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