Create a Product Recommendations for Email Experience

Follow these steps to create a Product Recommendations for Email experience.

1. Click EXPERIENCES in the top navigation bar, and then select Web.

   

2. Click the drop-down arrow to the right of CREATE EXPERIENCE, and then select Product Recommendations for Email.

   

3. Click the pencil icon, enter a name for the experience, and then click the green checkmark icon to save the name.

   

4. Click WHAT and then click ADD ACTION.

   

5. Click Product Recommendations for Email on the Action Type panel.

   

6. Click the action template that you want to use.

   

7. Configure the required recommendations-related inputs for the action.
   1. Select up to four recommendation strategies to populate the recommendations.

      

   2. Set the number of times the action displays recommendations from one strategy before displaying recommendations from the next strategy. For example, an action using recommendation strategies A, B, and C with a set sequence of 2 would pull from result in recommendations pulled in the following order: A, A, B, B, C, C, A, A….

      

   3. Set the minimum number of products the action must display before a fallback recommendation fires.

      Setting Minimum products returned to zero prevents the fallback strategy or strategies from firing and email recipients from seeing any recommendations.

      If in step 7a you selected any recommendation strategy with Prepend context item in recommendation enabled, then the context item counts toward meeting the threshold you set in Minimum products returned.

      

   4. Set the maximum number of products the action can recommend.

      If in step 7a you selected any recommendation strategy with Prepend context item in recommendation enabled, then the context item counts toward meeting the threshold you set in Maximum products returned.

      

   5. Optionally, enter into Pinned products the value of the id attribute for each product that you want to always appear at the beginning of the recommendations results.

      If you enter product IDs into Pinned products and if in step 7a you selected one or more recommendation strategies with Prepend context item in recommendation enabled, then the products identified at the action level appear before the context product in the recommendations results.

      

   6. Optionally, select a product catalog attribute on which duplicate recommended products are removed from the results.

      Ensure that the attribute that you select is present in the product catalog configured within each recommendation strategy that you selected in step 7a. This requirement doesn't apply to any fallback recommendation strategy that you select because the Remove duplicate products based on setting doesn't apply to fallback recommendation strategies.

      

8. Optionally, select one or two fallback recommendation strategies.

   If the action has not met the minimum number of products after depleting its ability to draw recommendations from the strategies you selected in step 6a and then still failed to meet the required minimum number of items using the first fallback strategy, then it uses the second fallback strategy to fill out what remains, if possible. If the action cannot meet the minimum products threshold using the primary or fallback strategies, then the action doesn't fire.

   

9. As necessary, modify the HTML code for the recommendation item template.

   

10. As necessary, adjust the size of the image container.

    

11. Click CREATE.
12. Click GENERATE EMAIL HTML.

    

13. Click COPY TO CLIPBOARD and then paste the HTML into your ESP email template.

    

14. Replace the $customer_id placeholder and, as necessary, the placeholders for any run-time parameters in the generated HTML, with their respective values. See Preparing the Generated HTML in Run-Time Context for Recommendations Email Experiences for more information.

    

Unlike Web experiences, a Product Recommendations for Email experience requires no activation because you send it to customers using your ESP.

Previewing the Email Experience

Follow these steps to preview a Product Recommendations for Email experience complete with the context of a customer ID.

1. Click PREVIEW on the Experience Editor page.

   

2. Enter a customer ID value in the Preview modal.

   This identifier is equivalent to the one used by your ESP to identify users. If you enter a valid customer ID, then the preview represents the experience seen by that customer. If you enter an invalid or imaginary customer ID, then the preview appears as if it would for an email recipient with no history.

   

If the preview appears blank, a likely culprit is a syntax error in the template. Another possibility is a lack of returned recommended items due to either an empty catalog or the configurations of the recommendation strategies selected in the WHAT action.