Setting up Product Source in VCE
To use Personalization rules in a block-based email template, you need to have repeatable product blocks available with the necessary editable fields to display a product: Link, Image, Title, CTA.
- If your email template was created by Emarsys, then you do not have to update it.
- If you use your own template, ensure it includes any repeatable blocks. For updating it, follow the instructions described in Creating a Repeatable Block.
- A Repeatable block is required for referencing your Product catalog data in the email campaign.
If your existing email template does not include any repeatable blocks, follow the steps of Creating a Repeatable Block.
Repeatable product blocks enable you to add multiple products dynamically to your email campaign from different product sources, such as Interactions events or more advanced recommendation sources.
To edit a repeatable product block in your existing email campaign, proceed as follows:
1. Go to Channels > Email Campaigns, select your campaign, then click Edit.
To update your own template, go to the Content > Block-Based Templates page and open the template you would like to use by clicking the Edit icon.
2. Go to the Content Creation step in the bottom menu and
- select an existing repeatable product block, or
- drag and drop one to the campaign.

4. In the Product Source Settings pop-up window tick the Personalization rule radio button and select the rule you want to use from the drop-down list, then click OK.

4.b Optionally, you can select the Product set radio button to set a pre-configured use case (i.e. either Price drop, Back in stock or Low in stock).

5. At the Display Settings section set the minimum and maximum number of products that should appear in the email.
Technically, the maximum number of products to display is 100, but it is not recommended to set more than 10 products.
6. Click Save to save your email.
Adding personalization fields to the product block
After specifying the Personalization rule as a data source of your repeatable product block, you can start adding the personalization fields to your block.
1. Position the cursor where you want to add the Personalization token, click the Personalization icon in the toolbar.
2. You can select any of the following product catalogue fields:
a. Personalizing Title or Price fields: Highlight the Title or Price placeholder and click Personalization icon. Select the Title or Price token under Product Catalog.

b. Personalizing image: Click the Image placeholder and select the Image Properties icon.
Select the Image token under Product Catalog.

Dont worry about the The image URL cannot be found. warning message, the image will be properly displayed in your campaign.

c. Personalizing image link URL: Click the Personalization icon next to the Url field and select the Image Link token under Product Catalog.
3. At this point your Repeatable block is blank but do not worry, it will contain all the right product images, titles, links and prices when your campaign will be sent.

Using a Personalization rule multiple times in an email campaign
For using the same Personalization rule multiple times within a single Email campaign:
- create as many copies of the same Personalization rule,
- use subsequently the rules for each corresponding block within the campaign.
This way it reduces the probability of any unexpected behaviors during campaign generation. This prevents any errors from occurring during the generation of the campaign.
Localizing personalization tokens with ESL
To avoid performance issues, a maximum of 20 ESL composed localization tokens are allowed per campaign. Contact your CSM for info on an ongoing Pilot to place locales directly as localized tokens.
To send your email campaigns to multiple markets it is necessary to display your product details (title, price, etc.) according to the local language, currency.
Product information with localized fields in the Product Catalog can be inserted with the use of ESL codes. Learn more: Emarsys Scripting Language. You can enter the ESL codes manually for the localized product fields.
Example
As an example we take a website that serves the German language market. The English version of the product titles and category names are already part of your default product catalog, now we add the German fields.
The localized fields are as follows:
- Item: {{ item['title_de'] }}
- Price: {{ item['price_de'] }}
- URL to link the CTA button and image: {{ item['link_de'] }}
The image URL can be used as a personalization token, since the product image stays the same.
The suffix de
is changed according to the field name in the Product Catalog, depending on the market. See Displaying recommendations in local languages.

Previewing the email campaign
As Contact Preview supports Personalization Rules, you can check your recommendation results on contact level.
In case of applying the Personalization rules the displayed preview of the items is based on your preset rule filters.
In each case, the contact preview shows the top products, which means the most popular products including the most-viewed and most-purchased items, which are the Global popularity fallback, that matches your filtering.

Repeatable Product blocks by default require at least one recommendation item!
- Contact preview does not appear, if the Personalization rule cannot provide at least one recommendation item for the selected contact. In this case, the specific contact would not receive the message, when launching the email campaign.
- Visual Link Tracking in Email Analysis does not work, if there are not enough recommendation items, because it can examine the rendered email parts only.
You can use Repeatable Product Blocks with multiple rows or columns. The Repeatable Block allows you to display multiple products in a single Repeatable Block by using a multiple row or column layout, containing one product in the first column and two products in the second column. For more information, see Creating a Repeatable Block with a multiple-product per block layout.
Contact preview can display troubleshooting notifications about an issue or the cause of a failed preview attempt. For details, see Contact preview notifications.
Make all the required changes to your campaign, then click Save.
Once your campaign is ready, replace the original email campaign with your updated campaign.