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Our Favorite Tactics for Email Recommendations

We know that tactful placement of recommendations across your email campaigns both enhances the customer journey as well as revenue, but where to start?

In this article we look at our favourite touch points to enhance your marketing, and our recommended tactics and best practice for each.

If you have any questions about how to implement these tactics, please contact [email protected]

OUR BEST PRACTICE GUIDANCE

How to maximize your ROI

Your Campaign Review

Before adding Recommendations, it’s worth reviewing your email campaigns to see where these will most aid your customer, as these will likely see the highest ROI. Understanding your customer journey and the touchpoints within is crucial to effective design and prioritization. Some example questions to ask yourself:

  • What automated campaigns are you already running? Adding recommendations to your existing automated campaigns are the quickest way to increase your ROI ongoing. Consider enhancing your lifecycle or Triggered campaigns as priority
  • What trends can you find in your email Analytics? Which campaigns tend to get the most reach / engagement? Which campaigns could stand to improve the most?
  • What is your Campaign Goal? Each campaign will have it’s own purpose, being clear on what that is will help you align the best tactic(s) to leverage. For example a welcome campaigns might be to increase product exposure using social proof, whilst a post-purchase email might focus on product replenishment
  • What do you already know about your customers? Each customer base will have different motivations that you can leverage. For example, do your customers have strong category affinity? If so, we should consistently target those preferences. Do your customers have a long consideration phase? If so, showing recently or most viewed products can be effective.
  • What common objections do you have? Consider displaying products to address these e.g. if Price points are highly compared with other brands, we could recommend lower priced or price dropped products

Remember that you can use multiple SmartBlocks of recommendations on the same page e.g. In cart abandonment emails, show Similar Products to the current cart AND items that were recently browsed, but not carted, to help customers discover new products and re-evaluate alternatives.

Top Tip!

Optimize your ongoing email campaign recommendations by using our Multi-Armed Bandit tool

Your Campaigns

Welcome Email Campaign

Personalizing within a Welcome Email can be tricky when the customer is new to your database. However the great news about Fresh Relevance is that we have already linked their email with their onsite behavior before they’ve given their email!

That said, we should always assume that someone may have signed up with very little exposure to your brand. The following tactics will work for everyone receiving your emails

  • Showcase your Best Sellers by using our Frequently Purchased Data Source, consider using a shorter time period for ‘Hot Right Now’
  • Show products at the right Price Points by accurately predicting a customers price point. Add our the Price Affinity Predictor filter to your recommendations
  • Highlight ‘Impulse Buys’ by using that Data Source, showing products that have highest conversion rates for the number of times the product is browsed

Top Tip!

Leverage these types of tactics for Fallback data sources, so that you can try to personalize more deeply on the first pass.

Re-engagement Campaigns

Personalized Product Recommendations are crucial in re-engaging lapsed customers. Ensure that you’re always personalizing either

  • Automatically showcase your New In stock within a customers Brand/Category Affinity by using our New Products Data Source, paired with the Best Tag Value Filter to surface their most active categories
  • Help Customers re-engage with familiar products especially if you can leverage repleniment emails. Showing a customer previously Purchased, or carted products.
  • Showcase your Best Sellers by using our Frequently Purchased Data Source, consider pairing with the Best Tag Value filter to showcase relevant best sellers
  • Highlight ‘Impulse Buys’ by using that Data Source, showing products that have highest conversion rates for the number of times the product is browsed

Top Tip!

A/B test the number of tags you show in your Best Tag Value filter, so see the ideal category bredth for your customers

BAU Newsletters

Newsletters, or blanket style, sends are a great way to keep in touch with your customers, but curating relevant Recommendations over and over again can be time consuming. These are some of our favourite tactics that you can use again and again!

  • Personalize on the customer’s behavior by using one of our AI data sources to predict the most relevant products for the visitor based on their website behaviour.
  • Showcase your Best Sellers by using our Frequently Purchased Data Source, consider pairing with the Best Tag Value filter to showcase relevant best sellers
  • Celebrate New Products automatically by using our New Products data source. This will automatically display the latest products to have been added to your product database in Fresh Relevance
  • Remind customers what they’ve previously left behind and help them pick up where they left off, by showing thier previously carted products
    Top Tip! Fallback to ‘Freqently Browsed (dynamic)’ Products for those who are yet to cart
  • Automatically highlight Price Drop Products with the Behavioral Targeting Module by building a Segment as your Data Source, dynamically showing products that customer browsed that have dropped in price
  • Increase AOV by showing products of a higher price point than normally purchased using the Price filter.
  • Highlight ‘Impulse Buys’ by using that Data Source, showing products that have highest conversion rates for the number of times the product is browsed

Top Tip!

If you’re using Recommendations regularly, consider adding the Exclude Recently Recommended filter to ensure that you’re exposing a good bredth of products

Product Launch Emails

It’s exciting times launching new products, categories or Brands. It’s not so exciting to manually curate recommendations.

Here’s our top tactics which are super easy to implement

  • Auotmatically display New Products, either across all products, or limited to specified brands or categories. Simply combine the relevant Tag (Category) filter with our New Products data source. This will automatically display the latest products to have been added to your product database in Fresh Relevance with the relevant brand or category
  • Show other best Sellers within the Category by using the Frequently Purchased Data Source, and filtering to the category or brand of the Launch

Sales Emails

Can you imagine building 1 SmartBlock and it being up-to-date for every Sales email you send for the rest of time? No more Recommendation curation and what’s more is the ability to further personalize Recommendations so you surface sales items that are most inticing to each individual.

  • Showcase your Best Sellers that have dropped in price by using our Frequently Purchased Data Source combined with the Price Drop filter
  • Highlight ‘Impulse Buys’ that have dropped in price by using that Data Source, showing products that have highest conversion rates for the number of times the product is browsed, paired with the Price Drop filter
  • Personalize to a customers Brand Affinity by targeting the Brand Tag group our Best Tag Value filter along with the relevant Tag (Category) filter in addition to the Price Drop filter

Top Tip!

Use Slot Marketing Rules to automatically display your content during your Sales period, for a stress free campaign