Merchandising Controls Best Practices

This section provides guidance on optimizing email recommendations delivered by Recommend.

Note: Every retail site is different and what works best for one is not guaranteed to translate into gains for another. As such, treat this guidance as general best practices—a foundation for optimization from which site-specific tuning should occur.

Merchandising Controls

Because the recommendation engine optimizes for click-through rate by default, we are very conservative in applying our standard merchandising rules, boosting, and restrictions, to email recommendations. In general, we endorse merchandising by exception to satisfy very specific use cases or user experience expectations that cannot be met with pure behavioral recommendations.

That said, depending on the retailer’s vertical, it’s often necessary to add campaign-specific refinements to the email request for recommendations. For example, if a customer purchased a BBQ grill, based on our guidance to use Personalized strategies for almost all email types, there’s a high probability (due to their browse history) we would recommend more grills in an order confirmation email. That, of course, would be a disservice as it calls into question the customer’s original purchase and will likely lead to customer’s remorse or frustration. To avoid head-scratchers like this, we suggest the following two best practices:

Use the filcat and filcatinc parameters in the email request to blacklist or whitelist products from specific categories in recommendations. In the previous example, filcat allows you to filter out products from the Grills category so that, in the order or the shipping confirmation emails, you don’t frustrate the customer by showing them the items similar to what was already purchased.
When it makes sense, use the filprmin, filprmax and filprinc parameters to include or exclude products based on price. For example, it’s not uncommon for retailers to have low-ticket items among their top-sellers—items that customers will purchase in high volumes organically such as paperclips from an office supply store. Such items don’t warrant inclusion in recommendations; customers will find and buy them anyway. As such, you can use these parameters to remove these “no-brainer” buys from recommendations and free up slots for more substantive products that will pique customer interest and elicit clicks back to the site.

Note: While it’s possible to apply this price filtering using the Recommendations Restrictions function, doing so on the campaign level supports a more granular application (in the event you don’t want all campaigns to be subject to the rule).

Parameters

Parameter Name	Quick Info	Description	Examples	Required
apiKey or a	API Key	The API key assigned to your website by {rr}. Each {rr} partner has a unique API key that separates that partners data and traffic from other partners.	&a=[API_KEY]	Yes
userid or u	User ID	The unique User ID value that matches the site User ID.	&userid=12345	Yes
campaign or campaignid or cpi	Campaign ID	The unique name for the campaign that the merchant is setting up. This can be whatever the client wants, however, it must be unique.	&campaignId= order_confirmation or campaignId= Electronics PromoJuly2011	Yes
date	YYYY-MM-DD	Date the campaign is sent. Note: If sending multiple e-mails with the same userId parameter, you might see the same product recommendations even if the seed product ("productId") parameter is different. To avoid this, a format including the timestamp is recommended: date=2016-04-28-HHmmssmil (hour, minute, second, milisecond values too) By using this format, the date parameter will for all intents and purposes be unique each time an email is sent, which will ensure that there will be no caching.	&date=2009-12-02	Yes
placement or pt	Placement	The name of the placement set up for this email. You can have multiple placements for different emails (for example, abandon-content). Note that the placement name does not have the page type.	&placement=responsive_rr	Yes
layout or ln or l	Layout name	The name of the layout set up for this email.	&layout=HTML-Email-Responsive	Yes
zoneName or pa	Look & Feel for ImageMaP	This is the name of the layout received from {rr}	&zoneName=Vertical_3	Yes
slot	Product position for Responsive	Indicates the position of the product in the set of recommendations returned. Will be used for redirection to correct product page. It is only used on click links and the Strategy title has the value 0 (zero).	&slot=2	Yes
lid or rrIndex	Product position for ImageMap	Indicates the position of the product in the set of recs returned. Will be used for redirection to correct product page. Only used on click links.	&lid=2	Yes
version or rmv	Version (default=1)	Note that all the brand/category/strategy filter attributes defined below only work with Version 2	&version=2	No
region	Region	If your site uses regions, set this parameter to the name of the user's region.	&region=pt-BR	No
bi	Block item ID	This option will force Recommend to NOT recommend specified products.	&bi=123\|234\|567	No
orderId or o	Order ID	The ID of an order if the email is related to an order.	&o=48958387	No
brandId or seedBrands or b	Brand ID	If the email refers to a specific brand, send the Brand ID. One or more brand IDs separated by a pipe	&seedBrand=65432\|98765	No
categoryId or seedCategoryIds or cis	Category ID	If the email refers to a specific category, send the category ID. One or more Category IDs separated by a pipe	&seedCategoryIds= 12345 or &seedCategory Ids=12345\|2345 \|67890	No
productId or seedProductIds or p	Product ID	If the email refers to a specific product, send the product ID. One or more Product IDs separated by a pipe. Note: The system de-duplicates between items identified as a seedProductIds.	&seedProductIds=123	No
st	Search Term	Specifies a search term that can be used by the SearchBought strategy family. Needs to be URL encoded.	&st=Harry%20Potter	No
strategySet	Filter Strategies	A prioritized list of strategy sets that you want to be returned based on the campaign use case. See the additional details under Strategy Families listing below. If this is not provided, our recommendation engine will run King of the Hill (KOTH) to provide best recommendations given the information provided. See the list of available strategies below.	&strategySet=SiteWideBestSellers or &strategySet=ProductBoughtBought\| ProductViewedViewed	No
filbr	List of Brands	Lists of brands you want to act on. This parameter works in conjunction with filbrinc. Both must be set up correctly to get desired results.	&filbr=SONY\|Samsung	No
filbrinc	Include True/False	This flag allows you to show or remove the brands you provided under filbr. The default value is false, which removes the specified brands.	&filbrinc=true	No
filcat	List of Categories	Lists of categories you want to act on. This parameter works in conjunction with filcatinc. Both must be set up correctly to get desired results. The category external ID (not category name) must be specified.	&filcat=TVS\| DVDS	No
filcatinc	Include True/False	This flag allows you to show or remove the categories you provided under filcat. The default value is false, which removes the specified categories..	&flicatinc=true	No
filprmin	Price Min	This flag allows you to pass in a minimum price threshold. Please note that this needs to be in cents.	&filprmin=2500	No
filprmax	Price Max	This flag allows you to pass in a maximum price threshold. Note that this needs to be in cents.	&filprmax=10000	No
filprinc	Include True/False	This flag allows you to include or remove products matching the minimum and maximum prices set using filprmin and filprmax. The default value is false.	&filprinc=true	No
ct	Click to, for ImageMap	Click URL to the product page. Needs to be URL encoded.	&ct=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.williams-sonoma.com%2Fproducts%2Fgreen-glass-shells%2F%3Frm%3Dt%26vg%3Dad8cc61d-9506-40cb-02d1-3058cb2da005	No
vg	View GUID	View GUID param	&vg=ad8cc61d-9506-40cb-02d1-3058cb2da005	No
additionalClickURLData	Additional Click URL Data	Additional parameters added by the merchant. Needs to be URL encoded.	&season=spring%20summer	No
engageSegmentId	Engage Segment	Engage segment ID. Numeric.	&engageSegmentId=1	No
emailRunId	Email Run Id	Email run ID.	&emailRunId=run1234	No
testMode or direct	Test mode	true/false	&testMode=true	No
devMode	Dev Mode	True/false. If "devMode=true" the caching mechanism will be bypassed	&devMode=true	No