Take Your Brick & Mortar Business Online

Hello! Welcome to our seventh video on how to take your brick and mortar business online!

In this video, I will show you how to create two of the most important automation workflows: a personalized welcome email automation and an abandoned cart automation. 

Automation workflows are automated emails that your subscribers receive after making a certain action. 

They are an integral part of your email marketing strategy because they can not only help you convert leads into customers, but they can also help you delight your existing customers and encourage activity like upsells, and additional purchases. 

Let’s begin by creating a welcome email. 

A good first impression is always an important goal in eCommerce. And welcome emails go a long way towards building a relationship with your customers and enhancing their overall experience. 

Moreover, it’s an email that all subscribers expect to receive today. 

So let’s start!

Go to your Dashboard and click on the Automations button. 

Click on the Create new automation button.

This will take you to this page, where you can see all the ready automation workflow recipes we have made for you. 

You can use them any time you want to save time but for now, let’s see how you will create your very own brand new automation workflow. 

Click on the Create a Custom Automation button.

Click on the Edit Automation Name area.

Fill in the field with a new name for your automation.

Click on the Save Automation Name when you’re done. 

Now let’s set up the proper trigger. 

Click on the Select your Trigger area.

The “Select a Trigger” pop-up window appears showcasing the available triggers.

Select the List Engagement option from the drop-down menu.

All available triggers are displayed on the “Select a Trigger” window by default, so filtering the different types of triggers showcased helps you make a quicker choice by focusing on what is relevant to the occasion. 

Right now we are looking for triggers that occur when someone engages with one of your subscriber lists.

Choose the When someone subscribes to any list option.

The window that appears begs the question: “Do you want this trigger to only trigger once?” to which you can answer either Yes or No.

Select the Yes – Trigger only on the first subscription option from the drop-down menu.

This is the best option for this type of automation since you want to welcome your new subscribers the first time they subscribe to one of your lists, not each time!

Click on the Save button.

If you want to expand your automation workflows now is the time to do it!

Click the + button.

A pop-up appears with two tabs, the Conditional / Control Steps tab and the Actions tab. You’ll find yourself at the Conditional / Control Steps tab by default.

Let’s say you want your new subscriber to receive your Welcome email a few minutes after signing up. 

Click on the Wait a Specific Time Interval button. 

Add the time you prefer on the Time to Wait field. 

Click Save. 

To continue with sending your email click on the + symbol at the bottom of the flow and click the Actions tab. 

Click on the Then send email campaign option.

Fill in the subject of the email you’re going to send.

Choose the sender of the email from the drop-down menu.

Choose the campaign content. 

You have two options here. The first is to create new content which means that you can simply type your message in the text box. 

You can style your text as you wish by changing, for example, the font, size or color of it. 

The second option is to use a design you have previously created. 

To do this click on the Content From Campaign tab and choose the campaign from the dropdown menu. 

In case you haven’t made one go to the Campaigns tab on the menu and design an Automation Campaign in our editor as we will show later on. 

Then, set the number of emails sent by this action per day to Up to 1 email per day from this step.

Click on the Save button. 

Remember to set your automation Active if you want it to start running right away.

Now let’s move on to the second most important automation workflow of your eCommerce marketing strategy, the cart abandonment automation.

A cart abandonment email is an email sent to visitors that either viewed a product and left your e-store or added a product to their cart but didn’t proceed to checkout. 

The purpose of this email is to remind them of their forgotten items and urge them to complete their purchase. 

This automation is one of the most popular ones in the eCommerce industry because it helps you generate more sales without any extra effort. 

Let’s start by creating an automation campaign. The content of this campaign will be used in our next steps when creating your automation workflow.

Ready? 

Click on the New Campaign button. 

Locate the Automation Campaign and click on the Create button.

Next, you’ll need to define the campaign settings.  Start by setting up the available fields: Campaign name and Preview text which is optional.

If you would like to track your campaign at Google analytics, enable the option with a click. 

Then, click on the Next button to continue.

Now let’s choose the appropriate format for your campaign.

There are 2 options: HTML and plain text, or Plain text only. 

You need to select HTML and plain text. Then click on the Next button to continue. 

To create your newsletter design click on the Take Me To The Editor button, and design your newsletter as previously shown.

For now, we will simply select a template from the Template Library. 

You can go through all the templates available or simply go to the Menu on your left to select the eCommerce category and find the ones specially created for your industry. 

Choose one of our Cart Abandonment templates and click Use Template.

Click on the settings of your container, and from the menu on the left, click on Select Website, to choose the website which your abandoned cart automation is linked to. 

Define the number of products to be displayed on your Abandoned Cart email.

You can customize the rest of your design, as previously shown. 

If you decide to design your own template, make sure you use our ready-made Cart Abandonment Structures, and drag them to your design.

Click on the Update Campaign and Continue button. 

Before sending your actual campaign you can test it to see how it looks!  

Just go to the Design and Delivery Test tab, add your email to receive the campaign and simply check how it looks! 

Otherwise, click Skip Test.  Take a look at all of your campaign details one more time before proceeding. 

When you’re ready, click on the Save button. Your content will be saved in the Campaigns section, under the category Automation.

Perfect! The content for your automation workflow is ready!

Now let’s see how we will create this automation workflow from scratch!

Going back to your Dashboard, click on the Automations button. 

Click on the Create new automation button. This will take you to this page, where you can see all the ready automation workflow recipes we have made for you. 

To create your very own brand new automation workflow, click on the Create a custom automation button.

Click on the Edit automation name area and fill in the field with a new name for your automation.

Click on the Save automation name when you’re done. 

Click on the Select your trigger area. The “Select a Trigger” pop-up window appears showcasing the available triggers.

Select the Website Engagement option from the drop-down menu as it is the relevant trigger for our occasion.

Click on the dots located on the pop-up window to move to the next page of available triggers. Choose the When someone adds any product to their cart option. 

The window that appears begs the question: “Do you want this trigger to only trigger once?” to which you can answer either Yes or No.

Select the No – Trigger every time someone adds a product option from the drop-down menu.

This is the best choice for this automation since you want your abandoned cart automation to get triggered every time a user drops items in their cart, not just the first time. 

Then select the website for which you want to track this event. Click on the Save button. 

The trigger has been set. 

When a customer adds an item to their cart it will initiate the automation sequence, but you can’t just have your automation act on it by immediately sending them an email! You need to give your customers some time to go through with the purchase. 

Now is the time to do it.

Click the + button. A pop-up appears with two tabs, the Conditional / Control Steps tab, and the Actions tab. You’ll find yourself at the Conditional / Control Steps tab by default.

Click on the Wait a specific time interval option.

Add the time you prefer on the Time to Wait field. 

Ideally, you should go for 45 minutes as an optimum waiting time. This should give your customers enough time to browse your site for other items and move forward with the purchase.

Click Save. 

Now that your customers have had adequate time to buy any items they added to their cart, let’s split them up, based on whether they did purchase any items or not.

Click the + button.

The pop-up window with the Conditional / Control Steps tab and the Actions tab appears.

Click on the Filter option.

In the window that appears, you need to select if you want to apply this filter to all of your mailing lists. 

Click on the Add a condition button.

Select the Purchased a Product option from the first drop-down menu.

Select the is false option from the second drop-down menu.

Setting the logic function this way means that the filter creates a division based on the following question “Did the customer make a purchase, yes or no?” 

Click on the time symbol, located on the right.

You now have extra options that help you define a time span in which the condition we’re setting has taken place. 

This way we can make a filter that separates the customers who recently purchased something from the ones who haven’t.

Fill-in the time to 45 and select the minutes measurement from the drop-down menu.

Click on the Save button.

Your filter separates anyone who has added something to their cart in the past 45 minutes into two sections: under Yes you’ll find the people who added something to their cart but did not make a purchase in the last 45 minutes, whereas under No are the people who added something to their cart 45 minutes ago and purchased during this time. 

People under Yes are those you need to nudge and get them to purchase!

Click on the + symbol below the Yes condition and click the Actions tab. 

Click on the Then send email campaign option.

Fill-in the subject of the email you’re going to send.

Choose the sender of the email from the drop-down menu.

Choose the campaign content. 

You have two options here. The first is to create new content which means that you can simply type your message in the text box and style it by changing, for example, the font, size or color of it. 

Or, you can use a design with an Abandoned Cart container in it, to display the products. We are going to take the second option and use the design we created earlier.

Click on the Content From Campaign tab and choose the campaign from the dropdown menu. 

Then, set the number of emails sent by this action per day to Unlimited. You want to make sure that whenever someone abandons something in their cart they’ll receive an email from you!

Click on the Save button. 

If you want your automation to start running right away remember to set it Active.

That’s it! Your email automation workflows are ready to be sent and help you nurture leads into customers!

And this was the last step of creating an eCommerce store! That was easier than you thought, right? 

By following these simple steps you’ll be ready to start building and growing your online business in no time! Good luck!