Thinking Outside the Site Part 2 - Image based recommendations

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Last week I posted about using a REST API to use Recommendations off site. Did you try it? Now I want to tell you about calling recommendations using an image based HTML request. Image based requests use the dynamic delivery method to provide a recommendations list in a different output format: as HTML images that include attribute values such as price and product name. Each image in the list also provides a link to the product page on your website for that recommended item.
The primary use for image recommendations is within email campaigns. This type of recommendation generates the list of recommended items when the email recipient opens the message, based on a targeted item included in the email message. I have also seen image based requests used in display advertising as well.

Image Recommendations are great for a few reasons:

• Recommendations are never stale
  • The zone is dynamically loaded every time the email is opened with that day’s recommendations
• Changes can be made real time
  • Most settings (display, tracking values, logic) can be changed dynamically and pushed live within minutes
• Built in tracking
  • Tracking parameters are automatically appended to product URLs and used for native performance reporting

Below is an example HTML snippet for a single recommendation. Your email service provider would place this code within the email template for use.

<a href="http://recs.coremetrics.com/iorequest/url?cm_cid=00000000&cm_template=O…;

cm_target=%SKU%&cm_rank=1">

<imgsrc="http://recs.coremetrics.com/iorequest/image?cm_cid=00000000&cm_template…;

cm_target=%SKU%&cm_rank=1"/></a>

Image based recommendations are currently only available for Product Recommendations. A few prerequisites must be met before image based recommendations can be provisioned for your client ID. Please refer to the Product Recommendations User Guide here to review.