Amazon attributes roughly 35% of its total revenue to personalized product recommendations. That is not a typo. More than a third of the largest e-commerce company’s sales come from showing people products they are actually likely to buy.
Your WooCommerce store can do the same thing. Not at Amazon’s scale, obviously, but the principle is identical. When you send customers emails featuring products they are genuinely interested in, they buy more. When you send generic “check out our latest products” blasts to your entire list, they hit delete.
Customers expect relevance now. They have been trained by years of personalized feeds and recommendations. A blanket promotional email feels lazy. A recommendation that lines up with something they recently purchased feels helpful.
The good news is that you already have all the data you need sitting inside WooCommerce. The challenge is getting it into your email marketing platform in a usable format. That is what this guide covers.
The Data You Need (And How to Get It Into Mautic)
Personalized product emails require three types of customer data: purchase history, product categories, and order frequency. Without these, you are guessing. With them, you can build automated campaigns that feel like one-on-one conversations.
The Mautic Integration for WooCommerce plugin syncs all of this automatically. When a customer places an order, the plugin pushes product tags, category tags, order data as JSON, and lifetime value fields directly to their Mautic contact record. No manual exports, no CSV uploads, no building custom API connections.
Once the sync is running, every contact in Mautic carries a detailed picture of what they have bought, which categories they shop from, how much they have spent, and how many orders they have placed. That is the foundation for every strategy below.
If you want to go deeper on organizing your customers by behavior, check out our guide on how to segment WooCommerce customers in Mautic. Segmentation and product recommendations work hand in hand.
Strategy 1: Category-Based Cross-Sells
This is the simplest strategy and one of the most effective. It works especially well for stores with clearly defined product categories.
Here is how it works. A customer buys a product from your “Running Shoes” category. The plugin automatically tags them with “running-shoes” in Mautic. Now you know this person is a runner.
In Mautic, build a campaign that triggers when a contact receives the running-shoes tag. Add a short delay of two to three days so the email does not arrive the same day as their order confirmation. Then send an email featuring running socks, insoles, and running apparel.
The logic is straightforward. Someone who just bought running shoes almost certainly needs running socks. They might need insoles. They could be in the market for moisture-wicking shirts or shorts. These are not random suggestions. They are logical next purchases based on a clear interest signal.
Repeat this pattern for each of your major product categories. Bought from “Coffee Beans”? Send them filters, grinders, and mugs. Bought from “Dog Food”? Send them treats, toys, and grooming supplies. The category tag does all the targeting work for you.
Strategy 2: Post-Purchase Complementary Products
This strategy goes beyond categories and focuses on specific product pairings. It works best when you know which products naturally go together.
The setup starts with the order completion tag that the plugin syncs to Mautic. Build a campaign that triggers on this tag, then add a wait step of 7 to 14 days. You want enough time for the customer to receive and start using their product, but not so long that the purchase excitement has faded.
After the wait, send an email featuring products that complement their purchase. For example, a customer who bought a camera gets an email showcasing lenses, memory cards, and camera bags. Someone who bought a tent sees sleeping bags, camping stoves, and headlamps.
Mautic’s dynamic content blocks make this powerful. Within a single email template, you can show different product sections based on which tags a contact has. A contact tagged with “cameras” sees camera accessories. A contact tagged with “laptops” sees laptop accessories. One email template, multiple personalized versions.
To set this up, create dynamic content slots in your Mautic email. Set the display conditions based on contact tags. Then build your product recommendation blocks for each tag group. When the email sends, each customer sees only the products relevant to their purchase.
Strategy 3: Replenishment Reminders
If you sell consumable products, this strategy practically prints money. Supplements, coffee, skincare, pet food, cleaning supplies, printer ink. Anything that runs out and needs to be reordered.
The concept is simple. You know roughly how long your product lasts. A 30-day supply of vitamins lasts about 30 days. A bag of coffee beans lasts most people two to three weeks. Set up a Mautic campaign that waits the appropriate number of days after purchase, then sends a “Time to restock?” email.
Here is a practical example. A customer buys a 60-day supply of a protein powder. The plugin tags them in Mautic and records the order. Your campaign triggers on the product tag, waits 50 days (giving them a heads-up before they run out), and sends an email reminding them to reorder. Include a direct link to the product page so reordering takes one click.
These emails consistently achieve some of the highest open and click rates of any automated campaign. The timing feels thoughtful rather than pushy. You are solving a real problem: the customer needs more of the product, and you are making it easy to get it.
For best results, track your actual reorder data over time and adjust the delay accordingly. If most customers reorder your coffee at the 18-day mark, set your reminder for day 15 or 16.
Strategy 4: New Arrivals by Interest
Most stores announce new products to their entire email list. That is a missed opportunity. A customer who only buys skincare products does not care about your new line of kitchen gadgets. But a customer who has bought three skincare products in the past six months? They absolutely want to hear about your new moisturizer.
Category tags make this easy. Since the plugin tags each contact with the categories they have purchased from, you can build Mautic segments based on category interest. When you launch a new product, send the announcement only to customers who have bought from that category before.
This approach does two things. First, it dramatically improves your email engagement metrics because you are only sending to people who are likely interested. Second, it protects your sender reputation by reducing the number of people who ignore or delete your emails.
You can also layer this with lifetime value data. The plugin syncs total spend and order count to Mautic. Want to give your best customers early access to new arrivals? Build a segment that combines the category tag with a minimum spend threshold. High-value customers in the right category get a “sneak peek” email a day or two before the general announcement.
Tips for Better Product Recommendation Emails
The strategies above will get you started, but execution details matter. Here are the things that separate good recommendation emails from great ones.
- Always include product images. People are visual shoppers. A recommendation email without images is just a list of product names, and nobody clicks on a list of product names. Use clear, high-quality photos that show the product well.
- Keep recommendations to 3-4 products maximum. More choices lead to fewer decisions. When you show someone 12 products, they feel overwhelmed and close the email. When you show them 3 carefully chosen products, they actually consider each one.
- Include a clear CTA button for each product. Do not make people hunt for how to buy. Every product recommendation should have its own “Shop Now” or “View Product” button that links directly to the product page.
- Test your subject lines. The best recommendation email in the world is worthless if nobody opens it. Test different approaches. “Based on your recent purchase” works, but so does naming the specific product: “You bought the Trail Runner X1. Here is what goes with it.” Use Mautic’s A/B testing to find what resonates with your audience.
- Time your sends carefully. Do not send recommendation emails on the same day as order confirmations or shipping notifications. Space things out so each email gets its own moment of attention.
- Review and update your product pairings regularly. What sells well together changes over time. Check your cross-sell performance every quarter and adjust your recommendation campaigns accordingly.
Getting Started
Personalized product recommendation emails are one of the highest-ROI marketing activities available to WooCommerce store owners. The data already exists in your store. You just need to get it into a platform that can act on it.
Start with Strategy 1, category-based cross-sells. It requires the least setup and delivers quick wins. Once you see the results, expand into complementary products, replenishment reminders, and targeted new arrival announcements.
The Mautic Integration for WooCommerce plugin handles the hard part, getting your customer purchase data, category tags, and lifetime value metrics into Mautic automatically. From there, you build the campaigns, write the emails, and watch your revenue from email marketing climb.
Stop sending the same email to everyone. Start sending the right products to the right customers at the right time.
