Reader Question: Mailchimp Product Blocks

I recently had a question from one of my newsletter readers about using Product Recommendation blocks in emails. They hadn’t worked as she’d expected and she reached out for advice. So here’s a quick run-down on what they are, what they do, and if you should use them.

What are Mailchimp’s Product and Product Rec blocks?

If you have an ecommerce store like Shopify, Woocommerce, Magento (among others) or even Eventbrite and it is connected to Mailchimp, you can use both Product and Product Recommendation blocks in email campaigns.

Product blocks allow you to select from the full inventory in your ecommerce shop and select a product to include in your email, alongside the hero image, product name, price, and a button linking directly to it. Super useful as long as your hero images are of a good quality and consistent size in your website (otherwise they can look a mess in an email).

Product recommendation blocks add dynamic content into your email and in theory recommend an appropriate product based on each individual’s shopping activity and demographic.

Should you use Product Rec blocks?

Sounds great right?

Wrong.

The reader in question has a relatively small ecommerce store. They had taken the plunge and bravely inserted a Product Rec block in their newsletter, understandably assuming it might recommend appropriate products.

Instead, it simply added the cheapest product in their shop in the email everyone - which was definitely not an appropriate recommendation.

Why?

Well the trouble is that for most businesses, they don’t have enough sales for each individual subscriber, and therefore enough data, for Mailchimp to get a good understanding of buying patterns aligned with subscriber demographics, in order to know what products to recommend to each individual.

If you’re the likes of Tesco where an individual is buying umpteen products on a very regular basis, it has something to work with. If you’re not, then it doesn’t.

Now, it would be good of course if Mailchimp actually told you that it doesn’t have enough information to provide reliable product recommendations. Unfortunately it doesn’t and will merrily allow you to add one of those blocks in regardless.

My advice?

Unless you’re the likes of Tesco, use Product blocks where you have control about what will show, and not Product Recommendation blocks where you don’t.

You can make Product blocks work harder for you by combining them with segmentation or dynamic content so that e.g. female subscribers see certain products while male subscribers see others, or someone with average spend above £x sees more premium products compared to someone with an average spend below £x.

Have questions? Need help?

I’m a fully certified top 10 global Mailchimp expert Pro Partner with almost 15 years’ experience. There’s not much I haven’t seen. Get in touch.