The Touchpoints team recently visited the 'Awin Think Tank 2022', an affiliate marketing conference that's taken place in London.
What is affiliate marketing and what is AWIN?
Affiliate marketing is an arrangement in which a merchant promotes its product through an affiliate (external website, eg.' Groupon.com'). They pay a small commission to that affiliate based on sales or traffic generated from those referrals. Here at Touchpoints we offer affiliate marketing through AWIN. They are an affiliate marketing platform that connects merchants and affiliates from across the globe. Events like this allow us to further develop our knowledge and skills. Keeping up to date with developments in our industry.
Our experience:
At the conference, we had a chance to meet some of the affiliates such as SalesFire, RevLifts and Honey. It was a great chance to network, and find new affiliates and potential merchants. Think Tank day was filled with speaker sessions and seminars. Starting off with predictions/forecasts of shopping and customer behaviour trends. They explained the more frequent use of QR codes, moving from the city centre to the city outskirts, 'the doughnut effect' and even talking about metaverse. They were great discussion points and I soon after found out that metaverse is more present than we think. I spoke to a woman after the session, her son emerged in the Metavers and pays for his metaverse character's clothes!
This raises the question: Should the metaverse be something we look out for in the marketing industry? Although it isn’t currently popular, it may be a different story in the next 10 years. Should we be paying attention to the trends?
The second speaker session attended was on AWINs own future plans and developments. This was beneficial as it shown how to use the platform more efficiently. The third speaker session focused on post-pandemic trends in the travel industry. In reference to the presentation, international travel accounted for 57% of all bookings made YTD, 14% higher than last year. Additionally, travel and work have also been trending, with more people working from holiday locations; lines between 'business and leisure have blurred. However searches for ''business-friendly'' lodgings have increased to more than 65% between January and March. According to EasyJet's Report from Jan 2022, UK travel bookings increased by 200% after easing COVID -19 test restrictions. This is a big trend as people are making up for the time years in the pandemic and it's important to note in travel industry marketing.
The next session on retail, we heard about the lingering effects of the pandemic, increased cost of living and changes in consumer lifestyle. According to AWIN data, ''eco purchases are up by +63% YoY'', which shows us how important it is to be an eco-friendly, sustainable business. They mentioned how even a show like 'Love Island' has turned to sustainable clothing rather than fast fashion this year to build their image/ reputation among the viewers. One other trend post-pandemic has been the rise in online shopping but also the rise of AOV (Average Order Value), which has gone from 75.5 GBP in 2020 to 101.50 GBP in 2022. Consumers are now more likely to purchase a lot at once, rather than multiple times over the season.
Finally, we had a chance to listen to a masterclass. This focused on brand partnerships that also had guest speakers from MyProtein and SimplyCook. They informed us how they enhanced customer loyalty and reached new customers.
What the masterclass session explained:
- How to identify potential partner brands: we have to take into consideration the customer profile and essentially build a Venn diagram of gender, age, income, location, values and sector. Even if the brands share the same customer profiles that do not guarantee success.
- Different ways brands can promote each other include:'On-site' promotion, 'order confirmations', 'customer log-in', 'Email/CRM', 'Socials' and also 'Product Packaging'. For example, if a shoe company collaborates with a sock company, they could put a 10% discount code off another brand for every bought pair of shoes/socks. Thus raising brand awareness.