After your customers make a purchase you will want to maintain and nurture the relationship with these customers. Creating a Post Purchase campaign in Journey Hub allows you to tailor the content of a Thank You message based on the types of items purchased, the amount spent, and more. Including personalized content, such as referencing products in a subject line, adding product recommendations, or targeting a customer in a specific channel can further nurture these relationships.
Need some inspiration? Learn more about the example journey build and the elements available to build a purchase journey.
Initial Setup
Accessing Journey Hub
Navigate to Automation > Journey Hub Journey.
Click the New Journey button.
Select the Post Purchase event.
Give your journey a name.
Adjusting the Entry Criteria
1. Click on the entry event in the builder and select the merchant associated with a purchase.
2. Set the re-entry frequency to No Limit or Once.
💡 Setting the frequency to No Limit allows a contact to enter the journey multiple times over their relationship with your brand.
3. If desired, set entry prevention rules to stop contacts from entering the Thank You Journey if they are in another journey, or their email address or phone number contains certain information.
💡 Use the email option to stop internal contacts in your organization from receiving an email.
How Customers Flow Through a Purchase Journey
Listrak receives information about purchases that occurred on your site from your ecommerce integration or from files you import into Listrak. All orders that are successfully added to Listrak are eligible to enter a contact into a purchase journey. In order for a customer to receive a message sent from within your journey, they must be subscribed to a list in your Listrak account with their email address regardless of messaging channel. The data management action step needs to be used to subscribe a contact to the list associated with your Post Purchase journey.
Configuring Exit Events
An exit event determines what must happen in order for a customer to exit a journey. If no exit events are configured or customers do not take the specified action they will naturally exit the journey at the end of their path.
1. Select the exit at the bottom of the journey.
2. If desired, select Purchased and then the merchant from the entry event.
💡If no limit is selected in entry event properties a customer could be in the journey in two places if they re-purchase while in the journey. Selecting the purchase event will stop a contact from receiving messages associated with their first purchase.
3. If desired, select Journey to exit a customer out of the Purchase journey if they enter another journey.
Customizing Your Purchase Journey
Configure the Flow
Now that you have determined how a customer becomes eligible to enter or exit the journey, you can determine the experience they will have by customizing paths based on past purchase history, messaging channel, and more.
Below are a few of the strategic considerations you may make when configuring your Post Purchase Journey.
Actions
Coupons: Include coupons in the message to incentivize a customer to make a repeat purchase.
Exit: Use the exit action to stop contacts in a specific path from continuing through the journey.
Webhook: A webhook can be configured to send information to a third-party system such as sending information to a system that manages your catalogs. Learn more about setting up a webhook.
Data Management: This action is used to subscribe or unsubscribe a contact from a list or lists when they reach the action.
⚠️ For a Post Purchase Entry this is required to ensure your purchasers are subscribed to the Post Purchase List so they can receive your configured messages.
Wait Step
Use wait steps to pause a contact before they receive additional messages.
Messages
To add an Email message, add the Email element onto the canvas. When creating messages be sure to select the list associated with the campaign, such as a Post Purchase list, in the properties panel.
To add an SMS message, drag the SMS element onto the canvas. In the properties panel, select the sender code.
⚠️ Use the data management action to ensure that a contact is able to receive messages.
Message Delivery Settings
When configuring an email or SMS message you can set turn on the message delivery settings in the Properties Panel. Enabling this setting allows you to limit the time range for when a message is sent.
You can also enable Time Zone Optimization to adjust the time to a customer's location based on their IP address, if sending an email message, or the area code, for an SMS message.
Decision Splits
Most decision splits can be placed anywhere in the journey to customize a customer's experience as they progress through the journey. Below are a few of the strategic ways decision splits can be used in a Post Purchase Journey. Once you have determined the strategy you would like to customize, learn more about configuring your decision splits.
💡 Use the multi-path option to create a fully customized experience for different groups of purchasers.
✉️ Engagement Split: This split can change a customer's path if they have engaged with a previous email or SMS message. Use this type of split to send additional messages to those who have shown interest.
📦 Purchase History Split: This split can customize a customer's path based on their past order history. Using the multi-split functionality you can tailor thank you messages based on the total number of orders a customer has placed to treat one-time vs. repeat buyers differently.
🛍️ Order Details Split: This split can customize a customer's path based on the items in their current order. Change the message creative, offer, or elements such as product recommendations based on product details, such as purchased brand or category.
📱 Channel Affinity Split: This split can be used to prioritize the messaging channel used to communicate with a customer.
🔀 Random Split: The random split can be used to test different components of a campaign by sending a percentage of customers one experience and the rest another experience. Use the random split to test how many messages to include, which subject lines have impact on open rates, or test how long to wait between messages.
☑️ Subscription Split: This split can be used to customize a contact's path based on how, when, or if they are subscribed to a specific list. This can be used to tailor a customer's path based on their membership to other programs that may have lists in your Listrak account, such as a loyalty program.
Activating a Journey
Once all messages have been created and the paths established, you are ready to activate the journey so that contacts can start receiving the new path and messages.
To activate, select the Activate button in the top right corner.
⚠️ If replacing an existing Conductor conversation with a journey, be sure to terminate the existing conversation so that lapsed purchasers only receive one thank you series.
Example Build
📷 Click image to enlarge
In this example Post Purchase Journey, purchasers are entered into the journey unless their email address contains the company domain. This prevents emails from being received by internal employees placing test orders. Any customer who makes another purchase while in the journey will be exited out.
All purchasers will wait one day. After waiting for one day, the data management action step will subscribe all contacts to the list associated with the email messages for the journey. Next, customers will be split into multiple paths based on the total number of purchases they have placed with the company. First, they will be checked to see if they have purchased 4 or more times, if not they will be checked to see if they have purchased 2 or more times, and if not they will flow down the default path. The default path will capture first time purchasers who do not meet any of the other criteria. The 2-3 time purchase path will only send to these contacts because anyone who has purchased 4 or more times will have already been directed down the 4x purchase path.
Within each path, a specific coupon will be set for each group. These paths allow you to customize the value or type of coupon for each group. Then, contacts who are opted into your SMS sender code will receive the configured SMS or MMS message that contained the configured coupon. Contacts must have opted into double opt-in, if included, for your sender code in order to be eligible for SMS messages. All contacts will also receive an email thank you message with the coupon because they were subscribed to the email list via the data management step.
For the 4+ time purchasers, three days after receiving the first message they will receive a second message if at least one of the items was a female or male gendered product. These messages can be tailored to provide upsell or cross-sell content. For those who purchased other products without gender, such as housewares, will be exited from the journey. Meanwhile, for first time purchasers in the default path, customers will wait for three days. If they clicked through a message during this time they will be directed down the yes path of the two-way engagement split and receive a second message. Those who did not engage will be exited from the journey.