Contextual Products module

Contextual Products make it easy to deliver highly relevant, dynamic product recommendations in automation emails that adapt to each customer's real-time context.

By leveraging triggers such as abandoned cart, abandoned browse, or back-in-stock events, this feature uses SKU-level data from the trigger to present personalized, intent-based suggestions.

Contextual Products are part of Connected Recommendations, integrating Engage with Elevate to deliver smarter, more responsive experiences that boost engagement and conversions.

Prerequsite

Connected Recommendations must be configured: marketing groups in Engage need to be linked to an Elevate market. If this setup is missing, the module's dropdown menus will be empty, and no products will be returned. Publishing or previewing without it will result in an error.

What is it?

Contextual Products is a smart recommendation module for automation emails that uses Elevate's algorithms to generate personalized suggestions based on one or more contextual SKUs provided by the trigger. Each recommendation is dynamically calculated at send time, ensuring that every customer receives up-to-date and relevant content.

How recommendations are generated

When Engage sends one or more SKUs from a trigger, such as abandoned cart, abandoned browse, or order confirmation, Elevate analyzes them and returns the most relevant products based on the selected recommendation type.

Two recommendation types are supported:

• Complementary recommendations
  These suggest products that pair well with the original item. The goal is to increase basket value by showing products that complete or enhance what the customer interacted with. If a discoveryKey is included (meaning the user is identified across both products), the result is further personalized by excluding products the customer has previously purchased, both online and in-store.
• Alternative recommendations
  These suggest similar or substitute products. The goal is to offer relevant replacements, for example if the customer is still evaluating options or comparing products.

If multiple base SKUs are provided — for example, if an abandoned session contains 10 product views — Elevate processes up to five, selecting the five best-selling ones.

Email layout and recommendation structure

The Contextual Products module is built around base products: these are products the customer has interacted with, such as a viewed, purchased, or cart-added item. For each base product, the module displays a set of recommended items alongside it.

The module supports up to five base products per email. If the recipient has interacted with more than five products, the five best-selling ones are selected. By default, recommended items are shown three per row, but this can be configured in the module settings (see below).

The module exposes two price fields for both base and recommended products. List price maps to ItemPrice in Engage (the regular retail price), and Selling price maps to ItemSalePrice (the actual price the customer pays).

When no discount is active, Selling price is empty. When a promotion is in effect, both fields are populated and the values differ. This lets you use conditional logic in Design Studio to show or hide price elements depending on whether a discount is active.

Contextual Products lets you repeat over base products and, within each of those, over their recommended products. The available personalization tags depend on which level you're working on:

Using Contextual Products

Before using Contextual Products:

• Ensure Connected Recommendations are enabled for your account. Reach out to your Account Manager if you're unsure.
• Once confirmed, configure Connected Recommendations in Config Hub.

With that in place:

1. Review the email type. If it's an automation email where the trigger can provide a SKU, you can proceed. If not, use Top-selling products.
2. Add the Contextual Products module from the module library in Design Studio.
3. Configure the module settings. The available options include:
   • SKU (for preview only)
   • Recommendation type: Choose Complementary (show products that go well with the selected SKUs) or Alternative (show similar or substitute products to the selected SKUs).
   • Number of products to display (recommended items per base product)
   • (Optional) Custom Price ID: Controlled in Elevate, this enables visitor-specific prices such as membership prices. Read more here.
   • (Optional) Select which image in the product's image order to use, from First to Fifth. The default is First. This follows the image order in your Elevate feed.

   • (Optional) Select an Elevate market to override the inherited market. This is only available if Allow Elevate market override is enabled. See Allow Elevate market override for details.

     

     You can also apply additional filters by adding Product selection, which includes all product attributes available in Elevate, including custom ones. Criteria can be set to Include or Exclude, and multiple criteria are combined.

     Be aware that applying filters may result in no products matching the criteria at send time. In such cases, the module will be hidden, as no fallback or backfill is applied. Use filters carefully to avoid unintended gaps in content.

     

     Facets and values available in the dropdowns are based on the market and locale linked to your marketing group. In Design view, the marketing group with the highest priority is used.

4. Preview and test. Use the SKU preview option by adding a SKU to generate contextual recommendations. Check the layout and relevance of returned products before publishing.
5. Publish your email. Once published, Engage automatically sends the SKU data to Elevate when the trigger fires. Elevate returns optimized product recommendations, which are rendered dynamically in the email.

Triggers

The Contextual Products module can be used in automation emails where the trigger provides a SKU. Currently supported triggers include:

• Abandoned cart
• Abandoned browse
• Back in stock
• Back in stock subscription created
• Product purchase
• New return
• Order Action (v3)/ New updated order (v2) (only take purchases into consideration, not returns)

If the module is added to an email used in an automation where the trigger doesn't provide a SKU, it will be hidden from the email.

Why use Contextual Products?

Contextual Products transform automated campaigns into personalized, behavior-driven experiences. By automatically aligning recommendations with customer intent, marketers can:

• Reduce manual effort while keeping emails dynamic and relevant.
• Increase conversions by showing the right product at the right time.
• Reuse the same module across multiple triggers with minimal setup.

Use cases

Contextual Products are flexible and can be used in many different scenarios. We recommend experimenting with different recommendation types in split tests to see what works best for your audience, but here are some common use cases.

• Abandoned cart
  Remind customers of what they left behind while suggesting products that complete the look or purchase.
• Back in stock subscription created
  Show alternative products that are currently in stock.
• Back in stock notification
  Re-engage customers when an item returns, and offer similar products to expand their options.
• Abandoned browse
  Inspire customers to return by displaying alternative products to the one they viewed.
• Post-purchase upsell
  After an order, recommend items that complement recently purchased products.
• Returns follow-up
  Show alternative options to the returned item, turning potential churn into re-engagement.

Each use case leverages customer intent and product context to deliver content that feels natural, relevant, and timely without manual setup.