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.