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Catalog Alerts let you reach users the moment something they care about changes — a price drop on a wishlisted item, a saved product back in stock, or a fast-selling ticket about to run out. MoEngage watches your catalog for changes in price or quantity, matches those changes against each user’s recent activity, and generates a personalized list of items you can send in a campaign.

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Use Cases

  • Notify users about a price drop on items in their wishlist or cart.
  • Tell users a product they viewed is back in stock.
  • Warn users that a saved item is selling out quickly.
  • Alert users when a saved flight or ticket is now available at a lower price.
  • Inform users that a monitored item’s price has risen since their last visit.
Before you begin, map your user actions and add a catalog.

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How Catalog Alerts Work

For each item a user has interacted with, MoEngage compares the current catalog value against the value at the time of the user’s last interaction with that item. If the change meets the rule you set (for example, price dropped by more than 30%), the item becomes eligible for the recommendation.

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Available Rules

Select one of the following rules to define the change you want to detect:

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How the Change Is Measured

MoEngage measures both the absolute change and the percentage change against the last interacted price:
Change formulas
The same logic applies to quantity.

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Create a Catalog Alert Recommendation

Only Admin, Manager, and Marketer roles can create Catalog Alert recommendations.
1

Open the Recommendations page

On the sidebar, hover over Content and click Recommendations.Recommendations in the Content menu
2

Start a new recommendation

Click + Create recommendation. The Select recommendation model step appears.The Create recommendation button on the Recommendations page
3

Select the Catalog alerts model

Click Catalog alerts, then click Next. The Create recommendation step appears.The Catalog alerts model on the Select recommendation model step
4

Name the recommendation and choose a catalog

Enter a Recommendation name and Recommendation description, then select the Catalog the alert applies to.Optionally, select Trigger a business event to trigger an event when the catalog is refreshed. See Business Event Trigger.
  • The business event can initiate business-trigger campaigns and alert users instantly when the catalog is refreshed.
  • It works for catalogs that use a scheduled URL or manual feed. If a catalog is refreshed multiple times a day, the event triggers only on the first refresh of the day.
  • The business event is not available for API-based catalogs.
5

Define the catalog change to detect

Under Generate recommendations based on catalog updates:
  1. In Select catalog attribute, choose the attribute to monitor (price or quantity).
  2. In Select operator, value, and Select type, define the change to detect (for example, decreased by 30 percent).
  3. In Select compare to, choose the interaction value to compare against (for example, last interaction price).
  4. Select the mapped user actions to consider, and any to exclude (for example, Added to Wishlist in the last 15 days, excluding Product Purchased in the same period). Mapped user actions selected and excluded for a catalog alert
6

Filter and sort the results (optional)

Turn on Filter items by item attributes to narrow results using catalog data (for example, quantity is greater than 0).In Sort the filtered items, order results by a MoEngage-derived attribute or any numeric catalog attribute (for example, order by Price percent change, highest to lowest).Sorting the filtered items by price percent change
7

Create the recommendation

Click Create to save and run the model.

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Worked Example

This example shows how MoEngage moves from a user’s activity to a final, sorted recommendation list. Recommendation setup: Price decreased by more than 30%, for items Added to Wishlist in the last 15 days, excluding items the user Purchased in the last 15 days. Reference time: April 30, 12:00 PM.

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Step 1: John’s Activity in the Last 30 Days

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Step 2: Apply the User-Action Filter

MoEngage keeps only items that were Added to Wishlist in the last 15 days and were not purchased in that window. For items with several interactions, it uses the most recent one. Anchor items carried forward: P007, P006, P005, P002.

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Step 3: Compare Against Current Catalog Prices

After the catalog refresh, MoEngage compares each anchor item’s last interacted price with its current price.

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Step 4: Calculate the Percentage Change

Using % change = [(current price − last interacted price) ÷ last interacted price] × 100: P002 and P006 are excluded because their drops do not exceed 30%.

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Step 5: Sort the Final List

MoEngage sorts the qualifying items by percentage change, largest drop first: Any item-attribute filters you configured are then applied to refine this list further.

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Business Event Trigger

A business event trigger triggers an event after the first catalog change detected each day, so you can automate real-time alert campaigns. The event name follows the format Catalog_Alerts_{{Recommendation_Name}}. For a recommendation named PriceDropAlerts, the event is Catalog_Alerts_PriceDropAlerts. Use the event to power business-event-triggered campaigns. If the catalog is refreshed twice daily (for example, 10:00 AM and 10:00 PM), the event triggers only after the first successful refresh. You can still run other campaign types on the same recommendation at any schedule, independent of the business event.

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Campaign Personalization

When you use Catalog Alerts, an extra attribute — {{last_interaction_price}} — becomes available for personalization. Place it alongside the current {{price}} to show users the exact difference and increase the likelihood of a click.