Overview
Smart Product Blocks add a dynamic product recommendation to your email, personalized per subscriber. Instead of picking one product for your whole list, each subscriber sees the product our ranking system predicts they're most likely to buy, based on the Product Feed you select.
Note: the product you see while building the email in the composer is just a placeholder — each subscriber will see the product that actually matches them once the email sends.
How product recommendations work
Recommendations are based on a clear scoring system, not an unpredictable black box. How a product gets ranked depends on which type of Product Feed you've selected:
Feed type | What it's based on |
Best Sellers | Units sold and revenue, weighed against your store's own sales range |
New Arrivals | How recently a product was published — anything older than 30 days scores zero |
Slow Moving | The same sales signals as Best Sellers, but inverted, to surface products that aren't selling well |
Last Product Purchased (used in post-purchase flows) | Simply the subscriber's own most recent order — no popularity ranking involved |
On top of that store-wide ranking, three things are factored in for each individual subscriber before the email sends:
Already purchased that product — heavily deprioritized (not excluded entirely, just pushed toward the bottom)
Sent to them in one of their last 3 emails — deprioritized even further, so the same recommendation won't repeat email after email
Everything else falls back to the store-wide ranking order above
Note: this system doesn't currently factor in browsing/page view activity, category affinity, or email engagement (opens/clicks). Abandoned cart and browse abandonment emails do show a specific product someone viewed or left in their cart — but that's a separate mechanism that happens to reuse the same block type, not part of this recommendation ranking.
What happens with limited data: if a subscriber has no purchase or send history yet, the per-subscriber adjustments above simply don't apply, and the recommendation falls back to the plain store-wide ranking (best sellers, newest, etc.). Product Feeds also require a minimum of 6 products to save (with a warning below 20), so there's always a reasonable pool of candidates once a feed is live. If a campaign includes multiple product blocks but a feed only has one or two genuinely eligible products, the same best-matching product will repeat across those blocks rather than leaving one empty.
How to add a Smart Product block
In the composer, click Smart Products in the Add New Section panel.
Select a Product Feed using the dropdown — this is where recommended products will be pulled from. The Product Feed must already exist before this step; there's no option to create one from within this dropdown.
Choose your Layout — the number of products shown is tied directly to how many columns you select (1, 2, or 3 columns fills each column with one product).
Style your block. It's automatically styled using your chosen Brand Kit's defaults, and you can adjust: Text align: Left, Center, Right, or Justify Show description: toggle on to display the product's actual description (pulled from your store, e.g. Shopify), or off to hide it. A Max image height option is also available alongside this. Button settings:
Button text
Button links to (e.g. the product page)
Alignment (Left, Center, Right)
Button width (px)
Button color
Stroke width (px) and stroke color
Spacing:
Background
Horizontal spacing (px)
Vertical spacing
Important: there's a limit of 6 products per campaign across all Smart Product blocks combined. If you exceed this, you'll see an error saying you've reached the limit.
That's it — your Smart Product Block has been added to your email! 🎉
Note: "Smart Products" is different from the Custom trigger products block type — Smart Products uses our recommendation ranking based on a Product Feed, while Custom trigger products pulls data from a Custom Event you've configured. Use whichever matches what you're trying to do.
FAQs
How does SmartrMail choose which product to recommend?
It depends on the Product Feed type you select (Best Sellers, New Arrivals, Slow Moving, or Last Product Purchased), each ranked using different sales/recency signals. On top of that, individual factors like whether a subscriber already bought a product, or was recently sent it, adjust the ranking per subscriber. See the "How product recommendations work" section above for the full breakdown.
How many products does a Smart Product Block show?
This depends on your Layout choice — a 1-column layout shows 1 product, 2-column shows 2, and 3-column shows 3. There's also a limit of 6 products total per campaign across all Smart Product blocks combined.
What happens if there aren't enough products in my Product Feed for a good recommendation?
Product Feeds require a minimum of 6 products to save (with a warning below 20), so there's always a reasonable pool to choose from. If a campaign has multiple product blocks but very few eligible products, the same best match may repeat across blocks rather than leaving one empty.
Do I need to create a Product Feed before adding a Smart Product block?
Yes — the Product Feed dropdown only shows feeds that already exist. There's no option to create a new one from within this block; set one up first using our Product Feed guide.
What's the difference between Smart Products and Custom trigger products?
Smart Products uses SmartrMail's recommendation algorithm to predict which product from your selected Product Feed a subscriber is most likely to buy. Custom trigger products pulls in data from a Custom Event you've configured instead. Use Smart Products for general personalized recommendations, and Custom trigger products when you need content tied to a specific event.