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Our customers often go through several forms/steps but not every customer reaches the last possible step. Thus, imagine 3 steps. Some only complete the first, others the second and others the third. Every step is connected to a different Triggered Send Data Extension btw.

Instead of triggering an email for every completed step, we would like to be able to send 1 email summarizing the already completed step(s) and possibly motivating to follow the missing ones. In order to do so, we were contemplating triggering a triggered send ONLY at step 1, but delaying the trigger by 10 minutes.

Does anyone know if this is possible within Marketing Cloud? Or does this have to be set up in backend/development?

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  • Are you using the SOAP or REST API to trigger your emails? – Adam Spriggs Mar 6 '17 at 15:20
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This sounds like a Cart Abandonment marketing activity with 3 progressive stages, and Journey Builder is the best way to manage an interaction like this.

You could try injecting your customers into a Journey as soon as they enter the first form (Progress = 0), and update their progress with an Increment Column Value by Data Extension Key event each time they complete a form.
In Journey Builder, use a Wait Activity to give the user ample time to complete the form/s, followed by a Decision Split Activity (that looks at what progress they made) to determine what message to send.

Alternatively, you could try adding the customer to a data extension, along with their progress and a "send time", and setup a Scheduled Automation to run every hour that filters/queries the data for sends that fall within the "hourly window" (defined by their send time), and conduct a Send Email Activity on that data.
Not the most elegant solution - but viable if Journey Builder is not an option.

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  • Could you elaborate on how you would inject them as soon as they enter (with standard functionality)? I'm currently looking into this, and natively it will run once per hour - unless using smartcapture or the marketing cloud connector. Would you be using the API or? – Kenneth Wagner Mar 6 '17 at 14:43
  • Hi Kenneth, it depends on what technology is being used to capture the user data. Cloud Pages using a Smart Capture to Journey Builder Entry Event is a good native solution, however you could use the Insert Data Extension Row and Fire Event calls to achieve a similar outcome on an external site. – Cameron Robert Mar 6 '17 at 21:26
  • Thanks Cameron! :) InsertDE and FireEvent - wouldn't that impose a time limit on it, so it would take between 1 minute and 59 minutes depending on when the automation is scheduled to run? – Kenneth Wagner Mar 7 '17 at 7:17
  • Correct Kenneth, depending on the delay and the automation cycle. Therefore it is only a viable solution if the accuracy of the form abandonment send delay is not important. The Journey Builder option is far better solution - plus it has great reporting and goal setting features! – Cameron Robert Mar 7 '17 at 7:25
  • Agreed - but that also means, that if we don't use the smart capture one, we are subject to the same delay due to the entry schedule - correct? :) – Kenneth Wagner Mar 7 '17 at 7:29

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