Strategy Best Practices
Two main retailer objectives that govern our strategy configuration approach are:
-
Maximizing revenue (that is, Total Campaign Sales) which is a function of driving traffic back to the site
-
Matching recommendations with the email’s intent (for example, displaying cross-sell recommendations in a transactional email)
These tend to be conflicting objectives as revenue maximization typically requires a different set of strategies than aligning recommendations with the email intent. Specifically, for revenue maximization, we’ve observed that browse-based Personalized strategies (most notably RecentHistoricalItems, PersonalizedClickCP and MultiItemPersonalizedViewCP) elicit the highest engagement regardless of the email objective. Thus, except for Abandoned Cart emails, we prioritize Personalize strategies (with some guardrails explained in the Merchandising Controls section) over all others. Abandoned Cart emails are the exception because showing anything other than the abandoned product along with an assortment of similar items (for example, sourced through ClickCP) would defy the purpose of the email.
At Algonomy, we encourage retailers to seek click/revenue maximization. That said, if the retailer’s objective is to closely align recommendations with the email intent, we suggest the following prioritization of strategy families (using the strategySet parameter in the email request or creating strategy rules) for the various transactional and marketing emails. For further description of these strategies, see Strategy Guidance for Recommend in Email.
|
Email Type |
Primary |
Secondary |
Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Order Confirmation |
ProductBoughtBought |
CategoryBoughtBought |
Provide Cross-sell opportunities |
|
Shipping Notification |
ProductBoughtBought |
CategoryBoughtBought |
Provide Cross-sell opportunities |
|
Gift Card Notification |
Personalized |
SiteWideBestSellers |
|
|
Abandoned Cart |
ProductViewedViewed |
ProductViewedBought |
Provide related items |
|
Browse Remarketing |
Personalized |
N/A (customer eligibility for a browse remarketing email requires that they have a logged browse history—so only Personalized strategies would be applicable) |
|
|
Promotional |
Personalized |
SiteWideBestSellers or CategoryTopSellers |
Provide promotions for items/categories that the customer frequents |