To use the Product Catalog Updates trigger, the following prerequisites have to be fulfilled:

• Web Extend has to be properly implemented. The product view, purchase and abandoned cart data come from Web Extend, so, if it has been incorrectly implemented, then the Product catalog update trigger will not work.
• Triggered Email has to be set up. If Triggered Email has not already been set up on your account, please contact Emarsys Support.

• As Triggered Email mail streams ignore the opt-in status of your contacts by design, we recommend creating a segment that contains contacts whose opt-in status is TRUE and have a valid email address (i.e. Email valid Equal yes contact criteria) and placing a Decision node using the type Included in segment that contains this segment before the Send email node. This way, you can ensure that only those contacts will receive your campaigns who opted in for marketing materials.
• Make sure that your frequently uploaded product catalog does not contain any errors.

You can use the following fields within placeholders in price drop and back in stock campaigns:

• Price drop: old_price, price, title, image, link, msrp
• Back in stock: price, title, image, link, msrp

The fields old_price and price are generated by Emarsys, these are not part of your product catalog.

• old_price: The product’s original price before it has dropped.
• price: The product’s price after it has dropped.

• Minimum price: The lowest original price of products belonging to a specific tier.
• Maximum price: The highest original price of products belonging to a specific tier. This value is determined by the Minimum price of the next tier. If there are no more tiers, the Maximum price will be the highest price in your product catalog.

The field msrp refers to the list price, also known as the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, or the recommended retail price or the suggested retail price. It is the price at which the manufacturer recommends that the retailer sell the product.

If, for instance, a price drop program is scheduled to run on every Monday and Thursday but it runs first on Thursday, then it will compare your current product catalog to the version that was up-to-date on Monday.

No, your back in stock campaign does note take completely new items (that are available for the first time) in your product catalog into account. When a back in stock program compares your last product catalog version to the most recent one, it checks the item IDs in both versions and your campaign will only contain items that have become available since then (i.e. their availability status has changed from false to true).

Yes, in that case, contacts will receive both campaigns. However, products that are currently unavailable cannot trigger price drop campaigns.

Yes, you can. In this case, instead of 10 products, we recommend displaying only one product in Push campaigns. To show the first product the status of which has changed and in which a contact might be interested, use the following Emarsys Scripting Language snippet:

{{ event.products[0].title}}

Yes, this contact will receive the back in stock campaign related to that product regardless of whether or not it was available when the contact visited your web page. When sending a back in stock campaign, only the product’s current status is taken into account (i.e. it is available again), Interactions does not check the product’s availability when the view or abandoned cart event happens.

Yes, they will be filtered out.

Yes, your price drop and back in stock Interactions programs will be displayed under Related Programs on the strategy reporting page. You can also add other programs to a strategy by clicking the Assign Related Program button.

The product list in your campaign contains a maximum of 10 items sorted by their original price in descending order.

In this case, the products the original price of which is identical will be ordered by their product IDs in ascending order.

The current campaign distribution method can display only one product in a single row. However, you can experiment with different layouts. To do so, you have to be familiar with the Emarsys Scripting Language.

You can put a specific product in the subject line of your campaigns by using the fields described in Which fields can I use in my content blocks? For example, if you would like to display the first product’s title from your product list in the subject line, then use the following ESL snippet:

{{ event.products[0].title}}

If you would like to add an item block to  a campaign in VCE, then follow the instructions in Creating a Repeatable Block for your email template.

If you would like to display information related to particular items in your campaigns, then follow the instructions in How can I display particular items (e.g. first or second item from my product catalog update list) in my campaigns?

This question is especially important if you work in the fashion industry. The structure of your current product catalog determines how Product Catalog Updates campaigns handle different color and size variants of the same product.

We recommend adding each product variant with a unique item_ID to your product catalog. For example, the yellow “L” size variant and the green “M” size variant of the same T-shirt should have a different product ID. This way, the product ID of items the price of which has dropped or that are back in stock again will be properly matched to the product ID of the items customers are interested in (i.e. the products they browsed, abandoned in their carts or added to their wishlist).

As a result, the distribution of product views will be uneven, pseudo-duplicate product variants (e.g. different size and color variants of the same T-shirt) might be displayed among the recommendations and it will be more difficult for Predict email and web recommendations to:

• Find the products that are truly popular and 
• Connect certain items that would be interesting to the customers with each other.

To maintain optimal recommendation performance, we suggest using the Parent/Child catalog feature.

By using the Parent/Child catalog structure, you define the parent product to use for the logic of certain recommendations and define the variants (size or color) as child items. Currently, child items can only handle one product attribute (i.e. size or color), therefore, we recommend having unique child IDs for each combination (e.g. the yellow “L” size variant and the green “M” size variant should have a different child ID).

This is the best solution for Predict recommendations and Product Catalog Updates campaigns.

No, you can also use the Emarsys Scripting Language in the HTML editor.

In this case, you can use the following ESL snippet:

{{ (item.old_price - item.price) / item.old price * 100 }}%

Yes, it's possible. If you would like to display the msrp only when the price is lower than the msrp, then you need to use the following ESL snippet:

{% if item['price']<item['msrp'] %} R {{ item['msrp'] }} {% else %} {% endif %}

If you can see a warning badge next to your Send email node, then check if your Triggered Email mail stream fulfills the following requirements:

• It has to use the Interactions event trigger source and
• It has to be activated.

For more information, see Testing Product Catalog Updates programs.