Automations: cart reminders, broadcasts, promotions and the Monday digest

The Automations section of the AI Co-founder tab holds the parts of the plan that work when nobody is at the dashboard. Four are covered here. The fifth, the storefront assistant, has its own guide at Storefront assistant. Each is a card with a switch, and a switch saves the moment you flip it.

What is on by default

When you join the plan, cart reminders, WhatsApp cart reminders and the Monday digest are already on. The storefront assistant is off, because it is the one that spends credits on its own. Scheduled promotions are not a switch; you create each one as you need it. All of this needs the AI Co-founder plan, and nothing here runs on any other.

Abandoned-cart reminders

Most people who put something in a cart never finish. A reminder an hour later brings a useful share of them back.

How the cart gets saved

On the checkout page, as soon as a shopper has typed a valid email address or phone number, their name, contact and cart lines are saved. Nothing is saved before that, so a browser that only looked around leaves nothing behind. If they come back and place the order, the cart is marked recovered and no reminder goes out.

When the reminders go out

• First reminder: one hour after they stopped, subject *You left [item] in your cart at [your store]*.
• Second reminder: twenty-four hours after the cart was first saved, subject *Still thinking it over? Your [your store] cart is saved*.
• Both link back with the cart already rebuilt, so nobody hunts for the product again.
• Carts are checked every fifteen minutes, and each stage is claimed before it sends, so nobody gets the same reminder twice.
• Saved carts older than 30 days are dropped.

Adding WhatsApp

Email works on its own. To remind on WhatsApp as well, connect the WhatsApp Business Cloud API under Settings → Integrations using your own number, as described in WhatsApp order notifications.

Then press Set up templates on the card. Meta requires marketing messages to use a template it approved in advance, so SitesPlaced submits two, a cart reminder and a broadcast, and the card shows the status of each. Messages sent before approval queue and go out once it lands.

Reading the numbers

The card shows four figures for the last 30 days: saved carts, reminded, recovered with the value it brought, and still open, over a table of recent carts where *reminded ×1* means one reminder went and *reminded ×2* means both did. None of this costs credits.

Broadcasts

A broadcast is one message to everyone who has bought from you or subscribed. It is your cheapest sales channel, because you are not paying to reach them.

Sending one

1. 1Choose the channel: Email or WhatsApp.
2. 2Choose who gets it: Everyone, Subscribers or Past buyers.
3. 3Write the subject, up to 80 characters, and the message. Email takes up to 3,000 characters. WhatsApp takes up to 500 and should be one to three plain sentences, because Meta rejects messages that read like spam.
4. 4Add a Link if it should go somewhere other than your home page, and on email a coupon code to highlight.
5. 5Put your own address or number in the test box and press Send test. Do this every time.
6. 6Press Send to N, then Yes, send when it asks you to confirm the number.

Who is in the audience

The Reach panel counts them before you send: newsletter subscribers who have not unsubscribed, plus people who bought in the last 12 months, minus opt-outs, with duplicates removed. WhatsApp reach is past buyers who left a phone number. The panel also shows how many opted out, so the number is honest.

The limits

• Up to 2,000 recipients in one send, and three sends a day per store across both channels. The counter by the card title shows where you are.
• Email goes out in your store's colours with a one-click unsubscribe link.
• WhatsApp needs the Cloud API connected and the template approved. Until then, messages queue rather than fail.

Recent broadcasts are listed with how many were sent, and broadcasts cost no credits. The campaign planner writes this copy for you: its Send to subscribers button carries the message straight into this form.

Scheduled promotions

A weekend sale should start on Friday evening and stop on Sunday night whether or not you remember. Set it once and the store handles both ends.

1. 1Set Starts and Ends. They are pre-filled with the coming Friday at 6 pm to the Sunday after at 11:59 pm, the usual shape of a weekend sale.
2. 2Add a coupon code, up to 24 characters, choose % off or Amount off with its value, and set a minimum order if small orders should not qualify.
3. 3Add the announcement bar text, up to 140 characters, for example *Weekend sale: 10% off with WEEKEND10*.
4. 4Press Schedule. You need at least one of the two.

The coupon is refused before the start and after the end, and the announcement bar appears and disappears with the window. Both are listed under the form, and an announcement can be removed with the bin icon.

Scheduled coupons also show up under Settings → Discounts, where you can edit or switch one off early. For the other ways to run a discount, see Discounts, coupons & offers.

The Monday digest

One email to your account address every Monday, around 9 am India time. It is short on purpose, and written from your store's real numbers only.

• Orders and sales for last week against the week before.
• Best sellers by units and revenue.
• Saved carts recovered and what they were worth.
• Visitors and conversion, when your plan includes store analytics.
• Five suggestions, each one short line, written from those numbers. If a number is zero it says what to do about it rather than pretending.

One email per store per week, no credits. Turn it off from the card if you would rather not get it.

Unsubscribes, opt-outs and STOP

• Every marketing email, both broadcasts and cart reminders, carries a one-click unsubscribe link. Clicking it records the opt-out at once, with nothing for the customer to fill in, and marks their newsletter row unsubscribed so your subscriber count stays truthful.
• Every WhatsApp marketing template carries the line *Reply STOP to opt out of messages from this store*, because Meta requires it.
• A shopper who replies stop, unsubscribe, opt out, stop all or cancel is opted out of your WhatsApp marketing and never messaged again. This happens on its own once the Cloud API is connected.
• Opt-outs are per store and per channel. Someone can stop your WhatsApp marketing and still get your emails, and opting out of one store does not affect another.
• Opting out does not stop order messages. Confirmations and shipping updates still go, because those concern an order the person placed.