Overview

Merchandising Events extends WhatsApp's Rich Media (Dynamic) templates to use the same Merchandising Trigger engine that already powers Email. When a merchandising event fires, whether that's a price drop, a restock, or a new arrival, the qualifying product's data is pulled from your Product Catalog Integration (PCI) catalog and used to personalize a single-product WhatsApp message.

This brings merchandising-driven messaging to WhatsApp for:

• Price Drop
• Back in Stock
• Stock Running Out
• New Arrival

Merchandising Event Workflow

At a high level, a Merchandising Event notification moves through the following flow:

• Your Product Catalog Integration (PCI) syncs catalog data on an ongoing basis.
• If a relevant change is detected, for example, a price drop or a restock.
• The Merchandising Trigger already configured evaluates whether that change matches its conditions.
• If it matches, the system identifies the eligible user and product relationship for that trigger.
• The Journey containing this WhatsApp template executes for that user.
• WhatsApp renders the single qualifying product using the snapshot captured at trigger time.

Template Set up

Log in to the Netcore CE dashboard and navigate to Content > WhatsApp > Media Template

1. Choose Dynamic under Select type.
2. From the Display products by dropdown, select Merchandising event.
3. Configure the template sections using the table below.

When you select Merchandising Events, the available attribute groups start empty. You add the attributes you need into the Header, Body, Footer, or Button fields.

Product Resolution

When a merchandising trigger fires, the system resolves the product using Product Catalog Integration (PCI) incremental sync, comparing the old catalog state against the new one, and selects the single latest qualifying product based on its last-updated timestamp. No ranking logic is applied, since only one product is ever selected.

At the moment the trigger executes, the system captures a snapshot of the product's attributes. This snapshot does not change later, even if catalog data updates before the message sends.

Personalization Support

Two new personalization groups are available for Merchandising Event templates.

Product Predefined Attributes:

• Title

• Description

• Image URL

• Retail price

• Sales price

Product Derived Attributes:

• Previous Availability

• Previous Condition

• Discount Amount

• Discount Percent

• Retail Price Difference

• Previous Retail Price

• Retail Price Difference Percentage

• Quantity Difference

• Previous Quantity

• Quantity Difference Percentage

• Sales Price Difference

• Previous Sales Price

• Sales Price Difference Percentage

Where Attributes Can Be Used

WhatsApp Merchandising Events supports both predefined and derived attributes across every section of the template, including the CTA.

Failure Handling

Failures fall into one of the following categories:

• No product found
• Missing attribute
• Invalid payload
• Media URL inaccessible or invalid
• Template variable resolution failure
• WhatsApp API failure
• Retry failure
  On failure, the system retries using your existing WhatsApp retry mechanism. If the retry also fails, the message is dropped.

Null attribute handling: if any attribute required by the template resolves to null, the message fails outright. There is no fallback value and no substitution, unlike optional fields in some other channels, a null here blocks the send rather than rendering blank.

Channel Restriction

Merchandising Events is supported only in Journeys.

• Static templates never show the Merchandising option, it is only accessible on Dynamic templates.
• Templates using Merchandising Events do not appear in Broadcast Campaign template selection.
• A Dynamic template with no merchandising attributes configured is still allowed to save, no warning is shown, but it will not merchandising-personalize until attributes are added.

Use Case

Back in Stock Alert via WhatsApp

As a marketer, you want to notify a user the moment a product they were waiting on comes back in stock, without building a manual campaign each time it happens.