Messaging Recommendations are personalized product recommendations sent via email; they increase the relevance of the recommended products sent in a marketing or post-purchase campaign. True personalization uses shopper behavior and shopper preferences based on the shopper’s on-site activity. Personalized recommendations are designed to drive a more engaging shopper experience, with the ultimate goal of getting the right product to the right person at the right time.
Whenever potential customers visit a site, they provide information about their interests via the pages they visit and the products they view. Every time a shopper views a product or adds a product to the cart, Searchspring’s personalization algorithm learns from those actions to better understand the shopper’s intent and makes predictions about what that shopper wants to buy. Those predictions generate the content used in messaging recommendations.
Messaging Recommendations are integrated with the Dotdigital marketing automation platform, employing an image and page redirect service so that recommendations can be sent in email marketing campaigns. Campaign parameters (such as the type of recommendation desired) and trigger variables are embedded into image and page links sent in the messages. All tracking codes are preserved in the redirect process, and Searchspring tracking codes are appended to enable reporting in our dashboards.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Currently, messaging recommendations are only available for those on Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento platforms who are using Klaviyo or Dotdigital for their messaging. Searchspring will be expanding this function to all platforms eventually, connecting email or phone to the customer shopper ID.
Highlights
Customizable rules for merchandisers
Use the Searchspring Management Console (SMC) to curate and customize personalization rules. Configure Advanced Rules to customize a Personalized Recommendation profile; those rules are applied across your store and Messaging Recommendation campaigns. This allows you to maintain consistent merchandising rules and personalized recommendation behaviors.
Personalization based on email-open
We calculate personalization on email open, rather than only on send. This ensures that our recommendations are hyper-relevant, aligning with the recipient's most recent activity.
Cutting-edge machine learning and AI analysis
With every index of your feed, we employ advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) analysis to interpret your site's data. We perform daily indexing for all sites, ensuring that our data remains synchronized with any changes made to your site, providing unparalleled relevance in generating recommendations.
Truly one-to-one personalization
Our messaging recommendations are unique to each individual, reflecting their preferences and interests.
Setup
Messaging Recommendation intelligence is created in Searchspring and then injected into Klaviyo or Dotdigital.
When an SMC user adds a new Messaging Recommendation profile to their site, they can select Dotdigital as their Marketing Automation Provider. Next, the user is prompted to choose the Campaign Type that they want to support, and then the Recommendation Type that they want to use in that campaign. Finally, users give the profile a name, choose the product card template to use, and set any template parameters required for that card. While saving the profile, they are prompted to upload it to Dotdigital. This step calls the Dotdigital APIs to either create or update the profile in the Dotdigital EasyEditor.
Searchspring profiles are all stored under the Searchspring section under the Dotdigital EasyEditor’s Build tab. Customers can select these profiles to drag and drop them into their email campaigns, sending personalized suggestions to their customers. Depending on the type of email event, the appropriate event data is dynamically inserted into the recommendation image and page links so that personalized product results are selected and shown to each email recipient.
Note: Searchspring also supports Recently Viewed recommendations in Dotdigital.
Create a new messaging recommendation
Navigate to Messaging Recommendations in the Searchspring Management Console (SMC) by selecting "Personalization" from the main menu, then selecting "Messaging Recommendations".
Click Messaging Recommendations. The following form will appear:
Click “Add New Profile” in the top right.
Select the marketing automation provider.
Select the type of campaign you'd like to use.
Select the recommendations type. In this example, we will choose “Cross-Sell”.
Once the recommendations type is selected, the Template tab will appear, as shown below. Configure the profile name and adjust the number of product recommendations to include in an email campaign. You may recommend up to 10 products in an email.
Note: Unlike email recommendations, SMS recommendations will contain only one product recommendation.
Click the Precision tab to configure how precise recommendations are. This value dictates how many conditions the system uses to find recommended products. Broad precision expands the recommendations algorithm to ensure products can be recommended even when shopper data is sparse. Narrow precision restricts recommendations to prevent the algorithm from defaulting to related products or top sellers. This could result in recommendations not being displayed for certain products.
Drag the slider to select the precision.
- All = Include top selling products plus Crowd and Genomic
- Genomic = Include cross-sell recommendations for other products like this
- Crowd = Include similar recommendations that match this product
- No Fill = Cross-sell recommendations that match this product
- Curated = Only return products from Cross-Sell Product Rules
Save the profile by clicking the blue Save button at the top-right of the form. Once the profile has been saved, two tabs will appear on the page: one for email and another for SMS. (SMS campaigns in Dotdigital will become available later in 2024.)
Click “Update” to update the Dotdigital EasyEditor block to match this profile, which will upload the Searchspring messaging profiles as Dotdigital EasyEditor extension blocks.
The subsidiary Email tab displays what is shared with Dotdigital.
Personalized email recommendations are available now; SMS recommendations will become available with Dotdigital later in 2024.
Adding Product Recommendations to Dotdigital
Product recommendations in Dotdigital are available to anyone on Searchspring’s Expert Tier. Users have access to all personalization features.
Once the Searchspring Management Console has been configured with your preferences, log in to Dotdigital. A screen similar to that shown below will appear:
You may have emails listed under Campaigns/Email (seasonal events, special sales) or under Automation/Triggered email (order confirmation, abandoned browse, abandoned cart, and welcome campaigns). Below are instructions for each option.
Campaigns
Drill down in the Campaigns section, then click “Email”. Once Email campaigns are displayed, click the appropriate campaign (DD Check in this example) to view its details.
Under building blocks for an email messaging campaign, select Searchspring from the bottom of the list on the left.
Click the arrow to drill down among the options. Drag and drop the desired component(s) into your email builder on the right side of the page; the system will automatically pull all the relevant event data for the message being sent.
The following will appear: “Drag and drop this block into your email template to add a personalized product recommendation. To make changes to this template, update the template in the Searchspring Management Console and press ‘Save’.”
You may update the number of products to include. Click “Apply” to apply the changes; click “Cancel” to cancel the changes.
If changes are needed to the personalized recommendations, return to the Searchspring Management Console to update the desired email profile, then confirm the changes by clicking the “Update” button to sync the SMC with Dotdigital.
Triggered events
Drill down in the Analytics section, then click “Email”. Once Email campaigns are displayed, click the appropriate campaign to view its details. For this example, we will use "Abandoned cart".
Clicking the "Abandoned cart" email will open the screen shown below. Under building blocks for an email messaging campaign, select Searchspring from the bottom of the list on the left.
Click the arrow to drill down and see all available options. Drag and drop the desired component(s) into the email builder on the right side of the page; the system will automatically pull all the relevant event data for the message being sent.
Shown here is an example of an abandoned cart email:
Make any changes needed and click the "Save" button or the "Save & Continue" button at the top right of the page.
Click the "Preview" button at the top of the page to preview the email.
Click the "Test Send" button to send a test email and ensure that the message appears as expected. A new window will appear:
Select options (HTML, plain text, or both) and click "Select Test Address" or "New Test Address" to choose or add an email address.
If adding a new email address, key in the address, first and last name, and click the "Create" button.
If selecting an existing email address, click the radio button next to one of the options shown.
The system will return to the previous window and display the selected email address. Click the "X" to remove the selected email and choose a different one.
Once the address is chosen, click the "Test Send" button to send the test email, or click the "Cancel" button to close this window and return to message configuration.
In the example of the test email shown below, both the "text" and "HTML" versions were chosen; the text version is shown at the top, and the HTML version is shown at the bottom.
Text version:
HTML version:
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