Top Selling Products is part of Connected Recommendations, connecting recommendations across Engage and Elevate to allow unified targeting and merchandising. The Top Selling Products module automatically displays your highest-performing items using real-time data. Designed to boost engagement and conversions, it ensures emails stay fresh and relevant without manual updates.
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?
Top Selling Products is a smart module that uses Elevate's top-product algorithms to automatically surface high-performing, in-stock items for each email that is sent. Instead of requiring manual product selection, it continuously analyzes aggregated data from visitor behavior, purchases, and product events like stock levels to identify and deliver the most relevant products.
For each product, the following details are returned:
- Product Group Key
- Product Key
- Variant Key (the one with the minimum price)
- Department
- Brand
- Title
- Description
- Product Page Link
- Image URL
- Thumbnail URL
- Selling Price
- List Price
The module exposes two price fields, 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.
| Elevate field | Engage field |
|---|---|
| List price | ItemPrice |
| Selling price | ItemSalePrice |
Using Top Selling Products
- In Design Studio, locate the Top selling products module in the Starter library and add it to your email layout. Read more about adding modules here.
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Configure the following options:
Make sure marketing groups are set up for Connected Recommendations before applying filters. If they are not set up, the dropdown menus will be empty.- Number of products to display in the module
- (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.
- (Optional) Product selection: Filter by any product attribute available in Elevate, including custom ones. Criteria can be set to Include or Exclude, and multiple criteria are combined. 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.
- Select Preview with data to verify that the configuration is correct.
How are products selected?
The Top Selling Products module is powered by Elevate's Top Products algorithm. This algorithm continuously analyzes multiple data sources to identify the most relevant items to show at the time of each email send. Selection is based on:
- Aggregated visitor behavior and purchases: Engagement, clicks, and buying patterns across your store.
- Product event data: Such as current stock levels, ensuring only available products are displayed.
- Product information: Including factors like product newness (coming later in 2025).
- Exposure strategy: Balancing product performance with your merchandising priorities in Elevate.
- Boost and bury rules: Manually adjusted strategy scores (for example, via Boost) can influence which products are prioritized and selected for exposure.
All data is captured per Elevate market and mapped to an Engage marketing group, which means each group automatically receives recommendations based on its own local trends and context.
This ensures that the products shown are not only high-performing and in stock, but also dynamically adjusted to reflect real-time customer interactions and availability.
Use cases in emails
The Top Selling Products module can be used in email flows to display curated product recommendations that are always relevant, up to date, and in stock, without requiring manual updates.
Below are some common examples of how to use it effectively:
Category-based follow-ups
Trigger an automation after a purchase and include a recommendation module configured to show products from a related category.
Life events and external signals
Trigger emails based on milestones or real-world signals such as moving to a new home, birthdays, graduations, local holidays, or weather shifts, and include top-selling products relevant to the occasion.
Promotional or seasonal flows
Highlight curated product selections for birthdays, holidays, or campaign periods by applying filters such as brand or category in the module settings.
VIP and exclusive access emails
In loyalty programs or VIP-only emails, highlight exclusive top sellers that are popular among the most engaged customers.
Loyalty and reward journeys
Celebrate loyalty milestones by recommending products within a set category or brand, making it easy for customers to redeem rewards or bonus checks.
Re-engagement flows
Rekindle interest with a curated selection of top-selling products, perfect for win-back campaigns or targeting inactive segments.