In this campaign, you'll create a segment of users with abandoned carts and trigger a personalized message—onsite or via email—with a checkout incentive. Capture conversion intent and reduce drop-off in the checkout funnel.
Focus area | Ideal For | Difficulty | Key Success Metrics |
Cart Abandonment | Increase cart recovery and reduce checkout abandonment | Intermediate |
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Skills Required
Prior to beginning, ensure you can:
Create and modify:
Profile properties
Listeners
Segments
Connections
Dialogues
The Simulator
Identify and involve your internal marketing teams/decision makers
Track KPIs and metrics using Insights and external systems
Before you begin: complete the 8-box
Define your objectives: Recover revenue by re-engaging abandoners with discount messaging via email or onsite pop-ups.
Identify your target audience: Define your target audience: Known users with an email or profile ID, who have added items to their cart or started a checkout, and did not complete a purchase in the last 24-48 hours.
Review existing customer data: How are your ecommerce events stored? Are they in an outside system, or does that information need to be tracked with BlueConic? Is there a connection established? What data does it pull in? Do you use an ESP to communicate with customers?
Identify customer data gaps and how BlueConic listeners can fill them: This use case uses the Funnel listener to track cart events.
Define your segment definitions: Visitors that have had cart activity in the last 1-3 days without a purchase event, and has an email.
Identify stakeholders and key hands-on resources and outline your marketing program scope: Identify which teams you will engage to execute this use case. ESP managers, teams who will set up Listeners and Segments, create creative content, configure Dialogues, and create Dashboards.
Consider activation options: Dialogues for discounted checkout offers, and/or Email (offsite) to send a personalized reminder with optional discount.
Establish your measurement approach: Cart recovery conversion rate, Revenue from abandoners, discount redemption rate.
Create Profile Properties
You will need an email profile property for this use case. You may already have an email profile property, and you can use that one, as long as the settings are configured as needed/outlined below. Otherwise, create an email address profile property to store data.
Additional profile properties used in this use case are created by the funnel listener.
Email Address
Name: Enter a name that follows your company's naming conventions.
ID: Enter a custom ID if needed, or use the generated ID
Type: Email
Segmentation: Available for segmentation
Merge strategy: Keep both
Unique Identifier: Check for "is"
Gather data with BlueConic Listeners
In the BlueConic interface, go to Listeners via the navigation menu.
Select Listeners > Add Listener > Funnel Step listener.
Enter a name for the listener.
Specify on which channels or pages the listener should be active:
If you are listening for activity on a single checkout funnel, leave the default all pages on all channels
If you need to drill down to a specific part of your channels, you can narrow them down by:
Use wildcards or URL‑pattern rules to define the pages.
“^” for exact match at the beginning.
“$” for exact match at the end.
“.” instead of “” for wildcards in the middle.
Assign a unique Funnel ID for this funnel.
Define the steps in the funnel flow:
Click Add page to begin. Use the Visual Picker to navigate to your first page of the flow.
Click the blue Add page button in the Visual Picker to add that page.
Then browse to the next page in your process, click Add page again. Continue this until all funnel steps are defined.
After adding all pages, close the Visual Picker.
Review the flow overview: You’ll see thumbnails of all pages/steps in the flow chained underneath each other.
For each step, click the name and add the name of the step e.g.. “Shopping cart”. If needed, you may edit the URL. Regex is accepted for URL editing.
You can add word‑filters: the page will only count toward that step if certain words are present on it.
A single step can include multiple URLs. Any page matching one of the URLs counts as reaching that step.
To remove a URL from a step, hover over it and click the “X”
Add the listener to any required Objectives
Example funnel flow:
Step Name | Trigger (URL or page element) |
View Cart | /cart |
Shipping information | /checkout/shipping or text “Shipping Details” |
Billing information | /checkout/billing or text “Payment Method” |
Review order | /checkout/review or text “Review Your Order” |
Order confirmation | /order-confirmation or text “Thank You” |
8. Add the listener to any required Objectives.
9. Toggle the listener to On. Click Save to save the configuration.
Funnel Listener-generated Profile Properties
In addition to the unique Funnel ID that serves as a unique identifier for your funnel, the Funnel Step Listener automatically creates profile properties in visitors' profiles to track the following:
Funnel steps: Track all steps the user has taken in the funnel.
Last field: Tracks any field that was in view when the user stopped in the form and is on a page within the funnel.
Busy with funnel: Lists the name of the funnel the user has entered (in cases where you have multiple funnels).
Funnel entrance: Tracks the date and time the user entered the funnel.
Last step: Tracks the last step the user made it to in the funnel.
Note: This accelerator uses the funnel listener to bring cart data from your channels into BlueConic. However, if you have cart events that are registered on a data layer and want to use them for activation, you can use the Cart Abandonment Tracker Connection to pull that data into the platform.
Create Audience Segments
After configuring listeners, create segments to precisely target your audience.
In the BlueConic navigation bar, select Segments.
Click Create segment.
Add rules based on your setup:
Funnel entrance profile property occurred in the last X days/hours. This will check for users who have started the funnel within a certain period but have not yet completed it.
AND
Busy with funnel profile property set to empty. This will exclude any user who has completed the funnel successfully.
Name the segment (e.g., "Cart Abandoners – Last 24 Hours").
Click Save.
Create the Dialogue
Create a Lightbox dialogue (Instructions are for using an example dialogue. If using your own HTML, in step 6, edit the dialogue to add your HTML.)
Select Dialogues > Add dialogue > Lightbox
Name the dialogue: e.g., Cart Abandoners in the last 24 hours discount offer.
Who tab: select the segment Cart Abandoners- 24 hours.
When tab: Leave default settings or adjust views per visitor as needed.
Where tab: add your site (e.g., Taylor Times) and specify pages to show the dialogue.
What tab: On the right side menu, click Load examples and select the Act Now example dialogue.
Edit the text to clearly state the offer (e.g., ready to complete your purchase? Get a 5% discount!)
Change the button text to add a CTA (e.g., Go to my cart.
Change the redirect url for the button to the shopping cart page.
Update the branding and style to your company's specifications.
Why tab: Click Add Conversion moment, select URL, and add in the order confirmed URL.
Optimization settings: For this use case, set the control group to 0% if you want to target all visitors within the segment.
Add Dialogue to any required Objectives.
Turn the dialogue On and Save your settings.
Configure a Connection (optional)
Connect to your Email Service provider to send emails to cart abandoners.
Select Connections > Add connection and choose your ESP (e.g., Sailthru Connection).
Name your connection.
Set up and run: authenticate your connection by entering API keys and secrets as required by your ESP.
Create your Export goal:
Select the segment “Cart Abandoners- 24 hours”
Define a linking identifier to match email addresses between BlueConic and your ESP (e.g., map BlueConic's 'Email address' identifier to your ESP's email field).
Map additional fields if needed.
Activate the checkbox in Step 4 to create new profiles in the ESP.
Add the connection to any required Objectives.
Check the box next to the export goal. Save.
Click Run now to initiate the connection and verify successful record creation in your ESP.
Outside of BlueConic: Configure the email for your ESP to send to cart abandoners with a discount code.
Testing and Validation
Thoroughly test all configurations to ensure accuracy and expected behavior.
Test your segments and dialogue in the Simulator:
Select Simulator.
Click Show all segments and pin the segment you created - Cart Abandoners- 24 Hours.
In the Properties section, pin the funnel steps profile property.
Add items to your cart, and walk through the purchase process, but do not complete. Confirm funnel steps are accurate in the profile properties.
Confirm the lightbox displays.
Check the lightbox for style and formatting.
Measure your success
Create an Insights Dashboard to Measure Success
Report on use case success with Dashboard Insights of your campaign by tracking key performance indicators.
Select Insights> Add dashboard
Name the dashboard: e.g., Cart Abandonment
Click Add insight and choose the Dialogues Table Insight.
Use the Text filter (e.g., "Cart Abandonment") to display relevant dialogues.
The Insight table will show views, clicks, and conversions for your dialogues.
Add a funnel visualization insight
The Funnel Visualization Insight displays your customers or visitors reaching various touch points in a multi-step funnel.
Click Add insight and choose the Dialogues Table Insight. The insight will show:
Abandoners: Visitors who never made it to the next step in the funnel.
Stayers: Visitors who continue to the next step in the funnel. This is directly related to the abandoners: visitors who do not abandon, continue.
New visitors: These visitors landed directly on a funnel step, skipping earlier steps.
The total number of visitors for the step. This equals the number of visitors who reached the previous step plus new visitors to the step. The number is both displayed in text and also represented as a bar whose width is relative to the widest bar. It also displays the relative portions of visitors who visited the previous step (in dark green) versus the new visitors (in light green).