With this year’s Black Friday and Cyber week now in the rear view, we spoke to our Account Management teams to see what learnings can be gleaned and applied to upcoming activity including Christmas campaigns. We were specifically looking for practical and tangible intelligence that our advertiser clients can put into action straight away.
Here’s what they told us…
Offer free delivery over peak days
Many of our clients experienced boosted numbers by offering to deliver goods at no charge for orders made over peak trading days. The most prominent example is that of a major global sports brand who experienced a monumental +162% YoY sales uplift that can be partially attributed to their offer of free delivery from Black Friday through to Cyber Monday.
A major global sports brand who experienced a monumental +162% YoY sales uplift that can be partially attributed to their offer of free delivery from Black Friday through to Cyber Monday
This could easily be applied to the run-up to final delivery days before Christmas to capitalise further on all those last-minute purchases.
Consider pushing online gift cards
Advertisers can offer free delivery and rapid delivery times but there will always be shoppers who leave it a little late when it comes to Christmas present buying. This makes online gift cards a popular and practical choice. From a brand perspective, e-gifts also extend the shopping period right up to Christmas itself.
In the past publishers have sometimes not been able to earn commission from gift card sales. However, due to the increase in their popularity and recently complexity over meeting up physically with family and friends, it is now normal for brands to pay out for this. This means that publishers can build gift cards into their campaigns and drive extra traffic to your site.
Pay attention to trending products
It’s essential that both advertisers and publishers are aware of what shoppers are looking for and buying at any time. Knowledge of this can help brands to offer competitive prices for key items, move trending items to prominent positions on their site and the sites of their publisher partners.
To highlight this, and inspire our network, we recently published an article showcasing examples of Google’s new Holiday 100 on Webgains. You can read it here. With millions of SKUs being sold by over 1,800 merchants, we have all trending products and similar alternatives available and publishers who are actively looking to promote them.
A simple update from advertiser to publisher around which of their products are currently selling well can be extremely effective. It may mean that the publisher can focus promotion on specific products and drive increased traffic and sales as a result. We’ve experienced this working a fair bit recently on Webgains. For example, a brand not known for selling slippers sent a top products update to all their publishers the week of Black Friday. This update resulted in several of their content partners shifting focus to promote their slippers on social media creating unprecedented sales.
This update resulted in several of their content partners shifting focus to promote their slippers on social media creating unprecedented sales
Use Webgains Smart Commissions
Webgains Smart Commissions functionality is always a useful tool but it is especially important for advertisers during peak trading periods. Allowing users to quickly and easily manage commission rates on any number of SKUs with specific publishers, this tool helps in two key ways: To drive attention to your affiliate programme and incentivises publishers to get involved, and to allow brands to smartly manage their margins and budgets.
We currently have advertisers finding success using Smart Commissions. Use cases with range from giving more focus to new products and higher margin items, to shifting overstock.
Harness the power of search
Articles from publishers like TechRadar and MoneySavingExpert with titles such as ‘Top Black Friday Deals’ rank highly in organic search and generate huge amounts of clicks and web traffic. There will be plenty of similarly titled articles around Christmas, so we certainly recommend advertisers to try and get their products featured wherever possible. A little research can pay big dividends as we build up to peak trading.
Activate closed group promotions
Closed group secret sales offer a fantastic platform for merchants to extend key sales periods of which there are plenty in Q4. Not only do they reward key customers but they can also provide an uptick in sales during quieter periods.
One Webgains client used this strategy recently with early access to their Black Friday sales for key workers via Blue Light Card and Network Digital. It performed incredibly well resulting in a 140% week-on-week increase in revenue from these affiliate partners. The client is already planning more of the same for upcoming key sales events.
It performed incredibly well resulting in a 140% week-on-week increase in revenue from these affiliate partners
Ensure product feeds are accurate
Much like around Black Friday, advertisers are likely to change product prices more regularly during the Christmas trading period due to the numerous sales, offers and promotions in play. Therefore, ensuring your product feeds up to date and accurate is especially important at the moment. Fortunately, Webgains’ Product Feeds functionality enables advertisers to set the exact time time that their feed is pulled each day to ensure that it stays up to date with regular price fluctuations. This will also drive traffic and help optimise conversion rates for your store.
Ensuring your product feeds up to date and accurate is especially important at the moment
If you want to learn more about product feeds and their use in affiliate marketing, you can read our recent explainer article here.
BRISTOL SMARTER CONNECTIONS
19.01.23
Are you signed up for our free affiliate event yet? If not, you can find out more and register here.
If you do join us, here are the 4 of the things you can expect from this free event:
- Meet top publishers in-person e.g. TopCashback, Groupon, Quidco, Klarna
- A series of insightful and inspiring short talks around harnessing the power of affiliates during the cost-of-living crisis
- Meet members of the Webgains team from multiple departments including your Account Managers
- Meet members of the Webgains team from multiple departments including your Account Managers