How to best include personalized recommendations in emails

[danroot]

I would like to send emails that include personalized recommendations based on website activity.  For example, how Wayfair sends images/links to recently viewed furnature, or a travel site may send images/links to recently viewed locations.  I attempted to simulate this by adding a Recommendations field to contacts and populating it with markup.  When this is added as a personalization token, however, it gets sent as plain text (ie <a href="foo"><img src="blah"></a>).  If I instead try to add RecommendationText, RecommendationUrl, RecommendationImageUrl fields, and use those in the email template, I find that the <img src={{contact.recommendationimageurl}}> is stripped from the email.  

Given this, how can I best send emails containing personalized recommendations including links, text, AND images?

[DanielAudio19 · Accepted solution]

Hi Dan,

Yes usually email providers strip down elements like video links and extra javascript/html.

If you want actual dynamic emails that change content instantly depending on the recepient, you will need a 3rd party provider.

Using Hubspot you can create segmented lists by areas of interest and then send emails to them that are built around the areas they showed interest in.

You can use one email with smart content to appear differently depending on the list the contact is in.

Let me know if you would like further explaination on this.

Regards,

Daniel