One of AutomateWoo’s key features is sending out WooCommerce abandoned cart emails. It has a session tracking module that can detect a returning registered user even when they aren’t logged in and it can also track guest customers.
When is a cart considered ‘abandoned’?
↑ Back to topWhen carts are tracked in AutomateWoo they can have two statuses, active or abandoned. A cart will be marked as abandoned after 15 minutes of inactivity or after whatever value is set as the Abandoned cart timeout setting. Cart activity includes any change to the cart and loading the cart or checkout page.
When does the abandoned cart trigger fire?
↑ Back to topWhen a cart’s status changes to abandoned, the Cart Abandoned trigger initiates any workflows using that trigger. If that cart’s status becomes active again any queued workflows with that trigger will be removed which essentially resets the abandonment process.
However, each workflow will only be run once per cart regardless of if the cart becomes active and abandoned once again.
- For example, you have two cart abandoned workflows delayed for 2 hours and 12 hours. After the first email the customer visits the checkout page but again doesn’t complete the purchase. The cart switches to active when the checkout is viewed but switches again to abandoned after 15 minutes. In this case, the 2 hour workflow has already run and will not be run again for the cart but the 12 hour workflow will be scheduled to run 12 hours from now.
The customer’s tracked cart is deleted any time they complete a purchase, empty their cart or their cart is expired (by default after 60 days). After the cart is deleted, a new cart is createdwhen the customer adds an item to their cart. This means that all workflows are now able to run for this cart.
Capturing guest data
↑ Back to topIf you choose to enable pre-submit data capture in settings, the Cart Abandoned trigger will use the pre-submit email capture technique on the checkout page. This means that a customer’s email is captured even before they fully complete the checkout process. As soon as the customer enters a valid email, AutomateWoo captures it and adds a tracking cookie to their browser.
Once this happens, the contents of a customer’s cart gets stored and is displayed in the Active Carts report. Future changes to the guest cart are also recorded and if the cart is abandoned this will trigger any abandoned cart workflows you’ve created.
Capturing emails from extra fields
↑ Back to topBy default this pre-submit functionality is only enabled on the checkout page, but the same technique can be used on any email field on your website. To achieve this, add the CSS class automatewoo-capture-guest-email to an email field.
Enable capture javascript on all pages
↑ Back to topThe email capture javascript is only enabled on the checkout page by default. This is to avoid loading unused javascript on every page. To capture email addresses from pages other than the checkout you must change the below setting under AutomateWoo > Settings > General.
Setting custom guest email jQuery selectors
If you are not able to add a CSS class to your target email field, you can add new guest jQuery selectors with the filter automatewoo/guest_capture_fields.
Testing guest email capture
↑ Back to topWhen testing the guest email capture function it is important to create a completely new browser session. Otherwise the session tracking will remember that you are a registered user (even if you are logged out) and will not record any captured email addresses. If you use Google Chrome you should open a new incognito window before testing.