, you can add a Commerce MA campaign module to an existing site.

Warning

To use the Commerce marketing automation campaigns, you must have xDB installed and enabled.

This walkthrough describes how to:

Tip

To see how to set up a Commerce marketing automation campaign, watch the video available on the Discover Sitecore channel.

Create an automated email campaign

Commerce marketing automation campaigns use an automated email campaign template, which requires a formatted and stylized email body. You can select the Abandoned Cart template or the New Order Placed template, depending on your requirements.

Note

The email template includes a company logo. You must upload the logo you want to use to the Media Library.

To create an automated email campaign:

  1. On the Sitecore Launchpad, click Email Experience Manager.

  2. From the Change Root Manager list in the upper-left corner, select the email folder for the storefront site (for example, Storefront Emails).

  3. To the right of the application window, click Default settings and, in the Default Settings dialog box, define the following parameters, and then click OK. At a minimum, specify the Base URL and the From email parameters.

    Setting

    Description

    Example

    Base URL

    The website address of the Content Delivery server.This URL is used in all the links in the email message.

    https://sxa.storefront.com

    Preview base URL

    In a scaled environment, internal links from test email messages point to the Base URL by default.To point the links to a different server, specify its URL in this setting.

    From email

    The email address that you want to appear in the From field of your email messages.

    noreply@sitecore.net

    From name

    The name that you want to appear as the From name on your email messages.

    Reply to

    The email address that you want the replies from recipients sent to.

    Global opt-out list

    A static contact list that contains contacts who click the Unsubscribe from all link. The contacts in this list never receive another email message from EXM, even if the contact appears in a list that you have included in an email campaign.

  4. On the sidebar, click Create and, in the Create email campaign window, click Automated email campaign.

  5. Depending on the type of marketing automation campaign you are creating, click either the Abandoned Cart or New Order Placed template, specify a name for the campaign, and click Create.

  6. On the Message tab, click the body of the email.

    The email body contains a personalization token shown as !PLACEHOLDER FIRSTNAME VALUE! that picks up the name of any contact who is signed into the storefront site.

  7. In the Edit body dialog box, modify the message logo and body as required and then click Save and close.

  8. On the Delivery tab, choose the delivery schedule and define notification settings.

  9. Click to select the Personalization check box.

  10. If you are creating a New Order Placed email campaign, in the Classification section, click the Service email campaign check box to select it, and then click Activate message.

  11. In the Confirm prompt, click OK.

Important

In order for images to display in the rendered email, in the Content Editor, go to sitecore/Content/<tenant>/<site> and click Storefront Emails. On the Content tab, in the Message Generation section, click the Embed Images check box, and save your changes.

Modify the marketing automation campaign

Finally, you must add the email campaign to the marketing automation campaign.

To modify the marketing automation campaign:

  1. On the Sitecore Launchpad, click Marketing Automation.

  2. On the Marketing Automation dashboard, click either the <site name> Abandoned Cart or the <site name> New Order Placed campaign.

  3. On the canvas, click Send commerce email and, on the details pane, select the email campaign you just created, and click Apply.

    Important

    Do not use the Send email action in place of the Send commerce email action for Commerce.

  4. Modify any of the other actions or conditions as required.

  5. To save your changes, click Save .

    Important

    The name of the Commerce marketing automation plan must adhere to the following naming convention: shopName + “ “ + templateName

    If you modify one of the default Commerce MA campaigns, when you save it, Sitecore appends a GUID to its name. You must remove this GUID from the name to comply to the Commerce MA campaign naming convention, otherwise the campaign does not apply on the Storefront.

    To remove the GUID, in the Content Editor, browse to System/Marketing Control Panel/Automation Plans/, right-click the name of the MA, click Rename, and remove the GUID from the name.

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