Some people get all the way to your order form, then leave without buying. They get distracted, or they aren't quite ready. A few well-timed reminders can bring some of them back. In this lesson, you'll build an abandoned cart automation. You'll trigger it on your order page, catch buyers with a goal, send reminders to everyone else, and publish.
Ontraport has an Abandoned Cart Recapture setup wizard that can build this for you, and setup wizards live under Systems in the top navigation. Here, we'll build it from scratch, so you know how each part works.
Go to Automations, then New Automation. If you've turned on other objects, like Companies or Deals, you'll find Automations under Contacts instead. Give your map a clear name, like "Abandoned cart."
Click the plus icon, then Add Trigger, and type to search. If your order form is on an Ontraport Page, choose Visits a landing page, then pick that page. Visits to Ontraport Pages are tracked automatically. If your order form is on another website, choose Contact visits URL instead. That page needs the Ontraport tracking code, which the Getting started course covers. Click Done.
Keep in mind that automations work with contacts. So this follow-up reaches visitors Ontraport already recognizes, like leads who came to your order page from one of your emails or filled out one of your forms.
Next, separate the buyers from everyone else. Below the trigger, click What Happens Next? and choose Goal. Open it, click Add Goal, choose Purchases product, and select the product on your order form.
Set "Who can achieve this goal?" to Any contact on this map, and "If contact is already on map" to Move here when achieved. That way, anyone who buys, at any point, jumps straight to the goal and skips the rest of the reminders. Click Done.
Below the goal, add an End element and turn on Remove from this automation. That makes it an exit, so buyers leave the map.
Every goal has a wait above it. By default, contacts move on the moment they achieve the goal. Click that wait, set "Wait here until" to Some time passes, enter one hour, and click Done. A new path appears to the left of the wait. Anyone who hasn't bought within the hour goes down that path, and that's where your reminders go.
On that path, click What Happens Next?, add a Send an Email element, and choose your email. An abandoned cart series usually has three emails. The first is a helpful reminder. Show what they left behind, link back to your order form, and offer to answer questions. The 5 message editors lesson shows you how to build it.
Then add a wait. Choose Some time passes and set one day. Check "Then wait until the time of day is…" and pick a morning time, so the email doesn't land in the middle of the night. You can use the contact's time zone. Waits count full 24-hour periods, so one day, then until 9 AM, means 24 hours plus the time until the next 9 AM.
Then send email two, a friendly nudge. Remind them why the product is worth it and link to the order form again, without a hard sell.
Add one more one-day wait, then email three, your final offer. This is a good place for an incentive, like a discount code. Coupons are available on Pro and above, and the Creating coupon codes lesson covers them. Your order form needs an Order Summary for customers to enter the code. After email three, add an End with Remove from this automation turned on, so anyone who still hasn't bought stops getting reminders.
Every map also has the default Added to Automation trigger, and every What Happens Next? box needs an element before you can publish. Under the default trigger, add a Go To and drag its handle to the wait above your goal, so you can add a test contact by hand. Or, if you don't need that, add an End.
There's one more kind of abandoned cart. Some payments need an extra approval step outside your form, like PayPal or Stripe 3D Secure. If a buyer starts one of those but doesn't finish the approval, Ontraport removes the incomplete purchase. To follow up with those buyers, use the Abandons external checkout trigger, or the matching goal. For PayPal, it works with the PayPal Standard element, not the legacy one.
You can also add these leads to a Facebook Custom Audience on the reminder path, so they see ads for the product they left behind. That's available on Plus and above, and the Facebook Custom Audiences lesson in the Ontraport for marketing course walks you through it.
Click the checklist icon to make sure every element is set up. Then click Publish, then Save & Publish. Now buyers leave through the goal the moment they purchase. Everyone else gets a reminder after an hour, a nudge the next day, and a final offer a day after that. Anyone who still doesn't buy stops getting reminders.
So: trigger the map on your order page, catch buyers with a Purchases product goal, and send a short series of reminders to everyone who hasn't bought within the hour. That wraps up order forms. Next up: fulfilling digital orders, so your customers get what they paid for.