Understanding Commerce marketing automation campaigns

Current version: 10.1

You use marketing automation campaigns to automatically control the email messages being sent to customers so that they stay engaged with your brand and your storefront and are enticed to visit and make purchases. By default, two Commerce marketing automation campaigns are available with SXA Storefront.

Important

To use a Commerce marketing automation campaign, you must have xDB installed and enabled.

To add a Commerce marketing automation campaign to a storefront site, you must select the relevant Commerce MA Campaign check box when you create it. This automatically adds the Commerce-specific templates (the Abandoned cart, the New order placed, and Recommended products templates) to the Email Experience Manager (EXM) for email campaigns. It also creates new Marketing Automation (MA) campaigns based on the Abandoned Cart or New Order Placed template.

The naming convention for Commerce MA campaign is shopName+" "+templateName. For example, MyStore Abandoned Cart or MyStore New Order Placed.

Important

We recommend that you use the predefined Commerce-specific MA campaigns that are available when you create a new SXA site. You must select the modules shown in the following dialog box.

If you must create custom Commerce MA campaigns review these considerations.

Create a new SXA site dialog box

SXA Storefront and Commerce Connect

You need both SXA Storefront and Commerce Connect to configure Commerce marketing automation campaigns.

  • SXA Storefront contains the renderings required to display content on the storefront and in Commerce emails. It also contains the scaffolding used to create the Abandoned Cart or New Order Placed marketing automation campaign.

  • Commerce Connect contains the Sitecore templates used for the storefront site, the marketing automation campaigns, and the Commerce emails. Commerce Connect also includes the pipelines and processors used to register and enroll customers in the marketing automation campaigns and retrieve the cart details displayed in the Commerce email messages.

Note

See Prerequisites for Commerce Marketing Automation campaigns for details on the packages required for Commerce Marketing Automation campaigns.

Considerations when creating custom Commerce marketing automation campaigns

FWe recommend that you use the predefined MA campaigns available with the SXA storefront site, that is, the Commerce Abandoned Cart MA Campaign, and the Commerce New Order Placed MA Campaign. However, if you must create your own custom Commerce MA campaign, consider the following.

Note

The following only applies if you create a custom Commerce MA campaign, including if you use one of the predefined Commerce MA plans as a template.

The naming convention for a Commerce MA campaign is shopName+" "+templateName. If your custom MA campaign does not follow this naming convention, the campaign cannot apply on your storefront.

When you create a MA campaign in Sitecore, Sitecore automatically appends a GUID to the MA campaign name. This also applies when you create a custom Commerce MA campaign. After you create a custom Commerce MA campaign, you must therefore rename your custom plan to remove the appended GUID to conform to the naming convention.

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