Quick Start : Triggering Abandon Cart Emails with Infinity and Responsys

Introduction

This tutorial details how to trigger an abandon cart email through Oracle Responsys by using Oracle Infinity to track when users have added an item to their cart but have not purchased.

Tip! In this tutorial, we’ll be providing you with a test website* so you can complete the tutorial without any development work:

*The test site was built using Oracle Content Management - a powerful solution to allow marketers to build their own websites quickly without any coding knowledge)

Objectives

The objectives of the tutorial are to:

Prerequisites

In order to complete this tutorial, you must have the following in place:

Step 1: Create, Configure and Implement the Oracle CX Tag on our Test Website

The Oracle CX Tag is used to implement Infinity on your website. Please follow these instructions to deploy this on the test website:

1.1 Create your Oracle CX Tag

1.2 Configure the Infinity Module

We now need to configure the Infinity Module to deploy the Infinity on the test website.

1.3 Deploy the Oracle CX Tag on the Test Website

Normally, we could be implementing the Oracle CX Tag on your website as per the implementation guidelines. However, as we are going to be using a pre-built test website, we will not need to do this so will be skipping this step.

Our test website is especially built to allow us to use any CX tag of our choice without needing to implement the normal CX Tag code (for your browser only - it won’t load the CX Tag for other visitors).

Please complete the following steps to do this:

Step 2: Implement the Infinity Tracking on your Website

Tip! We can skip this step in our tutorial as the test website we will be using is pre-configured to have this tracking implemented but the required tracking calls are detailed below.

Now that the Oracle CX Tag deployed on your website, you would need to implement tracking calls to tell Infinity when users have added products to their cart and when they have purchased.

2.1 Implement Add Product to Cart Tracking

To understand what products have been added to our users’ cart, we will need to implement the following tracking code when someone adds a product to their cart:

Tips! 

<script>
// Send Data
var cxDataObject = { 
  "wt.tx_e":"a", // required : Denotes 'add product to cart'
  "wt.pn_sku":"ENTER SKU", // required* : e.g. 'BJN1'. Delimit multiple values with ';' ('BJN1;PSK2')
  "wt.email_sha256":"ENTER SHA256 HASHED EMAIL IF LOGGED IN" // required** : e.g. "267648f5401c5ee1b94acc79b7a0ab4d76d0b0980af7958284566b4867aea44a"
};
 
// DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE - ORA.click()
window.ORA = window.ORA || {productReady: []};
ORA.productReady.push(['analytics', function(cxDataObject) {return function() {return ORA.click({"data": cxDataObject})}}(cxDataObject)]);
</script>

Notes:

2.2 Implement Purchase Product Tracking

To understand when a user has made a purchase, we will need to implement the following tracking code when someone makes a purchase (for example, on your order confirmation page):

Tips! 

<script>
// Send Data
var cxDataObject = { 
  "wt.tx_e":"p", // required : Denotes 'purchase product'
  "wt.email_sha256":"ENTER SHA256 HASHED EMAIL IF LOGGED IN" // required** : e.g. "267648f5401c5ee1b94acc79b7a0ab4d76d0b0980af7958284566b4867aea44a"
};
 
// DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE - ORA.click()
window.ORA = window.ORA || {productReady: []};
ORA.productReady.push(['analytics', function(cxDataObject) {return function() {return ORA.click({"data": cxDataObject})}}(cxDataObject)]);
</script>

Note: *If the customer is logged in, you must declare an ID which will later match the EMAIL_SHA256_HASH_ field in the Responsys Profile List we will be creating later .

2.3 Implement Page Tracking (including User Identifier Tracking)

In order to understand who to target with Responsys, a match key is required. We will be collecting your SHA 256 Hashed Email Address for each user and sending this to Infinity.

Notes:

On our test website, we will be declaring the user’s SHA256 Hashed Email on every call (as per steps 2.1 and 2.2 as wt.email_sha256. We will also be declaring this on every page view using the following code:

<script>
// Send Data
var cxDataObject = {}; 

// If logged in, declare your user's SHA 256 Hashed Email Address
cxDataObject["wt.email_sha256"]:"ENTER SHA256 HASHED EMAIL" // e.g. "267648f5401c5ee1b94acc79b7a0ab4d76d0b0980af7958284566b4867aea44a"
 
// DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE - ORA.click()
window.ORA = window.ORA || {productReady: []};
ORA.productReady.push(['analytics', function(cxDataObject) {return function() {return ORA.click({"data": cxDataObject})}}(cxDataObject)]);
</script>

Step 3: Validate Infinity Tracking on your Website

We can now test our website to see whether the required tracking has been implemented as follows:

Tip! Please see Verifying Data Collection for more information around validating Infinity Tracking with the Oracle CX Tag.

3.1 Validate the Oracle CX Tag and Infinity Modules are firing on your website

Visit your test site ensuring that you update the URL with your ACCOUNTGUID and TAGID (as per above).

In your browser:

3.2 Validate Add Product to Cart Tracking

Next, we will test whether adding products to your cart is tracked:

3.3 Validate Purchase Product Tracking

To check whether purchases are tracked, you can follow similar steps to the previous test:

3.4 Validate User Identifier Tracking

The test website tracks users by identifier once they declare their email address during the checkout process (you will see wt.email_sha256 on all Infinity requests once this has happened).

You can validate this as follows:

Important! Once logged in, you can see your wt.email_sha256 value on any Infinity calls so if you lose this - you can check any dcs.gif request (be sure you’re in the same browser you completed the above steps in though!).

Step 4: Configure Oracle Responsys

Now that we know our website visitors are being tracked by Oracle Infinity, we can configure Responsys to send cart abandon emails to any customers who have abandoned.

Firstly, log into your Responsys account then complete the following steps:

4.1 Create a new Folder

We are going to create a new Folder for all of our tutorial assets to live in:

4.2 Create a new Profile List for our Customers

Tip! Ordinarily, you would use your existing Profile List which create and update your customer records for (using a Responsys Connect job). For this tutorial, we’re creating a separate list to keep this tutorial activity completely separate from your real Responsys activity.

We will be creating a distinct Profile List (sometimes known as a Contacts List) to ensure we can keep the data we need for this tutorial distinct (and not accidentally affect any campaigns you may have running in Responsys):

4.3 Create a new Supplemental Table of our Products

We will be creating a Supplemental Table to store all of the products we will be supporting on our website. This will be used to populate our emails with the correct product details and images:

4.4 Create a Custom Event to trigger Abandon Cart Emails

We now need an Custom Event in Responsys which will be triggered when someone abandons their cart by our Infinity Action later in the tutorial:

4.5 Create Campaign Categories

We will create a Marketing Strategy and Marketing Program for our tutorial which we will use in our Email Campaign in the next step:

4.6 Create a Test Record in your Profile List

Note: If you do not complete this step, your email preview will fail in later in this tutorial.

For our tutorial, we need are going to need to manually create a record in our Profile List so that Responsys will know who to target.

Tip! Normally, you would have a Responsys Connect job set up to automatically create and update customer records in your main Profile List as users register on your website. For our tutorial, we will just create the records we want to test ourselves in Responsys.

Create your record as follows:

4.7 Create your Email Campaign

You will first create an Create an Email Campaign which is effectively the email which will be sent to your end users (and will be triggered by your Program as per the later step of Create a Program).

Create a Campaign

Create an Email Campaign with the following settings:

Add Your Data Sources

You will need to ensure that your campaign is linked through to the Product Supplemental Table we created earlier and the PRODUCT_SKUS Dynamic Variable (this is what Oracle Infinity will pass through the abandoned product SKUs as) so that it can generate the email content correctly:

  1. Open the Data Sources.

  2. Add the Tutorial Abandon Cart - Products Supplemental Table we created earlier as a Supplemental Table Data Source.

    • Change the Data Source Alias to Product_Table.

    Data Sources - Aliases

    Data Sources - Aliases

    • Ensure your columns have the following aliases:

      • PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION: Visible description of your product.
      • PRODUCT_IMAGE_URL: URL of image which will be displayed to your users.
      • PRODUCT_NAME: Visible name of product.
      • PRODUCT_PRICE: Visible price of your product (without currency).
      • PRODUCT_SKU: Visible SKU of your product (also used to look up the other fields per product).
      • PRODUCT_URL: Clickthrough URL for the product.

    • Ensure you set PRODUCT_SKU as a Lookup key.

    Data Sources - Key

    Data Sources - Key

    • Ensure you set the Supplemental Table as Data source is used only as a lookup table (see Data Sources for more information).

    Click ‘Settings’

    Click 'Settings'

    Check ‘Data source is used only as a lookup table’

    Check 'Data source is used only as a lookup table'

  3. Add a Dynamic Variable with an alias of PRODUCT_SKUS.

    Setting your Default: Ensure you add a default of a '14;15. This will populate our email preview with products 14 and 15.

    Adding a Dynamic Variable

    Adding a Dynamic Variable

Create a Message

Tip! Normally, you will create your own messages but we are supplying a template you can use for this tutorial.

You will need to create a message which will be displayed to the user within your email:

  1. Create a message from a file.
  2. Browse for a file and use the following email template.
  3. Add a Subject of Did you forget something? (this will display as the subject line in your email).
  4. Remove Link Tracking (in this tutorial, we will not be using Link Tracking to simplify the workflow but you can add this in yourself at a later stage if you wish).

How does the Email Template populate the Cart contents? See the template explanation if you’d like to understand how Oracle Responsys Personalization Language (RPL) is used to insert the user’s cart contents into the email.

Preview Your Email Campaign

We will now preview your email campaign in isolation without using Oracle Infinity (to ensure the email renders correctly):

  1. Preview your Message.

  2. You should now see a sample email populated with the default products you set within the PRODUCT_SKUS Dynamic Variable within your Campaign Data Sources:

    Previewing your email

    Previewing your email

You can now go on to create your Program in the next step.

Ignore any Targeting errors: You may see errors in the user interface within the Targeting section. Please ignore these as this section does not need to be completed if running within a Program (as is being done within this tutorial).

4.7 Create a Program

Now that the Email Campaign has been set up correctly and tested, you will need to Create a Program which will receive the data from Oracle Infinity and trigger the Campaign in order to send emails to your customers.

  1. Create a Program with the following details:

    • Name: Tutorial Abandon Cart - Program.
    • Folder: Set to the Tutorial Abandon Cart folder you created earlier.
    • List: Set to the Tutorial Abandon Cart - Profile List Profile List you created earlier.
    • Description: Set to Targeting users who abandon their cart via Oracle Infinity).

  2. Add and connect the following elements to your Program Canvas:

    (a) Custom Event

    Add a Custom Event and configure as follows:

    • Listen for custom event type : tutorial_abandon_cart_event (you created this earlier).
    • Audience Label : Toggle this on and set to Abandon Cart Tutorial (or any value you like - this is optionally used for analysis).
    • Create new Audience for each incoming segment : Uncheck this.
    • Match entry on : Leave as -optional-*.
    • Do not create a new entry in the program and leave the existing entry where it is : Toggle this on*

    *These settings ensure customers cannot enter the program more than once at a time - important if you want to build in a longer campaign with reminder emails after the initial email so you can avoid emailing customers too much.

    (b) Send Email Campaign

    Add Send Email Campaign and configure as follows:

    • Set Campaign to Tutorial Abandon Cart - Campaign and leave all other options as default.

    (c) End

    Add End and leave with default settings.

  3. Ensure your elements are connected as per below:

    Cart Abandonment Program

    Cart Abandonment Program

  4. Within the Design tab, go to Settings > Options:

    • Set Auto unpublish this program based on the following settings as Unpublish manually.
    • Enter your email address under Enter email addresses to receive notifications about this program.
    • Under Tracking and Variables, click + and add “PRODUCT_SKUS” with a type of “Text”.

  5. Publish your Program using default settings.

Step 5: Configure Oracle Infinity

5.1 Set up Oracle Responsys Connection

You will need to set up a connection to your Oracle Responsys account within Oracle Infinity. Please see Configuring an Oracle Responsys connection to set up your connection.

Connection not working?

You will need to set up a Custom Event destination with the following details from the previous Configure Oracle Responsys for Cart Abandonment step:

5.2 Create the Email SHA256 Hash Parameter

We need to create a parameter for our SHA 256 Hashed Email Address to use in our Action in the next step. To do this:

5.3 Create Your Action

Create your Action within Oracle Infinity as follows:

Basic Details

Please complete as follows:

Rules

  1. Please select the Product Add Abandonment Scenario.

  2. Remove View Product from the Scenario.

  3. Click Include to add the following filter:

    • Email SHA256 Hash Exists on Any occurrence in session.

  4. Click Include to add another filter (so that you have an AND clause):

    • Domain Contains on

  5. Click Continue.

Rules

Rules

Tip! We are adding a domain filter for workshop-oce0002.ocecdn.oraclecloud.com to ensure that you real customers on your website do not accidentally qualify for this action and enter you Responsys Program.

Destinations

As per the Connection you created earlier in Set up Oracle Responsys Connection within Infinity:

  1. Select the Oracle Responsys Connection you previously created:

    Select your Oracle Responsys Account

    Select your Oracle Responsys Account

  2. Select Trigger Custom Event:

    Trigger Custom Event

    Trigger Custom Event

  3. Select the Destination you previously created for cart abandonment:

    Select your Destination

    Select your Destination

Field Mapping

You will now map to required parameters which will be sent to Oracle Responsys for cart abandoners:

Match Key

We will now map the Email SHA256 Hash we collect in Oracle Infinity (wt.email_sha256) to dedicated Responsys field for Email SHA256 Hash (EMAIL_SHA256_HASH_).

  1. Within the Infinity Data column, select the Email SHA256 Hash parameter.
  2. Select Last occurrence in session.
  3. Within the Oracle Responsys Fields column, type customerId to map this to the Email SHA256 Hash field

Product SKU

Map the Product SKU parameter to your dynamic variable within Oracle Responsys used to denote the Product SKU(s) within the user’s cart.

  1. Click the + icon on the right-hand side to add a new mapping.

  2. Within the Infinity Data column, select Behaviors > Add product to cart > Product SKU.

  3. Within the Oracle Responsys Fields column, enter the dynamic variable you chose within the Configure Oracle Responsys for Cart Abandonment step - we used PRODUCT_SKUS.

    Mapping your Parameters

    Mapping your Parameters

  4. Click Save to save your Action.

5.3 Push your Action Live

You can now enable your action by clicking it within the user interface then clicking Enable.

5.4 Testing

Notes:

To test your Action, please follow these steps:

  1. Open an Incognito/private window to ensure that you have cleared your cookies (we to ensure we start with a new Infinity profile so we remove any previous behavior on the website which may interfere with our testing).

Note:If you already have an incognito window open, you will need to close all of them to ensure you clear the cookies in incognito mode.

  1. Visit your test site ensuring that you update the URL with your ACCOUNTGUID and TAGID (as per above).

  2. Log in with your credentials from earlier.

Note: You must ensure that you use the same credentials you used earlier so that the test record you created in Responsys is used for our test.

  1. Add at least one item to your cart.

  2. Wait 30-40 minutes* for your session to close**.

  3. You should receive an email with the products you added to your cart within the session. For example:

    Example Email

    Example Email

*Don’t want to wait 30 minutes?: For testing, you may wish to temporarily update your Action to trigger on Does not close session. This will trigger emails immediately upon cart add so that you can validate your emails are being sent more quickly (be aware that this should not be used for real customers - it will email them as soon as they add a product to their cart):

Changing to ‘Does not close session’

Session Open

**What happens upon session close?

At the end of your session:

Troubleshooting: Please see Troubleshooting for common issues and solutions.

Congratulations! You are have now completed the tutorial and you are triggering emails upon cart abandon on the test website!

Next Steps

Now that you have successfully delivered an abandon cart use case on the test website, you now have everything you need to begin an implementation on your own website.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I log in to the Infinity User Interface?

You will have received your login URL in your original welcome email (for example, app.oracleinfinity.com or app.eu1.oracleinfinity.com.

Troubleshooting

I don’t receive an Email after abandoning my Cart

Please see the following suggestions:

Suggestion Description
Did you wait 30 minutes for your Infinity session to close? You must not perform any actions on the website for 30 minutes to that Infinity can close your session to ensure you haven’t purchased anything and have truly abandoned
If you are waiting for the session to close, try amending your Action to trigger on Does not close session (see Testing). This will trigger the action immediately (potentially many times through your web session) as soon as the Action criteria is met so it is only recommended for testing.
Have you added a test record for yourself in Responsys? Without a record existing in the Profile List you are using - your email will not fire.

More Learning Resources

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