Marketing TechnologyHow automation solves the problem of product feed and retail ad management

How automation solves the problem of product feed and retail ad management

Channable is a global retail platform that enables digital marketers, brands, and online retailers to effectively automate and manage their online retail sales.

30-second summary:

  • Channable helps sell, advertise, market, and manage users’ retail products via tools that include product feed management, PPC automation and retail marketplace integration.
  • Channable’s subscription-based solution starts at $39 a month for 500 items and three channels, with the ability to scale up from there.
  • Channable solves two key problems for its clients: the platform manages product data feeds across multiple marketplaces and automates retail ad management and deployment.
  • In 2021, Channable plans to invest in stabilizing and growing teams in established regions, with a particular focus on growth in the U.S.

Channable is a global retail platform that enables digital marketers, brands, and online retailers to effectively automate and manage their online retail sales. The platform helps sell, advertise, market, and manage users’ retail products via tools that include product feed management, PPC automation and retail marketplace integration.

With over 4000 customers including big names like Staples, Craft Sportswear, and Artefact, Channable serves businesses of all sizes. Their subscription-based solution starts at $39 a month for 500 items and three channels, with the ability to scale up from there.

Channable’s CEO, Rob Van Nuenen, explains how the company was founded:

“The idea for Channable originated from another company that myself, Stephen Hospes, and Robert Kreuzer founded called Site2Mobile. While doing business as Site2Mobile, we received a lot of feedback from marketing agency clients who needed an easier way to advertise their clients’ products on multiple platforms and online marketplaces.

All three founders had a strong, technical background and realized that there was a lot more potential in creating a platform that easily coupled web shops and data sources to shopping websites, marketplaces, and affiliate networks – as opposed to converting websites to mobile devices.  Thus, Channable was born.”

Solving the problem of too many moving parts

Channable solves two key problems for its clients: the platform manages product data feeds across multiple marketplaces and automates retail ad management and deployment. Here’s a closer look at how each feature works.

  • Product data feed management: Channable optimizes and organizes data feed management through automation. Online shops that want to advertise their products on multiple shopping websites, marketplaces, and affiliate networks can do this in one place with Channable’s platform which enables even small businesses to handle their product placement without a marketing team or IT department. Inversely, the platform allows large companies to automate much of the advertising process, saving huge amounts of time and energy.
  • PPC Ad Automation: Through the power of the Channable platform, users can create automatic dynamic text ads connected to their web shop. When an advertised product goes on sale or out of stock, the ad will reflect this, increasing traffic or pausing ads depending on the situation. This power of the Channable platform decreases ad spend and saves advertisers a lot of time.

Channable’s onboarding process is quick and it’s one of the biggest strengths of the platform. Onboarding is facilitated by smart categorization which matches an advertiser’s product category tree with the specific marketplace or website, automating what is typically a very time-consuming process.

Channable automation

Channable’s interface makes it easy for retailers to match their category values to popular shopping websites like Google and Amazon.

The Marketplace Integrator feature enables retailers to integrate their online shop with popular online marketplaces so they can automatically list products, update listings, and manage orders from one platform (thanks to a liberal amount of API connections).

The PPC tool automates the process of running search, display, and shopping campaigns on marketplace websites, search engines, and more. The tool includes a built-in ad copy generator that combines static copy with dynamic product feed data, enabling the creation of ads and keywords at scale.

Onboarding with Channable is further facilitated with Help Center articles, tutorial videos, and support. Most new clients have their account set up within two weeks, though it’s possible to get up and running in two or three days. Part of the Channable service to every client is a free initial set-up and walk-through. This orientation for clients on how the platform works ensures the first connection is correct.

The positive impact of retail feed and PPC automation

Channable’s retail automation offerings have had positive results for their clients, per the following case studies that provide an overview of how two companies leveraged feed automation and retail PPC management.

Case Study #1: Product Feed Management Tool

Global agency ROCKETROI works with clients from many different industries including fashion, interior, and pharmaceutical. Initially, ROCKETROI’s clients would provide the product feed to the agency to be managed on marketing channels like Facebook and Google Shopping. This presented a few challenges including:

  • Clients weren’t familiar with feeds and their benefits
  • Clients depended on an IT department to set up the feeds
  • The feed set up process was lengthy
  • There was too much communication back and forth to set up

Fortunately, ROCKETROI knew these issues could be solved by bringing their clients’ feed management needs in-house. Using Channable made the process simple. Benefits include:

  • Significant time savings
  • Ease of meeting feed requirements
  • The ability to optimize feeds with only a few clicks
  • Easy creation and utilization of custom labels

Gonzalo García-Junceda, a ROCKETROI Performance Specialist, said, “Customers are much happier now because they can pass the feed responsibilities to us. We take care of the feeds. Conversations with our clients have become more strategy focused as we can now cover operational activities.”

Case Study #2: PPC Platform Management

Scottish PPC agency, ClickBoost, uses Channable’s PPC platform to generate ads for Google and Microsoft. By automating PPC with Channable, ClickBoost has been able to deliver a 25% better return on advertising spend. They also doubled the click-through rate for their clients’ ads thanks to generating product-specific PPC campaigns.

ClickBoost used Channable’s platform to:

  • Generated hyper-relevant ads
  • Utilize powerful rules to improve quality score
  • Create dynamic ad templates

Gordon Campbell, a co-founder of ClickBoost is a personal fan of Channable’s “time-saving aspect” and the ability to increase their clients’ revenue at the click of a button.

The future of Channable

The Channable Team

In 2021, Channable plans to invest in stabilizing and growing teams in established regions, with a particular focus on growth in the U.S. Beyond that, the plan is to further develop the platform, with more integrations and connections and a few new features to be announced later.

“Being in the technology sector, the terrain is ever-changing,” explains Van Nuenen. “It’s very hard to predict what the next hot new item will be! Take Google, for example, one day you are paying for advertisements on the Shopping Tab, the next day they are free. The same for YouTube and other social media platforms. To adapt to the trends and choices of these giants, it is always exciting, but also unpredictable.”

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