Checkout and orders
Win back buyers who left checkout
Every on-sale leaves people behind: a card that failed, a phone that rang, a buyer who meant to come back. Ticket Fairy keeps a list of them for each event, and one email to that list is often the cheapest sale of the campaign. The list, the audience you email and the reminder we send for you are three different sets of people, so it pays to know which is which.
Find the buyers who entered their details at checkout and never paid for their tickets, see why each one is on the list, and email them back to your event.
- For
- Turning lost checkouts into sales
- Takes
- 6 minutes
Before you start
- You're an owner or an admin on this event, or you have a Stats or Support login for it, which reads the list but cannot send the email. A Limited Stats login is sent back to the home page from Orders.
- Your event has taken buyers into checkout. A person joins the list once their email reaches the checkout, so someone who left before that never appears.
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Open the list
Open your event, select Orders and then the Abandoned Carts tab. Each row is one buyer who entered their details at checkout and never completed a paid order.
Note: The tab covers the last 30 days and holds up to 10,000 people, newest first. Past that it shows the most recent and says so.
Event, Orders, Abandoned Carts. -
Read what each row tells you
Cart stage separates the two ways a sale is lost: Order started means they reached an order and stopped, and No order means they never got that far. Checkout attempts counts how many times that person came back and tried.
Note: Several attempts from one buyer usually means something blocked them rather than that they changed their mind, so those rows are worth an email first.
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Email them back
Open Messaging, start a new email and choose Abandoned carts as the audience. Offer a reason to come back rather than a reminder that they left.
Note: That audience is not the tab. It reaches everyone who has ever left a cart on this event, not only the last 30 days, and it leaves out anyone who opted out of these emails.
Three lists, not one
The tab shows the last 30 days and includes people who opted out, because you are reading it rather than mailing it. The composer audience reaches every abandoned cart the event has ever had and leaves the opt-outs out. The reminder we send for you covers only carts between one and thirteen hours old. The three numbers will not match, and each is right for its own job.
Or have it done for you
Fai, the assistant inside your dashboard, can read the list and tell you how big it is and how recent. Sending the email is done in the dashboard, so she hands you back to the composer, and MCP has no reader for this list.
In your dashboard, with Fai
For <EVENT NAME>, how many people left checkout without paying in the last <NUMBER> days, and how many of them never got as far as an order
From your terminal
Install the CLI from our CLI page, sign in with ticketfairy auth login, and choose the brand you are working on with ticketfairy brand use <BRAND_ID>. ticketfairy brand list and ticketfairy event list show the IDs the other commands use.
The list is read in the dashboard or through Fai. There is no command for it yet.
The reminder we send for you
Twice a day, Ticket Fairy emails buyers whose cart is between one and thirteen hours old, with a link back to the event. It is skipped for an event with nothing left to sell, and for anyone whose order is paid in full, which a buyer part way through a payment plan is not.
Note: Ticket Fairy sends this for events in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and an event that runs under another company's branding gets that company's version of it wherever the event is. Anywhere else the composer is how you reach these buyers, and support can turn the reminder off for an event that does not want it.
Fai reads the abandoned-cart list and can say how big it is and how recent. Whether the automatic reminder runs for an event is not on anything she can read, so ask us that one.
In your dashboard, with Fai
How many people left checkout on <EVENT NAME> yesterday without paying
What takes a row off the list
A row leaves when that email completes a paid order for the event, or starts a payment plan on one. It also drops off once it is older than the 30 days the tab covers.
Note: A buyer who bought under a different email address stays on the list, because the two are matched on the address alone.
Fai reads the same list, so she sees what is on it now. A cart that has bought is already off it, and nothing records that it was ever on it.
In your dashboard, with Fai
For <EVENT NAME>, show me who is on the abandoned cart list now and how many times each of them reached checkout
When someone opts out
The reminder Ticket Fairy sends carries an opt-out link, and it applies to that person on that event alone. From then on they receive neither the reminder nor an email you send to the abandoned-carts audience.
Note: They stay on the tab, which counts everyone who left checkout whether they opted out or not. It does not shrink when you send either, so its total tells you nothing about how a send went.
Fai reads the tab, which counts opt-outs in, so ask her for the total rather than for who will receive a send.
In your dashboard, with Fai
How many people are on the abandoned-cart list for <EVENT NAME>
Questions you might have
- Why is a buyer on the list who has already bought?
- Two addresses. The list matches a cart to an order on the email address, so a buyer who abandoned under one address and paid under another stays on it. A buyer mid-way through a payment plan is treated as having bought and does leave the list.
- Why does one person have several checkout attempts?
- Each fresh visit to checkout more than an hour after the last one starts a new attempt, and the tab folds them into one row and counts them. A high count is a sign that something stopped that buyer rather than that they were browsing.
- Can I export the list?
- Not from the tab. You can sort it, search it and read it, and the way to act on it is the messaging composer, which reaches the whole audience rather than the rows in front of you.
- Does the list include people who never gave an email?
- No. A cart is recorded from the moment an email address reaches the checkout, so someone who looked at the ticket page and left is not on it. Traffic like that is in the visitor reports instead.
- What does "10,000+" mean at the top?
- The tab holds the 10,000 most recent people and this event has more. That is the limit on the mailout too, and it takes the most recent 10,000 every time, so sending again reaches the same people rather than working back through the queue. Send while the list is still under the limit if you want to reach everyone, and ask us where an event is already past it.
Related guides
Do this on your own event
Create your account, build your event and follow the steps in your own dashboard. You do not need to book a sales call.