• by Jess Nelson , June 3, 2016

MailChimp expanded its email marketing technology platform this week with predictive intelligence, unveiling Product Recommendations Wednesday in a blog post.

The platform, aimed at supporting small businesses, predicts which items a subscriber would most likely buy based on their past purchases and online behavior. Product recommendations are added as content blocks to the bottom of email marketing newsletters.

Small businesses can personalize emails with items each subscriber will most likely buy, Neel Shivdasani, data scientist at MailChimp, wrote in a blog post.

To access the new feature, MailChimp customers need to connect their online store to MailChimp so that the company can access product images, links and inventory amounts.

The platform integrates with Shopify and BigCommerce retailers via an already-available integration. Those not using these platforms need to manually upload the information via the MailChimp API.

A Magento integration is planned for release next week and an expansion is also planned for WooCommerce retailers in the future.

MailChimp made headlines -- and the ire of developers -- when the company shuttered its free transactional email service earlier this year. MailChimp announced it would fold its free Mandrill developer service into a paid-for MailChimp email marketing subscription service in February, with the full transition occurring by the end of April.

The company confirmed that the decision was partially due to a business pivot towards personalized ecommerce marketing in a blog post at the time, and MailChimp’s Product Recommendations is the first feature launch since the company’s transition. 

MailChimp has historically been an email marketing technology platform for small businesses, but the company’s newest release marks MailChimp’s entrance into delivering data products to its customers.

A third of MailChimp's 12 million users sell goods online, per the company.