How To Automate E-commerce Email Marketing with Product Feeds

The e-commerce industry provides a huge amount of products and targets many people. Each person is interested in another product and style - and neither wants to receive emails with irrelevant and outdated content. Product feeds ensure each person gets a message with relevant content without manually adjusting all emails. In this article, we'll walk you through what product feed is, how it works, and how e-commerce email marketing can benefit from that.

Product feed, also known as product data feed, data feed, or product XML feed, is a file that contains information about a certain product. It provides you with information such as the product's title, image, identifier, price, color, or any other relevant characteristics. Product feeds typically have a form of CSV, TXT, XML, or JSON file.

If you sell more products, you probably won't be able to handle all the communication manually, especially if you are about to sell your products over multiple channels. Here comes the e-commerce product feed in play. It provides you with all the information about your products in one place, allowing you to distribute it across other channels easily. Marketplaces, search engines, social commerce platforms, and other tools can read this file and display the credentials. 

Product feed contains product data. What does it mean? A product feed is a CSV, TXT, XML, or JSON file, and product data is a product title, identifier, description, price, size, or any other relevant information about the product.

Product feeds are most often used in e-commerce. They automate product information updates, such as prices, stock levels, and descriptions, ensuring customers see the most current details. This reduces manual errors and helps maintain accurate inventory management across multiple sales channels, enhancing customer satisfaction. Sales and marketing platforms use product feeds to retrieve product data from online stores and use them to optimize their marketing activities - such as social media or email campaigns.

Email personalization and Targeting - Using feeds is a great way to tailor your emails to each customer segment and include products according to their preferences, behavior, or purchase history. Targeting specific customer groups ensures reaching the right audience with the right product, and increasing the effectiveness of your email campaigns. 

Dynamic content - Product feeds are sometimes called dynamic content. You don't need to repeatedly update the information manually, since product feeds work real-time. It means that if some characteristics change - let's say the price - it will be reflected in the product feed, and thanks to that also in your email. Your newsletter will always be synchronized with the information on your website, ensuring the latest products, prices, and stock availability are displayed.

Automation and scalability - As mentioned above, using product feeds comes with the automation of time-consuming manual tasks, supporting the trend of email marketing automation. There is no need to manually update and explore product files each time when you make a change. An ability to handle growing volumes of email contacts and personalize even a huge number of contacts comes into play simultaneously.

Credibility - When sending marketing emails, your goal is to personalize the message and send the most relevant information to build the trust of your customers. Product feeds ensure consistency in product information across various marketing channels. Whether it is an email, social media, or online ads, customers receive uniform and accurate product details, reinforcing trust and credibility - and preventing customer retention.

Product feed is a great help in email marketing. But what are the best e-commerce marketing strategies and when to use product feed? Matching the right product feed with the right audience according to their preferences is key - this approach is known as a behavioral targeting strategy. Except that, you need to choose the right email matching the right occasion - and there are a few email types where product feed should not be missing.

What are the use cases?

Welcome emails - You can include a special offer or several top products based on the customer's profile in your welcome email.

Abandoned cart emails -  It probably happened to all of us. Adding a few products into a shopping cart…and not finishing the order for several reasons. This is a great opportunity to send potential customers a reminder email with selected products.

Order confirmation emails - Every customer needs a confirmation email to be sure their order was successful.

Birthday emails - A special discount in a happy birthday email, supported with a few products tailored to customer's preferences, is a great way to encourage them to make a purchase.

Newsletter emails - Adding new products into newsletters according to customer segments's preferences is another way where product feeds play an important role.

How to use a product feed? Let's have a look at an example of how data feeds can save time when preparing an email campaign. You can imagine the product feed as a product block of content that you will add to your email template.

We'll show you how to add a product feed directly into your email template. In this example, we'll be using the Topol email editor. Integration with the product feed is super easy.

1. All you need to do is copy and paste the XML code of your product(s) into the editor's settings page. Choose a name, and currency and click “Create”.

2. Your product feed will be displayed in the section below, where you can also manage it. 

3.After that, you can go to your email template and drag & drop a product content block.

4. Click on the number in the middle of the new content block. A menu on the left will appear. Choose the desired feed (you may have a list of various feeds) and select the product you want to add.

5. All relevant information available from the website will be displayed in your email template. You can add as many products as you wish. 

Your product is now part of your email. Specifically in this case, there is available a standalone editor application, or you can embed the editor application into your ecommerce platform. Embedded email editor into your app will make your work even easier. No more switching of tools, you'll have it all in one place, seamlessly integrated.

Product feeds combined with customized emails can help save your time and increase your e-commerce marketing performance. Build your emails easily using drag and drop with the Topol editor and you'll see the difference. Try a free trial to see for yourself!