Presentation from TFM&A by James Little / AffiliateFuture in March 2011.
Includes case study from travel site Sunshine.co.uk on how Affiliates helped them generate £17m Revenue in their second year of business.
Standing out from the Crowd. How to make your affiliate campaign stand out in a competitive marketplace
1. Standing Out from the CrowdHow to make your affiliate campaign stand out in a competitive marketplace.James LittleClient Services Directorwww.affiliatefuture.co.uk
4. Spend past 6 years working in Affiliate Marketing during which time have experienced working for client, agency and network
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6. AffiliateFuture Performance 300,000 website publishers 900 advertisers 83 million clicks per year 5 million transactions per year £160 million sales per year for merchants £10 million per year commission paid to affiliates
12. Case Study How Sunshine.co.uk stood out from the crowd and generated £17m Revenue in a year
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14. Specialised in offering low-cost dynamically packages holidays"The big idea behind sunshine was a simple one. If low-cost airlines can work, so can a low-cost travel agent."
15. The Objectives To establish and build brand awareness of recently launched sunshine.co.uk To attract and secure 400 business-generating affiliates within six months of launch To achieve 10,000 unique visitors in the first month of launch To establish and grow consumer confidence in sunshine.co.uk To generate 10 sales per day within three months of launch To achieve 3.5% conversion rate within three months of launch Sunshine.co.uk’s overriding strategy was to be the best resourced travel merchant for affiliates in the UK.
16. The Launch Launched with very competitive 7% commission rate Launched with incentive to win Macbook Air (recently launched) just by placing a link on Affiliate site or promoting the programme on affiliate blog Created dedicated resource center at www.sunshine.co.uk/affiliates/ with Blog, Live chat, RSS offer feeds and search boxes
17. The Incentives Send total of 12 Affiliates to Barbados as part of AffiliateFuture network incentive over 2 years Launched a “fam trip” incentive where the two winners were sent to Orlando/Fuerteventura Given away two Macbook Airs Given away tickets to industry events such as A4U Awards/Expo
18. Sunpress sunshine.co.uk + Wordpress= sunPress Launched at A4UExpo 2008 Aimed at non-travel affiliates or domain based affiliates Allows creative of a travel site in minutes Integrates with sunshine.co.uk XLM API Helped new travel affiliates earn thousands in revenue each month
19. Conversion rates Worked with Conversion Rate Experts on Split testing landing pages, in-depth analytics, usability testing and customer surveys Made changes to the site that almost doubled the conversion rate – helping affiliates earn even more from their clicks
20. Communication Affiliate Blog with all the latest news Live chat with via bespoke Affiliate Site Regular Newsletters to Affiliates Available on MSN, phone or email, even out of hours Frequent posts & guest articles on industry forums such as Affiliates4u.com
21. Initial Results To achieve 10,000 unique visitors in the first month of launch To achieve 3.5% conversion rate within three months of launch To attract and secure 400 business-generating affiliates within six months of launch To generate 10 sales per day within three months of launch In the second month of business, sunshine.co.uk attracted 29,032 unique visitors In the fourth month of business sunshine.co.uk achieved a conversion rate of 4.6% Within five months: 444 Affiliates Sold 1,470 holidays 452,477 Unique Visitors Generated over £700,000 in revenue
23. The Awards? IMA Affiliate Marketing Award Winner 2008 Highly Commended in 2008 eConsultancy awards Winners of Affiliate Manager of the Year a4uawards 2008 & 2009 Finalist in TravolutionPioneers category 2009 awards Best Travel Agency site at Travelmole Web Awards 2010 Nominated for 2010 Travel Agency Achievement Awards
24. Their Affiliates “I use sunshine.co.uk because they offer the best commision rate in the industry, their site converts very well and they are very switched on with regards to affiliate marketing as a whole” Frank Paul, Lollipop.co.uk “sunshine.co.uk are the only site I’ve put on my portfolio of travel domains. Without them I would not have entered the travel industry and now it’s one of my biggest verticals” GulshanBaryah – Various Domains “sunshine.co.uk are the perfect fit for my site – their prices are virtually unbeatable and the service I get from them as an affiliate is second to none” Owner – Magaluf.co.uk
Communicating with affiliatesVirtual sales forceCreating landing pages to remove phone numbers and increase online converison rates.Offer real support & help (think content)
You may have seen Chris Brown in a recent episode of The Secret Millionaire
Macbook air very sought after
Over 1,000 holidays & £1m revenue sold per month in peak periods via Affiliate Channel alone
IMA Award – up against TalkTalk and ???? – only non-established brand to win an award that night