Queued Emails

[Dan Cole]

Thought I'd start a thread to chat about my favorite add-on/core addition, Queued Emails. I've been using this email system since Gary first created it and am now in the process of updating the system for use on my 1.0.8.21 shop.

There are lots of scheduler modules available. I have 16 of them. At the moment I'm working on three of them, the new product scheduler, cart reminder and no checkout modules. The new product scheduler and cart reminder modules are add-ons so I'll only discuss those in general terms.

Emails for the no checkout module are scheduled for 10 days after a check out is abandoned and the cart reminder is scheduled for the 5 day mark. The email scheduled dates are easily changed so I thought I'd see what the best time frames for sending them might be. Poking around the web suggests that those types of emails should be sent within hours but that seems too soon to me. That has me wondering how others are setting their time frames? I'm thinking of setting both of mine for sending after 1 day and seeing how that goes. What are you doing and what has been your experience?

Dan

[burt]

Thanks Dan. It's one of the Jewels in the Crown of Phoenix.
A really amazing tool that every shopowner has loved.

Customer Outreach, with zero effort. Winner!

[14Steve14]

We love this automated system as well.

Currently we use cart_reminder, no_checkout, order_thanks, review_request, review_thanks, trustpilot, and stock_update.

Overall a good system with many options. It is well worth adjusting the text within the emails and when they are sent.

In reply to your question @Dan Cole our time settings are
cart reminder - 1 days
No checkout - 10 days as we send other emails first depending whether checkout has been tried first and failed. This is really used as the final email before deleting the order but does suggest adding items into a wishist if they are needed.
Order thanks - 14 days which gives customers time to open and use the products. We get lots of great feedback from this one email.
Review request - 21 days and does generate a few reviews, but not as many as we would like.
Review thanks - assume its as soon as the review is received.
Trustpilot- 7 days but there is a further 10 days hold that we adjusted by Trustpilot.
Stock update - as soon as stock is updated.

[burt]

Review thanks - assume its as soon as the review is received.

When you (admin) set the Review to `Live`.

[Dan Cole]

Thanks for the post Steve. For the moment I'm focused on the cart reminder and no checkout modules and I note that you have the cart reminder email set to be sent after one day which is what I was thinking of doing. Just wondering if you've received any customer feed back about the timing, good or bad?

Drilling down on what might be the best time to send the email I came across an analysis published by rejoiner.com that compared the conversion rate from an abandoned cart reminder with the length of time before the reminder mailing was sent. Interestingly it suggests that the email should be sent at an hour after the cart abandoned. That seems really quick to me but it is hard to ignore the data. Given that I'm now going to set mine to an hour as well, if the module allows for that. Off the of my head I can recall if that is possible but I'll have a look.

Here is the analysis cart from rejoiner.com.

abandoned cart conversion rate by rejoiner.jpg

Dan

[Dan Cole]

Found this in the phoenixcartwiki....

The scheduled date/time is configured in this line found near the top of the file:

const INTERVAL = 'PT4H';

This means it is set for 4 Hours. Note the additional T for Time that must precede settings for Hours, Minutes and Seconds.

...so setting it to an HOUR is very doable.

Dan

[burt]

Timings are very configurable Dan, from PT1S (1 second, more or less immediately ready to send) - note that I have never tried PT0S (ie, properly straight into the Queue as ready to send) - but even that should work.

Up to anytime in the future, P10Y or longer (10 years or more, can't imagine a useful scenario), but P1Y11M might be a good one [eg a guarantee runs out 2 years after sale or somesuch, so send 1 month prior to 2 years so they might buy an extended guarantee] for example.

Anyway...ultra configurable.

[14Steve14]

HI @Dan Cole

I had an email from a business within about 10 minutes of leaving the site after adding something into a basket and felt pressured, mainly because of the text in the email. I just ignored it as I bought from elsewhere, as I was price checking similar products. It does go to show that some sent out emails quickly. I have even had some offer a discount if I return to buy, so it is a good selling medium if you offer discounts.

We get a mixed response to the cart reminder email. It occasionally gets an immediate response with a purchase. Sometimes we hear nothing but notice that the order has disappeared from the list, which usually means the customer has either emptied the cart or added the items into their Wishlist which we suggest in the email. We do also get responses saying that they were just price checking and we can empty their baskets.

What emails go unanswered are again later chased up because we have the Recover carts addon so we get another chance to get a sale.

We use a cronjob to send email twice a day, so I suppose if after 1 hour is selected then the cron will need to run every hour.

I think it all depends on your customers and the items you sell, as to the response you get.

[Dan Cole]

Thanks again Steve. @14Steve14

I set both my cart reminder and no checkout modules to 1 hour and I'll see how that goes. I haven't yet explored using a cron job to send the queued emails yet but I probably will as I get most of modules up and running. At the moment I'm manually sending them but as soon as I can remove myself from the equation I will.

I'm now going to move along and get my new product scheduler module sorted out. I looked back on the list of modules you are using and didn't see that one. Any particular reason? I set up new products daily and a number of my customers are interested in keeping up-to-date on what's new. I plan to send out a brief email every time I add a certain number of new items. I'm thinking six new items at a time so maybe a scheduled email once a week.

I'll probably get under the hood on this one to generate a list of the items added and perhaps images but I'm not sure what the module provides for at the moment. Anyway let me know if you've considered using this module or not.

Thanks for keeping this thread live. At first I thought it was just going to be me and the crickets in here.

Dan

[14Steve14]

@Dan Cole We announce all our new products using our weekly newsletter, and am starting to do it on a few of the social media channels which gets results.