Special Report: Affiliate Marketing

Automated XML Feed
Now, rather than sending updates quarterly, General Mills has set up an automated XML feed that pulls all the necessary product information from the Betty Crocker database and sends it to Shop.com daily. Grozian-Lorentzen notes that process took a few weeks to set up and test.

Several times a day, Shop.com sends a batch of orders to General Mills. While Shop.com captures transactional information on its site, General Mills processes the payment for each order. While Shop.com provided 1 percent of Betty Crocker’s online sales in the first year, the program has grown to nearly 5 percent of the catalog’s total online sales.