Personalize the Recommendations You Send in Marketing Emails

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

List the products you need to send personalized product recommendations to your customers.
Find resources for implementing this solution.

Thanks to the work of Pia, Charlotte, and their team, Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) marketers are using B2C Commerce data in Marketing Cloud Engagement to create personalized, relevant, and data-driven customer journeys. Now Isabelle Givens, digital marketing manager, wants to deliver even more personalization to NTO shoppers.

Isabelle knows that NTO customers love learning about products that work well with other products they already own. The angler who recently purchased the Warm and Wacky Waterproof Waders, for example, appreciates getting an email that recommends the Frisky Fly Fishing Vest to complete the look. And the climber who wears NTO crampons to scale snowy peaks is pleased to get an email recommending NTO’s premium ice axe, for even more protection from slips and falls.

Build on Existing Integrations

When Isabelle brings her request to Pia, she’s ready. She knows that there’s a Salesforce solution kit for personalizing marketing recommendations. In fact, this kit builds on work NTO has already done, such as implementing the Marketing Cloud Engagement Connector for B2C Commerce and setting up these key integrations and data flows.

Product, catalog, order, and customer data imported to Marketing Cloud Engagement from Salesforce B2C Commerce
Shopper behavior and cart data collected (via Collect Tracking Code) and sent (via SFTP) to Marketing Cloud Engagement
Email functions in B2C Commerce replaced with trigger-send in Marketing Cloud Engagement

If NTO had not already built solutions for transactional emails, abandoned carts, and coupon redemption, they would set up the Connector and other integrations now.

What Products Does This Solution Require?

To implement this solution, NTO needs:

Marketing Cloud Engagement Enterprise 2.0
- Journey Builder
- Einstein Email Recommendations
B2C Commerce (SFRA)
- Einstein Product Recommendations

Pia sees that NTO has all the products in this list and is using most of them in the three cross-cloud solutions they’ve built so far. The only product that’s new for this solution is Einstein Product Recommendations for Commerce Cloud.

Pia’s first step is to review the workflow.

Workflow diagram that shows how daily order and shopper history data flows from B2C Commerce to Marketing Cloud Engagement to support personalized recommendations.

By enabling Einstein Product Recommendations, NTO can provide product suggestions while the shopper is in the storefront. Then, as shoppers make purchases, that data is collected and sent to Marketing Cloud Engagement, where Collect Tracking Code and Catalog for Einstein Email Recommendations build a detailed shopper profile over time. Using the shopper’s history data, Einstein generates recommendations that can be added as a block to an email.

Set Up Storefront Recommendations

Even though Isabelle Givens is primarily interested in personalized recommendations using email, Pia decides to work with the NTO storefront team to implement Einstein Product Recommendations in B2C Commerce. It’s not a required step in this solution kit, but Pia wants to provide the best recommendations to shoppers wherever they interact with NTO, whether that’s in the storefront or via email.

Gather Data and Set Up Email Templates

Next, Pia reviews some of NTO’s existing configurations to make sure that they’re optimized for personalized email recommendations. She checks that the data flowing into Marketing Cloud Engagement via the Connector is being refreshed daily. She also confirms that the storefront product catalog is being imported, so product SKUs match the data that comes in from shopper orders.

Then Pia… waits. It’s not yet time to set up personalized recommendations in Marketing Cloud Engagement. First the system gathers data about purchases and behavior, and uses that data to build shopper profiles. Gathering enough data takes time—Salesforce recommends waiting at least 30 days for the recommendation engine to track the behavioral intent patterns of NTO shoppers and build robust profiles.

When Pia gives NTO’s marketers the green light, they get to work setting up email templates in Marketing Cloud Engagement with dynamic content blocks for personalized recommendations. They also define rules in Einstein Email Recommendations to determine which recommendations to display, and when.

The End Result

Thanks to the four cross-cloud solutions that Pia and her team have built, NTO is creating more engaging marketing campaigns that help shoppers find just the right equipment for their next outdoor adventure.

When a shopper makes a purchase, NTO now follows up to let them know that their order is on track. NTO also checks in with shoppers who leave the storefront without buying anything, giving them incentives to come back and complete their order.

Speaking of incentives—NTO now has a way to send and track the effectiveness of coupons. And shoppers are delighted when NTO suggests the perfect product to complement a product they already own.