I don't know if you've heard of Customer.io – but it's pretty neat. You can have it automatically send emails to just the right people, at just the right time.
Imagine, if you will, a customer who comes back to your WooCommerce store, and puts something in their cart. But then gets distracted and leaves. Wouldn't it be nice to send them a note within 3 hours, or the next day, to remind them that they still have something in their cart? You might even think about sending them a coupon.
Well, Customer.io let's you do the careful crafting of all those emails and the timing of when to send them.
Easy integrations
The easiest way to get your triggering data (like someone putting something into the cart and then leaving) is via a WooCommerce extension that monitors all those events. Several exist. I've used this one by Extensionworks – and it moves data from WooCommerce to Segment.io. From there, Segment.io sends data to Customer.io.
To help you track it, it looks like this:
WooCommerce –> Segment.io –> Customer.io
And the nice thing about the extension for WooCommerce is that you can pick what data gets tracked and moved over to Segment.io.
If you leave an item blank, the data doesn't move over. At least that's what's advertised.
I'm not sure I believe it. Here's what I've noticed.
I went into ExtensionWorks and only defined the Coupon Used and Closed Sale events. Then I turned everything on. And sure enough, I started noticing event data in Customer.io like “added comment” – an event I wasn't trying to track.
Two Warnings
The first warning, if you're using WooCommerce, Segment.io and Customer.io, is that more data moves across the network than you expect. This isn't an issue in some cases. But in cases like Customer.io where you pay by the number of “users” you put into the system, if you have a lot of commenters, even if you're only trying to track purchasers, you might end up having to pay for a higher tier.
The second warning, related to Segment.io specifically, is that you can't control what data goes to which integration.
This can be frustrating because their integrations cover lots of areas.
It would be great if purchaser data goes to Customer.io for outbound email, but commenters didn't. It would be great if people who filled out a specific form could go to helpscout, but not to customer.io.
In the end, Segment.io is still young, and offers great potential, but it's not fully there, and the consequence is that you may end up loading several systems with data it doesn't need (and potentially paying for it).
All that said…
This is still some of the easiest and best ways to automate things, if you're using WooCommerce.
Another alternative, if you want metrics but don't need integration to other systems is to integrate WooCommerce with MixPanel.
Are you doing something like this? Tell me about it.