eFlorist grew their affiliate revenue by 40% after partnering with Google Affiliate Network

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on our blog.

eFlorist operates a robust network of 1,800 florists across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Consumers across the globe have an affinity for the Romsey, UK-based retailer, thanks to their e-commerce site and same-day delivery in 135 countries. With goals focused toward further capitalizing market position and affiliate program growth, eFlorist’s Marketing Manager Paul Isaia turned to Google Affiliate Network in 2012.

Paul had three key reasons in mind when transitioning the eFlorist affiliate program to Google. He wanted to grow affiliate-generated sales by 10% within one year, improve the quality of their publisher base, and leverage reporting insights to uncover new growth opportunities.

After first launching the eFlorist program with Google Affiliate Network, Paul noted that he "was very impressed with the reporting as well as the tools to recruit new affiliates." Paul focused on building publisher relationships, using the Recommendation engine to identify new affiliates, and partnering closely with the Google Affiliate Network team to make sure his program had a strong network of high-value publishers. Within a few months, eFlorist also began to use their Google Merchant Center product feed to scale their product catalog to affiliates.

While executing these initial measures, eFlorist started to see a notable sales impact in their program. Within six months, the results spoke for themselves: eFlorist’s affiliate channel revenue grew 40%, well above their initial 10% benchmark. In turn, affiliate marketing’s share of total online sales grew from 15% to 20%, satisfying Isaia and his team.

To learn more about Paul Isaia and eFlorist, read the full case study.

Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Executive

Beauty Encounter launches an affiliate program to achieve branding and direct response goals

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on our blog.

Beauty Encounter is a specialty retailer who has earned a reputation as a popular shopping destination for affordable beauty and fragrance products. Founded in 1999 and based in Fountain Valley, CA, they evolved from a family-run wholesaler to an online fragrance retailer. As their online business developed, they wanted to increase their brand exposure and reach new customers while trimming their cost per customer acquisition. They launched an affiliate program in June 2011 to achieve these goals.

For Chief Technology Officer Thu Truong and her team, affiliate marketing ended up playing a vital role in the growth of their e-commerce efforts. Not only have they acquired new customers at a desirable cost, but they have also expanded their online presence. Truong states that their affiliate program has “given us access to productive affiliates, which is like having tens to hundreds to thousands of marketers spread knowledge of our brand name to online shoppers who normally would not know about Beauty Encounter and what we have to offer.” Throughout the first months of launch, the Beauty Encounter team established a solid set of publishers to achieve their branding and direct response goals.

In addition to analyzing performance and recruiting new publishers, Beauty Encounter launched an incentive program to motivate their top publishers. Truong explains, “We offered higher commission rates and exclusive offers to affiliates with a strong track record of driving sales for us. The incentive program motivated our top publishers to increase exposure of our brand and promotions, and really allowed these partnerships to flourish.” In the end, the results spoke for themselves. After just five months, Beauty Encounter saw their affiliate conversion rate increase by over 7%, ultimately helping to boost their total online sales by 7% as well.

To learn more about Ms. Truong and the Beauty Encounter affiliate program, read the full case study.

Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager

ShopWiki.com grows 65% in Google Affiliate Network and expands internationally

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on the blog every few weeks.  When ShopWiki.com entered the online shopping space in 2005, they started with a simple idea: “make shopping better.” As a shopping search engine, they hoped to index everything that can be bought online and help consumers make the best purchase. With over 200,000 featured stores and domains in the US, UK, France, and Germany, ShopWiki has become a popular destination for online consumers. Their technology now crawls partner sites and organizes a wide selection of their products in one centralized place.
With global interests and ever-changing consumer needs, ShopWiki General Manager James Keating and his team search for efficient ways to scale their site and grow revenue. Since partnering with Google Affiliate Network in 2007, Keating has relied on detailed reporting and analytics to make informed decisions and drive strategy. As he explains, “Google Affiliate Network gives us rich insights into the best-converting products. We combine these insights with our own site data to automatically optimize yield for every page of our site.” As ShopWiki has grown, they have also added new advertisers and focused on strategic partnerships. Keating has kept an eye on new advertisers in Google Affiliate Network and joined their programs upon launch, building links and using the new content to better serve his site visitors. Through Google Affiliate Network’s user interface, Keating has found new relationships and tools to streamline these processes. He explains, “whenever a new advertiser joins, we are able to create and implement links right away and begin optimization from day one.” Guided by data insight and focused on new partnerships, ShopWiki has continued to grow as a publisher in Google Affiliate Network and a shopping destination on the web. In 2011, they grew their network revenue by 65% YoY, helping to spur international expansion outside of their home US market. To learn more about how James Keating and ShopWiki have established their affiliate business, check out their full case study. Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager

Offers.com utilizes technology and strong partnerships to increase sales by 36%

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’re pleased to share these stories with you on the blog every few weeks. 

Offers.com is an Austin-based publisher that aggregates and promotes deals from all over the web. In 2011, as they considered their annual goals, Offers.com Vice President Howard Schaffer worked with Google Affiliate Network to grow top line revenue and better align with advertisers’ brand goals.

Using Google Affiliate Network link subscriptions, product search, and product feed subscriptions, Howard and the Offers.com team culled the right information to provide their audience with the most compelling deals. Their proven results earned the Offers.com team the trust and confidence of a growing group of advertisers, assisting a number of them with their search strategy.

By coupling Google Affiliate Network technology with building strong partnerships, advertiser sales through Offers.com increased 36% YoY in 2011.

Learn more by reading the full case study.

Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager

Abt.com transitions to Google Affiliate Network and grows revenue 119%

Over the past few years, Google Affiliate Network has helped advertisers and publishers grow their businesses with the right mix of technology, service, and data insights. We’ll be sharing these stories on the blog over the coming weeks. 

Today, we turn the spotlight to Abt.com, an online electronics retailer based just north of Chicago in Glenview, IL. Since launching in 1998, Abt.com has climbed to #151 on Internet Retailer’s list of America's top retail websites. The Abt.com team came to Google Affiliate Network in 2008 with three objectives: to grow online sales, reach new customers, and expand their existing reach across top affiliate publishers.

Steve Tazic, Abt.com’s Director of eCommerce Marketing, transitioned the company’s affiliate program to Google Affiliate Network based on the platform’s ease of use, automation, robust quality controls and advanced reporting. With less time spent managing processes, Steve collaborated with his Google Affiliate Network account team to optimize key relationships and implement best practices. Just a few highlights include:

• Data-driven optimization: The Abt.com team used advanced reports to “reach out to publishers in different situations when numbers are good or bad to try and capitalize on opportunities. For example, we can easily pinpoint publishers who have dropped off in sales and know exactly who to contact to get them back on track.”
  
• Take advantage of platform efficiency: “The Google Affiliate Network platform automates processes for creating ads, pinpointing potential new affiliates and recognizing current affiliates that need attention, whether it be good or bad. One big time saver is that we were able to automate the reconciliation process which we used to do manually.”

“Since coming from our previous network, we have seen average monthly revenue increase 119%. We have better relationships with each publisher and feel it is easier to get our offers out to our publishers. The affiliate channel now represents 15% of our online business.” - Steve Tazic, Abt.com’s Director of eCommerce Marketing 

Learn more by reading the full case study.

Posted by Will Heidrich, Account Manager