Abandoned Cart Notification Emails

Abandoned carts are missed opportunities to convert interested shoppers into loyal customers. Sending an abandoned cart email notification is a way to gently nudge them to come back, whether it is with a personalized message or a special discount. Automating abandoned cart emails requires orchestrating data from your eCommerce system with an email service provider to identify, segment, tailor, and send your messages. Buillding an abandoned cart notification process can be challenging as teams have to manage syncing data across systems, handling high-volume requests, and ensuring flexibility in the style and messaging of your emails.

In this recipe, we configure the Conscia DX Engine to send abandoned cart email notifications.

We will get abandoned cart information from commercetools and send emails to customers via Twilio SendGrid API.

This is a starter recipe to show how you can easily retrieve eCommerce cart data (commercetools) to configure personalized email notifications with an Email Service (Twilio SendGrid).

You can extend this Conscia DX Engine recipe to orchestrate personalized emails with dynamic images and text from your Content Management System and enriched customer segmentation data from your Customer Data Platform.

Prerequisites

Before starting this recipe, you should be familiar with Conscia DX Engine fundamentals:

1. Creating DX Engine Components
2. Configuring DX Engine Components

To follow this recipe, you will require DX Engine Connections for commercetools and Twilio:

1. DX Engine Connection to commercetools
2. DX Engine Connection to Twilio

Overall Orchestration Approach

First, we will use Conscia DX Engine to query commercetools for a list of carts that have been abandoned. Then using Conscia Object Mapper we will loop over each cart in the list to send a personalized email to each customer via Twilio SendGrid API.

Mapping Out DX Flow

Our Flow for this recipe will include the following as seen in the diagram below:

• Commercetools Query Carts
  • Conscia Universal API Component is used to get Cart data from commercetools
• Map Cart Object to Cart Email Array
  • Conscia Object Mapper Component transforms the Cart data to an array
• Map Cart Email Array to Email -- SC SendGridEmail
  • Conscia Object Mapper component transforms the Cart Email array to the email API format and calls the Sub Component SC SendGrid Email (not pictured) to send request to Twilio SendGrid API

DX Engine Configuration Details

Components

This recipe uses a Sub Component. A Sub Component must be created before it can be used, so we will create and configure the Sub Component first.

1. Send Emails via Twilio SendGrid API

Our Send Email component will use a series of Conscia Context Fields to configure the API request.

By using Context Fields, this component can easily be re-used in other recipes.

1. Create Component

   Field	Value
   Component Code	sendgrid-email-request
   Component Name	SC SendGrid Email
   No Rules	True - Checked
   Component Type	Conscia - Universal API Connector

2. Configure Component

   Options

   Field	Type	Value	Note
   Get Value From	Literal	Sendgrid Connection	Your existing Twilio connection component
   Webservice Path	Literal	/mail/send
   Method		POST

   Query Parameter Options

   To configure the Body field, set Body - Get Value from = "JS Expression" and paste the following expression into the editor:

_.assign({},
{
    "personalizations": [
    {
        "to":[
        {
            "email": contextField("toEmail"),
            "name": contextField("toName")
        }]
    }],
    "from":
    {
        "email": contextField("fromEmail"),
        "name": contextField("fromName")
    },
    "subject": contextField("emailSubject"),
    "content": [
    {
        "type": contextField("contentType"),
            "value": contextField("contentValue")
    }]
})

2. Query commercetools for Abandoned Carts

For this recipe, we will consider "Abandoned Carts" as commercetool carts that are Active and have not been modified since a specific timestamp. The API request and query parameters are based on the specifications for commercetools Carts API.

For demo purposes, we retrieve the first 5 cart results (limit = 5).

1. Create Component

   Field	Value
   Component Code	commercetools-query-carts
   Component Name	Commercetools Query Carts
   No Rules	True - Checked
   Component Type	Conscia - Universal API Connector

2. Configure Component

   Options

   Field	Type	Value
   Get Value From	Literal	Commercetools Connection
   Webservice Path	Literal	/carts/

   Query Parameters

   Parameter Name	Type	Value	Note
   Limit	Literal	5	Set for demo purposes
   where	Literal	cartState = "Active"
   where	Literal	lastModifiedAt < "2024-12-19T00:00:00.000Z"	Set for demo purposes

3. Map Abandoned Carts to Cart Email Array

1. Create Component

   Field	Value
   Component Code	om-cart-obj-to-array
   Component Name	Map Cart Object to Cart Email Array
   No Rules	True - Checked
   Component Type	Conscia - Object Mapper

2. Configure Component

   Object Maps

   Field	Type	Value	Note
   Source Data	Component Response	Commercetools Query Carts	This is component from previous step.
   Expression Type		JSONata
   Source Array Property Path		results
   Target Property Path for modified array		personalizations

   Schema

   The body of the email will be based on the number of items in the commercetools cart.

   • If the cart has items, the email will say "Hi! You left items in your cart!"
   • If the cart has no items, the email will say "Hi! Come back soon!"

   The body of the email will be defined in the Schema with the following JavaScript expression:

   "<h1>Hi!</h1><br><p>" & ($count(lineItems) > 0 ? ("You left items in your cart!</p><br>") : ("Come back soon</p><br>"))

   Schema Configuration

   Name	Type	Parent	Evaluation Expression	Note
   Root	object
   to	object	Root
   email	expression	to	customerEmail	From component response
   content	object	Root
   type	expression	content	"text/html"	Include quotation marks
   value	expression	content	"<h1>Hi!</h1><br><p>" & ($count(lineItems) > 0 ? ("You left items in your cart!</p><br>") : ("Come back soon</p><br>"))	Set for demo purposes

   Response Transform

   The Object Map transforms the Cart records into an array of emails. Based on the SendGrid API requirements, we then use a Response Transform to transform the "To" fields into an array.

   Copy and paste the Javascript expression into your Object Mapper Response Transform field

   response.personalizations.map(item => ({"to": [item.to], "contentValue": item.content.value, "contentType": item.content.type }))

4. Map Cart Email Array to Email

With the cart emails in an array, we can iterate over each record to send emails. This is where we will use the Sub Component.

1. Create Component

   Field	Value
   Component Code	om-emails-array-to-email
   Component Name	Map Cart Email Array to Email -- SC SendGrid Email
   No Rules	True - Checked
   Component Type	Conscia - Object Mapper

2. Configure Component

   Object Maps

   Field	Type	Value	Note
   Source Data	Component Response	Map Cart Object to Cart Email Array	This is component from previous step.
   Expression Type		JSONata
   Source Array Property Path		$
   Target Property Path for modified array		$

   Schema

   You will use your own values for the following configuration below:

   • FROM EMAIL
   • FROM NAME
   • EMAIL SUBJECT

   Schema Object Configuration

   Name	Type	Parent	Evaluation Expression	Note
   Root	object
   to	object	Root
   email	expression	to	to.email	From component response
   from	object	Root
   email	expression	from	FROM EMAIL	Set for demo purposes
   name	expression	from	FROM NAME	Set for demo purposes
   subject	expression	Root	EMAIL SUBJECT	Set for demo purposes
   content	object	Root
   type	expression	content	contentType	From component response
   value	expression	content	contentValue	From component response

Sub Components

Navigate to the Sub Component menu and configure the following:

• Property Name = sentEmails
• Components = sendgrid-email-request

Context Fields for Sub Component

Context Field	Expression
toEmail	response.to.email
fromEmail	response.from.email
emailSubject	response.subject
contentType	response.content.type
contentValue	response.content.value

Flow

From the Manage Flow menu, click + Add Flow and create a flow with the following configuration:

Field	Value
Experience Template Code	ct-abandoned-carts-email
Name	CT Abandoned Carts Email

In the Experience Components section, click + Experience Components and specify Map Email Array to Cart Email --SC SendGrid Email.

Instructions

To run in the Debugger, select and execute the Flow CT Abandoned Carts Email.

The Actual Response will include the email request that was sent to SendGrid as seen in the JSON snippet below.

{
  "to": {
            "email": // TO EMAIL 
          },
          "from": {
            "email": // FROM EMAIL
            "name": // FROM NAME
          },
          "subject": // EMAIL SUBJECT
          "content": {
            "type": "text/html",
            "value": "<h1>Hi!</h1><br><p>Come back soon</p><br>"
          },
          "sentEmails": {
            "request-sendgrid-email": {
              "@extras": {
                "rule": {
                  "metadata": [],
                  "attributes": {}
                }
              },
              "status": "VALID",
            }
    }
}

References

• Commercetools Carts API documentation
• Twilio SendGrid API documentation
• Conscia Object Mapper