Nifty Promo Control Panel

Background

Your Facebook Shop gets its inventory from a "catalogue" you create for it. The inventory actually comes from subsets of products that are drawn from it. They're called either collections or sets, depending on where you are in your shop setup. They're similar to the collections in Zazzle your're already familiar with.

The easiest way to fill your catalogue with designs from Zazzle is via data feeds, which is what you use this tool for.

Note that this is perfect for affiliating as your pulls don't have to be for your own products.

The quickest way to to draw products from your Catalogue into Facebook Sets/Collections is automatically via filters.

About filtering

Facebook allows you to do the filtering by using special fields within the data feed. Right now, the special fields supported by Nifty are:

• custom_label_0 (auto set to the store name that the product comes from - as used in a Zazzle store link)
• custom_label_1 (for your optional use)
• custom_label_2 (for your optional use)
• custom_label_3 (auto set to the search term, if you used one)
• custom_label_4 (auto set to the department id, if you used one)
• color (for your optional use)
• gender (for your optional use)

You can use the optional ones (the case you use doesn't matter) to fine tune how you can filter from your Facebook Catalogue into the sets you want for your shop.

For example, you could use custom_label_1 for a keyword or phrase that best describes the pull. If you're pulling from a Zazzle collection, maybe use the collection name from its link - that way spaces won't mess you up.

Note: If you are pulling from a Zazzle collection, remember that any search term or department id you give are ignored.

If your pull covers a lot of different types of product, you could refine things by also using product_type when you're doing your filtering in Facebook.

You might like to use custom_label_2 just for when Zazzle has a sale on. You'd set up a feed specifically for the products covered and use a value for it of, say, 20Sale (for a 20% off sale). When you create your Facebook set/collection for it, you can use an appropriate image of the types of product for it and text on the image describing the sale. When the sale ends, you can delete the feed and the set/collection made from it.

Don't worry if your filtering doesn't quite work out as you intended because you can always delete data feeds from your catalogue (and the sets/collections drawn from it) and create new ones that work better for you.

Simple Example

Imagine you want a collection in your Facebook shop for ladies' t-shirts with floral designs. What you do is set up a pull in Nifty to get just those and you set the value for the gender filter field to female.

Once you've included the data feed Nifty gives you in your Facebook shop catalogue, you'll be able to create your set/collection by filtering your catalogue using the filters: "custom_label_3 is floral" and "gender is female" (remember custom_label_3 is set automatically and uses the search term you gave for your pull).

Final things to note

On Facebook, you get to choose how frequently the Catalogue is updated with re-pulls from each of its data feeds. It makes sense because it makes sure the Catalogue and the Collections drawn from it are nice and fresh.

Some designers will add their email address and / or links in the description. That's not fair on affiliates because it can mean losing out on any referrals they'd otherwise get. So by default, if a product description includes either, then it'll not be included in the feed results. If you want them to be included, you have to check the end of the feed url you're given, looking just before the tracking code for the &skelf=y and change it to &skelf=n (skelf stands for skip email or links flag)

Multifeed mode doesn't work with this tool.

Aim to be consistent in how you use theese optional fields. You'll get better as time goes on :)

You can always adjust things later as you learn, deleting data feed urls from your Facebook Catalogue and replacing them with ones that work better in helping you to create the Sets/Collections you want for your shop.