Post on 28-Nov-2014
description
Do Incentive Sites Drive
Incremental Value?
Mark Ash, Commercial Director- TMN (Mutual Points)
David McDermott, Affiliate Manager-Mindshare
David Harding, Customer Acquisitions Manager- Argos
Daniel Powel, Head of Account Management- Commission Junction
Chris Hodgson, Co-Founder-KidStart
Mads Ellengaard, Co-Founder, aGoodCause.com
Price
• Best Price
• Search, Voucher code, Price Comparison
• Result: Purchase behaviour is ‘rational’
Value
• Price + Emotional component
What motivates users to use
incentive sites?
• Price + Emotional component
• Earn points towards something emotional
• Special offers and discounts
• Belong to community, getting ‘information’
• Giving to charity, supporting causes
Result: Purchase behaviour becomes ‘irrational’ since it is associated with emotion
1. Visit our website and install the AidMaker software
2. Shop at the same prices as everyone else. (in more than 5000 online shops e.g. Dell).
3. Your shopping makes donations for a charity of your choice (e.g. Save the Children).
Emotional and personal incentives through AidMaker and aGoodCauseEmotional and personal incentives through AidMaker and aGoodCause
What motivates merchants to use
incentive sites?
• Access to a new customer base
• Growing consumer awareness and adoption
• Being where you competitors are
• Easy entrance into new markets for smaller brands• Easy entrance into new markets for smaller brands
• The economic climate: Lower COS
• US market
• Potential increases average order value
• Potential increases in average transaction frequency
• The flexibility in CPA
What is incremental value?
In quantitative terms:
• Driving new customer sales
• Increasing CLV of existing customers
• Increasing AOV
Untracked:
• Driving awareness and adding value to the brand....
Measuring the incremental value of
incentive publishers?• Assessing the new customer benefit
• The sales benefit cannibalisation vs incrementality
• Comparing channel measurement
• Incrementality over time
• Assessing the incrementality of varying activities
• Impact on Average order value• Impact on Average order value
• Impact on transaction frequency/loyalty
• The customer journey
How do incentive sites add value?
• Access to a large community of brand-affable shoppers whose
loyalty to their incentive site is passed on to the merchant.
• Generating groups of highly influential, vocal brand champions.
Perfect viral marketers
• Providing advertising responsive customers eager to hear about
the latest products/offers. Cross/Upsell & Lapsed conversion the latest products/offers. Cross/Upsell & Lapsed conversion
enhanced by incentive sites
• Generating tactical exposure as and when required
• Influencing the initial product comparison process and helping to
close the sale
• By offering the perfect remedy to an economic crisis
How can we demonstrate It?
Quantitative
• Analysing network tracked sales data – only one piece of the puzzle
• Working with incentive site to analyse site member purchase
behaviour• File-aging, Recency/Frequency, New vs. Existing , Creative Response behavioural
analysis.
• Combine data with other online/offline datasets to get 360 degree • Combine data with other online/offline datasets to get 360 degree overview of affiliate effectiveness
Qualitative
• Site traffic analysis
• Focus Groups
• Consumer blogs/Forums feedback
Monitoring traffic value
“The farther backward you can look, the
farther forward you are likely to see.”
Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill
Monitoring traffic valueIs the ‘last
click wins’ method fair?
What is the
value of an
influencer?
How do you
determine
How can I
measure the
route to
purchase?
Will I be
duplicatingdeterminean influencer?
duplicatingmy budget?
Emotional
incentive
No
incentive
Emotional and personal incentives Through
AidMaker and aGoodCause
1000 visitors
Conversion rate 2% Conversion rate 6,7 %Conversion rate 2% Conversion rate 6,7 %
20 sales of 50 Pounds 67 sales of 50 Pounds
1000 Pounds 3550 Pounds
Better Traffic Understanding?
• Industry needs to consider additional tracking mechanisms and alternative ways to assess affiliate value
• More robust and transparent forms of research into what drives a sale is required
• Deeper network level analysis of user journeys
• Test your affiliate mix. Bear in mind the breadth of different types of • Test your affiliate mix. Bear in mind the breadth of different types of incentive sites and how to use them for different marketing strategies
• Steer away from reliance on Last Cookie Wins and focus towards other more equitable forms of sales attribution
• Purely online problem!
Designing Incremental Traffic
• Make sure you have the right mix of incentive publishers
• Target demographics to match products
• Hit different incentive “verticals”
– Commercial? (cashback)
– Community? (rewards, competitions, single merchant)– Community? (rewards, competitions, single merchant)
– Ethically (charity, causes)
– Product
• Help the affiliate provide a good user experience!
– Resolve queries
– Special offers
Case Study: The Argos approach
to measuring incrementality• Recruited a select number of incentive based publishers
• Close communication to devise a launch plan and ongoing promotional calendar
• Launched a limited 6 month incrementality trial assessing:
– Incrementality at the outset and how that evolves over time
– Incremental value of various promotional activities– Incremental value of various promotional activities
– Compare incrementality with that of other affiliate business models
– Comparing cross-channel incrementality
– AOV benefit of incentive based affiliates
– ATF benefit of incentive based affiliates
• Conclude and devise the most profitable and incremental future strategy for the Argos
Conclusion
• The right offer for the right audience!
• The right mix of incentive sites can you give
broader coverage without overlap
• Proper analytics can help you understand • Proper analytics can help you understand
exactly how incremental the traffic is
• Incentive sites do bring greater reach for your
brand
• Incentive sites are a cost efficient way to drive
incremental sales.