Abandoned Order Notifications

Introduction

Very often, customers begin placing an order and never finish. They either change their mind, get distracted, or mistakenly believe they finished; then, while in the middle of the order process, they close the browser window, navigate away from the website, or walk away from their device.

Our system detects this situation, and will send the customer an email reminder, prompting them to return and complete their order. By ten days from the event date, if they still haven't done so, the system will send a second email reminder (if the situation occurs that far in advance).

These reminders can be a great benefit to your event, by recovering a substantial number of otherwise lost customers.

(The phone number given in the email is taken from the "Phone Sales" field on the event Overview page.)

Details

Each abandoned order email only sends if all the following conditions are true:

• The customer hasn't already finished their order.
• The event is still on sale (e.g. has not sold out).
• The feature is enabled for the event (which it is by default; see below).
• The system knows an email address for the customer.

There are three ways the system can know an email address:

• The customer has an iTickets account, and was logged in when they began ordering.
• The event has guest checkout enabled (which it is by default; see below).
• The customer made it at least to the Payment page, and entered their email address there.

Disabling

To enable or disable abandoned order notifications, from inside the event go to Order Settings > Customer Order, and use the appropriate checkbox under "General."

Warning: If you turn off the feature, and then turn it on later, all past abandoned orders will get an email reminder.

Data

We store very basic information about abandoned orders:

• event ID
• customer ID
• description of ticket request
• email address
• date/time the order was notified

We can export and send this data to you upon request, if you want to follow up with those who still didn't order.

The notification emails contain a URL with a referrer code. To locate orders placed as a result of these notifications, use the "Referrer" field on the Order Search page.

The code is recovered for orders placed using the first notification, and recovered10 for orders placed using the second notification.

Guest Checkout

The guest checkout feature asks the user to either log in, or provide an email address, before the order process begins. This has the following benefits:

• It increases the effectiveness of abandoned order notifications.
• It pre-fills some details on the Payment page, so this step is easier during checkout.

To enable or disable this, from inside the event go to Order Settings > Customer Order, and use the appropriate checkbox under "General."

Warning: Disabling guest checkout severely impacts the effectiveness of abandoned order notifications. This is because without guest checkout, the vast majority of abandoned orders will have no email address associated with them.