Marketing Cloud allows you to create product recommendations based on any of four metrics, i.e., Best Sellers, New Arrivals, Top Trending, and Bought Together. You can additionally filter categories to include in the recommendations and choose a sorting order for how the recommendations are shown.
In this Article
Prerequisites
For Best Sellers, New Arrivals, and Top Trending:
Your Marketing Cloud account should have order data for at least 60 days to generate these product recommendations.
For Bought Together:
To generate recommendation results as accurately as possible, your Marketing Cloud account should have at least 180 days of historical purchase data. This recommendation type is only available for the following platforms:
Creating a Product Feed
To create a product feed, follow the steps shown below:
- From your MMC account, go to the Navigation panel, click on Content, and select Product Recommendations.
- On the Product Recommendations page, go to the Product Feeds tab.
- On the Product Feeds tab, click New Product Feed.
- From the slider that opens, enter a product feed name and choose the recommendation filters you wish to apply. These filters allow you to include or exclude a set of products. They are namely:
- Active products only: This filter ensures that only products with an "Active" status are included in recommendations, excluding any products marked as "Inactive" in the system.
- In Stock products only: This filter ensures that recommendations only include products currently available for purchase, excluding any out-of-stock items.
- Approved for Webstore products only: This filter includes products that meet specific guidelines for display on a particular webstore, ensuring recommendations are limited to items approved for that platform.
- Next, select the e-commerce platform from the Source dropdown, which lists platforms with available data, like Shopify, Neto, Rex, or options passed via API. Then, choose the specific store from which products will be recommended. For more tailored recommendations, select a brand to include product categories associated with the specified brand.
- Further, you can fine-tune your filter categories by selecting the options shown below:
- Show all categories: The recommendation includes all product categories derived from the store along with the brands chosen with it.
- Limit to specific categories: The recommendation includes only those categories that are selected from the categories dropdown list.
- Exclude specific categories: The recommendation omits categories that are selected in the exclusion dropdown list. The remaining categories are included in the recommendations.
📋 Note: The Categories drop-down field facilitates hierarchy-based selection, giving you additional control over whether to include or exclude child categories within a parent category.
- After you’ve selected the categories, choose the recommendation type based on which the product recommendation will be generated. Currently, we are providing four options:
- Best Sellers: Recommendations are generated for the recent best-selling products. You can select a date range for a minimum period of “Last 5 days” to a maximum period of “Last 60 days” so that the best-selling products during the chosen time are considered for generating the recommendations.
- New Arrivals: Recommendations are generated for the newly launched products. You can select a date range for a minimum period of “Last 7 days” to a maximum period of “Last 30 days” so that the newly-added products during the chosen time are considered for generating the recommendations.
- Top Trending: Recommendations are generated for the trending products meaning products showing a surge in popularity. You can select a date range for a minimum period of “Last 7 days” to a maximum period of “Last 30 days” so that the products trending during the chosen time are considered for generating the recommendations.
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What are Best Sellers and Top Trending products?
- Best sellers are the products that sell the most, while top trending products are those that exhibit significant increases in sales volume.
- A product is termed trending if its sales quantity increases by five or more. So, depending on your sales growth, you may or may not have any trending products.
- Bought Together: Recommendations are generated for products that are regularly bought together from a store. It is advised to combine it with a product feed (such as an abandoned cart, best-selling, new arrivals, & top trending) or a list of products identified by its SKU to accurately display product recommendations to the user while viewing the email campaign. Currently, the “Bought Together” recommendation is only available for Neto, Rex, Keap, and Shopify platforms.
📋 What is an SKU and its significance?
Stock Keeping Unit, or simply "SKU", is an alphanumeric-based identification code retailers use to track stock levels. It helps assess and manage a store"s overall inventory, ensuring the store meets client expectations without falling short in stock supply.
SKU enables businesses to organize products, identify low supplies, restock more quickly, and optimize supply chains on a much larger scale, thereby improving the possibility of increased sales.
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Important Points to Consider:
- For new integrations, the system requires a 2-day period to sync and analyze your MMC account’s storage data before generating "Bought Together" recommendations. New customers who recently connected their stores with MMC will need to wait 2 days to access this recommendation type, which will remain disabled for their account during this initial setup phase.
- Ensure you only mention product feeds or products directly related to the items bought or kept in the shopping list by the customer. This is to make sure only relevant “Bought Together” information is shown to the customer while they are checking their abandoned cart or a recently purchased product.
- You can select four types of feeds for the “Bought Together” recommendation, which are namely, Abandoned Cart, Best Sellers, New Arrivals, and Top Trending. While Best Sellers, New Arrivals, and Top Trending Feeds are static meaning they display the same product recommendation to all users belonging to a particular store, the Abandoned Cart Feed is dynamic and will display products based on the items left in the cart.
- If no recommended items are available for a cart in the "Bought Together" recommendation type, the system will automatically display the most popular products as a fallback option.
- We also encourage Maropost users to regularly verify and update their product catalog with the latest images since only products having available images will be suggested to customers. This helps to maximize the visibility of your product offerings and maintain visually engaging and relevant product recommendations at all times.
- Now, select the sorting method to be used in the product recommendation template that will be inserted in the emails. The options are shown below:
- Random: The recommended products are displayed randomly without any specific order. This option is selected by default.
- Price Low to High: The recommended products are displayed based on their price range from low to high.
- Price High to Low: The recommended products are displayed based on their price range from high to low.
After you’ve added the necessary details in the given fields, click on Create to generate the product feed.
Use Cases
Combining “Bought Together” product recommendations with bulk emails:
Bought together is a great tool to drive cross-sells when promoting a new or specific product in a bulk email campaign. For example, if you are sending out a sale campaign for a specific product, including a “Bought Together” feed in the campaign has been shown to drive click rates and conversions.
Such methods of showcasing complementary product suggestions to a large audience group greatly help increase conversion rates, thus encouraging additional purchases in the long run.
Combining “Bought Together” product recommendations with triggered emails:
Triggered 1:1 campaigns are ideal for dynamically populating “Bought Together” product recommendations. For abandoned cart and browse campaigns, these types of recommendations increase the chances of recovery. With campaigns such as purchase confirmations or replenishment notifications, including other relevant products increases the likelihood of repeat purchases.
FAQs
Q1) Can I customize the product feed layout for “Bought Together” recommendations?
Yes, once you've created a “Bought Together” product feed, you can customize the layout by creating a product feed template. In the template editor, you can adjust rows, columns, product images, product names, prices, buttons, and styling to match your brand’s look.
Q2) How do I use “Bought Together” recommendations in an email campaign?
After creating a “Bought Together” product feed template, you can use it in your email campaigns by following these steps:
- Go to the Email Editor and create a new email or edit an existing one.
- Insert the “Bought Together” product feed template tags into the email content.
- It is recommended to include the product feed or selected products used to generate the “Bought Together” recommendations, ensuring the recipient gets personalized suggestions.
Q3) Can I use “Bought Together” recommendations for bulk email campaigns?
Yes, you can add “Bought Together” recommendations to mass email campaigns. This allows you to provide complementary product suggestions to a large audience, increasing conversion rates by encouraging customers to purchase related items. We recommend including the associated product feed along with the “Bought Together” recommendation while sending bulk email campaigns.
Q4) How does “Bought Together” work in abandoned cart flows?
In abandoned cart emails, the “Bought Together” recommendation type analyzes the products included in the associated abandoned cart feed. It then suggests items frequently purchased alongside those products. By displaying these complementary items, the feature increases the likelihood of customers completing their purchases while encouraging them to add more products to their cart.
Q5) How can I use “Bought Together” recommendations in other email campaigns?
For any email campaign that uses Product Feed Template Tags, you can seamlessly integrate “Bought Together” recommendations. This provides dynamic, tailor-made product suggestions to enhance the effectiveness of your email campaigns and drive more sales.
Q6) What are fallback options and how do they work?
Fallback options ensure that recommendations are displayed even when no specific matches are found. This applies specifically to the "Bought Together" recommendation type. If no recommended products are found, the system will automatically send the most popular products as suggestions. This ensures users continue to see relevant product options, maintaining engagement and a seamless experience.
Q7) Can I select specific products to create “Bought Together” recommendations?
Yes, you can either select an existing product feed (e.g., Best Sellers, Abandoned Cart Feed) or manually choose specific SKUs to create “Bought Together” recommendations. This flexibility allows for more personalized and targeted suggestions.
Q8) How do fallback options improve the recommendation system?
Fallback options ensure that if a product or feed doesn’t have sufficient data, the system still provides recommendations based on available data. This helps avoid gaps in recommendations and improves overall reliability, reducing user drop-off and maintaining customer engagement.
Q9) Can I use filters while generating “Bought Together” product feeds?
Yes, while creating a product feed, you can apply filters such as:
- Active Products Only.
- In Stock Products Only.
You can also apply category filters to include or exclude specific product categories, ensuring the recommendations are relevant.
Q10) Will the “Bought Together” recommendation feature be available for all users in MMC?
Yes, any MMC user with access to the Product Recommendations feature will be able to create and use “Bought Together” recommendations, as long as they are using one of the supported platforms (Shopify, Neto, REX, or KEAP).
Q11) What are some example use cases for “Bought Together” recommendations?
Here are a few common use cases:
- Bulk Emails: Include complementary product recommendations in mass emails to increase conversion rates.
- Abandoned Cart Flow: Use "Bought Together" recommendations to encourage customers to complete their purchases and buy related products.
- Email Campaigns with Product Feed Tags: Dynamically insert personalized product recommendations using product feed template tags in any email campaign.