How to create a payment failed campaign for Christmas

Remember, there are two key campaigns you need to be running during Christmas:

1. A visit-session ended campaign - to bring back customers who browsed on your site but didn’t make a purchase
2. A payment failed campaign - to ensure you don’t lose any customers during this final hurdle

These campaigns will both run during the entire Christmas shopping period, so we’ll have them starting on the 9th of December and running until Christmas day.

So let’s get to it! If you want to see how to create a Visit-Session Ended campaign, click here.

Payment Failed Campaign

One of the most important campaigns to run during any busy online-shopping period is a ‘payment failed campaign’. Its purpose is to let your customers know that their payment was not processed and to direct them back to the site immediately to update their payment details and finalize the purchase.

This campaign should be sent to every customer who fails to complete the checkout, so use an all contacts list (which should be created on the lists page prior to building your campaign).

Step 1:

To start with, create an email template that will alert your customers that their payment has not been completed. Include a direct link back to the cart so that they can update their payment details and complete the purchase immediately.

This email will include:

• A text box where you alert your customer to the payment issue and urge them to complete the payment so that everyone gets their Christmas presents on time
• A button that will direct the customer right to the payment page
• A cart item section, so that they can see which item(s) we’re talking about
• A follow us on social section

Step 2:

Now it’s time to create an SMS template. This SMS will serve as an extra reminder for customers to update their payment details and complete the purchase. It will be sent shortly after the email.

The SMS should include:

• Text that alerts the customer to the payment issue and tells them to finish the payment to ensure their product arrives before Christmas
• A <customerfirstname> tag
• A <cartURL> tag, to bring them back to the specific purchase 

Step 3:

You’re ready to add your payment failed campaign! It’s important to note that if you already have a payment-failed campaign running you’ll need to pause it when this Christmas campaign is running. Head to the campaigns page and fill in the following information:

• Name your campaign
• Set the campaign goal as conversion and select stop the campaign when the goal is reached
• Select Action Trigger - as the campaign will begin when the customer inputs invalid payment details
• Choose December 9th as the start date and 25th December as the end date
• Select payment failed as your action
• Choose to always re-enroll contact so that you send a payment failed campaign every time a customers payment details don’t work
• You will also need to select your audience, which in this case will be an all contacts list (which you can create on the lists page)

Step 4:

Once your campaign has been configured you’re ready to design your workflow! The build your workflow, follow these steps:

• From the start block, insert an action, which will be the email template you created earlier.
• Click continue then insert a 15 minute time delay. We’re keeping it short because it’s urgent that your customer is alerted to their failed payment as quickly as possible
• After the time delay insert another action and this time select the SMS template you created earlier.

And there you have it! Your Christmas payment failed campaign is ready to launch!