Remind customers to place their first order in Magento

By: Marko Martinovic, Last updated: Oct 23, 2019 | Published: May 31, 2013

Sometimes customers need a little encouragement to place their first order after creating an account. There are many reasons this is the case, for example customers may forget to bookmark your site, thus they might have difficulties finding your store second time around. In this article I’ll present one way of keeping an eye on your customers orders count and sending first order reminder emails, trough free Magento extension named Inchoo_OrderReminder.

Introduction

Source code for Inchoo_OrderReminder is available from its GitHub repository page, as usual here I’ll just present it’s features and some code snippets. So here are the features of Inchoo_OrderReminder:

Can send reminder emails to customers who haven’t placed any orders yet, on configurable interval in days.
Maximum number of email reminders is also configurable, as well as action to take after sending last email reminder (move to different customer group or delete an account).
Regular and last order reminder email templates are configurable trough Magento’s transactional email templates feature.
Configurable reminder email sender identity as well as sending reminder emails to additional email addresses as copy or Bcc

Here’s the screenshot of configuration options available at System -> Configuration -> Sales Emails -> Order Reminders inside your Magento admin area:

Background

In this section I’ll present some code and basic logic behind Inchoo_OrderReminder. Inchoo_OrderReminder_Model_Observer::processOrderReminders() function is configured to be triggered by cron daily to process customers according to the configuration options. Here’s the config.xml code snippet for that purpose:

<config>
    <crontab>
        <jobs>
            <inchoo_orderreminder>
                <!-- Daily at 1 am -->
                <schedule><cron_expr>0 1 * * *</cron_expr></schedule>
                <run><model>inchoo_orderreminder/observer::processOrderReminders</model></run>
            </inchoo_orderreminder>
        </jobs>
    </crontab>
</config>

When triggered, this function will derive dates from Number of Reminders and Reminder Interval configuration options, taking Magento timezone configuration option into an account, and then grab all customers whose account has been created on that date, for every derived date. This function will then send emails to customers without any orders using proper transactional email template. It’ll also take actions of moving to another group or deleting customers who have been sent their last email reminder, if instructed to do so by system config options.

Here’s the code snippet of class Inchoo_OrderReminder_Model_Observer’s protected function for sending transactional emails:

/**
 * Send transactional emails.
 * 
 * @param Varien_Object $customer Customer object
 * @param int $reminderLimit Number of days for last reminder
 * @param int $reminderKey Number of days since customer account was created
 * @param string $template Email template
 */
protected function _sendOrderReminderEmail(Varien_Object $customer, $reminderLimit, $reminderKey, $template)
{
    $this->_log('Preparing email...');
 
    // Get necessary vars
    $copyTo = $this->_getStoreConfigCopyTo();
    $copyMethod = $this->_getStoreConfigCopyMethod();
    $storeId = Mage::app()->getStore()->getId();
 
    // Uses code from Mage_Sales_Model_Order::sendNewOrderEmail()
    $mailer = Mage::getModel('core/email_template_mailer');
    $emailInfo = Mage::getModel('core/email_info');
    $emailInfo->addTo($customer->getEmail(), $customer->getName());
    if ($copyTo && $copyMethod == 'bcc') {
        // Add bcc to customer email
        foreach ($copyTo as $email) {
            $emailInfo->addBcc($email);
 
            $this->_log(sprintf('Add %s to Bcc.', $email));
        }
    }
    $mailer->addEmailInfo($emailInfo);
 
    // Email copies are sent as separated emails if their copy method is 'copy'
    if ($copyTo && $copyMethod == 'copy') {
        foreach ($copyTo as $email) {
            $emailInfo = Mage::getModel('core/email_info');
            $emailInfo->addTo($email);
            $mailer->addEmailInfo($emailInfo);
 
            $this->_log(sprintf('Will send a copy to  %s.', $email));
        }
    }
 
    // Set all required params and send emails
    $mailer->setSender($this->_getStoreConfigIdentity(), $storeId);
    $mailer->setStoreId($storeId);
    $mailer->setTemplateId($template);
    $mailer->setTemplateParams(
        array(
            // Customer object
            'customer' => $customer,
 
            // Reminder for number of days
            'reminder_days' => $reminderKey,
 
            // Last reminder number of days
            'reminder_limit' => $reminderLimit
        )
    );
 
    // Send
    $mailer->send();
 
    $this->_log('Email sent.');
}

What to do next?

For more details about Inchoo_OrderReminder you can always checkout and download up-to-date code from Inchoo_OrderReminder’s GitHub repository page. Cheers and happy coding!

Published in:

17 comments

Den says:
Mar 29, 2016 at 15:23
Hello. I have an entry in the log that the “Email sent.”. But they are not sent. I am the recipient and I did not get the emails. I use magento 1.4.1.0 and copied the Mailer and Info models into Mage\Core\Model\Email from last version.
Reply
robin says:
Sep 05, 2014 at 15:48
installed this extension. but don’t know how to run it. it does not work. please guide me how to run it. i have created an account. put reminder interval 1 but cannot get any email after one day. what else has to be done to run this extension?
Reply

Thanks for the code but I had some trouble getting it working on 1.9. I also wanted to have a custom customer attribute so I could log the date the e-mail was sent & not just the last 3 days worth of new customers (for historical purposes).

Here’s the modified function in your helper:

public function processOrderReminders()
{

	$this->_log('Beginning...');

	$customers = Mage::getResourceModel('customer/customer_collection')
			->addNameToSelect()
			->addAttributeToSelect('reminder_email')
			->addAttributeToFilter(
				'reminder_email',
				array('null' => true),
				'left'
			)
			->setPageSize(50);

	foreach ($customers AS $customer) {

		$this->_log($customer->getEmail());

		$orders = Mage::getResourceModel('sales/order_collection')
					->addFieldToFilter(
						'customer_id',
						array(
							'eq' => $customer->getId()
						)
					);

		$this->_log(
			sprintf(
				'Processing %s <%s> account.',
				$customer->getName(),
				$customer->getEmail()
			)
		);

		$this->_log($customer->getData('reminder_email'));

		// If there are orders
		$success = false;
		if ($orders->getSize() > 0) {
			$customer->setData('reminder_email', date("Y-m-d 00:00:00"));
			$customer->save();
			$this->_log('Existing orders found, skip this account.');
		} else {
			// send email
			$emailTemplate = Mage::getModel('core/email_template')
						->loadDefault($this->_getStoreConfigLastTemplate());
			$emailTemplateVariables = array();
			$processedTemplate = $emailTemplate->getProcessedTemplate($emailTemplateVariables);
			$success = $emailTemplate->sendTransactional(1, array('name' => 'Your Name', 'email' => 'Your e-mail'), $customer->getData('email'), $customer->getName());

			// set reminder e-mail flag
			if ($success) {
				$customer->setData('reminder_email', date("Y-m-d 00:00:00"));
				$customer->save();
				$this->_log('E-mail successfully sent');
			} else {
				$this->_log('Error sending e-mail');
			}
		}
	}

}

jeeva says:
Sep 01, 2016 at 8:39
How can i run this code

Sparks says:
Oct 04, 2013 at 10:00
After a bit of tweaking got this to work fine..
Thanks again for a great tutorial
Reply
Tony says:
Sep 10, 2013 at 3:19
Where do the logs get put out to?
Reply
Tony says:
Sep 10, 2013 at 2:08
Hi Marko,
Ive installed this without edits, and went into the config panel to setup the sales emails. Unfortunately the changes in config is not being reflected in the xml, and not appearing in the cron. Any reason you could think of?
Reply
Jav says:
Sep 03, 2013 at 1:51
Hi Marko,
I have tried with my own triggers…and it appears to work:
[in db]
id | job | status | messages
139 | inchoo_orderreminder | success | NULL
but no email is sent, and messages has a NULL value.
What could be some of the reasons for it to not send?
Reply
Marko Martinovic says:
Aug 10, 2013 at 15:11
Hi Jav,
if by “enabled set to 0” you’re refering to config.xml, that’s just an entry telling Magento the default state for Enabled dropdown accessible at System -> Configuration -> Sales Emails -> Order Reminders in Magento admin. That’s where you should enable Order Reminder and emails should be sent out if Magento installation and server hosting it is properly configured.
You should monitor Magento’s var/log/system.log because Order Reminder will write some lines starting with “Inchoo_OrderReminder” every time processOrderReminders is run by cron. If there are no lines there, then function isn’t being triggered and your cron isn’t properly configured. For more info about setting up cron you can take a look at related Magento Wiki entry:
Alternatively you can also create Magento controller to trigger this function manually for testing if you can’t wait for cron to kick in.
Regards,
Marko
Reply
Jav says:
Aug 09, 2013 at 6:25
The enabled is set to 0 I mean.
Reply
Jav says:
Aug 09, 2013 at 6:25
Hi Marko,
Finally got it into the cron_schedule…but it does not seem to want to send the email
in the config it is set to this (as is):

0
is that correct?
Reply
Dan Smith says:
Aug 09, 2013 at 3:12
I’m going to install this. Think it’s a great idea! Simple but great.
Reply
Jav says:
Aug 06, 2013 at 6:22
Hi Marko,
Thanks for your reply have sorted the earlier question, I cant seem to get the processOrderReminders to appear in my cron schedule table (which would mean the cron isnt being executed am I right?)
Reply
1. Marko Martinovic says:
  Aug 09, 2013 at 6:04
  @Jav:
  Yes that’s true, for some reason processOrderReminders isn’t scheduled to run.
  Regards,
  Marko
Marko Martinovic says:
Jul 19, 2013 at 6:07
@Jav:
Hello. Unfortunately there are multiple reasons why this error might occure. If it happens that you have more detailed error message containing line of code affected I might be able to assist.
Cheers!
Reply
Jav says:
Jul 18, 2013 at 3:34
Hi while using it I encountered varien_object not found; this is when Observer.php is ran.
Reply
Michael says:
Jun 05, 2013 at 8:28
It’s a great extension! this is working for us and helping to convert more prospects to customers in our store.
Reply

Introduction

Background

What to do next?

You made it all the way down here so you must have enjoyed this post! You may also like:

How I learned to stop worrying and love 3rd party modules for Magento

Per product meta robots tag control in Magento

Print message in all languages using single store, date on specified localization

17 comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply