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Personalized sales are a very powerful marketing tool. Thanks to personalisation, you can tailor this type of promotion to each customer.
What is Sale
Sale is a marketing strategy that involves one or more product items being offered at a reduced price, often for a limited time. These sales are usually represented by a unique identification number, title, image, URL link, validity information and a list of associated products. The aim is to attract customers and increase sales of specific products.
Data feed
The data feed of sales must generally meet the same requirements as other feeds, see this article. It includes the basic definition of sale including all additional custom parameters.
Supported sale parameters
Name | Type | Required | Description |
---|---|---|---|
SALE_ID | String | yes | database ID of sale |
TITLE | String | yes | name of sale |
URL | String | yes | link to sale |
IMAGE | String | yes | URL of the sale image approx. 300px x 300px |
ACTIVE_FROM | Datetime (as String) | no | start of sale in the format YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD (more information) |
ACTIVE_TO | Datetime (as String) | no | End of sale in the format YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD (more information) |
PARAMETERS | [NAME, VALUE] | no | other parameters of sale, NAME does not have to be unique see example |
PRODUCTS | see below | yes | associated products (PRODUCT_ID) with the sale |
If only the date is filled in for the ACTIVE_FROM or ACTIVE_TO attributes (i.e. the time is missing), it is automatically assumed that
- ACTIVE_FROM: the action starts at midnight (0:00:00) of the day
- ACTIVE_TO: action ends at midnight of the day (23:59:59)
If the validity of sale is not filled in, its unlimited validity is automatically assumed, namely:
- Missing ACTIVE_FROM and ACTIVE_TO: unlimited validity
- Only ACTIVE_TO is missing: the sale is valid from ACTIVE_FROM indefinitely
- Only ACTIVE_FROM is missing: the sale is valid until ACTIVE_TO expires
A sale may include more than one product. One product can be covered by multiple sales at the same time. The product ID must match the PRODUCT_ID specified in the product feed.
In case of multiple occurrences of a parameter with the same NAME, all relevant VALUEs are processed. It is therefore possible to search among all values within the filtering.
Example of sale feed
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SALES>
<SALE>
<SALE_ID>484245864</SALE_ID>
<TITLE>Brand XXX sale</TITLE>
<URL>https://www.myeshop.com/path/to/the/sale</URL>
<IMAGE>http://www.myeshop.com/path/to/the/image.jpg</IMAGE>
<PRODUCTS>
<PRODUCT_ID>52129</PRODUCT_ID>
<PRODUCT_ID>17160</PRODUCT_ID>
<PRODUCT_ID>67721</PRODUCT_ID>
<PRODUCT_ID>51190</PRODUCT_ID>
<PRODUCT_ID>74843</PRODUCT_ID>
</PRODUCTS>
<ACTIVE_FROM>2024-07-01</ACTIVE_FROM>
<ACTIVE_TO>2024-07-31</ACTIVE_TO>
<PARAMETERS>
<PARAMETER>
<NAME>Type</NAME>
<VALUE>brand</VALUE>
</PARAMETER>
</PARAMETERS>
</SALE>
</SALES>
Sale recommendation algorithm
Samba.ai only selects from sales that meet all of the following conditions:
URL
existsIMAGE
exists- is currently valid
- has at least 1 product associated with it (the value of the STOCK attribute etc. is not checked, the existing reference in the product feed is sufficient)
The system uses its knowledge of product recommendations and uses advanced AI algorithms to select tailored sales for each customer based on their buying behavior. If there is no longer any sale in the database that meets the above basic requirements, a personalized email will not be sent.
Sale filters
Similarly to products, sale promotions can be filtered by the user using various criteria. This can be used in particular for user configuration of the recommendation algorithm, where its output can be limited to a certain set of sale actions that contain at least 1 product with a certain property, or on the contrary exclude from the recommendation all selected sale actions.
List of sale filters
Campaign and email template
Personalized sales can be sent in one-off email campaigns and also in an email node within Flow campaigns.
First you need to create a template of type “Sale”. The following merge tags can be used within the template:
- {{sale*_title}} – name of sale
- {{sale*_url}} – link to sale detail
- {{sale*_image}} – image of sale
- the same formatting options apply here as for formatting a personalized product image
* = 1, 2, …, 10
In the campaign settings section “Dynamic sales” you can customize the personalization output using sale filters. If no further sale meet the selected user criteria, further actions are recommended regardless of these criteria. However, the basic requirements for the validity of sale and its definition see above still apply.
Evaluation
In addition to the usual statistics available for campaigns, you can also use the Detailed reporting of sales. To activate it, you need to add the tracking parameter rk=sale* to the relevant merge tag of the sale URL, where * must correspond to the numbering of the sale merge tag. So, for example, it is sufficient to provide a link to the sale in this format:
After sending a campaign, clicking on the “Show Detailed Reporting” button will display a list of all sent personalization sales sorted by the number of occurrences in personalized emails for each customer.
The following data is available:
- Image – image of the sale
- ID – Sale ID
- Title – Name of sale
- Sent – How many emails recommended the sale
- Open – How many opened emails contained the sale
- Clicked – In how many emails the sale was clicked through