Track Customer Engagement with Recommendations

You can set up an engagement-based goal metric to use with a recommendations action with a URL parameter name and a URL parameter value that you can track in a custom event built in Event Builder.

Creating the Custom Event

Follow these steps to create an event to track the URL parameter name and value.

  1. Click COMPONENTS in the top navigation bar and then select Events.

    Callout of the Events option in the COMPONENTS menu

  2. Click CREATE EVENT.

    Callout of the CREATE EVENT button on the Events list page

  3. Click the Page URL tab, and then click Contains.

    Callout of the Contains option on the Page URL tab of Event Builder

  4. Type into URL contains a parameter name and value that is not used elsewhere on your site, and then press Enter.

    Callout of the 'URL contains' field

  5. Optionally, click ADD CONDITION, select a category, select an option from that category, and then complete the condition. See Action Conditions for more information.

    The recs=apex query parameter used in the example shown designates that the URL contains the keyword recs and that it is associated with an Automated Personalization experience (apex). You can use this example for the event you're building by changing the parameter value to whatever makes the most sense for your purpose, but ensure it's specific to what you will use in the recommendations action and isn't used anywhere else on your site.

    Callout of the ADD CONDITION selector. The query parameter 'recs=apex' has been entered in the 'URL contains' field.

  6. Type a title and description into the Event Title and Description fields, respectively. Optionally, type a subcategory into its respective field. Finally, click CREATE & EXIT.

    Callout of the CREATE & EXIT button

Continue to the next section to add the event to a Web experience with a recommendations action.

Adding the Event to a Web Experience

Follow these steps to set up an Automated Personalization experience with the tracking event.

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

    Callout of the Web option in the COMPONENTS menu of the top navigation bar

  2. Click CREATE EXPERIENCE.

    Callout of the CREATE EXPERIENCE button on the All Web Experiences list page

  3. Click the pencil icon to the right of the placeholder name, give the new experience a name, and then click the green checkmark.
  4. Click WHY, select Automated Personalization, and then click NEXT.

    Callout of the Automated Personalization option and the NEXT button on the WHY panel

  5. Select the event metric you created in Event Builder and then click NEXT.

    Callout of the selected custom metric event and the NEXT button

  6. Click NEXT to confirm the secondary metrics.

    Callout of the NEXT button to confirm the secondary metrics

  7. Click SAVE to confirm the WHY settings.

    Callout of the SAVE button

Continue to the next section to add a recommendations action to the experience.

Adding the Recommendations Action to the Web Experience

Follow these steps to configure the recommendations action for the Automated Personalization experience you created in the previous section.

  1. Click A of the WHAT settings, and then click ADD ACTION.

    Callout of the action A field of the WHAT settings and of the 'ADD ACTION' button

  2. Click Product Recommendations.

    Callout of the Product Recommendations option on the Action Type panel

  3. Click a recommendations action template that includes the URL Parameter and URL Parameter Value fields, and then configure the settings in the Required Inputs section. See Configure a Recommendations Action for more information about the settings and options.

    Example of the recommendations action template options available for a Web experience

  4. In the Optional Inputs section, type the parameter name you used when creating the tracking event into URL Parameter Name, and then type the parameter value into URL Parameter Value.

    Callout of the URL Parameter Name field and the URL Parameter Value field in a recommendations action template

  5. Configure any of the other Optional Inputs settings as needed, add any action conditions, and then click CREATE.
  6. Configure the WHO, WHEN, and HOW settings of the experience as necessary, and then click ACTIVATE.

    Callout of the ACTIVATE button

With this configuration the experience leverages each customer's contextual attributes to automatically optimize their chances of engaging with the recommendations.

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