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Products in an email

A product block shows products from your store: an image, a name, a price, and a button that goes to the product. One card, or a grid of them.

What it shows is decided here, in the template editor, on the block's own panel. Pick the block and the panel on the right asks how many products, what fills them, and what each card shows. Nothing about a product block is set anywhere else.

How many, and how they sit

How many products is the first question, because it decides the rest. One draws a single card. Several opens two more controls: How many, from two up to twelve, and Per row — 1, 2 or 3 across. A single card has no per-row question, since there is nothing to move.

Fill with

Fill with is the one question that matters most, and it has nine answers.

• Products I pick. You choose them yourself, and the block shows those and nothing else. Choosing products by hand, below, is the whole of it.
• Best sellers. What sold most over a window you set — Last so many days. In collection narrows it to one of your collections; leave it at Anywhere in your store and the whole catalog is in the running.
• New arrivals. Your newest products first. Added in the last so many days is optional — leave it empty and there is no cut-off.
• From a collection. One collection of yours, in an Order you choose: Collection order (the order you arranged in Shopify), Best selling, or Newest.
• What they were looking at. The products this person viewed on your store, within a Last window in days.
• Left in their checkout. What this person put in a checkout and did not buy, within a Last window in days.
• Bought before. What this person has already bought. Both windows are optional: Last so many days bounds how far back you look, and and not in the last so many days leaves out anything they bought recently — which is how you write "time to reorder" without saying it.
• Picked for them. Products chosen for this person, Based on either What they bought or What they viewed. It looks back a year, and there is no control for that because there is nothing useful to change it to.
• From the email's trigger. The products carried by whatever started the email — the items in the checkout that was abandoned, say.

Every window is in days, from one day up to ten years.

Two of the nine carry a note under them, because both would otherwise surprise you. Picked for them is honest about the people it does not know enough about:

When we do not know enough about someone yet, they see your best sellers.

What "Picked for them" is picked from is your own orders, and the count it reads is kept up to date on its own. When several different people have bought two things in the same order, this block shows one of them to someone who has bought the other. It takes three different people buying the same two things together before a pairing counts at all, so one household's shopping trip never decides what a stranger is shown. It is a count of what sells together and nothing cleverer than that — it knows nothing about similarity, substitutes, seasons or price.

It counts orders that were placed. An order that was later canceled or refunded still says the two things were bought together, and nothing takes it back out.

Which means it is quiet at the start. A store with little order history, and anyone whose own orders give it nothing to go on, gets your best sellers instead — and that is a real share of the people a "Picked for them" block goes to, not a rare edge.

And From the email's trigger only ever fills in an email that something started:

This fills from what started the email, so it only shows anything in an email an automation sends.

Neither of those means an empty space. A block that cannot be filled the way you asked is filled with your best sellers instead — in the editor so you can see the design, and in the email so it goes out full. What you see in the editor, below, is the whole of it.

What you see in the editor

The editor always draws products in a product block, even when the real ones have not been decided yet, because otherwise you are designing around a gap. The sentence under the frame says which of three things you are looking at.

Today's pick. The block's own rule was answered just now, so these are real products from your store — and the same rule is asked again when the email goes out, which may give a different answer:

These products are today’s pick. The email picks them again when it sends.

Stand-ins. The block draws from something that does not exist yet in the editor — the email's trigger, or one of the per-person ways — so your best sellers are standing in, purely so you can judge the design:

The products shown are stand-ins so you can see the design. The email fills this block when it sends.

Nothing yet. Your store has no products this app can show, which usually means the catalog has not been synced:

This block has no products to show yet, because your store has none we can show. Sync your products and it fills itself.

None of those sentences is in the email. They are notes on the screen, for you.

When the products are chosen

Only "Products I pick" names the products. Every other answer is worked out later, and that is the point of them — a best seller is whatever is selling when the email goes out, not whatever was selling the afternoon you wrote it.

Three of them — Best sellers, New arrivals and From a collection — are worked out once, for everybody, at the moment of sending. Four of them — What they were looking at, Left in their checkout, Bought before and Picked for them — are worked out for each person separately, which is why two people opening the same email see two different grids.

So what you approve is the rule, not the cards. A campaign's review screen shows you the email and asks you to schedule it, and if the email itself changes while you are looking at it, nothing is scheduled and the screen loads the campaign as it now stands. But a block that picks its own products is confirmed against the way it fills — "best sellers over the last 30 days" — and your catalog is free to move under it: a sale placed while you read, a product that sells out, a collection you rearrange. The cards can be different from the ones on your screen a moment ago, and the campaign still goes. That is what these blocks are for. The alternative is that a busy store could never send one at all.

What the block would send right now is in the email on that screen, so you can see today's answer before you decide. The whole email is kept with the send, so the same answer can be worked out again later. If a collection an email fills from has left your store, the send is refused rather than quietly filled with something else.

Changing what fills a block

Two of the nine need something chosen before the block can hold them — Products I pick and From a collection. Choosing either one from the menu changes nothing on its own, and the panel tells you what the block is still filling with while it waits:

Nothing has changed yet — this block still fills with “Best sellers”.

Pick a product, or a collection, and the change takes. Walk away without picking and the block is exactly as you left it.

The collections you can choose from

Your product blocks read a copy of your Shopify collections, refreshed every day, so the panel is not waiting on your store every time you open it. The line under the collection shows when that copy was last checked, or says No collections copied over yet. if it never has been. Refresh collections in Settings reads it now — the Settings page has the rest.

A collection whose rules cannot be read one product at a time is not offered, and is named. Some collection rules pick particular variants, or leave products out in a way that does not answer the question "which products are in here" — so rather than putting the wrong things in your email, the panel leaves them out and says which:

These cannot be used here, because their rules do not read the same way one product at a time: Summer Edit.

If a collection you use has left your store, the panel says No longer in your store beside it rather than showing you an empty menu.

What each card shows

Show the price and Show a button are switches. Turn the button on and What the button says is yours to write, up to forty characters. Your wording is kept whether or not the button is drawn, so turning it off and on again never loses it, and neither does changing what fills the block.

Image shape is Square, Tall or Wide, and every card in the block is drawn to the same one.

How a product card looks is yours, even though the words are not. The name, the price and the image come from your store; the panel's Name, Price and Button rows are where you set their size, alignment, color and typeface. The Email templates page covers those controls.

When there is less to show than you asked for

If a product has gone decides what happens to a card whose product is no longer in your catalog: Leave it out, or Keep it.

If there are fewer than the number you asked for, the block either shows Show fewer — the ones it has — or Hide the block, and the whole thing comes out of that person's email. Where the block shows a single product the question reads If there is nothing to show instead, which is the same question with one product in it.

A block that fills itself is topped up rather than sent short. If the rule finds two products for a block with room for four, the last two are your best sellers, so the email goes out looking the way you designed it. The Checks card tells you it happened, and so does the check before a campaign goes out.

Two things are never topped up. A block set to Hide the block is hidden, because that is the answer you already gave; and a block of products you picked by hand shows those and nothing else, because you named them.

Choosing products by hand

Choose products opens your own catalog. Change what is chosen is the same door once something is in the block.

You search, you never type an identifier. The box is labeled Search your catalog and it looks at the name, the variant and the product code:

Name, variant or product code

You choose variants, not whole products. A shade, a size, a scent — the thing somebody actually buys. A product with only one variant is simply its own name, with no shade listed under it. An empty search shows you your catalog, so there is something to look at before you type.

A row says what is wrong and nothing else. A product that is in stock and for sale carries no badge at all, because badging every row is how the two that matter become invisible. There are three:

• Out of stock — none on hand. You can still choose it; you may be selling it anyway.
• Not for sale — a different question from stock. A variant you have set to keep selling with none on hand is for sale and out of stock at once, which is why the two are said apart.
• Not published — the product is a draft or has been archived. This one cannot be chosen at all, because nothing built from it would go in the email.

Stock that has never been read is said once, not on every row. Where nothing in your catalog has had its stock read yet, one line under the results says so rather than printing the same fact against every row:

Stock levels have not been read from your store yet.

A long answer says it is long. Rather than cutting your catalog off in silence:

More match that. Keep typing to narrow it.

A block can show twelve products, and when you are at that number the picker says so:

That is as many as this block can show.

Take one out to make room. The last one cannot be taken out, because a block filled from products you pick has to have at least one:

A block filled from products you pick needs at least one. Choose another before you take this one out.

Done closes the picker. Your choices are already in the block — there is nothing to confirm.

A block from an older template

An email built before this panel existed names whole products rather than variants. It still works and still sends. The panel says what it is holding, and what choosing here will do about it:

This block names whole products, chosen before this panel existed. Choosing here replaces them with variants.

Prices and availability

Prices are your store's, at the moment of sending. A price you saw in the editor is not a promise about the price that arrives, and neither is availability. That is deliberate: the alternative is mailing last week's price.