How to loop products from added_item_to_cart events in an email?

[Manoj__]

Hello Experts,

I am building my first canvas journey in Braze for an Abandoned cart use case. I am using an email channel as a message in this use case.

In my scenario, I have added 2 products to the cart and I want to print those two products by email.

The issue I am facing is how to print these products via event using a for loop.

I have tried Advanced Event Properties. But It just prints item_name. How do we know which item it is from the event? There could be 2 or more products in the event

The learning section here only shows the push notification which is easy to configure.

[Manoj__]

Hello @Ishwar_Patidar  Using customer attribute is good option but I don't want to use this as this will increase the data points consumption.

[AllanHeo]

Hey @Manoj__ , 

Youtube Tutorial on this topic, coming this week. This is a very very common use case. Stay tuned! 

Allan

[AllanHeo]

Hey @Manoj__ , as promised, here you go! https://youtu.be/mMqrHqeYHto

I will say: having a Custom Attribute called items_in_cart makes this much, much easier. It's really the only way to do it, to account for new items added, items deleted, etc. 

Hope this helps, and please feel free to reach out with questions! 

[Manoj__]

Hello @AllanHeo 

Thanks for sharing the video.

Unfortunately, I don't want to go down this path as I will have duplicate data in customer attributes and in the events.

Also, updating customer attributes multiple time will increase the data point usage which will impact the billing.  A retails business can have thousands of customer abandoning the cart and customer attribute will increase the data points consumption rate for us.

[AllanHeo]

Hi @Manoj__ , 

Unfortunately, I don't want to go down this path as I will have duplicate data in customer attributes and in the events.

I don't see a huge issue with having duplicate data in custom attributes and in the events. To clarify, the cart items data that lives in your Custom Event Properties do not count towards your Braze Data Points Billing (unless you have property segmentation enabled).

Also, there are certainly situations where even if you have the data available as a fleeting Custom Event Property, you need it as a more permanent Custom Attribute, exactly in Cart Abandon situations like this.

Also, updating customer attributes multiple time will increase the data point usage which will impact the billing.  A retails business can have thousands of customer abandoning the cart and customer attribute will increase the data points consumption rate for us.

I certainly agree with this concern; this use case may require a little bit of research and calculation. If you have a CDP or any other tool that gives you an understanding of how many times "cart add" or "cart delete" gets performed by your users on a daily basis, this would be a great starting point. 

I will note that Braze Data Points are based on a per-user-basis, with the contracts typically starting at ~250 data points per user per month. I would argue that a crucial campaign like Cart Abandon deserves at least a handful of data points per user per month for the proper execution. Of course, once again, it comes down to a bit of calculation and ROI. 

One workaround could be to update the Custom Attribute once per day; this way, you're not incrementing data points for every user action. Of course, this brings the risk of the Cart Abandon email not having the most updated items. Something to consider. 

Please let me know if I can answer any other questions!