Everyone in retail and eCommerce knows Black Friday is the ‘Superbowl” of shopping.
It’s important to have all performance marketing channels prepared and ready to go for this massive shopping day and the official kickoff of the holiday shopping weekend. However, in the rare case your brand wants to launch this weekend? You are brave, and at Blue Moon Digital, you are in good hands!
Online shopping pulled in a record $7.2 billion on Black Friday 2019, according to Salesforce, which tracks online spending. That’s a 14% growth over the last year. On Thanksgiving, digital sales in the U.S. rose 17% to $4.1 billion and 65% of all digital orders came through a smartphone.
“This indicates that shoppers are ready to transition toward a mobile-only reality and that mobile is becoming the driver for multichannel and multi-touchpoint engagements,” Salesforce said in their holiday news release.
Customers are savvier than ever and many rely on publishers and shopping aggregators to “Round Up” deals for them. Shopping sites like Rakuten, Honey and Retailmenot do the majority of the heavy lifting for customers—digging deals across all shipping verticals and bringing to their audience all in one place! So, how can your brand be featured on these sites and pay on a CPA model?
First, selecting an affiliate network is the primary step and will enable your brand to select the partners or “publishers” that will promote your brand. Once that is done, you can send out your offers and promotions in a very streamlined and efficient way, allowing you to mass message all your partners so their editors have access to your brand’s deals and can link to your brand.
Grande Cosmetics, established in 2008, joined forces with Blue Moon Digital in November 2019 after their Shopify migration to optimize their affiliate channel in time for the holiday. Blue Moon Digital launched their affiliate program the week of Black Friday 2019, after which we saw the following statistics:
- Revenue from Black Friday to Cyber Monday increased 136% YoY
- Traffic increased 20% YoY
- Click active publishers increased 13% YoY
Grande Cosmetics wanted to grow their eCommerce platform and have more control over their brand. In the past year, together we have achieved the following milestones:
- Revenue increase 172% CY to date, YoY
- Traffic increased 19% CY to date, YoY
- Key publishers added: rewardStyle, Rakuten, Cartera Commerce, Magiclinks
“Optimizing our affiliate channel has been instrumental to our success. Prior to November 2019, our affiliate channel was underperforming and was not a prime marketing channel for our site. Through smart management and a focus on content creation vs. discounts, we have successfully grown affiliates as one of our top four marketing channels,” Lisa Dominish, eCommerce Director, Grande Cosmetics.
Grande Cosmetics has done all the right things to prepare for this year’s Black Friday, and under the current shopping restrictions of COVID-19, the online shopping channel will undoubtedly see the largest online shopping period ever.
