---
schema_version: "1"
id: 6b659fa5e43a227ed7d819b7f2ead7022bf734e4d61a34970c38ae750676806a
title: Fallback Strategies
collection: admin
version: current
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/mktg/264-0-0/mc_pers_einstein_recipe_fallback_strategies.md
canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=mktg.mc_pers_einstein_recipe_fallback_strategies.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5
source_site: help.salesforce.com
content_type: documentation
content_hash: 53756d5aadf7d7f0c9b6320e803ffd989fd4093f997e53ab2b74f2814b864bcc
description: Fallback techniques can enhance your Einstein recipe-building strategy and ensure that a recipe returns enough items to fill the recommendation slots designated by a campaign.
products:
  - Marketing
  - Salesforce Personalization
release: "264"
---
# Fallback Strategies

Fallback techniques can enhance your Einstein recipe-building strategy and ensure that a recipe returns enough items to fill the recommendation slots designated by a campaign.

This table lists possible fallback options to use, their benefits, and things to consider when using them in a recipe.

<table class="slds-table slds-table_bordered slds-max-medium-table_stacked slds-m-bottom_small ">
      <colgroup>
        <col style="width:33.33333333333333%">
        <col style="width:33.33333333333333%">
        <col style="width:33.33333333333333%">
      </colgroup>
      <thead class="slds-text-title_caps ">
        <tr class="">
          <th scope="col" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" id="d14201e41">Fallback</th>
          <th scope="col" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" id="d14201e44">Benefits</th>
          <th scope="col" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" id="d14201e47">Considerations</th>
        </tr>
      </thead>
      <tbody>
        <tr class="">
          <td data-label="Fallback" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e41 ">Any Eligible Item ingredient</td>

          <td data-label="Benefits" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e44 ">
            <ul>
              <li>Acts as a fallback for other ingredients.</li>

              <li>If there isn’t enough user data to provide a full list of
                recommendations, this ingredient includes items that meet the minimum
                data requirements for the target recipe.</li>

              <li>Populates only enough recommendations to meet the minimum number of
                promoted items for the campaign.</li>

              <li>Compatible with all other ingredients.</li>

              <li>Eligible items obey existing exclusions, inclusions, and
                variations.</li>

            </ul>
          </td>

          <td data-label="Considerations" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e47 ">
            <ul>
              <li>For a product to be recommended, it must meet the minimum requirements
                (name, ID, URL, image URL, price, and an inventory of null or not
                zero).</li>

              <li>If the recipe doesn’t include exclusions, inclusions, or variations,
                this ingredient returns a random set of items.</li>

            </ul>
          </td>

        </tr>
        <tr class="">
          <td data-label="Fallback" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e41 ">Collaborative Filtering ingredient</td>

          <td data-label="Benefits" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e44 ">
            <ul>
              <li>Has trending built in.</li>

              <li>Defaults to showing trending results when there’s no user or item
                activity during the configured lookback period.</li>

              <li>Trending results are identical to using a Trending ingredient with a
                weight value of 1.</li>

              <li>Eligible items obey existing exclusions, inclusions, and
                variations.</li>

            </ul>
          </td>

          <td data-label="Considerations" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e47 ">
            <ul>
              <li>Built-in trending fallback applies only to the collaborative filtering
                ingredient.</li>

              <li>You can’t customize trending parameters. Trending is hard-coded to
                recommend products by most purchased and recommend other catalog objects
                by most viewed.</li>

              <li>The trending in Collaborative Filtering ingredients stacks with Trending
                ingredients in recipes. This stacking is equivalent to having multiple
                trending ingredients in the recipe, each with potentially different
                weights. In recipes containing three or more ingredients, and no user or
                item activity has occurred within a specified lookback period, stacked
                Trending ingredients can overpower other ingredients in the recipe.</li>

            </ul>
          </td>

        </tr>
        <tr class="">
          <td data-label="Fallback" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e41 ">Trending ingredient</td>

          <td data-label="Benefits" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e44 ">
            <ul>
              <li>Enables setting a trending weight (1–4) using a graduated slide.</li>

              <li>Eligible items obey existing exclusions, inclusions, and
                variations.</li>

              <li>Recommends products by most revenue, most purchased, most time spent
                viewing, or most viewed.</li>

            </ul>
          </td>

          <td data-label="Considerations" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e47 ">
            <ul>
              <li>Provides trends using statistics from only the past 24 hours.</li>

              <li>No configurable lookback period.</li>

            </ul>
          </td>

        </tr>
        <tr class="">
          <td data-label="Fallback" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e41 ">Enable trending product fallback option</td>

          <td data-label="Benefits" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e44 ">
            <ul>
              <li>Checkbox works for the entire Einstein recipe.</li>

              <li>Populates only enough recommendations to meet the minimum number of
                promoted items for the campaign.</li>

              <li>Enables you to evaluate products for trending over a specified number of
                past days. The maximum setting for evaluation is for products from the
                past 30 days.</li>

            </ul>
          </td>

          <td data-label="Considerations" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d14201e47 ">
            <ul>
              <li>Shows trends only by purchase count for products and view count for
                other catalog objects.</li>

              <li>Ignores exclusions, inclusions, and variations.</li>

            </ul>
          </td>

        </tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>

## Precautions for Email Campaigns

When using a recipe in an email campaign, the system checks whether the email contains blank recommendation slots. By default, all Open Time email requests perform a Trending lookup (by views over the past week) to fill empty slots with items. If you don’t want to show recommendations in an Open Time email, you can override the default behavior. On the item block, deselect Enable trending product fallback for the recipe.

The Trending lookup used by an Open Time email request ignores inclusions, exclusions, and variations.