Walkthrough: Setting up a Commerce marketing automation campaign

Current version: 10.2

You use Commerce marketing automation campaigns to re-engage with customers who have visited your storefront or to automatically confirm an order when a customer has completed a purchase. The following Commerce marketing automation campaigns are available:

  • Storefront Abandoned Cart

  • Storefront New Order Placed, which can be extended to encompass recommended products.

You can use the available Commerce-specific elements in your marketing automation campaigns.

Tip

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

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:

Create an automated email campaign for Commerce

Commerce marketing automation campaigns use an automated email campaign template. Three templates are available: New order placed, Abandoned cart, and Recommended products.

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.

    Create email campaign window showing available commands
  5. In the Automated email campaign dialog box, depending on the type of marketing automation campaign you are creating, click one of the following templates and then click Create:

    • Abandoned cart

    • New order placed

    • Recommended products

    Create automated email campaign window showing templates
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.

Specify email campaign settings

  1. In the email campaign builder, on the General tab, provide a description for the campaign if required.

  2. 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. For recommended products, it also contains the Email product recommendations rendering.

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

  4. If you are using the Recommended products rendering and want to change the number of recommended products displayed in the email message, click the Email product recommendations rendering and, on the toolbar, click More, Edit Component Properties. In the Recommended Products Email Configurations section, enter the maximum number of products and click OK. Click Save and Close.

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

  6. Select the Personalization check box. When this option is selected, renderings are not cached.

  7. 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. A service message ignores suppression lists, opt-out lists, and sending limits.

  8. In the Confirm prompt, click OK.

Note

To further customize how the list of recommended products is determined, see Customize the data provider for recommended products and Configuring an email rendering to output product content.

Modify the marketing automation campaign

Finally, you must add the email campaign to the marketing automation campaign. The Commerce marketing automation campaign template is created automatically during site creation when you add a Commerce MA campaign module.

Important

We recommend that you modify one of the predefined Commerce MA campaigns provided out of the box.

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

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.

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