· Issue 21 · January 2013
Seven Deadly Sins
The
of Datafeeds
Nick Loper
by Nick Loper
D
atafeeds may not be the sexiest part of af-
4. Poor Categorization
filiate marketing, but they are a critical part of a
(or Worse, No Categorization at All)
merchant’s program and a powerful tool for driv-
ing sales.
In the 2011 AffStat report, 10% of affiliates named
datafeeds their preferred linking method. The 2012 Affiliate Benchmarks survey indicated that 16.2% said datafeeds were one of the “most valuable” methods of promot-
Create detailed and usable categorization and sub-categorization. Those fields aren’t just there for decoration; use them. What level of detail is appropriate? If you run a department store, maybe “Electronics” is sufficient, but if you run an electronics store, “Electronics” seems at once painfully obvious and woefully vague.
ing a program. Of those surveyed, 7.9% said the datafeed was a deciding factor when considering joining a new merchant program.
5. Poor Product Descriptions
Unfortunately, too many merchant feeds suffer from mis-
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Are they getting
understanding and neglect. Take the time to avoid these seven
any value from your template-driven, keyword-stuffing, ge-
deadly datafeed sins and you’ll reap the rewards for years to come.
neric non-descriptive descriptions?
1. Not Having a Datafeed
6. Not Using Both Price Columns
By not having a feed, even if you sell just one product, you’re closing the door on entire channel of potential affiliate partners.
(Retail Price/Sale Price) Accurate pricing is a must, but accurate pricing has to be applied across both price fields. When given both the current
2. Not Keeping It Up-To-Date Nothing upsets customers faster than inaccurate pricing or sold out inventory presented as “in stock.” Keep the feed
sales price and the regular price, affiliates can do all sorts of fun operations, like determine which products are “on sale”, and which have the deepest discounts.
current to keep affiliates and customers happy.
7. Not Breaking Up Large Files by Vertical 3. Going “SKU-Based”, With No Alternative If you have multiple records of each product for no dis-
It’s a niche world we live in, so I’m surprised we haven’t seen more large retailers break up their feeds by vertical.
cernible reason, you probably have a SKU-based feed. There’s
If an affiliate has a niche site about dogs, they might like
no excuse to hog the bandwidth and processing resources
to include some dog beds from Overstock. Unfortunately that
needed to churn through 20 duplicate entries for each product.
would entail churning through the entire massive Overstock
The worst offender I’ve seen sent 240 identical rows of one
feed and weeding out probably 99% of the data.
product. Same product name, same image, same description,
Here’s a rule of thumb: If your feed is big enough to crash
same price, same everything.. Every time I see a SKU-Based
an affiliate’s laptop, it’s time to consider offering category-spe-
feed I want to cry.
cific feeds.
☞ Nick Loper is a veteran affiliate marketer and is the Datafeed guy at ShoeSniper.com.
27