Also bought uses recent order behaviour to recommend products that are frequently purchased together. It identifies the most relevant item from a customer’s latest order and uses this as the basis for generating suggestions. This type is well suited to post‑purchase journeys, where timely, product‑led follow‑up messages perform best.
Filtering behaviour
You can refine an Also bought recommendation by applying filters in the recommendation builder. For example, you can exclude products under a certain price.
Also bought recommendations always generate results for all products in the catalog, even if some products are hidden by recommendation rules. However, the returned results do not include any products that are filtered out by those rules.
Also bought recommendations in emails
When used in an email, Also bought recommendations look to the most recent order placed by the customer. If this order contains multiple items, the recommendation favours the highest value item. This is then set as the featured product.
Also bought is a strong recommendation for post-purchase emails.
In EasyEditor, dragging an Also bought recommendation block into an email allows you to configure its design and layout. Unlike other recommendations, Also bought has two views:
Simple: shows just the name of the featured product
Detailed: shows the featured product and its image
The Also bought product recommendation is designed for automated post-purchase marketing. It works best as a triggered send within a week of purchase.
For extended post-purchase marketing, the best next recommendation is more effective. It uses machine learning and collaborative filtering to give a more optimised recommendation for this customer journey phase.
Not suitable for bulk campaigns
The Also bought recommendation is not intended to be used in a bulk campaign. It will not produce optimal results as some contacts may have last purchased a long time ago. It may also slow down your campaign sending significantly.
Also bought recommendations on site
When used on your website, Also bought should be embedded on the template at the lowest level product page. The product page URL is then sent by the script to Dotdigital.
Onsite recommendations can be customised to use appropriate HTML and CSS to match your website.
Dependencies
To use Also bought, you should review the insight data dependencies for this type of recommendation.
You must also ensure:
You have synced data to Dotdigital
You have orders for products in your catalog
Products have a price greater than zero.