If More Were Less - Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental
1. IF MORE WERE LESS – ENSURING YOUR
AFFILIATE SALES ARE TRULY
INCREMENTAL
Owen Hewitson
Client Strategist – Affiliate Window & buy.at
zanox Expert Day | Milan | 29.03.12.
2. AGENDA
• 1. WHAT IS ‘INCREMENTAL’?
• 2. CASHBACK
• 3. VOUCHER CODES
• 4. BEHAVIOURAL RE-TARGETING
• 5. SEARCH
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 2
3. 1. WHAT IS ‘INCREMENTAL’?
AFFILIATES EMAIL DISPLAY SEARCH SOCIAL
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 3
4. 1. WHAT IS ‘INCREMENTAL’?
IF AFFILIATES WERE REMOVED A PORTION OF
TOTAL ONLINE MARKETING SALES SHOULD
BE LOST
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 4
5. 1. WHAT IS ‘INCREMENTAL’?
BUT WHAT IF AFFILIATES WERE
REMOVED AND NO SALES WERE LOST?
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 5
6. 1. WHAT IS ‘INCREMENTAL’?
NEW VS VOLUME AVERAGE ORDER VALUE
EXISTING
CUSTOMERS FREQUENCY
CHURN UP-SELLING
DEMOGRAPHICS
PROFITABILITY
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 6
7. 1. WHAT IS ‘INCREMENTAL’?
INCENTIVE
CONTENT
BRAND
SEARCH
PRICE
COMPARISON
GENERIC
SEARCH
CROSS-CHANNEL REPORTING IS VITAL TO
UNDERSTANDING INCREMENTALITY
DE-DUPLICATION IS NOT AN ATTRIBUTION STRATEGY
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 7
8. 1. WHAT IS ‘INCREMENTAL’?
HOW MANY CHANNELS ARE AFFILIATES DE-DUPLICATED AGAINST?
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
All 6 5 4 3 2 1
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 8
9. 1. WHAT IS ‘INCREMENTAL’?
WHAT CHANNELS ARE DE-DUPLICATED AGAINST?
100 92%
90
80
70 63%
57%
60 46%
50
40 31%
30
15%
20
10
0
Display Paid Email Natural Social Mobile
Search Search
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 9
10. 2. CASHBACK
ARE CASHBACK CUSTOMERS LOW EARNERS WHO WILL NOT SHOP WITHOUT
REWARDS?
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 10
11. 2. CASHBACK
ARE CASHBACK MEMBERS EXISTING CUSTOMERS ALREADY?
100
90 Strongly
80 47% 49% 52% agree/Agree
70
60
50
40 37% Neither agree
40% nor disagree
30
41%
20
10
16% 11% 7%
0
It's more about I have found new I have used Strongly
cashback than the brands on cashback cashback sites to disagree/Disa
brand sites that I continue purchase from gree
to use brands I have never
considered before
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 11
12. 2. CASHBACK
DO CASHBACK SITES DISCOURAGE LOYALTY TO ADVERTISERS’ BRANDS?
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 12
13. 2. CASHBACK
DO CASHBACK SITES MISREPRESENT ADVERTISERS’ BRANDS?
CIRCULATION: 950,000/WEEK
COST: £10,500/ €12.000
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 13
14. 2. CASHBACK
DO CASHBACK SITES MISREPRESENT ADVERTISERS’ BRANDS?
PAGE VIEWS: 800K/WEEK
COST: £1000/€1.200/WEEK
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 14
15. 2. CASHBACK – CASE STUDY
FOR ONE CASHBACK SITE, 73% OF SALES INVOLVED NO OTHER AFFILIATE...
... AND NO OTHER CHANNEL!
AOV Avg for Type Avg AOV
Voucher Voucher Voucher Voucher Loyalty Loyalty Loyalty Loyalty Loyalty True
Code Code Code Code Content
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 15
16. 2. CASHBACK – CASE STUDY
AFFILIATES LAST CLICK -
AFFILIATE CHANNEL
ONLY TOUCHPOINT
31%
AFFILIATES LAST CLICK -
43% OTHER CHANNEL
TOUCHPOINT(S)
AFFILIATE ASSIST - NOT
LAST CLICK
NO AFFILIATE
19% TOUCHPOINT
7%
• 31% OF AFFILIATE SALES INVOLVED ONLY AFFILIATES
• 92% OF AFFILIATE SALES INVOLVED ONLY ONE TOUCHPOINT
• AFFILIATES LOSE OUT ON 7% OF SALES BUT ARE ASSISTED 19% OF THE
TIME
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 16
17. 3. VOUCHER CODES
• VOUCHER CODE SITES ARE NOT JUST FOR
VOUCHER CODES
• VOUCHER CODES ARE NOT JUST FOR VOUCHER
CODE SITES
• THE TYPE OF CODE IS KEY IN ENCOURAGING
INCREMENTAL SALES
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 17
18. 3. VOUCHER CODES
1. FREE DELIVERY CODES
2. ‘QUICK EXPIRE’ CODES
3. SITE ABANDONMENT CODES
4. STRETCH-AND-SAVE CODES
5. CODES FOR CUSTOMER TYPES
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 18
19. 3. VOUCHER CODES
GUARDING EXCLUSIVITY BY
TRACKING THE VOUCHER
CODE USED
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 19
20. 3. CASE STUDY: RED LETTER DAYS
● CODE BOX EITHER
HIDDEN OR DISPLAYED
BASED ON REFERRING
URL
● DEAL ID HAS TO BE
COMBINED WITH
AFFILIATE ID
● DISCOUNTED PRICE
ALREADY APPLIED ON
SITE
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental
21. 3. CASE STUDY: RED LETTER DAYS
GREATER CONTROL OVER
AUTHORISED USE OF CODES
REDUCES ABANDONMENT
WHEN USER SEES VOUCHER
CODE BOX
FAIRER TO AFFILIATES AS
COOKIES NOT OVERWRITTEN
CODES CAN BE OFFERED TO
NON-CODE SITES FROM THE
LONG TAIL
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental
22. 4. BEHAVIOURAL RE-TARGETING
1. WHERE ARE THE ADS APPEARING?
2. WHICH SALES ARE POST-CLICK AND WHICH ARE
POST-VIEW?
3. ARE ADS ABOVE THE FOLD?
4. ARE ADS FREQUENCY-CAPPED?
5. HOW MUCH TIME BETWEEN SITE ABANDONMENT
AND RE-TARGETING?
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 22
23. 4. BEHAVIOURAL RE-TARGETING – CASE
STUDY
NEW CUSTOMERS BY AFFILIATE
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 23
24. 4. BEHAVIOURAL RE-TARGETING – CASE
STUDY
POST-CLICK VS. POST-VIEW SALES
1600
1400
1200
1000
Post Click Sales
800
Post View Sales
600
400
200
0
September October November December
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 24
25. 5. SEARCH
1. BRAND PPC NOT INCREMENTAL
2. CAMPAIGNS BASED ON COMPETITOR PRESENCE
3. AND COVERAGE OF KEY TERMS
4. GENERIC BRAND NAMES ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT
5. BRAND + VOUCHER TERMS – WHO IS BETTER AT
CONVERTING TRAFFIC FOR THESE TERMS?
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 25
26. 5. SEARCH
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 26
27. 5. SEARCH
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 27
28. CONCLUDING REMARKS
1. ASSESS INCREMENTALITY IN CONTEXT OF CHANGING CONSUMER
HABITS
2. THERE IS NO ONE MEASURE OF INCREMENTALITY: LOOK BEYOND
VOLUME TO VALUE
3. LOOK AT CROSS-CHANNEL PATHS TO PURCHASE AND WHERE VALUE IS
ADDED – A SINGLE ATTRIBUTION MODEL DOES NOT WORK FOR ALL
PARTNERS
4. DEMAND INSIGHT INTO PUBLISHERS’ AUDIENCES OR MEMBER BASES
5. NOT ALL AFFILIATES WITH THE SAME METHOD OF PROMOTION ARE THE
SAME
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 28
29. THANK YOU
OWEN HEWITSON
CLIENT STRATEGIST
zanox Ltd | 100 Leman St. 3rd floor | London, E1 8EU
Telephone +44 (0)207 553 0342 | owen.hewitson@affiliatewindow.com | www.digitalwindow.com
twitter.com/owenhewitson
twitter.com/Awin_Strategy
Milano | 29.03.2012. | Owen Hewitson, Client Strategist, zanox | If More Were Less: Ensuring Your Affiliate Sales Are Truly Incremental 29
Editor's Notes
Opening remarks:Incrementality major issue in UK. Looking at how some publishers and advertisers in the UK have demonstrated incrementality with their publishers. What you can do, as publishers, to showcase yourself better to advertisers via zanox’s Marketplace.
Key question for advertisers is whether the sales they receive from affiliates would have been made anywayDifferent channels that contribute sales to the online marketing panettone
If you took affiliates away – if you closed your affiliate programme tomorrow – you should take away a slice of those sales
But what if you removed the affiliate channel and the sales stayed the same? This would tell you that sales from affiliates were not incremental.
Context of online shopping habits – rise of deal-conscious consumerA certain proportion of customers will have transacted on an advertiser’s site anywayThus need to assess incrementality on metrics of sales value rather than sales volume – what makes a sale valuable?
Questions of attribution go hand in hand with questions of incrementality.Attribution is about understanding the touch-points in the user’s click path and the most common click-paths or routes to conversion. This requires data rather than guess-work.De-duplication is not an attribution strategy. De-duping different channels doesn’t tell you anything about the part they play in the decision to purchase. Again, requires data not guess-work.
Affiliates losing out as much as they gain because advertisers de-dupe instead of attributing correctly. E.g., 92% de-dupe against paid search, which is rarely incremental.
Affiliates losing out as much as they gain because advertisers de-dupe instead of attributing correctly. E.g., 92% de-dupe against paid search, which is rarely incremental.Caveat to what follows – advertisers should not rely on categorisation too heavily; publishers should showcase how they cross different categories
At competitive times of year people shop around. Thus tactical as well as strategic partners to leverage customers’ loyalty.Quidco member demographics – almost half earn the equivalent of €60kA major high street department store profiled the types of customers that their major cashback, loyalty and reward affiliates referred over a given period. These sites produced an average number of new customers compared to their other affiliates, but those customers transacted more frequently and spent a considerable amount more than those from other affiliates.
52% of TopCashback’s members say that they have used cashback sites to purchase from a brand that they had never considered buying from before.49% say that they have found new brands on cashback sites that they continue to use.
Cashback sites by their nature trade on the loyalty of their members. The key thing for advertisers is to know who these members are so that they can target them much better.Example from an affiliate running corporate reward programmes.Offer deals solely to the employees of those companies.Means that they can guarantee that they are reaching a certain audience.
Cashback sites can also encourage brand awareness. Because they are only paid when the sale is made, the ‘branding’ element is free. And moreover, it is makes better sense economically than more traditional branding channels. Example compares print – Guardian newspaper in the UK. What one advertiser was quoted for inclusion on the front page of their weekend supplements.
Inclusion on the homepage of one of the UK’s leading cashback sites costs a lot less and reaches almost as many people, but more often, and being an online actor the cashback site knows much more about their users’ shopping habits.
For one cashback site, 73% of sales involved not only no other affiliate, but no other channel. So absolutely incremental.This advertiser found that not a single affiliate site was the same as another when it came to their number of assists, the amount of sales they were helped out in versus those that they were helping. This means that the same attribution model is not going to work for everyone. So an attribution model is for reporting/analysis, not payment.The lesson here is that you have to look at affiliates – indeed, all actors referring you sales – differently.
By looking at data we can prove:Incremental Sales31% of affiliate sales involved only affiliates as a touch point92% of affiliate sales involve only one affiliate touch pointIn other words, for over a third of their sales in this particular category they can say that they wouldn’t get them if they didn’t have the affiliate channel. This immediately answers the incrementality question.
Voucher code sites are not just for voucher codes – repositories for deals, etc. As with Cashback, consumers want to feel they are getting a good deal rather than money offVoucher codes are not just for voucher code sites – can be offered to any kind of site. Advertisers may want to offer exclusive codes to sites demonstrating best results (AOVs, Churn, high profit products, new customers, etc).Types of codes used are key in encouraging incremental sales – have to be used tactically – blanket codes are untargeted and often de-value the brand
Free delivery codes: 61% of US consumers will cancel purchase if not included; AOVs 30% higher with free deliveryQuick expire codes: too often codes last Mon-Fri, 1st-31stSite abandonment codes: via email re-marketersStretch and Save codes: to increase AOVFor particular types of customers: e.g., new vs existing
Exclusivity can be guarded through the use of voucher code trackingReported back as a separate field in the infromation collected by our network at the point of sale.This is a screengrab showing that advertisers can commission on sales from affiliates made using codes that were not authorised for them.Prevents codes going viral.
Technological solution put in place by the advertiser.Represents best example of industry-leading best practice in the voucher code market in the UK
Allows for increased flexibility in the use of codes
1. Because a) blind network and b) competition in auction-based environment with display provider2. Important to de-prioritise cookie; perhaps pay different commissions3. comScore recently published research showing that 31% of display ads are never even seen. Paying on CPC as a solution4. For user experience and because PV cookie dropped each time. 5. Cookie dropped on impression so potentially no intent and customer may have returned anyway (insert graph showing lag time)
The BRT provider is out-performing all other affiliate types on the number of new customers, for every month in this study...
However the proportion of sales that are generated through post-click sales are very minimal.Could be that advertiser wants to treat the campaign with a BRT as hybrid branding/acquisition campaign, however.
UK market grew up around affiliates doing paid search, arbitrating between the cost per click paid to Google and the commission on CPA received back from the advertiser.Different sense to incrementality – admission that brand paid search does not produce incremental sales in the traditional sense as most customers are returning through a brand search ad or know that they want to shop at the brand. Affiliate contribution to the sale as paid search affiliate is minimal.But have to look at the practicalities of the search space.
Brand as generic term – the search space for ‘lowcostholidays’ (the brand name) is clear, with only LowCostHoliday’s ad displaying. But on the generic term ‘low cost holidays’ there is a lot of competitor activity. It is clear that if competitors are bidding on this term that a certain proportion of sales that were intended for LCH will be going to competitors. Therefore there is the opportunity for affiliates to get involved in this space.Incremental not in the sense that they are bringing them new customers, but in the sense that they are taking them away from their competitors.
Advertisers may wish to look at giving special rights to use brand + voucher code terms to voucher code sites. Whilst the incremental value of doing so may appear limited, as noted above advertisers should acknowledge that a certain proportion of search queries will be on brand + voucher code terms and thus should ask the question: who would be better to convert that traffic: the brand’s site or the voucher code affiliate’s? An affiliate would be able to build an optimised landing page reducing points of leakage to competitors and mirroring the branding and messaging provided on the advertiser’s site but nonetheless tailored to those searching for a good deal.
Assessincrementality in the context of changing consumer habits – do not assume that just because a customer has bought with you before that they will do so again. Seasonal competitiveness a big factor.