Cost per click on Facebook and Google ads dominate the digital marketing landscape. With tracking technology you only pay for ad spend once you’ve converted a customer.
Facebook and Google ads dominate the digital marketing landscape. Paying in clicks can entirely consume your marketing budget, especially when trying to reach new audiences. On the other hand driving the right traffic to your website and converting it to paying customers is a science in itself. Customers are now more connected and empowered than ever. In the new world sales and marketing only get you so far. Partnerships are an emerging growth strategy that are possible through pixel tracking and cookies can.
Tracking pixels are useful for tracking user behavior, site conversions, acquiring data for online marketing, web analysis and email marketing. They’re also useful for driving sales as sales can be attributed with this technology to individual customers, therefore you only pay once a sale has been generated. So how do you enable tracking technology? Platforms such as Impact Radius, Partnerize, Pepperjam and Rakuten offer tracking software as a service to enable modern referral-based partnerships. These partnerships can be strategic B2B partnerships, social influencers, publishers (for example purchasing tenancy on websites or eDM placements) or affiliate partners such as coupon or comparison sites. Pixel tracking can be done in different ways to set up attribution for all of these different types of partnerships – the possibilities aren’t limited with this technology.
Pixel tracking works through tracking links. Links are placed behind a button or image online. When they’re clicked by a customer, a pixel fires and a cookie drops onto their browser. It doesn’t matter if they make a purchase on that day or weeks later, the sale can still be tracked and attributed.
Example attribution model
Pixel tracking driving traffic through publisher sites can be complex with mature partnerships. Below is an example of tracking links in action on the Rakuten marketplace. Net-a-Porter is partnering with Rakuten to drive their sales. This is a mature partnership program and the Rakuten eCommerce platform is sophisticated.
Rakuten marketplace
Net-a-Porter are both advertising on the Rakuten marketplace and tracking their sales through Rakuten’s pixel tracking capabilities. In the above screenshot there are many strategies in play. Rakuten has their own marketplace supply of brands and they run their own referral program to build their demand – their customer base. This is an interesting example as Net-a-porter are a marketplace themselves, however are advertising on the Rakuten marketplace which they’d be paying for through a cost per acquisition partnership. This is an example of horizontal marketing – although Net-a-Porter are their own marketplace they are partnering with Rakuten to widen their audience to Rakuten’s.
It’s possible to achieve traffic in the 1000’s through online platforms that have tracking and campaign optimization capabilities. Achieving scale doesn’t happen overnight, however data indicates that it’s best to keep publishing partners to a select handful in order to achieve the best sales.
So who should you partner with? This depends on the audience that you’re trying to reach and your brand positioning. We took a look at the top performing affiliate and publisher sites for Australian brands right now:
Examples of affiliate and publisher sites
- Honey: A browser extension that’s activated on eCommerce sites. Its’ technology is making waves in eCommerce and businesses sales strategies. Once the extension is installed, users click on it to access all coupon codes available to shop with on any site.
- Qantas: The Qantas online mall seeks premium brands to partner with. This is a website with a well qualified Australian audience.
- Shopback: A Singapore-based e-commerce business that entered the Australian market in 2018 and now claims 8 million users. They have a similar audience to other cashback sites. As well as a website they offer subscribers a mobile app to enhance their shopping experience.
- StudentBeans: A UK student discount platform which launched in Australia in 2018. If you’re wanting to access the student market, partnering with student sites should be considered.
- Dealmoon: The Asian market in Australia is significant. Using publishers who have a pre-existing Asian audience such as Dealmoon can assist you to tap in.
- Cashrewards: Shopback’s biggest competitor in Australia. This cashback site ranked #41 in Deloitte’s Tech Fast 50 this year.
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