7 most common feed management errors and how to fix them

In this article, we’ll go through common feed management mistakes and show you how to fix them. With these tips, you’ll save time, money, and effort while improving your campaigns in the end.

Let’s get started!

1/ Relying entirely on the IT department for Feed Management

This is a common challenge for many marketers: relying on IT departments to optimize feeds. Unfortunately, this approach often leads to several issues:

• Changes to the feed can take days or even weeks to implement.
• Frequent ticket submissions become necessary as strategies evolve over time.
• Real-time feed optimization based on campaign results becomes nearly impossible.
• IT team salaries can significantly increase operational costs.„

These factors combined result in delays, revenue losses, and errors—all while driving up expenses.

Solution

Using a feed management platform like Dotidot is one of the best things you can do for your campaigns and products. It offers several benefits:

• Independence: Gain full control over your feeds and make quick updates without relying on others.
• Boosted marketing performance: Easily manage multiple channels and quickly adapt to new strategies.
• Save time and money: Avoid wasting resources on slow, error-prone changes and reduce the costs associated with feed management.

2/ Having a wrong encoding

This is one of the most common errors you can come across. It may seem hard to fix but it's quite the opposite. 

There are several steps you can take to diagnose and resolve the problem:

• Check the file's metadata: Look for any information about the encoding in the file's metadata or header. Sometimes, files specify their encoding in the metadata, especially if they're in a format like CSV or XML. As these formats are the most popular for various advertising channels, this should resolve the problem for most e-commerce businesses.
• Use encoding detection libraries: There are libraries available in various programming languages that can automatically detect the encoding of a file or a piece of text. For example, in Python, you can use the chardet library.
• Try different encodings: If you're unable to detect the encoding automatically, you can try opening the file with different encodings to see which one displays the data correctly. Common encodings to try include UTF-8, ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1), and Windows-1252.

Once you've identified the correct encoding, you can fix the issue by re-encoding the data using the appropriate encoding. If you're dealing with a database or other structured data source, you may need to update the encoding settings or convert the data before importing it into your system.

Solution

‍Dotidot ensures that every feed it generates has the correct encoding, eliminating any risk of errors. All feed exports are meticulously designed to meet the specific requirements of each channel. For example, when generating a feed for Allegro, not only will the encoding be correct, but all parameters will be perfectly aligned with the platform's standards.

3/ Not using all available data sources

The full potential of feed management lies in having and working with a vast amount of data. Many e-commerce businesses focus on data from a single source, mostly Merchant Center. However, there is a wealth of data available that can provide comprehensive insights.

Here are some examples of untapped data sources:

• Product performance stats from campaigns: These metrics can reveal which products are driving success and where adjustments are needed.
• Google Analytics insights: This tool provides a broader view of performance, including soft metrics like user engagement and conversion pathways.
• Your website data: Hidden gems like product reviews, ratings, or additional specifications might not yet be included in your feeds but can significantly enhance them.
• Custom data and analysis: Many businesses have spreadsheets filled with valuable information—such as margins, profitability, and product attributes—just waiting to be utilized.

The more data you have, the better performance you can achieve.

Solution

With Dotidot, you can connect multiple data sources and merge them into a single, powerful data stream that contains everything you need. And it doesn’t stop there—Dotidot allows you to manipulate and integrate data seamlessly. Calculate ROAS, margins, discounts, and more, enabling you to make data-driven decisions with ease.

4/ Not identifying feed errors in time

Critical issues can have a significant impact on your business operations. It's crucial to remember that when utilizing feeds for platforms that allocate budget, proper feed monitoring and error detection should never be overlooked.

Solution

This is where feed management platforms can be invaluable. Consider how Dotidot helps prevent errors:

• Data validation - Dotidot verifies whether your data (both input and output) align with the required field types and channel specifications
• Synchronization statuses - You can easily track whether your synchronizations have failed and understand the reasons behind any failures
• Notifications - Set up notifications to promptly alert you to any critical errors that occur
• User rights - Many errors stem from user actions such as misclicks. With Dotidot, you have the ability to restrict or grant access to specific parts of the platform, reducing the likelihood of such errors.

5/ Using one feed export for multiple channels

Just because some channels support the same type of feed you use for your PPC campaigns doesn’t mean you should use it for everything. For example, Google product feeds are widely accepted by many platforms, and while they can map it to fit their requirements, using the same feed everywhere can limit your potential. Here’s why:

• Different channels need different strategies: What works for Google Shopping ads might not perform well on a marketplace.
• Missing key attributes: Many platforms rely on specific attributes for features like filtering or sorting. If your feed doesn’t include them, you’ll miss out on opportunities.
• Higher risk of errors: Any changes to the feed might affect multiple channels, leading to unintended issues and lost revenue.

Solution

With Dotidot, you can start with one central data source and transform it into multiple feeds using rules. These rules let you customize attributes for each channel while keeping everything connected to your main source. This product data transformation offers the best of both worlds: you can fix issues at the source, but still tailor each feed to fit the unique needs of different platforms.

6/ Poor product categorization

Proper product categorization is crucial for success on advertising channels. Without accurate categorization, your products might receive zero impressions, get ignored by potential customers, or even fail to appear on marketplaces and price comparison sites.

Example: Imagine you sell a kitchen knife. On your website, it's listed under the "Kitchen Appliances" category. However, a marketplace has a more specific category called "Kitchen Knives." If your product isn't mapped correctly, it may end up in the wrong category, making it hard for customers to find—or worse, it might not be listed at all.

Solution

Using Dotidot simplifies this process and ensures your products are always categorized correctly. Here's how to do it:

1. Invest time in studying the taxonomy and categorization guidelines of each channel
2. Use the Dotidot to map your existing categories to the appropriate ones specified by each channel, ensuring accurate categorization in the feed export values

Let’s get back to the example. With Dotidot, you can establish a rule to automatically assign all kitchen knives to the appropriate "Kitchen Knives" category on the marketplace. This rule is applied across your entire catalog, saving time and reducing errors.

7/ One synchronization per day

Relying on just one daily feed sync can cause delays and outdated product information in your advertising channels. Many advertisers set a feed update in their feed tool at one time and a feed fetch in their channel, like Google Merchant Center, hours later. This mismatch means your ads might still show old data, leading to missed sales and unhappy customers.

Solution

Dotidot makes sure your feed updates are always in sync with your advertising channels. Here’s how it works:

• Dotidot easily connects to all channels after a few clicks. Discover more in Integrations.
• Dotidot sends your updated product feed directly to your advertising channels as soon as changes are made.
• You can set feed updates to happen every hour or multiple times a day, so your product data is always fresh and accurate.

With Dotidot, your product data will always match what your customers see, helping you avoid mistakes and boosting your campaign results.

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