Foot Locker boosts profits with Channable's Smart Automation

Evolving Foot Locker’s advertising strategy

In recent years, Foot Locker has taken significant steps to evolve its digital advertising approach. As a global retailer operating at scale, the company recognized opportunities to modernize and enhance its systems to meet the demands of an increasingly dynamic eCommerce landscape.

Stefany Engelhardt and Bas Zethof, both Managers of Paid Search at Foot Locker, note that while the previous setup effectively supported operations during a prior growth phase, new business ambitions and market demands required more dynamic infrastructure, particularly around data integration and product feed management.

To compete more effectively in the market, Foot Locker shifted from a pure efficiency-based model (ROAS) to a more profit-focused strategy (POAS).

The key to this shift? Channable’s Core, PPC, and Insights modules, which enabled Foot Locker to restructure and optimize its digital marketing campaigns.

Managing data complexity and tooling

Before implementing Channable, Foot Locker identified key friction points that limited agility at scale. These included managing multilingual feeds and ensuring consistent product availability across regions.

With a growing need for customization and scalability, Foot Locker also sought a more cost-efficient and flexible alternative to its previous Google Ads automation tool. The company found that its previous tools were limiting its ability to scale effectively.

Why Foot Locker chose Channable

Foot Locker selected Channable as the solution for its:

• Greater flexibility and structured automation

• Advanced data integration capabilities

• Cost-saving benefits

• Ease of onboarding, thanks to industry familiarity with Channable

Beyond just feed management, Foot Locker leveraged Channable to enhance performance segmentation through product scoring, shifting from a basic demand-and-cost model to a more profit-driven approach.

A new approach to advertising

Foot Locker successfully integrated three of Channable’s modules:

• Core: Consolidates data sources and applies ruling per channel.

• PPC: Powers search campaigns and product-scoring-based PMAX campaigns.

• Insights: Ingests cost data that is then combined with margins for advanced performance segmentation.

With these modules working together, Foot Locker created a dynamic system where products move between campaigns based on performance, optimizing their presence in auctions.

Profit growth and impact

Since implementing Channable and the newer version of product scoring, Foot Locker has seen significant results:

• +2% topline revenue growth

• +30% profit uplift

• Cost savings from offboarding SA360 and transitioning from their previous feed management solution

• Reduced campaign management time and fewer errors
  
  By automating complex calculations and segmentation, Foot Locker ensures that each campaign is structured for maximum efficiency and profitability.

Smarter Segmentation with the Insights Module

One of the biggest shifts for Foot Locker was using Channable’s Insights module for advanced performance segmentation.

Step 1: Foot Locker used the GA4 API to send transaction data to Channable.

Step 2: They used their first-party data (COGS, markdown, returns, and handling costs) to calculate the Gross Margin per product.

Step 3: They combined those metrics with Insights data to get Profit that defined a certain score for each product.

Step 4: Foot Locker used Rules in Channable to connect each product to a specific segment based on their scores.

Step 5: Each segment has its Google Ads campaign with a more aggressive or a more lenient approach depending on the results per product. Products automatically move between campaigns based on their performance.

Looking ahead

Foot Locker continues to refine its product scoring methodology, with plans to:

• Enhance internal data fields for better inventory strategy.

• Further develop segmentation models for profitability optimization.
  
  By embracing Channable, Foot Locker has successfully evolved from a multi-tool setup to a unified, performance-driven strategy.