Unified SFMC Recommendation Engine Drives 40% Faster Campaign Setup
A major athletic apparel retailer partnered with GSPANN to automate product recommendation campaigns, realizing consistently faster and accurate Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) personalization.
The Client
A multinational apparel retailer.
The Challenge
A McKinsey research shows that personalized product recommendations can drive a 10-20 percentage point increase in cross-sell for multi-category retailers, yet many organizations struggle with fragmented systems and manual processes that slow campaign execution. As consumers increasingly expect tailored online interactions, companies must leverage automation and data-driven strategies to scale customer journey personalization effectively.
Athletic apparel brands, in particular, face challenges with email marketing automation, requiring streamlined workflows to deliver consistent customer experiences while managing complex product catalogs.
The client's marketing team managed multiple types of recommendation campaigns. The existing system was fragmented, leaving business users with limited flexibility and campaign execution prone to errors. The marketing team faced significant operational bottlenecks that impacted their ability to deliver timely Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) personalization.
Key challenges included:
- Complex Setup Process: Business teams had to choose from multiple modules and configure them individually, creating unnecessary complexity and time delays.
- Inefficient Data Model: Product details were stored across multiple columns (e.g., product1name, product1image, product2name, product2Image), making updates cumbersome and error-prone.
- Limited UI Flexibility: Emails were restricted to showing three products side by side, regardless of campaign needs or content requirements.
- Risk of Display Errors: If no conditions were met for a subscriber, the email often displayed a blank recommendation section, resulting in a poor customer experience.
In brief, the client needed to optimize their SFMC infrastructure to support scalable, automated marketing campaigns.
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The Solution
GSPANN partnered with the client to implement a streamlined solution within Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), simplifying campaign management and providing marketing teams with greater control. The approach focused on redesigning the data model, consolidating module architecture, and enhancing display flexibility to enable dynamic, customer-first experiences.
The solution leveraged subscriber data already captured in SFMC, including browsing history, purchase activity, and past engagement, to create meaningful segments aligned with actual shopping behavior. We consolidated all product attributes into a single JSON column, enabling the storage of multiple product details within a single structured field that could scale from the current six products to unlimited future expansion.
Our team built a single product loader module to replace multiple modules, allowing business users to simply drag and drop the module and configure the data extension. Smart fallback logic ensured that when no conditions were met, the section defaulted to best-selling products instead of displaying blank content.
Key aspects of our solution included:
- Unified configurable framework replacing multiple hard-coded modules with a plug-and-play approach
- JSON-based data model storing unlimited product details in a single field
- Automated fallback functionality detecting empty states and switching dynamically
- Adaptive layouts offering one to six product displays automatically
- AMPscript and Server-side JavaScript integration for data retrieval and parsing
- Automation Studio implementation for scheduled product feed refreshes
The solution provided our client with a competitive advantage by enabling marketing teams to launch personalized campaigns independently, without relying on technical dependencies, thereby accelerating their responsiveness to market opportunities and customer behavior.
Business Impact
- Campaign setup accelerated by 40% through simplified data structures
- Zero blank recommendation sections delivered through automated fallback logic
- Technical dependency eliminated enabling business users to manage campaigns independently
- Customer experience improved with flexible dynamic layouts and relevance
- Subscriber engagement increased through consistency, personalized product recommendations, and error-free execution
- Time-to-market reduced for new campaign types and seasonal initiatives
- Operational efficiency enhanced by consolidating hundreds of product fields
- Managing over 2M subscriber records with thousands of SKUs, demonstrating scalability
- Data accuracy improved through a centralized JSON-based product information model
- Marketing agility increased with a self-service framework for future implementations
Technologies Used
Related Capabilities
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