Open-time email recommendations, also known as real-time product recommendations, refers to personalized email recommendations that are made and render upon the opening of the email by each individual recipient. In other words, the product recommendations in the email are not predetermined and are not made at email send time, but rather are personalized and optimal for the point in time when the email is opened and read.
As an example, an email with a recommendation widget can be sent on Saturday and not opened by the recipient; then on Sunday the recipient browses your site and makes purchases. When the email is opened on Monday, the recommendations will have been adjusted to reflect this visitor’s newly learned preferences and taste, even though the email was sent prior to the purchases.
Here at Dynamic Yield, we enable marketers to enhance consumer email campaigns with personalized product or article recommendations. Rather than blasting the same recommended products or posts to a diversified consumer base, we allow marketers to personalize their campaigns with real-time tailored recommendations, based on up-to-date consumer onsite behaviors and affinities.
The recommendations are generated when the recipient opens their email which allows our machine learning algorithms to continuously produce the most compelling offer.
How Does it Work?
When setting up an email recommendation campaign, the marketer usually selects the desired recommendation strategy as well as any editorial or merchandising rules he or she would like for the product recommendation algorithm to factor in (for example, items that meet the minimum inventory thresholds). There are several different strategies to choose from. For example:
- Most Popular Products
- Most Popular Posts
- Bought Together
- Similar Products
- Similar Posts
- Personalized
Upon creating the recommendation widget, an HTML snippet of code is provided to copy and paste into a designated block within the marketer’s email template. When the recipient opens their email, the HTML code requests, in real-time, the most relevant recommendations and renders the response directly into the desired template block. The rendered items include the necessary redirects to monitor CTRs as well as the success of the campaign within the Dynamic Yield report.
