Affiliate marketing – make it personal
I love to pick up a bargain and often my first touch point after finding a product to purchase online, is a discount site (affiliate site). If you are not familiar with affiliate marketing it is a marketing practise where a business rewards one or more affiliates for their marketing efforts that deliver sales.
Essentially, this means that if an affiliate drives a customer to the merchant’s site and the customer makes a purchase, the affiliate is rewarded (usually as a percentage of the sales revenue).
There are four core players involved in affiliate marketing – the merchant (also known as the retailer), the network (contains affiliate sites, merchants, and deals with payment terms), the publisher (also known as the affiliate) and the customer.
Each affiliate site uses different means to drive sales:
- Cashback sites – rewards customers for a sale by means of cashback e.g. Quidco
- Voucher code sites – provide customers with product/service discounts e.g. MyVoucherCodes
- Comparison shopping – helps the customer find the lowest price e.g. Kelkoo
- Search – utilise PPC e.g.Click Angel
- Email – send out newsletters to a targeted database Freemax Media
- Blogs – often focus on a niche area e.g. boutique fashion
The UK affiliate market is currently a £42 billion a year industry (Econsultancy Internet Statistics Compendium 2011) which looks set to grow even bigger as major affiliate sites increase their marketing spend (has anyone seen Quidco advertising on the tube?).
However, I think the affiliate area is lacking in one particular area and this is providing a personalised experience to users. It would be great to visit a site such as My Voucher Codes and be targeted with personalised offers based on my previous browsing/shopping experiences.
Currently out of the major cash back and voucher code sites in the UK, only Quidco are offering any sign of personalised content. The site has a small ‘recommended for you tab’ when a user is logged into their account.
One of the main reasons that sites are not offering customers personalised offers is that often the user does not have to be logged in to their account to redeem an offer. This makes personalising the customer experience difficult as the site will have limited customer data available.
For too long now affiliate sites have been taking the easy option of filling their sites with a high volume of offers with little thought to the requirements of the customer.
I would like to see sites taking a proactive approach; users should be required to login to an affiliate site so that the products they see are targeted to their interests. Not only will this make the user experience more engaging, it will improve conversion rates and maybe even aid in the discovery of new products and services.
The digital world in January
Wow January went fast, welcome again to a monthly overview of the key digital media stories that you may have missed.
Why are pirates called pirates? Because they argh
The SOPA bill was opposed in force by major US websites including Wikipedia, Google, CraigsList, Reddit, and Mozilla. US visitors to the Google site on the 18th of Jan were greeted with a blacked out Google logo.
Wikipedia which usually receives 100 million unique visits a day displayed the following message:-“imagine a world without free knowledge”.
So what is SOPA? SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. It’s a proposed bill that aims to crack down on copyright infringement, by restricting access to sites that host pirated content. SOPA’s main targets are rogue overseas sites such as Pirate Bay. The bills goal is to cut off pirate sites U.S traffic by obliging US search engines, ad networks and even hosting networks to withhold their services.
Kim DotCom
Recent US piracy focus has been on Kim Dot Com and Mega Uploads illegal video streaming empire. If you haven’t read up on Kim Dot Com I would recommend this article. If Kim DotCom is convicted of hosting illegal content he could face up to 50 years in prison.
The Social Media Juggernaut+
Google released a master plan for integrating Google+ in Google search. Google has strap lined the search update “Google + Your World”. Starting 10th January, Google+ members were able to search the broader web and integrate their own social graph. To put this simply this will mean that Google+ circles, photos, posts and more will be integrated into search.
However, delivering information that is shared even if it only between a small group of people, could raise privacy issues. To counteract this, Google search across your world only works if you are signed in to Google+ and searching on Google’s secure search.
Facebook IPO
As Facebook prepared for an IPO of its stock which values the business at $100 billion, a number of Facebook staff are in line to be become overnight millionaires. One graffiti artist David Choe took shares in the company instead of cash for painting the interior of the first ever Facebook HQ and he could see his 0.25% share in the business worth $200 million when the company floats. See the full story here
#SuperBowl & social media command centre
The Super Bowl host city Indianapolis, has concocted a new way to deal with the madness that comes with managing the world’s biggest annual event. The solution is the first-ever social media command centre – a team of techies, analysts and strategists will monitor the online social buzz from a 2,800 square foot space. The social media team will also be tasked with answering thousands of queries through Facebook and Twitter
The last few weeks in the office have been filled with the chatter of ‘Pinterest’. So what is Pinterest and why are we excited about it? The best way that I can describe Pinterest is when you are browsing online and see something that you don’t want to forget, you can ‘pin it’. This will save it to your virtual pin board which is a creative board of your interests. Pinterest’s goal is to connect everyone in the world through ‘things’ they find interesting.
Sky to offer BBC iPlayer
Up to five million Sky customers will be able to catch up on BBC programs later this year when iPlayer is made available on the Sky Anytime+ service. However, what Sky didn’t mention is that Sky Anytime+ is only available for customers that have both Sky and a Sky Broadband package.
Finally every month we like to highlight an interesting campaign.
This month we wanted to showcase Cancer Research UK’s SunSmart campaign – “R UV Ugly”. The aim of the campaign was to educate young people about the dangers of using Sunbeds. Users can opt in through Facebook to receive a free voucher for a skin scan worth £25. Anyone that opts in is encouraged to share the campaign with friends. What is interesting about the campaign is that it has received a 50% share rate through mobile.
Until next month……
I must use Google+. I must use Google+. I must use Google+. I must use Google+.
At the start of 2012 the majority of people I asked about their New Year’s resolutions came back with the usual responses ”go to the gym more”, “drink less booze”, “cut out chocolate” etc etc. However I am pretty confident that my two personal resolutions for the year are pretty unique:- 1. By the end of the year to be able to ‘do’ the splits. 2. Increase my use of Google+. As this is a digital blog I’ll choose to focus on my second resolution in more depth…
I signed up to Google+ last year during the invitation-only phase and admittedly didn’t return too often in 2011 with the key reason being that I did not understand what I would get out of it. The two main social platforms in my life are Facebook and Twitter and they both have a separate use in my life; Facebook is used to connect and share with my friends and family with Twitter being used to keep up to date with people/topics/companies I find interesting. The question is how will Google+ add to and enrich my social experiences online? The only way to find out is to use it more which is what I have been doing since the start of the year.
My immediate thoughts are that the platform feels more visual with a key emphasis on users connecting with one another through photos and ‘hangouts’. To get a feel for the platform I have been adding people I know (which is predominately people from within the industry) along with brands and celebrities I find interesting. I believe that the success of Google+ in the future will stem from their focus on the latter – celebrities. Using high profile names will push the platform into the mainstream subconcious and allow Google+ to move beyond just the so-called early adopter members. It already has David Beckham and Lady Gaga using the platform which are two people who are arguably at the top of their profession and will only make more people aware of it. Larry Page announced earlier this month that Google+ has 90 million users which is double what they had three months ago. However the question remains how many of these users are engaging daily or weekly (for which a definitive figure was not provided).
So after my first full month of using the platform, I am still confused as to how it will enrich my social experiences online. Ultimately the success of the platform will be driven by the people who join and nobody I know from outside the digital industry is a member making it hard for me to comment on what my Google+ account adds to my life. In its current state it is something that I am using in conjunction with other social platforms and it is allowing me to connect with people within the digital world alongside other people I am interested in. My experiences will change as others share more on Google+ so I’ll be sure to share my thoughts as they evolve!
If you want to add me to your Google+ circle then feel free to do so…
The digital world in November
Christmas has started in the Navigate Digital office with the commencement of Christmas tunes, the opening of advent calendars and the embellishing of the office with Christmas decorations. As we reach December it is time again for our monthly digital overview.
eBay opens physical store in London – the online auction site will be opening its first physical shop in the UK for five days this December. The shop, situated on Dean Street, will not feature traditional tills instead savvy shoppers will be encouraged to pay for products with their smartphones.
The store opened on the 1st of December and showcased 200 of the websites best-selling items. To make a purchase users need to scan a QR code using their smart phone, the code then takes the user to the payment section of the eBay mobile site where they can complete their purchase.
Online newspapers see record traffic – The Mail Online, Guardian and Telegraph saw record site traffic last month. With the Mail Online being the most visited newspaper site – attracting a record number of monthly and daily users.
Britain to have best broadband in Europe by 2015 – Britain is currently on target to meet the government’s ambition for the majority of Brits to have access to superfast broadband by 2015.
It is still estimated that in the UK 8.7 million adults have never used the internet.
Brands launch profiles on Google+ – Burberry, Angry Birds and Mumsnet became some of the first brands to set up a company profile on Google+ at the start of November.
Users of the social network (which now amounts to over 40 million) will now be able to add brands to their circles and recommend them to friends.
Finally every month we like to highlight an advertising campaign that interests us – seeing as Christmas is around the corner we wanted to focus on the John Lewis Christmas advert.
The online ad made its debut on YouTube and Facebook on November 11th before being shown during the ad break of the X-Factor on November 12th. The initial launch of the ad made an instant impact on Twitter, with various celebrities tweeting their approval. Furthermore the success of the ad extended online to video streaming site YouTube with the video now recording 3.2 million views.
John Lewis has spent around £6 million on its Christmas advertising campaign, which includes online, TV ads, print and social media projects.
For the few that haven’t seen the advert here is a link –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSLOnR1s74o
Until next month…