With Unicorn you can run multiple carts at once, targeting different markets and different customer segments.
This guide shows you how to create a secret cart that only new customers can reach, and send it to them through your Meta ads. It’s a great play in the run-up to Black Friday, when you want to acquire as many new customers as possible so you can convert them again during your sale.
How to set it up
Create your new-customer cart. In Unicorn, set up a cart for the market you want to target (for example, Australia). This is the cart only your new customers will see.
Add your offer. Build a special Gift with Purchase just for this audience, such as free accessories, a free bag, or whatever you’d like to test. Make it tempting, since the goal is to win over a cold audience.
Restrict the cart to URL access only. Check Restrict cart to URL access only. Now the cart can only be reached by people who have the link, or who land on any page with the URL parameter added to the end. It stays available to them until they purchase, or until you turn the cart off.
Keep your business-as-usual cart running. Make sure you also have another cart active for this market, so everyone else (customers arriving via direct, email, and so on) can still access a normal cart.
Note: You’ll see a small warning that two carts are live for the same market. That’s expected here, and nothing to worry about. One is your secret URL-only cart, and one is the standard cart for everyone who lands on your site.
Set up your Meta ad audience. In your Meta ad, choose to acquire new customers only. Exclude your existing customers, and exclude your engaged audiences too. This gives you a genuinely cold audience to send the offer to.
Point the ad to your secret cart. Copy the cart’s URL and paste it into the ad as the destination. Alternatively, add the URL parameter to the end of any product page or collection page you’d like to send people to, and use that as the destination instead.
Your ad will now direct that cold, new-customer audience straight to your secret cart and its offer. With the exclusions in place, you’re hyper-personalising the deal to exactly the people you want to acquire before peak. The cart stays active until you switch it off or the customer purchases.
Tip: Run this in the lead-up to Black Friday. Acquiring new customers now means you can re-convert them during your sale.