Steps

Overview

A marketing sequence, flow or campaign, is made up of a series of steps. These steps allow you to create more sophisticated marketing .

Adding a Step

Within the campaign or flow editor, click on the plus button as shown below.

Next a dialog will appear asking for the type of step you want to add. Only the steps that are appropriate for the location will be displayed in the drop down list.

List of Step Types

Step Type

Description

Step Type

Description

Time Delay

Sets a time delay before the next step is processed.

Conditional Delay

Defines a delay based on a condition.

Rate Limiter

Enforces Rate limiter for outgoing messages.

Setup / Modify cart

Creates a new cart or modifies an existing cart.

Send Email

Sends email to customer.

Resend Email

Resends email to customer.

Send Post Card

Sends physical postcard to customer.

Send Webhook

Sends webhook.

Loyalty Points

Adds loyalty points to customer profile.
(*If no profile exists for customer, one will be created, along with “magic” login link.)

Condition

Process a defined condition.

Split

Splits the flow into separate steps.

Merge

Allows you to rejoin the 'Yes/No' sides of a condition step, or Left and Right sides of a Split step.

Update Profile

Make an update to customer profile.

Experiment

Process a defined experiment.

List Subscribe

Subscribe customer to a mailing list.

List Unsubscribe

Unsubscribe customer from a mailing list.

Third Party

Interact with a 3rd party script.

Send Email

The send email step is the most important step to familiarize yourself with, since most campaigns and flows will contain one or more email steps. The first two fields are the most important piece text you will configure on your email. The subject and preview text are visible to the customer within their inbox. Write something catchy to get their attention.

Important Message Regarding Email Copy Review Requirement

Emails Require Approval by UltraCart

UltraCart uses Amazon SES for email delivery. Amazon has strict rules regarding email delivery. Therefore, UltraCart review new Emails for use in Email Campaigns, in order to keep SPAM to a minimum.

Helpful Tips for Approval

 

Next you’ll pick a template type. There are six different templates available to give you a variety of layouts to work with. The first three templates contain headers while the last three templates do not.

The smart email option will be enabled by default. When this option is enabled, if the customer has received an email within the last 24 hours then this email will be skipped to avoid annoying the customer with too many emails. Be careful turning off this setting.

Next click on “Save and Customize Email” to launch the StoreFront Visual Builder.

If your flow or campaign is utilizing either a cart or an order object, an intermediate dialog will appear for you to specify items or an order id. Selecting these values will allow the editor to show a contextually complete email to modify.

The standard StoreFront Visual Builder editor will appear. The screenshot below points out the Test button (will send a copy of the email to you) and the save button.

Wait (Time Delay)

The second most common step in a sequence is the time delay step. The settings on a wait step are shown below.



Setting

Description

Setting

Description

Enabled

If unchecked, the wait step will be skipped

Delay until specific date

Wait until a specific date

Set delay for

Wait a specific number of Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks or Months.

Delay until a specific time of day

Wait until a specific time of day. All times are in EST.

Wait until customer most active

Waits until the customer’s most active time of day as determined by their interaction with your website.

Delay until specific day(s) of the week

Allow you to wait for a specific day of the week. Useful to make sure marketing interactions go out during business days for example.

Wait Step Release Option

You may wish to bypass the wait step in order to immediate process the customers in the wait step.

 

You can immediate release customers currently queued in a wait step by clicking the three-dots menu in the right side of the Wait Step bubble.

 

Condition

A condition step allows you to check the customer’s profile for a particular activity or property and then branch the sequence based upon matching the condition. The condition step settings allow you specify the customer filter and flip the yes/no sides.

After creating a condition the sequence will look like the screenshot below. By default Yes is on the left and No is on the right. Use the optional setting to reverse that behavior. Click on the + button underneath either side to add additional steps.

The merge step below will allow you to rejoin the Yes and No sides of the sequence.

Experiment

An experiment step allows you to test one or more emails against each other. By default an experiment will have two variants split 50/50 as shown below.

Within the settings of the experiment you have the option to perform a limited test. A limited test will send a particular number of customers through the experiment and then route the remaining customers to the winning variant. An experiment within a flow will use a fixed number of customers as shown below.

An experiment within a campaign, a certain percentage will be sent the email first and then after a set amount of time the variants are evaluated and the remaining customers are sent to the winner.


List Subscribe / List Unsubscribe

The list subscribe step will place the customer on the specified list. For example at the end of a campaign you might have a conditional step that evaluates the customers behavior and then decide to subscribe them to a list.

Likewise, the List Unsubscribe button will allow you to remove a customer from a list.

Merge

The merge step allows you to rejoin the Yes and No sides of a Condition step or Left and Right sides of a Split step. After the last step on the right side click on the plus button and then select the Merge step type. The two sides of the sequence will then rejoin as shown below.


Rate Limiter

The Rate Limiter step is one of the most sophisticated steps available. The settings for this step are shown below.

A description of each setting for the rate limiter is described in the following table.

Setting

Description

Setting

Description

Enabled

If unchecked, the rate limiter is disabled and the customers will simply pass through this step.

Paused

When a rate limiter is paused, customers will remain at the rate limiter step indefinitely.

Move customers through in batches

Allows customers through at a specified number per hour or day

Only release between

Allows for control of the time of day that the customer can pass through the step. Great for limiting emails to within business hours.

While a specified item is in stock

Allow specific item inventory levels to be monitored. As long as one of the items in the list is in stock the customer will be permitted through. If all of the items are out of stock then the marketing sequence is ended.

Warm up the most active

Sends through the most recently active percentage of the customers and then after a set amount of time releases the remaining customers through. A rate limiter with this configuration effects the overall order of how customers are loaded into a campaign.

An example usage of a rate limiter is marketing a product with limited quantity available to:

  • most active customers first

  • while supplies of the product last

  • in batches of 1,000 per hour

  • during normal business hours

Send Postcard

A postcard step will cause a postcard to be on-demand printed and mailed to the customer. The StoreFront Visual Builder will allow you to customize the content on the postcard. The editor will show you the front and back of the postcard. The area where the address and postage are located is blocked from editing.

 

Because of the $0.65/postcard cost associated with mailing a postcard, a dry-run option is available allow for the postcard to be rendered but not actually mailed to the customer. This setting is recommended for initial testing. Copies of the postcard will be emailed to you as PDF attachments.

Setup / Modify Cart

The setup / modify cart step will allow for manipulation of the cart object associated with the marketing sequence. A common use case for this step is to apply a coupon at a certain point during an abandon cart recovery or recommend replenishment flow.

All of the modifications available are shown in the screenshot below.

Coupons can also be added during the email step using the “email coupon” element within the visual builder. The “email coupon” element allows for further fine tuned control over how long the coupon is valid for, etc.

Split

A split step is similar to a condition step except the left and right sides are configured with a fixed percentage split. When a split is added to the sequence it will default to 50/50 as shown below.

The settings for this step will allow you to adjust the percentage of the split.

Just like the Condition step, a Merge step on the right side of the split can be used to rejoin the left and right sides.

Update Profile

The update profile step allow you to add, update or remove properties on the customer’s profile. The properties can be text, number, date or boolean properties. How you utilize properties on your customer profiles is completely up to your business, but setting them along the way in your campaigns and flows will allow you to segment customers more effectively in the future.

A single update profile step can perform multiple property operations at one time.

Loyalty Points

The Loyalty Points step will establish a customer profile, if one is missing, and then adds the defined credit to their loyalty balance.

Internal Notes

Most of the steps contain an Internal Notes field. This is an area where you can record notes about the purpose of the particular step. Notes are incredibly helpful to keep track of what you’re testing, etc.

Your internal notes will appear in the sequence editor as shown below.

“…” Menu

Each step contains a “…” menu to provide contextual options as shown below.

The following table shows all the options you might encounter in this menu.

Menu Option

Steps

Description

Menu Option

Steps

Description

Edit

All

Edit the settings associated with the step

Cut

All

Remove the step from this spot in the sequence. Click the + button somewhere else in the sequence to paste the step.

Copy

All

Copy the step. Click the + button somewhere else in the sequence to paste the step.

Delete

All

 

Edit Content

Email, Postcard

Open the visual builder to edit the content

Send Test Email

Email

Send a test email

Start Experiment

Email

Transform an email into an experiment. A duplicate copy will automatically be created for the second variant

Preview postcard

Postcard

Sends a rendered preview of the postcard to your email as PDFs.

Add Variant

Experiment

Create a new variant of the email for testing within the experiment

Declare Winner

Experiment

Make the variant the winner of the experiment. Transforms the experiment step back to a single email step.

Delete Email

Experiment

Remove the variant from the experiment.

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