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Product Recommendations Strategies for Listrak Triggered Campaigns
Product Recommendations Strategies for Listrak Triggered Campaigns

Learn about different strategies for creating product recommendations to be used in different campaigns.

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Written by Support
Updated over a year ago

In this article you will find some of the suggested strategies for the product recommendations included in your Listrak triggered campaigns, such as Welcome Series or Shopping Cart Abandonment. These strategies can act as a starting point and can be further customized based on your specific messages, business goals, or types of products. Work with your Account Manager to discuss the uses cases that may work best for your goals.

Under each strategy you will find an explanation of why these strategies are often used in each campaign and how they help support the overall goal of the campaign. These explanations can be used to help determine which strategy is best for you. You can learn more about the different components in the Product Recommendations Glossary.

Automated Campaigns



Welcome Series Product Recommendations Strategies

Your Welcome Series is an automated campaign that is sent to a wide variety of contacts with different interests and activities on your site. Using reference data allows you to personalize messages and drive contact's back to the site. For contacts who have not been active on your site utilize backup ingredients that show products relevant to all contacts, such as your top selling products.

Should recipes differ by message? The Welcome Series campaign introduces your new subscribers to your brand. By including all types of activity as a contact interacts with your brand more through the Welcome Series, the products recommended will automatically become more tailored.

  • Common Base Ingredients: Recent Activity, Gateway Products

    • Activity Included: Items purchased, abandoned, or browsed

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Preferred or Same Attributes (Category, Subcategory, Brand etc.)

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending, Similar Products

How do these support my goals? Recent Activity displays products a contact recently interacted with on your site. By including all activity types the product recommendations will become more tailored as contact's interact with your website. Gateway products are products that first time customer's, who would have been in similar needs as your new subscribers, have often purchased. Backup recipes like Top Sellers and Trending display products that many customers are buying and are a good way to introduce new subscribers to your products.


Shopping Cart Product Recommendations Strategies

The Shopping Cart Abandonment Campaign provides a prompt for a contact who has left an item or items in their cart without completing a purchase. Adding Product Recommendations to these campaigns can enhance the campaign by including products that are relevant based on the specific items a contact added to their cart.

Should recipes differ by message? In a standard three-message Shopping Cart Abandonment campaign the first and second message provide an opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell based on the items in a contact's cart. The third message is a last-chance effort to drive the contact back to the site and may compete or provide a different option than the items in a contact's cart. If the campaign includes additional nurture messages you may also want to include recipes that are not based on a contact's actions.

Messages 1 & 2

  • Common Base Ingredients: Frequently Bought Together, Purchase This Purchase That

    • Activity Included: Abandoned Products

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Different Attributes (Brand, Category etc.)

How do these support my goals? Frequently Bought Together and Purchase This Purchase That display products that other customers who purchased the abandoned product(s) has also purchased. These customers may have similar styles, needs, or interests. Backup recipes like Top Sellers and Trending display products that many customers are buying and are a good way to suggest additional products.

Message 3 & Nurture Messages

  • Common Base Ingredients: Similar Products

    • Activity Included: Abandoned Products

  • Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Same Attributes (Brand, Subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? In message 3 and beyond a contact may no longer be interested in the product they abandoned. Similar Products displays products that have related attributes and meet the same need. Backup recipes like Top Sellers and Trending display products that many customers are buying and are a good way to suggest additional products that are in the same category or subcategory as the products they abandoned.


Browse Abandonment Product Recommendations Strategy

A Browse Abandonment Campaign reminds customers of pages or products that they were browsing on your site. These messages thank them for visiting your site, and entice them to come back for more. Including product recommendations can provide the contact with other similar items to the one they were viewing that may prompt them to take further action and make a purchase.

Should recipes differ by message? In a standard three-message series the strategy across page and product browse messages are consistent across messages.

  • Common Base Ingredients: Similar Products, Purchase This Purchase That

    • Activity Included: Browsed Products

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Included: Browsed Products

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Same Attributes (Brand, Category etc.)

How do these support my goals? Browse Abandonment messages are sent to contacts who have shown a lesser level of purchase intent. Similar Products displays products that have similar characteristics as the item browsed. Purchase This Purchase That displays items that contacts who purchased the browsed items also purchased. These two strategies display products that may generate additional interest. Top Sellers and Trending are solid backup ingredients that display popular products from your website and can be filtered to show products that are the same brand, category, or subcategory as what the contact was browsing.

💡 Customers may interact with a variety of products on your website, to ensure the recipe uses the product featured in the browse email to determine which products to display, a custom URL variable should be used. Applying a Custom URL variable allows you to provide the most relevant product recommendations to your browsers. Learn how by reading, Recommender Advanced: Using Custom URL Variables with Recommendations article.


Post Purchase Product Recommendations Strategies

The Post Purchase solution can combine many different types of messages, such as Winback or Thank You, to nurture a relationship with your purchases. Each message type has a different strategy based on where they are in their purchase journey.

Thank You

  • Common Base Ingredients: Frequently Bought Together, Purchase This Purchase That

    • Activity Included: Purchase

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Included: Purchase

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Different Attributes (Category, Subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? Thank You messages are sent shortly after a customer's purchase. Frequently Bought Together and Purchase This Purchase That display products that other customers who purchased the same item also purchased. These customers have similar interest, styles, or needs. Backup ingredients like Top Sellers in a different category display products that many customers have purchased while providing an up-sell opportunity of products in a different category.

Winback

  • Common Base Ingredients: Similar Products, What's New

    • Activity Included: Purchase

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Same Brand, Category, Subcategory

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Included: Purchase

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Preferred Brand, Category, Subcategory

How do these support my goals? Winback messages are sent to lapsed purchasers after a specified timeframe. Because a contact may not have recently visited your site show your newest products or products that have similar attributes to items they have purchased in the past. Using top sellers or trending with preferred attributes displays popular products while also tailoring results based on their past purchase behavior.

Loyalty

  • Common Base Ingredients: Similar Products, What's New, Trending

    • Activity Included: Purchase

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Preferred Brand, Category, Subcategory

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Preferred Brand, Category, Subcategory

How do these support my goals? Loyalty messages are sent to customers who have made multiple purchases. Harnessing this data with Similar Products allows you to display products that have similar attributes. You can also display new products in the categories, subcategories, or brands the customer typically purchases. As a backup, using top sellers or trending with preferred attributes displays popular products while also tailoring results based on their past purchase behavior.

Review Request

  • Common Base Ingredients: Frequently Bought Together, Purchase This Purchase That

    • Activity Included: Purchase

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Included: Purchase

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Different Attributes (Category, Subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? Review Request messages are sent shortly after a customer's purchase asking for a customer to provide a review of the products they purchased. Frequently Bought Together and Purchase This Purchase That display products that other customers who purchased the same item also purchased. These customers have similar interest, styles, or needs. Backup ingredients like Top Sellers in a different category display products that many customers have purchased while providing an up-sell opportunity of products in a different category.


Alerts Suite Product Recommendations Strategies

Listrak's Alert Suite allows you to connect with your shoppers by alerting them about a specific event, such as when a product is back in stock or a price is dropped. Each message type has a different strategy based on the event that triggered the email.

Sign-Up Message

  • Common Base Ingredients: Similar Products, Purchase this Purchase That

    • Activity Included: Browsed Items

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Included: Browsed Items

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Same attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? The sign-up message is sent to contact who sign up for notifications when a product is back in stock. Showing similar products based on attributes or products other customers purchased in addition to the out-of-stock item provides relevant products if they do not want to wait for a product to come back in stock.

Back-in-Stock

  • Common Base Ingredients: Frequently Bought Together, Purchase this Purchase That

    • Activity Included: Browsed Items

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Included: Browsed Items

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Different attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? The Back-in-Stock message is sent when the item arrives back in stock. There may be limited quantities of these items, so similar products based on attributes or products other customers purchased in addition to the item provides relevant products if the item sells out.

Discontinued

  • Common Base Ingredient: Similar Products, Purchase This Purchase That

    • Activity Included: Browsed Items

  • Common Backup Recipe: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Include: Browsed Items

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Same attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? The Discontinued message is sent if a customer's product has been discontinued. Similar products based on attributes or products other customers purchased in addition to the item provides relevant products since the item is no longer available.

Nurture

  • Common Base Ingredients: Similar Products, What's New, Trending

    • Activity Include: Browsed Items

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Same attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers

    • Activity Include: Browsed Items

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Same attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? The Nurture message is sent if a period of time has lapsed and the item a customer was interested in is still not back in stock. Similar products based on attributes or products other customers purchased in addition to the item provides relevant products if they do not wish to wait for the item to come back in stock.

Price Drop

  • Common Base Ingredients: Frequently Bought Together, Purchase This Purchase That

    • Activity Includes: Browsed Products

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Selling, Trending

    • Activity Includes: Browsed Products

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Different attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? The Price Drop message is sent if the item a contact browsed has dropped by a specified threshold. Using Frequently Bought Together or Purchase This Purchase That provides additional products others have purchased to cross-sell or up-sell the product that dropped in price.

💡 Customers may interact with a variety of products on your website, to ensure the recipe uses the product featured in the email to determine which products to display, a custom URL variable should be used. Applying a Custom URL variable allows you to provide the most relevant product recommendations to your contacts. Learn how by reading, Recommender Advanced: Using Custom URL Variables with Recommendations article.


Transactional Messages Product Recommendations Strategies

Transactional messages are sent based on activities related to a customer's order, such as confirming an order or notification of shipment. Including product recommendations in these emails allows you to display additional products that may interest a customer and drive a second purchase.

Order Confirmation

  • Common Base Ingredients: Frequently Bought Together or Purchased This, Purchased That

    • Activity Included: Purchased Items

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Includes: Purchased Products

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Different attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? The Order Confirmation message is sent after the customer's purchase has been placed. Using Frequently Bought Together or Purchase This Purchase That provides additional products others have purchased to cross-sell or up-sell the products in their order.

Return Confirmation

  • Common Base Ingredients: Similar Products

    • Activity Included: Purchased Items

  • Backup Recipe: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Includes: Purchased Products

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Different attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? The Return Confirmation message is sent after a customer's return has been purchased. Using Similar Products displays products that have similar attributes that might better fit a customer's needs compared to the returned product.

Shipping Confirmation

  • Common Base Ingredients: Purchased This Purchased That

    • Activity Included: Purchased Items

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Includes: Purchased Products

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Different attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

How do these support my goals? The Shipping Confirmation message is sent after the customer's order has been shipped. Using Purchase This Purchase That provides additional products others have purchased to cross-sell or up-sell the products in their order.

💡 Customers may interact with a variety of products on your website, to ensure the recipe uses the product featured in the email to determine which products to display, a custom URL variable should be used. Applying a Custom URL variable allows you to provide the most relevant product recommendations to your purchasers. Learn how by reading, Recommender Advanced: Using Custom URL Variables with Recommendations article.


Birthday & Anniversary

Birthday and anniversary messages are sent near a contact's birthday or on the anniversary of some event, such as subscription or first purchase.

  • Common Base Ingredients: What's New, Trending, Top Sellers

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Preferred attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

  • Common Backup Recipes: What's New, Trending, Top Sellers

How do these support my goals? Including product recommendations in these emails is a great way to feature new products or highlight some of your most popular products. These contacts may not have recently visited the site so it is a good opportunity to display products they may not have seen.


Replenishment

A replenishment messages is sent to customers who have purchased re-purchasable items, such as food or skincare, based on the average amount of time between purchases.

  • Common Base Ingredients: Similar Products, Purchased This Purchased That

    • Activity Include: Purchased Items

    • Common Additional Ingredients: Same attributes (brand, category, subcategory etc.)

  • Common Backup Recipes: Top Sellers, Trending

    • Activity Include: Purchased Items

How do these support my goals? Including product recommendations in these emails can display products with similar attributes or other products customers have purchased that the receiver may be interested in.

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