Use Google Feed API to Convert RSS to JSON

Here is a quick tip for anyone sick of working with the xml in RSS feeds. You can use the Google Feed API in your scripts to automatically convert the XML in the RSS feed to JSON which makes working with them much easier. For example, there is an RSS Feed from the Consumer Product Safety Commission and it has all the government recalls in the United States. Using this simple trick, you could easily pull the fresh feed on a regular basis and parse out information about recalls to use in your account. You can also configure Google Alerts to generate RSS feeds based on specific keywords you are interested in. For example, here is an RSS feed for the keyword "smx".

Thanks,
Russ

/******************************************
* Use Google Feed API to convert RSS to json
* Version 1.0 
* Created By: Russ Savage
* FreeAdWordsScripts.com
******************************************/
// Usage: var jsonData = convertRssToJson('http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/CPSC-RSS-Feed/Recalls-RSS/');
function convertRssToJson(rssUrl) {
  var FEED_API_URL = "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&q="
  var url = FEED_API_URL+encodeURIComponent(rssUrl);
  var resp = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url);
  if(resp.getResponseCode() == 200) {
    return JSON.parse(resp.getContentText());
  } else {
    throw "An error occured while trying to parse: "+rssUrl;
  }
}

Connect Zoho CRM Data with AdWords Using Scripts

For anyone working in B2B Pay Per Click, one of the biggest headaches is trying to report on the entire sales flow within a single report. The biggest issue is that marketing PPC data lives in AdWords (clicks, impressions, MQLs) and the sales data lives in your CRM (Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, Etc.). So I started looking at ways to connect the two sources of data. I don't use a CRM, so I signed up for a free trial of Zoho CRM and started fiddling with their API. It turns out, they have a REST(ish) API that returns JSON objects, which is perfect for AdWords scripts.

I built the Class below to pull data out of Zoho. It has the ability to pull Leads, Contacts, Potentials and just about any other Zoho object you can think of directly from your CRM. I stopped at just being able to get data out since updating or deleting records seemed less useful for AdWords scripts.

Here is a quick reference guide to the Class. Define a new object with var zoho = new ZohoApi(YOUR_API_TOKEN); If you need help setting up your account for API access or generating a token, check out the Zoho Developer Docs. I generated some simple getters for each Zoho object. ZohoApi.get[Objects]() will pull in all of the particular object. So you can say zoho.getLeads() or zoho.getPotentials(). You can also get only those objects belonging to you with zoho.getMyLeads().

If you have any additional url parameters you want to send over with the request, you can add them as a parameter to the function. For example, if you wanted to return the first 100 records (instead of the default 20), you would say zoho.getLeads({fromIndex:1,toIndex:100});

You can also search for records using zoho.search[Objects](). So to search for Potentials that have been won, you would say zoho.searchPotentials({'searchCondition':'(Stage|=|Closed Won)'}); You can read more about Zoho's searchCondition syntax in their API Docs. As part of that, you can put the columns you want to see or if you don't put anything in there, I pull the full set of columns to display for you using the get[Objects]Fields() method.

As for the response from the class, you will get an array of objects. Each key in the object has been lowercased with spaces replaced by underscores. For example, retVal[0].first_name or retVal[0].annual_revenue.

So give it a shot and let me know what you think in the comments. I put together a simple example script at the very bottom of this post to store Impressions, Clicks, Conversions, and Closed Won Potentials in a Google Doc on a daily basis to give you an idea of what you can do. Let me know what you would like to see next.

Thanks,
Russ



And here is a really simple example of how you could combine conversion data from multiple sources into a single Google Spreadsheet report.