Lena Huang, Sr. eCommerce Manager of Marriott International commented: “Affiliate marketing is an important channel for us and we are further expanding our efforts internationally. We decided to partner with Affiliate Window to access new affiliates and maximize sales in the UK and Ireland. It is paramount for us to have strong, pro-active partners on the network side that support our strategies in the local market.”

Gavin Wilson, Head of Commercial for the UK’s leading network added: “Both Marriott and Affiliate Window are leaders in their field and hence this long term partnership is one we have very high expectations for. The synergy between both businesses is widely apparent and with the Marriott brands strong and defined heritage, we are extremely pleased to be working with them.”

To learn more about Marriott’s UK affiliate operations, visit their international affiliate page: www.MarriottAffiliateProgramme.com

For press enquiries please contact:
Lisa Chaikin
PR Manager, Affiliate Window
e: lisa.chaikin@affiliatewindow.com
t: 020 7553 0333

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Overview & Brief:

As a veteran to the affiliate channel with nearly 10 years experience, Prezzybox has consistently been commended for their innovative approach, earning five A4U Awards over the past three years, in addition to being voted the IMRG Retail Website of the year in 2009.

The quirky gift and gadget retailer has always been an advocate of producing co-branded landing pages for their affiliate partners. A co-branded landing page is a specific page that visitors reach which features the logo and additional details of the affiliate website they have been referred from; this helps to reassure the customer that a relationship is in place between the two sites and that the link was in no way malicious. The creation of these pages for top loyalty sites has proven to increase conversion rates, providing a mutually beneficial relationship for both the retailer and affiliate partner.

Strategy & Execution:

Historically Prezzybox had, upon request, provided every affiliate with a bespoke co-branded landing page featuring stretch and save voucher codes. Although this approach worked well for them in the past, with the growing prominence of voucher code sites, combined with the initiative of other merchants and their voucher code strategies, Prezzybox felt that vouchers had not only lost their impact but no longer provided anything positive to the affiliate partners who were actively promoting them.

With Hitwise reports continuing to demonstrate a consumer demand for online discount codes, the decision was made not to remove this popular promotional tool, but instead revise it. To reflect this, company founder Zak Edwards introduced a new and improved voucher code scheme, offering a variety of codes, including percentage off vouchers and higher value stretch and save discounts. Coupled with a higher level of monitoring and the ability to control related commissions, voucher codes now serve their purpose by proving to be an effective and valuable asset to the Prezzybox programme.

Results:

In the current economic climate marketers continue to focus on ROI. 2009 was Prezzybox’s most successful year in affiliate marketing to date; they recorded a 42% year-on-year increase in affiliate transactions and an astonishing 62.5% growth in affiliate generated revenue. Their innovative method of cleverly combining bespoke landing pages and voucher codes has been credited as the key factor behind this significant uplift.

Using a standard landing page, TopCashBack had an average conversion of 8.56% across a 6 month period. Following the introduction of a co-branded landing page and bespoke code, the conversion rate increased to a staggering 23.21% in just one month. This increase did not even reflect the Christmas season as the figures listed were generated in ‘off peak’ months.

Continuing this trend, from April – July 2009 MyVoucherCodes reported a 2.5% conversion on the Prezzybox programme without the use of a landing page. For the exact same period in 2010, the conversion jumped to 10.9% through the implementation of a bespoke landing page.

Finally, Nectar achieved a 4.8% conversion between March – June 2009 with an older version of a co-branded landing page, however following revisions the conversion increased to 5.2% for the same timeframe in 2010.

These figures prove the value that a bespoke strategy for loyalty, reward and cashback publishers can have and the positive impact strategically issued voucher codes can have.

Zak Edwards, Managing Director of Prezzybox said; “It’s great to see our co-branded landing pages combined with voucher offers working so well for us and our affiliate partners. Recently we’ve spent a lot of time and resource analyzing the impact of voucher codes in relation to ABV and general ROI, and going forward hope to operate smarter and more dynamically with our Voucher Code offerings to the benefit of our affiliates and ourselves.”

For more information please contact:
Lisa Chaikin
PR Manager, Affiliate Window
e: lisa.chaikin@affiliatewindow.com
t: 020 7553 0333

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The migration coincides with some exciting changes to their affiliate programme including DOUBLE commission of 20% for the first week of September in conjunction with a variety of new and improved creative.

Claire Theobald, Head of Account Development at Affiliate Window comments: “I am delighted that Prezzybox have chosen to consolidate their affiliate activity with Affiliate Window as we have worked very closely with Zak and his enthusiastic team over the years, watching the programme grow from strength to strength. We look forward to implementing new strategies in conjunction with fantastic affiliate incentives through the festive season.”

Zak Edwards, Managing Director at Prezzybox added: “We believe Affiliate Window is THE de facto affiliate network. Their skills in account management and proactive approach to affiliate marketing is superb. It therefore makes perfect sense for us to work exclusively with them. To be honest, it’s a natural progression. We’ve seen AWin grow from a tiny acorn to the network they are now, which dominates the affiliate space. We’re looking to really push on as a business and ‘reach the next level.’ This means maximising all of our resource and marketing efforts and we feel we are best placed to do this with AWin.”

For more information on their 10 year Anniversary plans, visit the Affiliate Window Offers Blog.

Be sure to visit our blog again tomorrow when the Prezzybox case study goes live; discussing how clever use of co-branded landing pages & voucher codes can benefit affiliate programmes.

For press enquiries please contact:
Lisa Chaikin
PR Manager, Affiliate Window
e: lisa.chaikin@affiliatewindow.com
t: 020 7553 0333

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This feature provides an increased level of visibility over the process that is currently in place when a merchant needs to decline part of a transaction.  Previously, if a customer cancelled part of an order, the merchant would have to decline the entire transaction and then add a manual commission for the legitimately purchased products.  This method proved inefficient for merchants and when viewed by affiliates led to a severe amount of declines; the new functionality means that you will be able to view the changes under the same transaction, seeing both the before and after amounts, as opposed to a new one being created.

If you have any questions, require any additional information, or would like to offer your suggestions for the amended commissions report, please contact partnerships@affiliatewindow.com.

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eCommera’s research into the scale of online retail growth brought out some interesting headline figures. 42.6% of UK consumers buy something online every week, with an average spend per month of £71. The report also reveals some interesting attitudinal findings: over 60% of respondents citing the availability of deals as the reason they choose to shop online.

econsultancy published its research into the habits and attitudes of online shoppers with some interesting findings on email and voucher code engagement. 61% of respondents named email as their preferred method for receiving offers, with 35% saying they bought something online because of an email they received. Another report by email marketers SignUp.to earlier in August identified the most effective sectors for email as restaurants and B2B.

econsultancy’s report also found that 60% of respondents had used an online voucher code in the last 12 months and that free shipping was the most popular motivation for 82% of shoppers surveyed. This finding is complemented by a separate piece of research in August by Experian and Cheetah into last year’s pre-Christmas shopping in the US. Free delivery with no minimum spend produced transaction rates of 70% and, intriguingly, free delivery offers were the even more popular than percentage off or money off discounts.

On 14th September Google will remove restrictions on using brand trademarks in ad text in Europe as it has already in the US. This can be seen as an extension of Google’s decision in May 2008 to no longer enforce or restrict bidding on brand trademarks but follows specifically from recent judgments by the European Court of Justice. The planned changes have elicited differing reactions in the online community, a selection of which can be read here, here and here.

Written by Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist.

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Being named the fastest growing company in web history is quite an achievement. How will this accolade affect your business going forward and are there any big plans in the pipeline?

We will continue to move fast, grow strategically, and expand our marketing reach wherever we can. We’ve built our reputation on this, and are known here in the UK as one of the fastest growing merchants (especially on Awin!). Our modus operandi is simple, really: do more of what’s working, and do it better. This is why we’ve grown so phenomenally quickly on the local and international level.

Groupon US are in the process of launching personalised deals, whereby customers’ demographic information and buying history are used to tailor offers to individual users. This will allow several offers to be issued on the same day. In addition, they are looking at issuing deals through Twitter’s new EarlyBird service. These are two opportunities we will be looking at in the UK in the near future.

What differentiates Groupon from its competitors and what attributes of your business model make the company such a success?

We were the original: the inventors and pioneers of the group-buying model. This means we have the most comprehensive in-house knowledge at how best to apply the model, and find the best deals that benefit both our customers and partners. On top of this, we relentlessly adapt and perfect our offer as the market continues to evolve.

In addition, there is a significant gap between the reach we have and the smaller-scale opportunities that our competitors can offer our merchant partners. We have global capacity, and keep on expanding. This is based on a happy melange of specific local knowledge and a robust offer engine that can handle the volume that we are famous for producing.

We tend to be a useful resource for our competitors; they use us as the barometer of the market. We saw this recently when a competitor pretty much copied and pasted our affiliate promotion with only minor changes. There’s nothing like flattery!

How does the affiliate channel fit within Groupon’s overall marketing strategy?

The affiliate channel is deeply important to what we’re trying to achieve. Our offers are diverse in price and nature, and therefore are best run across a variety of verticals. Affiliate marketing allows us to achieve on a larger scale, and in the most efficient manner possible.

Aside from affiliates, we do very well with display ads, PPC, and on our thriving social media channels. As is the case with any merchant, our marketing channels complement each other, and work well to provide a useful mix in the online space. Because users see our banners and ads in such a diverse range of places, this helps significantly with brand awareness, which – as our affiliates well know – expresses itself through higher conversion rates.

All these elements combine to drive word of mouth and viral marketing – which is in turn catalysed by a sense of urgency stemming from the 24 hour model. News of deals spreads unbelievably quickly amongst friends, colleagues etc, and this is a huge component of our customer acquisition.

In a sector that’s recently seen a lot of new merchants utilise affiliate marketing why should affiliates make Groupon their group buying programme of choice?

The best advice is to be choosy who you work with. Ultimately, it boils down to whether the brand converts for you. We have generated very high conversion rates for our affiliates, simply because our products are so strongly discounted, and because they are the best available. We don’t run things that we don’t think will sell. Our pre-sales process is extremely selective, and with a different deal per city per day, the sheer variety of what’s available is deeply attractive for our affiliates. We have a higher turnaround of deals, whereas other group buying programmes may run their main deals over two or three days.

If you look not-so-carefully at the sales numbers displayed on our front end, you will note that our deals are always exceptionally popular, and that we tend to sell hundreds tend if not thousands more products on a daily basis than our nearest competitors. This, to my mind, is the big differentiator: the deal quality is always high, so the volume sold is always high.

For those affiliates who are not currently promoting your programme, what steps are you taking to more intelligently target new partners?

It’s all about segmentation. We are actively seeking out sites whose demographic fit our own. We have a very busy business development aspect to our programme, as a lot of our affiliates know. We only work with people who we think are suitable in terms of site traffic and demographic. You can be a small site operator and still earn good money with us as a result. We value the quality of the publisher as much as the volumes received, so we like to be as focused as possible when we set up new affiliate relationships.

For More information on the Groupon Affiliate Programme or to become an affiliate, click here.

For press enquiries please contact:
Lisa Chaikin
PR Manager, Affiliate Window
e: lisa.chaikin@affiliatewindow.com
t: 020 7553 0333

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Helen Southgate, Online Marketing Senior Manager from Sky has provided us with a guest blog post discussing how datafeeds are relevant and beneficial to their business, changing the way that customers purchase exclusively in the affiliate channel.

What have we done?

Why have we done this?

• – Allow customers to select a monthly fee first, filtering data to display the packages recommended in this price bracket; or
• – Allow customers to select a channel/programme they want to watch  thereby displaying all relevant package suggestions.

What are the opportunities for affiliates?

What is next?

What do we want now?

For further information or if you have any questions, please contact:

Helen Southgate
Online Marketing Senior Manager
helen.southgate@bskyb.com



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With a 2008 site re-launch providing a more fashion driven appearance and increased functionality, BeCheeky decided to employ a multi-network strategy. By launching an affiliate programme on Linkshare in 2009 they hoped to work with additional affiliate partners and engage a larger share of online shoppers. Within a short time it became evident that this approach did not provide BeCheeky with the uplift they had expected, and they elected to dissolve their contract.

Justine Wyness, Managing Director at BeCheeky comments; “Affiliate Window has been fantastically supportive in growing our affiliate program and re-building sales lost from switching networks. Their easy-to-use technology and clear reporting reduces the amount of time we spend on admin while allowing us to communicate much more effectively with our affiliates. Overall, besides being a lovely bunch to work with, our ROI from the channel is far superior to other networks we have worked with; making the decision to move back to Affiliate Window as sole network an easy one.”

Anthony Clements, Director of Client Services at Affiliate Window adds; “We are delighted that BeCheeky have decided to consolidate exclusively to Affiliate Window. This partnership will allow us to work more effectively to grow their campaign, and most importantly ensure it is delivering positive results in terms of both volume and ROI. Our aim moving forward will be to ensure BeCheeky’s affiliate strategy is implemented correctly on a day-to-day basis, helping to manage their current affiliate partners, while also introducing them to new content affiliates who will build the value of the programme.”

Since its inception five years ago, BeCheeky.com has expanded its site and range of sleek and stylish products to now include lingerie sets, bras, knickers, boyshorts, corsets, basques, bikinis and swimsuits ensuring there’s something suitable for all personal tastes and pocket sizes.

For press enquiries please contact:
Lisa Chaikin
PR Manager, Affiliate Window
e: lisa.chaikin@affiliatewindow.com
t: 020 7553 0333

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The day began in Theobalds Park with Gareth Davies (Vodafone Online Marketing Manager), Giuseppe Gravano (Vodafone Affiliate Marketing Manager) and Daniel Fernandes (Affiliate Window Account Manager) providing an insightful presentation.

The presentation gave Vodafone the chance to thank affiliates for their contribution to online this year, to share how the affiliate programme is progressing and to update on future strategy plans. It was also a great opportunity for Affiliate Window to introduce the team who work on the Vodafone account. Everyone was invited to ask questions and provide feedback.

Activities then commenced. Dividing the attendees into groups every team got the chance to try all activities, from archery and cross bow to blind driving (yes blind), clay shooting and quad biking. Not forgetting the bungee run (some of us still have the bruises to show for that one!)

Luckily the sun shone all day and the winning team was announced to the sound of cheers and the clinking of Pimms glasses. Jumping on a coach back to London the day carried on in true Vodafone style, with a cocktail making class followed by dinner and dancing.

So why do Vodafone hold an affiliate event every year?

“The Vodafone affiliate day is a chance for Vodafone to say thank you to their long term partners, to get the chance to meet new affiliates they’ve started working with and to establish new relationships – affiliates are one of the most crucial channels in Vodafone’s online business. Events like these are a great way to get everyone in the same place together, to celebrate the year’s successes and discuss the future’s objectives.” Gareth Davies – Online Marketing Manager

The day was a great success and we’d like to thank everyone that attended.

To view more photos from the day, click here.

Vodafone and Affiliate Window

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Additionally, a full podcast of the discussion is now available for free download or streaming (below) and is now available on iTunes.

We would like to thank all attendees for their interesting and thought-provoking contributions.

We look forward to planning another round table event in the future.

For more information please contact:
Lisa Chaikin
PR Manager, Digital Window
e: lisa.chaikin@digitalwindow.com
t: 020 7553 0333

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