This interview marks the second of two we have conducted with the folks over at Channel Intelligence. For more insights into the company and their services be sure to check out the first interview we did with Vik Murty about SellPath.

As a core part of their solution, Channel Intelligence offers industry leading comparison shopping and data feed services for merchants and eCommerce sellers who are interested in receiving high-end channel marketing technology from a company with a long standing reputation in this industry. The individual comparison shopping services are designed to make the process of generating, uploading, optimizing and tracking feeds as simple and easy as possible on the publisher. Also, they are setup in a way that makes it absolutely clear which campaigns are producing what, giving additional insight into the campaigns that may need to be improved or tweaked in order to produce the desired results.

Channel Intelligence Comparison Shopping Services Overview:

Channel Intelligence uses proprietary technology blended with years of industry experience to offer a level of service sought out by some of the biggest brands in eCommerce. CI uses a variety of data services that make up their CommerceIQ technology including AttributeIQ, CategoryIQ, FeedIQ, ImageIQ, ItemNameIQ, KeywordIQ, ModelIQ, TaxonomyIQ, UnificationIQ and UPCIQ. Each of the separate intelligent data services is used to generate and provide the most meaningful and complete information about each product and is then distributed throughout the CI supported comparison shopping engines.

Through our patented and patent-pending technologies, we automatically find and group like products together in our database by understanding and interpreting various naming conventions, categorizing each and every product into our Universal Type-based categories and harvesting essential search variables such as attributes and keywords. This optimized product data can be sent and received in all the commonly used formats, integrating seamlessly with existing channels and offering greater possibilities to marketers and publishers.

Steven Roth, VP of Strategic Consulting, Answers 10 Questions:

What made you decide to get into the feed generation or management business originally? How long have you been servicing merchants, vendors and Online sellers?

We entered this market in April 2004 at the request of clients that were struggling to get timely data feeds from their IT departments. Since then our services have evolved into full marketing consulting and product optimization services.

What are your specific service specialties? Do you currently provide feed generation, distribution, tracking, management or all of the above?

We provide everything mentioned. From a data perspective we provide enhanced product-level optimization services to help ensure retailers’ products are complete, accurate and properly placed on each shopping engine. These services include automated product-level categorization customized for each shopping engine, harvesting of attributes and keywords, and matching of product identifiers between the product catalogs of a retailer and each shopping engine.

You can see more about the data technology platform behind our services here:

http://www.channelintelligence.com/commerceiq.html

We also provide an option that lets a retailer outsource management of all aspects of their shopping engine activities, from strategic consulting to the management of the legal and financial relationships with the engines. Our services are customized to the unique needs of each client and leverage our unique expertise in this very complex and constantly changing marketing channel.

Our day-to-day management includes analyzing trends for each client and the industry in general and taking action that may include adjusting bids, suppressing products or highlighting promotions. We offer complete transparency in these activities through regular client reviews and detailed reports that drill down to the category, brand, product and order level.

What comparison shopping engines are supported by your service? Which engines do you work with?

We work with over 50 destinations including all major and upcoming shopping engines, online marketplaces, affiliate networks and others.

Who are some of the merchants that currently use you as a feed generation or management firm?

We have more top-ranked retailers using our service for shopping engine management than any other provider in the industry today. Currently we have over 100 retailers using our SellCast Services including Target, Neiman Marcus, Best Buy, Spiegel, Circuit City, Coldwater Creek, Overstock.com, ShopNBC, West Marine, OfficeMax, Drs Foster & Smith, Skechers, eToys Direct, Northern Tool + Equipment, Smart Bargains, BenchMark Brands, Teleflora, Casual Male and ICE.com.

What factors should merchants consider when shopping for a feed generation or management firm?

When shopping for a feed generation or management firm, it’s helpful to look at the type of clients a provider works with to help assure a good fit. For example, a typical client at CI is ranked among the Internet Retailer Top 500 online retailers and is committed to profitably growing sales in this marketing channel. Merchants choose Channel Intelligence because of our unique combination of technology and expertise within this marketing channel. There are many low-cost tools from other vendors that smaller retailers can use, but we pride ourselves on providing excellent service and results to the leading online retailers.

In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake merchants make when venturing into the comparison shopping world?

Underestimating the time and effort it takes to make this marketing channel succeed. Our services and technology solutions are much more scalable than a single retailer could develop on its own, which makes our solutions more cost effective with a shorter ramp-up time.

In your opinion, what is the most commonly overlooked feed aspect, that makes the biggest difference with CSE’s?

Good, accurate and complete product data. Techniques like bidding and product suppressions are useful, but only after all products are accurately displayed and placed for optimal performance. It is only after this is achieved that business decisions can be made to fine tune the results on the shopping engines.

In your opinion, what will the comparison shopping-scape look like in the future? Replaced by traditional SE’s? Better than ever? Hardly used? More social? Anything?

We definitely expect to see the best-known shopping engines maintain their presence and hopefully start to become more innovative again. The smaller shopping engines like Jellyfish and Like.com are driving innovation in this industry, which is creating a more compelling user experience and delivering qualified consumers to merchants.

We’ve already started to see specialization of shopping engines by vertical (HealthPricer, CNET, Builders Square, etc.) and target audience (“green” sites, social networking sites, etc.), and this trend will continue. We’re also seeing the product listings on the shopping engines being distributed to thousands of “mini-shopping engines” that are appearing on sites that include FaceBook, review sites and blogs.

As this marketing channel becomes increasingly complex, Channel Intelligence is leading the industry in innovations that include tracking sales from each distributed listing and supporting all of the emerging shopping engines.

What goals do you hope to accomplish and where do you see your firm heading in the next 1-3 years?

Our specialization in the shopping engine niche has already been expanded to include paid search, mobile marketing, online rebates and our own CI Ad Network. These services share a patented data optimization platform that will allow Channel Intelligence to continue growing the services offered to our clients – while still maintaining the excellent customer services that our clients have come to expect.

What is the single best performing comparison shopping engine you currently support? Who earns the most revenue on average for your merchants?

Each client has a unique set of goals, so “best performing” could be measured by traffic, sales, profitability, return on ad spend or any number of other success metrics. The “best performing” shopping engine for a client is the one that delivers on its goals, and the best engine for one client could be the worst engine for another. The key is to first identify how success is measured, and then to customize a marketing plan for this channel that is focused on achieving those success metrics.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Steven: I really appreciate all the time and effort you spent writing and providing these answers to us Steven. I can tell by the passion in your words that you really do care about your customers, company, services and the industry, which are all extremely important in my opinion. It was an absolute pleasure learning more about CI’s data feed services from you and I hope that this isn’t the last time we are able to collaborate on a project. It’s funny to see how the answers one person provides differ from the next. I thought you did a superb job on your responses, spot on. My favorite was probably the very last response you provided in regards to the “best performing” engines. Your answer is so right, I’m surprised others fail to realize the importance of their own unique situation rather than comparing their situation to other sites or competitors and how they perform.

To our readers: Well, I for one hope you all enjoyed reading our latest eCommerce interview with Steven Roth of Channel Intelligence. It was fun for me, I really enjoy these write-ups and it’s that much more enjoyable when I get to conduct them with some of the companies I am a major fan of, like CI. If you enjoyed this interview, you may consider visiting our interviews category which features several from all across the industry. Or, you can always subscribe to our RSS feed and we’ll deliver the news and interviews to you each time a new article is published. Until next time.

Channel Intelligence is featured as one of the data feed companies on our Product Listing Guide!