Include your best-selling or newest products in your campaigns and automations with the Product Recommender Item.
This article will teach you to automatically include your best sellers or newest products in your email content.
Before You Begin
Product Recommender is available for Omnisend users with Shopify, Bigcommerce, Magento, Woocommerce, or API integration;
Product Recommender is available for all Omnisend pricing plans.
About Product Recommender
Product Recommender automatically pulls up to 8 products from your store—images, titles, descriptions, prices, and product links. You decide what information should be included in the email content. This item is refreshed every hour to ensure the latest information is pulled from your store.
To include the most recent information from your store, recommended products are pulled at the last moment before the email is sent. Therefore, products do not appear in the email builder and preview but are automatically added to the email content when sent to the recipient.
So, if you want to see how the products will look when an email is sent to the client, you can send a test email to yourself.
Note! Email Campaign test emails include actually recommended products. However, if you send a test email from automation, the Product Recommender will show blank products, as in the preview.
So, to see what the products look like in an automation email, you'll need to trigger workflow with your email address and receive an actual email, not a test one.
To start using Product Recommender, head to either of your emails — a new campaign or a separate email in your automation workflows.
Once you see content, drag and drop the Product Recommender from the Quick Add sidebar to your email content.
Once you have your item in place, you can start editing it.
Item Settings
You can start editing the Product Recommender by selecting Layout and the Number of products you want to show.
A single Item can hold up to 8 products. Please note that if you need more than eight products displayed in a single email, you must drag and drop more Product Listing Items to your email content.
Move the toggle or type in the number of products you want to show. You can also show products side by side in a single column.
With the Columns option selected, you can choose how many columns of products should be displayed in the email. The maximum number of columns is 4 to ensure your customers will see products even on small screens.
It's important to note that only up to 2 columns can be displayed on the phone screens. You can check this by previewing the email. As a result, all products will be grouped by 2 in a single row.
Once you select the number of products and columns to be shown, you can choose the type of the products.
Product Recommender in Campaigns
In Campaigns, there are three categories to choose from: best-selling products, recently added products, and most viewed products.
Best-Selling Products
If you choose to display best-selling products, the system will automatically show items sold the most in your store over the last 12 months. You can adjust this time frame using the toggle to fit your preferences, with a maximum span of 12 months. Please note that your store must have recent order data for this setting to function correctly.
Recently Added Products
If you select to show recently added products, the item will pull recently added products to your store. The product recommender acts upon the date when the product was published but is not updated.
Most Viewed Products
If you choose to display the most viewed products, we will show recommendations from the store. All of the most viewed products within the shop will be displayed in the email for all campaign recipients. Additionally, you can select the time range for the newest products, from 1 to 3 months.
Product Recommender in Automations
In Automations, you will have 5 product recommendations types to include in your email:
Standard Recommendations include:
Best-selling products;
Recently added-products;
Most viewed products;
Personalized Recommendations include:
Products similar to past purchases;
Products contact recently viewed.
Products Similar to Past Purchases
If you select products similar to past purchases, the product recommender will show more relevant products for your post-purchase or win-back automations. You don't need to pick items manually for cross-sell and upsell automations. You can add this type of recommendation and make more sales while bringing real value to your customers.
Note! The same product will not be recommended again if the customer has purchased it within the last 365 days.
Products Contact Recently Viewed
When you select the products contact recently viewed option, the email will show up to 10 products that each contact has recently viewed. The number of products shown depends on how many products the contact has viewed. If a customer has no viewing history, the email will display either the newest products or best sellers as a fallback. You can choose which fallback option to use.
Personalized Recommendations Selection Process
Data Retrieval:
Omnisend retrieves each contact’s past purchased products (purchase history).
Co-occurrence Analysis:
Omnisend analyzes the co-occurrence of products in the same cart across all contacts at the brand level.
It calculates a co-occurrence score for each product pair based on how often they appear together in purchases.
Recommendation Generation:
For a specific contact, Omnisend examines their past purchased products.
It then recommends other products that have the highest co-occurrence scores with the contact’s purchased products based on the overall brand-level co-occurrence data.
Result:
Omnisend recommends similar products (those frequently bought together by other users at the brand level) based on the contact’s purchase history.
Recommender options
You can also limit the products shown to a particular category (collection) by selecting 'Specific category' and choosing the collection name from the dropdown options.
It is advised not to specify categories for the recently viewed recommendations.
You can also exclude specific products from recommendations, even if no category is selected. You can do so by clicking 'Exclude products' → selecting the products → Exclude.
Tip 💡 If you select "products contact recently viewed" and a fallback type for the Product Recommender, excluded products will not appear in either the recently viewed recommendations or the fallback variant chosen (e.g., best sellers).
Once you've selected the type of your Product Recommender products, you can edit the content that should be shown. You can automatically choose the information you want to pull for each product (image, name, description, price, button that links to product).
After selecting product details, you can show products that are out of stock in your emails or recently bought by your customers.
If you prefer not to recommend products that were already purchased, you can set an exclusion period of up to 60 days by selecting 'Exclude recently bought products.' This means products bought within the last 60 days will not be recommended.
To limit the visibility of the Product Recommender, choose which devices should show the item selected. You can show it to users viewing your email from:
all devices;
mobile devices only;
desktop devices only.
Then, you can edit the conditions (only in automation) of the item and decide who should see this content block by selecting and applying conditional rules to target your contacts.
Manage paddings by typing in the best ones for your email style.
Lastly, you can define the background color or image. You can select the background color for the Product Recommender or use an uploaded image as its background.
Click on the plus icon to add your color from the color palette → pick the color you need or type in hex, → click Add color.
You can also type in the hex color value next to each color field.
That's it; your Product Recommender is all set! It will be saved in real-time automatically as you edit it 🚀
FAQ
Can I use multiple Product Recommender Items in a single email?
Absolutely! You can send multiple items to a single email. What's more, different types of product recommendations can be added, including best sellers, newest items, and personalized recommendations.