In-session and daily triggers

Optimizely Triggered Messages distinguishes between In-session triggers and Daily triggers. In-session triggers fire during a visitor's session when certain criteria are met. Daily triggers fire based on a daily analysis of visitor's behavior, for example, when the visitor made a purchase.

In-session and daily triggers filter out inactive, out-of-stock products, and not recommendable. For example, an abandoned basket trigger will not fire when products in the user basket are out of stock. Also, when a basket contains one in-stock and one out-of-stock product, the trigger fires with only one product.

In-session triggers

In-session trigger campaigns analyze user behavior constantly (real-time) and fire actions immediately when trigger criteria are met. Each in-session trigger has a wait time, specifying how long the visitor must be inactive before the trigger can fire.

• Abandoned checkout – Fires when a visitor enters the checkout flow but does not complete the purchase.
• Abandoned basket – Fires when a visitor adds an item to the basket or views the basket but does not purchase it.
• Abandoned browsed products – Fires when a visitor visits a product page but leaves the site without adding anything to the basket. Also, the visitor must have viewed at least one product during a session.
• Additional trigger actions – Fires when a visitor goes to a specific page (home, category, product, basket, order confirmation, or page URL containing a specific phrase) a number of times. For example, a visitor visits a particular site section and views more than five pages in a category but does not purchase. Use alone or combine it with another in-session trigger.

Daily triggers

The following table shows the daily triggers.

• Targeted discounts – Fires when a product the visitor has viewed but not purchased in the past 30 days has decreased in price.
  • The analysis runs when the product feed is imported.
  • It can be combined with an Email Product Recommendations campaign to show the discounted products in the email.
  • When Only abandoned baskets is enabled, the trigger fires for products added to baskets and not purchased within the past 30 days.
• High product interest – Fires when a visitor has visited the same product multiple times without purchasing it in the last 30 days.
  • It counts how many unique days the product page was viewed in the last 30 days. The duration of each view is not considered.
  • Analysis runs at 09:00 UTC by default, but you can configure this in the Recommendations Portal.
  • It can be combined with an Email Product Recommendations campaign to show the products viewed in the email.
• Post-purchase –
  • Fires a specified number of days after an order is placed.
  • Analysis runs at 09:00 UTC by default, but you can configure this in the Recommendations Portal.
  • It can be combined with an Email Product Recommendations campaign to show the purchased products in the email.
• Low-in-stock abandoned-basket – Fires when a product is low in stock, and the visitor added that product to their basket in the last 14 days but did not purchase.
  • The analysis runs when the product feed is imported.
  • If variants are tracked on basket pages, the trigger looks at the product's variant stock level. The trigger looks at the product stock level if variants are not tracked.
  • The basket is considered abandoned after 4 hours of inactivity.
  • Upper and lower thresholds of stock availability need to be specified. Lower and upper bounds are inclusive.
  • It can be combined with an Email Product Recommendations campaign to show the relevant products in the email.
• Repurchase – Fires when a visitor has not purchased a recurring product that was expected to be purchased by a given date, such as when paper supplies run out.
  • Analysis runs at 09:00 UTC by default, but you can configure this in the Recommendations Portal.
  • It can be combined with an Email Product Recommendations campaign to show the purchased products in the email.

Trigger action limits

To avoid sending too many emails to a visitor, Triggered Messages implements limits for the number of emails that you can send.

Per-session limit

• You can fire only one send-message action for a session. You cannot remove this limit.

Per-campaign limit

• The limit applies only to send-message actions.
• The limit can be configured under Contact frequency in a Triggered Messages campaign edit form.
• The limit defined the following options:
  • Per day – 24 hours from when a campaign is supposed to fire (not calendar day, from midnight to midnight).
  • Per week – 7 days from when a campaign is supposed to fire.
  • Per month – 30 days from when a campaign is supposed to fire.

  For example, if the limit is 1 per day and a campaign is fired for a visitor at 2 p.m., the same campaign can fire no sooner than 2:01 p.m. the next day for the same visitor.

• The following default limits apply when not configured: 5 per day, 20 per week, 50 per month.

Per-site limit

• The limit applies only to send-message actions. It doesn't apply to add-to-group and remove-from-group actions.
• The limit on the Triggered Messages campaign list page can be configured per site.
• The limit defined the following options:
  • Per day – 24 hours from when a campaign is supposed to fire (not calendar day).
  • Per week – 7 days from when a campaign is supposed to fire.
  • Per month – 30 days from when a campaign is supposed to fire.

  For example, if the limit is 1 per day and any campaign fired for a visitor at 2 p.m., any other campaign can fire no sooner than at 2.01 p.m. the next day for the same visitor.

• The following default limits apply when not configured: 5 per day, 20 per week, 50 per month.

Filter triggers with expressions

Expressions filter products that do not match the expression. For a sample abandoned basket campaign, if an abandoned basket contains two products, one that matches the expression and one that does not, the campaign still fires for this basket with a single product.

You can define additional expressions for in-session and daily triggers. Expressions specify which products should fire the trigger campaign. For example, if an expression is defined as (r.saleprice["GBP"]>"40"), only products that are more expensive than 40 pounds fire the campaign.

You can reference products that caused a campaign trigger to fire in an Email Product Recommendations campaign through strategies. That is, Products from in-session trigger campaign returns products that fired the campaign, and Recommendations based on daily trigger campaign returns recommendations that are related to the product that fired the trigger campaign.

For further information on expressions, see Set up an Optimizely Triggered Messages campaign.

Prioritize campaigns

You can prioritize triggered messages campaigns on the campaign list page in the Recommendations Portal by dragging campaigns up or down with the icon next to the campaign name (first column on the list).

If two or more campaigns are supposed to fire simultaneously, the higher-priority campaign fires first. Trigger action limits may prevent subsequent campaigns from firing.

For a sample scenario on prioritization of Triggered Messages campaigns, see the example in Manage Optimizely Triggered Messages campaigns.