The transactional email campaign gives you the possibility to survey your contacts based on events triggered in your Shopify store.
One of the most common scenarios is to send a survey after a new order was created in Shopify.
Follow the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to configure a transactional email campaign in Retently, and how to connect it to Shopify events using a webhook link.
Set up a transactional email campaign in Retently
To create a new campaign, go to the Campaigns page, choose a survey metric (NPS, CSAT, CES, 5-STAR), next select email as your survey channel, and from the dropdown list with campaign types, select the Transactional option.
Assign a survey template
In the campaign editor, start with choosing the survey template that your contacts, who match this campaign, will receive in their Inbox. You can select an existing email template, or create and customize a new one.
Make sure the survey template has your company’s logo, otherwise you will not be able to select and use it.
When everything looks ok, hit the Assign button to add it as the main survey template in your campaign.
Filter your audience
Any customer that will trigger your Shopify event will be able to receive the survey. However, if you need to make sure that only a specific segment of your customers will be surveyed, then you can apply an additional layer of filters to narrow down your audience.
Let’s assume that you have a Shopify event that is fired when an order is created, and you are also storing the country of your contacts as a tag. This would allow you to add some extra filters in Retently and survey only the contacts that live in a particular country.
Your audience filters would look as in the example below:
In most cases, there is no need to adjust the audience filters at all. But, if you have to, we recommend checking our article to learn more about the audience segmentation in campaigns or you can request assistance from our support team.
Edit the survey trigger settings
The first thing to do in the Trigger section is to specify how your surveys will be triggered. Since we are configuring this campaign for Shopify, choose this service from the drop-down menu.
NOTE: It’s important to select the needed service because the content on the Setup page will adjust based on your choice. For our goal, we will need a webhook link that will be automatically generated and available for you to copy in the Setup section.
Next, you have three options that will help you configure how and when your surveys will be sent to your campaign’s audience:
Sample audience: Choose what percentage of the triggered events will result in a survey being sent. When switched off, all triggered events will result in a survey.
Delay survey: Send the survey at a later date from the triggered event. When switched off, the survey will be sent immediately.
Throttle survey: Throttle helps avoid over-surveying customers. If a customer has been surveyed recently in this campaign, then any new triggered surveys will be discarded until a specific number of days have passed since the last survey was received. When switched off, customers will be surveyed in this campaign every time they trigger an event. This option won’t affect the schedule in other campaigns.
Reminders
Reminders will help increase your survey response rate. For instance, if a contact didn't respond to your survey within three days after opening it, our system will send them a reminder email survey. This way, you will be reaching your contacts once more when they might be more likely to answer the survey.
Moreover, you can choose a different survey template for your reminders, with different wording or style, that might be more appealing to your survey respondents. You can create a new email survey template in the Templates section of your campaign or on the Templates page.
Alerts
In the Alerts section, you can create custom notifications and keep track of your progress.
When creating a new notification you will be asked to choose one or more event types you want to be notified about, the notification frequency (immediately, daily, or weekly digest), and the channel (email or Slack).
Don't forget to save your alerts and make sure they are enabled.
Autoreplies
In this section, you can create a set of email auto-responders meant to engage with contacts who did not leave any text feedback, left a Detractor score, or simply ask Promoters to leave their reviews on specific platforms and spread word-of-mouth. Autoresponders will be sent to respondents with a random delay between 5 and 60 minutes from the moment they've answered the survey.
Export
Use webhooks to send requests to web applications every time an event occurs. Webhooks allow you to send HTTP requests to another web application every time an event is triggered, be it new feedback, a bounced survey, or an unsubscribed contact. Don't forget to save each created webhook and make sure they're enabled.
Setup
In the Setup section, you will find a unique webhook link that will be used to receive contact data from Shopify and trigger the transactional survey. Make sure to keep this link handy because you will need it soon when configuring the Shopify event.
NOTE: If the webhook link is not displayed, then go back to the Schedule section and make sure that Shopify is selected in your services drop-down menu.
Activating your campaign
The final step is to activate the transactional email campaign by switching the toggle button ON.
No surveys will be sent just yet because we haven’t connected the campaign to a Shopify event. We will do this next!
Set up a Shopify event for your survey campaign
From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Notifications, and scroll down to the Webhooks section.
Click the Create webhook button. A new window should appear. From the "Event" drop-down menu select the "Order creation" event.
IMPORTANT: Currently, our Shopify integration supports two events (more will be added soon):
"Order creation"
"Fulfilment creation".
In the “Format” field make sure that “JSON” is selected.
In the “URL” field include the webhook link available in your transactional email campaign’s Trigger section. Finally, from the “Webhook API version” menu, choose the Retently supported Webhook API version, 2023-07.
Finally, save your webhook notification, and from that moment on, every time a new order will be created in your Shopify store, the customer will be imported to Retently and will receive a survey in your transactional email campaign.
Manage customer properties via Shopify
Using the Shopify integration you can assign and update customer properties every time an event is triggered.
IMPORTANT: Each event returns a different set of properties, and in some cases, certain properties that are returned by one event, will be missing in the other event. For example, the "Order creation" even returns customer tags, but the "Fulfilment creation" event does not include customer tags.
"Order creation" event properties
By default, the integration will map the following properties:
Email
First name
Last name
Customer tags
Country Code listed in the Shipping address
If needed, an additional set of properties can be assigned to the customer when the "Order creation" event is triggered. All you need to do is to create one or more new properties in Retently (learn how) with the following names:
customer_created_at (this is a "date" property)
last_product_id (this is a "text" property)
last_product_name (this is a "text" property)
last_order_number (this is a "number" property)
last_order_price (this is a "number" property)
"Fulfillment creation" event properties
By default, the integration will map the following properties:
Email
If needed, an additional set of properties can be assigned to the customer when the "Fulfillment creation" event is triggered. All you need to do is to create one or more new properties in Retently (learn how) with the following names:
order_id (this is a "text" property)
status (this is a "text" property; refers to the fulfillment status)
created_at (this is a "date" property; refers to the fulfilment date)
tracking_company (this is a "text" property)
tracking_number (this is a "text" property)
last_product_id (this is a "text" property)
last_product_name (this is a "text" property)
Create customer property in Retently
Start with creating a customer property in your Retently account, on the "Attributes" page. To create a new one, click the "Create property" button.
A popup will ask you to write the name of the new property (ex: Subscription, Signup date, Product name, etc.) and choose the type of the value that will be stored in the new property.
Retently supports the following four data types:
Text: The value will be stored as regular text.
Number: This property can store only numbers (this data type also supports numbers with decimals).
Collection: You can store an array of keywords (ex: "item 1, item 2, item 2").
When creating the property, make sure that you're giving it the exact id as it is listed in our tutorial (check the previous chapter).
Update the value of an assigned customer property
The values in a property that is already assigned to a customer will be updated automatically the next time your automation will be triggered and the contacts will match the automation rules.
Note: If you want to create more transactional campaigns, you have to add the new webhooks to your Shopify account.