Operate > IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce > Marketing tool > Work with Web and Dialog activities > Activity building blocks: triggers, targets, and actions > Actions in marketing activities
Action: Recommend Promotion
Use this action in a Web activity to display content in an e-Marketing Spot that is associated with a promotion, and when the following is true: the content has a predefined click action that is directly related to the promotion.
If this is not the case, then use the Recommend Content action to display the content in a Web activity. The Recommend Promotion action and the Recommend Content action are similar in that they both display content in an e-Marketing Spot. The advantage of the Recommend Promotion action is that it associates the promotion to the content's click action so that you do not have to manually code the click action URL.
When you create the content to advertise the promotion, you can specify three predefined click actions that are directly related to promotions, as shown in the following list. Then, when you specify the content in the properties of the Recommend Promotion action in a Web activity, these click actions cause the following to happen:
- Display promotion description
- This click action redirects the customer's browser to the promotion details display page. For the starter stores, the promotion details displayed on this page are the Customer viewable short description text and the Customer viewable long description text, as defined for the promotion. This click action applies to promotions with any redemption method.
- Add coupon to customer's coupon wallet
- This click action redirects the customer's browser to the shopping cart page and displays the coupon in the coupon list. This click action applies only to promotions for which the redemption method is Coupon promotion.
- Add to shopping cart and apply promotion
- This click action redirects the customer's browser to the shopping cart page, adds the specified SKU to the customer's shopping cart, and applies the promotion to the customer's order. This click action applies only to promotions for which the redemption method is Requires promotion codes. Make sure that the promotion has only one promotion code defined; if it has more than one, then we will not be able to activate any Web activites that reference the promotion.
Here is an example of a Web activity that uses the Recommend Promotion action. In this example, the content, "Ad for 15% off all orders," has a predefined click action set to "Display promotion description."
When a customer views the store home page e-Marketing Spot, display an advertisement for an order promotion; when the customer clicks on the advertisement, display the details of the promotion.
Another advantage of the Recommend Promotion action is that you can associate a single piece of content to more than one promotion by creating multiple Web activities. As a result, the click action can dynamically change according to which Web activity is active on the site. Conversely, you can associate a single promotion with different pieces of content using multiple Web activities; in this way, you could advertise the same promotion in multiple e-Marketing Spots with different pieces of content.
Prerequisites for using the Recommend Promotion action
- Make sure a site administrator has the site configured to support Management Center marketing features. See Configure marketing for Management Center.
- The promotion associated with the content must exist in the Management Center so that you can specify it when setting up the Recommend Promotion action. See Create promotions.
- The content that advertises the promotion must exist in the Management Center so that you can specify it when setting up the Recommend Promotion action. See Create marketing content to display on store pages. If the content uses a predefined click action, then the click action must be one the following types:
- Display promotion description
- Add coupon to customer's coupon wallet
- Add to shopping cart and apply promotion
How the server determines whether to display the content
The Recommend Promotion action displays content to customers about a promotion. To ensure that customers see this content only when the promotion is available to them, the server displays the content only in the following circumstances:
- The promotion must be in the Active state (not the Inactive or Suspended state).
- The promotion must be available according to the schedule defined in the promotion's properties.
- The customer viewing the e-Marketing Spot must belong to the customer segment defined in the promotion's properties, if a customer segment is indeed defined.
- The click action for the content must be valid according to the promotion's redemption method. For example, if the click action for the content is Add coupon to customer's coupon wallet, but the promotion's redemption method is not Coupon promotion, then the content will not display to the customer. See Options for advertising promotions on store pages for a mapping of valid click actions to redemption methods.
Regarding the previous point: when you activate the Web activity containing the Recommend Promotion action, if the click action for the content is not valid, an error message will display, giving you an opportunity to correct the problem before the Web activity goes live. If you make changes to either the content or the promotion after activating the Web activity that result in a click action that is not valid, an error message will not display; however the server will not display the content until you correct the problem.
Related concepts
Options for advertising promotions on store pages
Activity building blocks: triggers, targets, and actions
Actions in marketing activities
Related tasks
Set up filters to control whether to display marketing information in an e-Marketing Spot
Related reference
Sample e-Marketing Spot JSP snippets and the Web activities they support