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Product groups

A product group is a rule that chooses products, saved under a name you give it — Vegan skincare under $40, Holiday gift picks. You build it once on Content → Product groups, and from then on any product block can be filled with it by name, instead of setting up the same rule again in every email.

A group chooses which products, and in what order. The block decides how many and how they look. One group can fill a row of three cards in one email and a grid of six in another.

Group names are unique in your store, whatever their capitals: Gift picks and gift picks are the same name.

Building a group

Choose where the group starts, add filters a product has to pass, and choose an order. It can start from your best sellers, a collection, your whole catalog, one of the ways that choose for each person, or products you pick.

A group starts from one place, the same places a product block can fill from, plus one of its own:

• Best sellers, New arrivals and From a collection, as in a product block.
• All products — your whole catalog. It is there for a group that is nothing but filters: everything tagged vegan under $30.
• What they were looking at, Left in their checkout, Bought before and Picked for them — the ways that choose for each person.
• Products I pick — a set you choose by hand. More on that below.

A group never starts from another group, and never from what started an automation, because that only means something inside an email an order or a checkout started.

Filters narrow what the group starts from. Each row is one sentence, and a product has to pass every row to be in the group:

• In collection or Not in collection — one or more of your collections. Type in the field to search every collection in your store by name; one the row already holds shows Already added, and one whose rules cannot be read one product at a time shows Cannot be used here. If the list says Keep typing to narrow the list, more collections match than it can show — type another letter or two.
• Tagged or Not tagged — your Shopify product tags. Vegan and vegan are the same tag.
• Vendor is and Product type is — as you set them in Shopify.
• Price between — a lowest price, a highest, or both, in your store's currency. It is asked of the variant the card would show.
• Exclude products they already bought — only for a group that chooses for each person, and not on Bought before, where it would exclude everything.

A row that names several values matches any of them: Tagged vegan, cruelty free is a product with either tag.

A product whose tags, vendor or type have not been read from your store yet matches no filter on them — not Tagged vegan, and not Not tagged sample either. A filter that asked to keep something out never lets an unknown in.

When a group with filters comes up short, the best sellers that stand in for the missing cards pass the same filters, so a vegan group is never topped up with something that is not.

Order sets which products come first: Best selling, Newest, Collection order (for a group that starts from a collection), Price, low to high or Price, high to low. Best selling, as an order, looks back over the last year. A group that chooses for each person keeps its own order — the newest first, or the best match for that person.

Same for everyone, or different for each person

It is not a setting: it follows from where the group starts, and a badge on the group says which. Everyone sees the same products from a group that starts from a fixed place, such as a collection; a group that reads each person's own activity shows each person their own.

• Same for everyone — a group that starts from your best sellers, new arrivals, a collection, all products, or products you pick. Everyone the email goes to sees the same products.
• Different for each person — a group that starts from what they were looking at, left in their checkout, bought before, or what is picked for them. Each person sees their own.

A group that is different for each person cannot show you one answer, so its preview asks whose products to show. It starts with somebody who has recently done the thing the group reads, and you can search for anyone else. The preview is worked out while you look at it and kept nowhere.

Store rules

Your store rules decide what an email that picks its own products may never show. There is one set for the whole store, on the same page as your groups, and it applies everywhere a product is chosen for you: every product block that fills itself, the best sellers that stand in when a block comes up short, and every group.

• Never show gift cards. On unless you disable it.
• Never show products from these collections. None until you choose some. Type in the field to search every collection in your store by name. One whose rules cannot be read one product at a time shows Cannot be used here.
• Skip products with no image. On unless you disable it.
• Only show products in stock. On unless you disable it. This includes the ways that show a person their own items — what they were looking at, left in their checkout, or bought before — so an item that has sold out is not shown to them either.
• Never show products hidden from the online store. Always on, and the switch cannot be disabled: a product a shopper cannot open — a draft, or one taken off your online store — is never shown in an email, because a card for it would lead to a page nobody can reach. The page says so under the switch.

A change applies to every email right away, including campaigns already scheduled and automations that are running. Store rules are a policy for your store, not part of any one email, so changing one does not ask you to approve an email again — the same way a price change in Shopify does not.

Whether a product is a gift card is read from Shopify, product by product. A product added in the last few minutes is held back until that answer arrives. If Shopify has not answered for a product, it is shown until it does.

A collection whose rules cannot be read one product at a time cannot be chosen here, the same as in a product block. If a collection you excluded leaves your store, it excludes nothing any more, and the email's checks say so.

Store rules never touch two things. Products you picked by hand, and the items of the order or checkout that started an automation — an order email shows what the order held, gift card included.

Products you pick

A group can be a set you choose by hand — Holiday gift picks, chosen once and used in many emails. Choose up to twelve, the most a block can show. It takes no filters, keeps the order you picked them in, and is never topped up with other products.

Store rules never remove a product you picked. If one of your picks breaks a rule — a gift card, say, when gift cards are excluded — it still shows, and the group, like the email editor, warns you beside that product, so the choice stays yours.

One thing removes a pick whatever the rules say: a product that is no longer in your store, or that a shopper cannot open. The block's If a product has gone setting decides what happens then.

Why is my product not showing?

Look up a product on the same page answers that. Search by name, variant or product code, and it says whether that product can appear in an email that picks its own products, and if not, why: a store rule (and which one), out of stock, or a draft in Shopify. It also names the groups that include it now.

It is the only place this page reads your catalog. Content → Product groups never lists every product — your catalog itself lives in Shopify.

Where a group is used

A group's own screen lists every email that uses it — templates, campaigns, automations, and Library sections, since every email that uses a section uses the groups inside it. A campaign that is scheduled says it is frozen when scheduled; an automation says it updates when you save.

A group that is used cannot be deleted. Deleting it would leave those emails with a block that finds nothing, so the delete is refused and the list shows which emails to change first. An archived email still counts, because archiving can be undone.

If a group does go missing from under an email, the block shows nothing, and the email's checks say a product block is filled from a group that no longer exists.

When a campaign is scheduled

Scheduling a campaign freezes each group's rule as it stood. Editing the group afterwards changes nothing that campaign sends. The products are still chosen from that rule when the campaign sends, the way every block that picks its own products works: a best seller is whatever is selling at that moment.

If a group changes while you are confirming a campaign, nothing is scheduled, and step 3 shows the campaign as it now stands, so what you schedule is the rule you saw.

An automation uses the group as it is saved now. Edit the group and the next email the automation sends follows the edit, without applying any changes to the automation.

Who can change what

Marketers, managers and owners can build, edit and delete groups. Store rules are for managers and owners, because they change every email at once.

The Products in an email page covers the product block itself.