Module 06: Marketplace Syndication

Anchor outcome Feed-connected to 4 marketplaces. Units go off-market on all platforms within 60 seconds of being marked sold. Marketplace lead response time: 11 hours → under 6 minutes.

Era 4 added the outbound feed layer and its mirror image: the reverse channel that routes marketplace inquiries back into the CRM. Before this era, inventory updates on the website didn’t propagate to the marketplaces, and marketplace leads arrived in a generic email inbox with no connection to the CRM. After this era, both directions are automated. The four lessons cover feed architecture, credential security, failure detection, and inquiry ingestion.

The 4 lessons

Lesson 6.1

Feed Architecture and Field Mapping

The canonical feed record, per-marketplace field mappers, async push orchestration via wp_schedule_single_event, and validation before any API call. The pattern that makes adding a fifth marketplace a 30-minute task.

Lesson 6.2

Encrypted Credential Storage

AES-256-CBC encryption with a key derived from wp-config.php constants, random IV per encryption, typed per-marketplace credential structure, and why the encryption key must never be in the database.

Lesson 6.3

Failed-Push Alerting

The push log table, logging success and failure on every attempt, immediate admin email on failure with response body, and a daily stale-listing audit that catches silent non-pushes the immediate alert misses.

Lesson 6.4

Reverse Channel: Inquiry Ingestion

Unified REST endpoint per marketplace, inquiry normalizer for each platform’s payload format, webhook signature verification, deduplication against existing leads, source attribution, and sequence enrollment on new inquiries.