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The last 18 months has seen some business struggle whilst others have boomed. Affiliate Future, one of the UK’s premier affiliate networks, has seen phenomenal success with B2C online drinks retailers during this time.
Affiliate Future clients such as Master of Malt, Beer52, DryDrinker, VIP Bottles, The Whisky Shop, Coast Beer, Corkk, honest brew and Cotswolds Distillery have all seen some great results.
“Across the network we have seen excellent performance across all of our online drinks retailers,” said Affiliate Future’s commercial director, Joanna Turner. “In peak months, we were seeing up to 450% more sales. Even when lockdown was eased and we could once again go out, the performance has remained strong.”
- What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a sound option when looking to expand a business’s reach, even in troubling times. A performance-based pricing model means clients only pay when a sale is generated, thus keeping customer acquisition costs down. By only paying for sales, affiliate marketing allows brands to expertly scale whilst optimizing their return.
Affiliate Future has also seen the trend of traditional offline retailers with an online presence discovering the use of affiliate marketing to seize lost offline traffic, creating clever campaigns to target traditionally offline customers to purchase online.
- What clients have to say?
Stephon Anthony for Master of Malt discusses his experience of running a successful affiliate marketing campaign.
What challenges have you had to overcome due to COVID-19?
We not only provide our services/goods to customers/public as a retailer but also have B2B customers. During the lockdowns that have been brought upon us in the UK, we’ve had one of our biggest hits on B2B. The hospitality sector suffered tremendously – we had to make sure we catered for our B2B customers even during the pandemic and also think of ways to help the sector and our customers in these desperate times. For example, we began using our own labs to distil (for zero profit) hand sanitiser for the NHS and public.
How has affiliate marketing helped drive success during this period?
Affiliate marketing was a huge help (and still is). With lots of people on furlough and having more time behind screens, we saw an opportunity to deliver more suitable and convenient products across our website and echo this to our partners.
We also made sure to take special care in helping the public with a variety of promotional offers, live tasting streams, donating GBP1 for every order to the hospitality sector and increasing incentives to extend the longevity of our campaigns.
How important is affiliate marketing to your overall online strategy?
It’s by far one of the most flexible and beneficial channels in our overall strategy. The business model is advantageous to an advertiser because it’s risk-free and commercially viable. We only pay when a sale has been generated.
How effective is affiliate marketing in recruiting new customers?
It’s an exceptionally beneficial channel to have in our marketing mix. It’s opened up plenty of opportunities for us to tap into a broad-spectrum of demographics. For example, in the last 30 days, we’ve seen a 73% increase in new users. We’re confident we’ll see a positive conversion rate.
How has Affiliate Future supported you in hitting your targets?
Affiliate Future has helped to maintain great communication between client services and ourselves, helping us mirror opportunities from affiliates they have on their network to run parallel with campaigns we created in-house.
The reporting functionalities they provide along with their client services team are a tremendous benefit. It all goes hand-in-hand to support our affiliate marketing mix.
Why did you choose Affiliate Future as your network?
They’ve been our most competitive affiliate network to date. Affiliate Future understand how to manage and handle client expectations.
I’m also comfortable with the significant support we receive with any impediments we face when it revolves around tech. They always find a solution for any fixes we may have.
To find out what affiliate marketing and Affiliate Future can offer your company, click here.
