Product feed (XML)

Product feed: What is it and why use it?
A product feed is a file that contains all the information about the products in your webshop – such as link, image, price, description, etc. The file is automatically updated when you make changes to your shop.  

With a product feed, you can always add products to your campaigns and automations, confident that the products are up to date with your webshop. This applies to everything in the product feed, such as product name, image and, of course, price.   

If you have just made a change to the webshop and want to be sure that Heyloyalty gets this change before you send the next campaign, you can force an update of your product feed in Heyloyalty.  

How to map an XML feed

Start by finding the URL for your product feed. You will most likely find this in the backend of your webshop. Heyloyalty can’t give you the exact path, as there are many factors that affect where you find your product feed’s URL.

Once you have found the URL for the product feed, you are ready to map it in Heyloyalty.

Start by clicking Integrations → Integrations → Product feed → Setup integration → Create new product feed.

Fill in the Product feed name. It is possible to have several different product feeds, so make sure that the name makes sense to you and to anyone who will use the Heyloyalty account in the future.

Depending on your setup, it might make sense to limit the availability of the feed to a specific list (for example, if you have a product feed that only contains customer club prices, it might make sense to limit that feed to the customer club list). However, as a rule, it’s fine to set the product feed to Available on all lists.

Paste the link you previously copied into the product feed URL field.

The update interval is generally every 24 hours. In most cases, this is enough, because you can always force a manual update if you have changed something a few minutes before you are due to send a campaign.

You now need to map your product feed.

Next to the product feed you just created, click ⁝ → Product Feed Mapping.

Fill in the Feed type and Field name based on how your product feed is structured.

To be able to fill in all the fields in Field mapping, you need to open your product feed.

Open your product feed in a new browser tab by pasting its URL into the address bar and pressing Enter. Depending on how many products you have in your product feed, it may take a short while for your browser to load the entire feed. A properly loaded product feed in XML format can look like this:

Now you need to map the fields from your product feed to the fields in the Field mapping list in Heyloyalty. Your product feed is probably well structured, so it should be a manageable task to map the fields based on the naming in both the product feed and the Field Mapping list in Heyloyalty.

In the Field mapping list in Heyloyalty, the first field is the Product ID. Find the corresponding field in your product feed, which in this case is product_id.

Product name is in the product_name field.

Repeat this mapping for all the relevant fields in your product feed.

It makes good sense to map fields such as price, sale price, category name, brand, stock status, etc. Once you have mapped the fields you want, click Save Mapping and then Back.

Update your product feed (JSON)

You can easily check whether your product feed mapping is correct by updating the product feed manually. Click ⁝ → Update product feed. Wait 30 seconds and reload the web page (press Ctrl + R or Cmd + R). If the product feed is mapped correctly, the Last updated column will now say 0 hours ago:

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