The Product Recommendations System allows you to customize the products that appear in your email or on your site. Use this guide to familiarize yourself with some common terms you'll see in the Product Recommendations system and the specifics of how different elements of the builder.
Common Terminology
Recipe: A recipe determines which products appear in an email or site page. Different email or page types may require different types of products to appear, such as showing the newest products or show products similar to the products a contact browsed.
Global Ingredients: Global Ingredients are configured at the domain level and apply to all recipes. These can be disabled for a single recipe, however this is not recommended. Global Ingredient are used to ensure that only products that should appear are included, such as only in-stock products or excluding discontinued products. Up to seven global ingredients can be applied. The global ingredients can be configured using the additional ingredients.
Reference Data: Reference data refers to using a contact's activity on your site when determining which products will appear. The three activities tracked by Listrak are: items browsed, items abandoned in a cart, or items purchased. Listrak tracks the last 25 items that fall into those categories.
Merchandise Block: A merchandise block is the structure that determines the layout and appearance of the products in an email or on your site.
Base Ingredients
The base ingredient determines the foundation of your strategy and which products appear in an email or website page. There are two broad categories of base ingredients: base ingredients that use reference data (customer activity) to customize products and those that do not.
Choosing to use a base ingredient that includes reference data will depend on the specific goal of your email or site page. For example, in a browse abandonment campaign you may want to reference the last product that a contact browsed, but in a marketing email for a specific category of products you may want to ensure that the recommended products are from that category, regardless of a customer's past activity.
💡 The 🛍️ icon indicates a base ingredient uses reference data to determine which products to display.
The following base ingredients are available:
CEO's Picks: CEO's Picks allow you to curate a list of specific products that appear in the email. Up to 250 SKUs can be listed by placing each SKU on a sperate line. Global Ingredients will still apply to the list of SKUs.
Frequently Bought Together: 🛍️ This base ingredient uses customer reference data to display products that other customers who purchased the referenced products have also purchased. Customers purchased these items in the same order as the referenced products.
Gateway Products: Gateway Products displays products that first-time purchasers on your website frequently purchase.
Purchase This Purchase That: 🛍️ This base ingredient uses reference data to display products that other customers who have purchased the reference product(s) has also purchased. Unlike Frequently Bought Together, the items purchased may have been purchased in separate purchases.
Recent Activity: 🛍️ This base ingredient uses reference data to display the specific products a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased (depends on the type of activity selected).
Recipe: This ingredient allows you to select a previously created recipe. Recipes are more often used as a backup ingredient.
Related Products: 🛍️ Related Products relies on reference data and specific information supplied about your products. In the product data you can provide a list of SKUs that are related to a product, often products that cross-sell or up-sell the specific product. Product recommendations can display these products based on the items a contact was browsing, abandoning, or purchasing.
Similar Products: 🛍️ This base ingredient using reference data and Listrak's AI to look at domain-wide browsing data and product information to display products that are similar to items a contact was interacting with. Similar products is most effective if additional ingredients are not added.
Top Sellers: Top Sellers displays products that sold the largest number of units within a selected timeframe (last 7, 30, 90, or 365 days).
Trending: Trending displays the products that have the largest change in purchase rate during a specific time frame (last 7 or 30 days). Display the top 25%, 50%, 75% or all products based on the rate of change.
Viewed This Purchased That: 🛍️ This base ingredient uses reference data to display products that other customers who browsed (viewed) the referenced items later went on to purchase.
Viewed This Viewed That: 🛍️ This base ingredient uses reference data to display products that other customers who browsed (viewed) the referenced items also browsed while on your site.
What's New: What's New displays the newest products based on the Create Date available for the product. Create Date is automatically set when a product is first sent to Listrak by your integration or product file and cannot be edited.
Additional Ingredients
Additional Ingredients allow you to tailor the products suggested based on the base ingredient by adding different types of filters or sorting the results. Additional ingredients can be added to an individual recipe in the recipe tab, or to the global ingredients if the filter should apply to all recipes, such as making sure products are in stock.
Additional ingredients are broken down into three categories: general (based on product information), pricing (based on price or sale price information), and personalized (based on an individual customer's activity).
How Additional Ingredients Impact Recipes
When an ingredient is added, it can be controlled by a slider, called an Importance Slider. The slider is weighted from 0% to 100%. When the slider is weighted to 100% only products that meet the criteria of the slider (e.g.: priced over $10) will display. When the slider is weighted to less than 100% products that meet the criteria are prioritized, however products that do not meet the criteria may also appear.
💡 The 🛍️ icon indicates an ingredient uses reference data to determine which products to display.
General Ingredients
At Least [Quantity] Alternative Images: Alternative images are an optional data piece that allows you to send over additional product images. This ingredient allows you to promote products that have alternative images.
Clearance [Status]: This ingredient allows you to filter down your results to include or exclude products that are flagged as clearance products.
Demote by SKU: This ingredient allows you to de-prioritize or exclude (importance slider is weighted to 100%) specific products from appearing in the product recommendations. Each product that should be excluded should be listed on it's own line.
Different Brand: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display the products of a brand that is not the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Different Category: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display those products of a category that is not the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Different Subcategory: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display those in a subcategory that is no the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
In Stock: This ingredient filters down the product results to products that are flagged as in stock.
Less Than [Quantity] In Stock: This ingredient filters down the product results to products that have a Quantity on Hand less than the specified value.
More than [Quantity] In Stock: This ingredient filters down the product results to products that have a Quantity on Hand more than the specified value.
Not a Reference Product: 🛍️ This ingredient filters down results to exclude (importance slider is set to 100%) the specific products included in the reference data to exclude recently browsed, abandoned, or purchased products.
Not Discontinued: This ingredient excludes products that are not no longer sold. Products are considered discontinued when the discontinued flag is set to true in the product information.
Only One Variant: This ingredient displays a single version, or variant, of a product. Variants have the same Master SKU, but different individual SKUs and properties, such as size or color. The specific variant displayed will be the most popular of the variants or the variant that best fits the filters you apply.
Promote by SKU: This ingredient allows you to prioritize or only show (importance slider is weighted to 100%) specific products. Each product should be listed on it's own line.
Randomness: This ingredient allows you to shuffle the products included in recommendations. Randomness is often used in Recurring Automated Campaigns to add variety to results when the same recipe is sent on a weekly or monthly basis.
Related Products: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to show products related to the ones a customer was browsing, abandoning, or purchasing. Related products are specified in the product file and can include cross-sell or up-sell related products.
Sale/Clearance: This ingredient allows to show products that are on sale or clearance. Sale or Clearance status is based on the Sale or Clearance flag in the product file.
Sale [Status]: This ingredient allows you to specifically include or exclude sale products in the recommended products.
Sales Rank - Last [Timeframe] Days: This ingredient allows you to sort the products based on the number of items sold in a specific timeframe (last 7 or 30 days).
Same Brand: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display the products of a brand that is the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Same Category: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display the products of a category that is the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Same Color: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display the products of a color that is the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Same Gender: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display the products of a gender that is the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Same Size: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display the products of a size that is the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Same Style: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display the products of a style that is the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Same Subcategory: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data to filter down the products to display the products of a subcategory that is the same as the items a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Similar Color: This ingredient uses reference data and identifies other products that are in the same color family as the product a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased based on a scrape of the product image.
Specific Brand: This ingredient filters down the results to display a specific brand of products. All brands available in the product file can be selected in the input.
Specific Category: This ingredient filters down the results to display a specific category of products. All categories available in the product file can be selected in the input.
Specific Product Attribute: This ingredient allows you to filter down the results to products that have a specific value in a field of the product file.
Specific Subcategory: This ingredient filters down the results to display a specific subcategory or products. All subcategories from the product file can be selected in the input.
Top Rated Products Above [StarCount] Star(s): This ingredient allows you to display the products with the highest star ranking. Star ratings must be provided to use this ingredient.
Custom: The custom ingredient allows you to create more advanced logic to display products. Common use cases are including or excluding products with specific values in a meta field and displaying products where the value in a reference product match the value in the recommended product.
Pricing Ingredients
When configuring pricing ingredients you can choose to base it on different data points about the product including: price, sale price, and MSRP.
Less Than $[Price]: This ingredient filters the recommendations to include only products that cost less than a specific amount.
Less Than Reference Price: This ingredient uses reference data to display products that are less expensive than the item a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
More Than $[Price]: This ingredient filters the recommendations to include only products that cost more than a specific amount.
More Than Reference Price: This ingredient uses reference data to display products that are more expensive than the item a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Priced Between $[Floor] and [Ceiling]: This ingredient allows you to specify a pricing range for the products that appear in the recommendations.
Profit Margin: This ingredient recommends products produced with a higher margin. Profit margin is calculated as price - unit cost. Both price and unit cost must be provided in order to use profit margin.
Similarly Priced within [Price] [Mode]: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data and recommends products that are within a certain dollar amount or percentage of the price as the product a customer browsed, abandoned, or purchased.
Personalized Ingredients
Personalized ingredients rely on a customer's preferences based on the items they were browsing, abandoning, or purchasing. Preference is determined based on number of items (if customer bought one item from brand A and two from brand B their preferred brand is B) as well as recency.
Not Preferred Brand: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data and recommends products that do not belong to the customer’s preferred brand.
Not Preferred Category: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data and recommends products that do not belong to the customer’s preferred category.
Not Preferred Subcategory: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data and recommends products that do not belong to the customer’s preferred subcategory.
Preferred Brand: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data and recommends products that belong to the customer’s preferred brand.
Preferred Category: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data and recommends products that do belong to the customer’s preferred category.
Preferred Subcategory: 🛍️ This ingredient uses reference data and recommends products that do belong to the customer’s preferred subcategory.
Products Not Recently Purchased: This ingredient excludes the last 25 product SKUs that were purchased by the customer from appearing in recommendations.
Products Not Recently Recommended: This ingredient excludes products that were recently recommended to the customer in an email or onsite from appearing. You can define recently based on one of the following date ranges: All Available, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, or 30 days.