2019 Winners Archive

Strategic global focus, reach and support are just some of the USPs that make Rakuten Marketing one of the most sought-after marketing platforms around. The affiliate network allows advertisers to tap into a global ecosystem of publishers. Furthermore, managing director of international Anthony Capano has been spearheading the acceleration of Rakuten Marketing’s international footprint while supporting both advertisers and publishers looking to grow globally. Rapid growth in France and Germany, plus consistent double-digit growth in the UK has led to 31% year-on-year growth in gross merchant sales across Europe this year. These results are a testament to hard work, resilience and innovation, making them a worthy winner of this award.

One of the first-to-market brands to utilise influencers for brand marketing, The Hut Group (THG) noticed that there was a gap for measuring influencer performance in-line with performance marketing channels. With this in mind, they developed the “influence-ometer” – an attribution model able to forecast influencer ROI that could be customised to work on a local level for global clients. Not only has this led to closer relationships with key partners; it’s also helped to scale influencer outreach at pace while minimising spend risk. Along with THG’s omnichannel approach, the model facilitated influencer sales, which grew 100% year-on-year, with average monthly growth of active influences up 15% across the group.

By focusing on increasing the quality of visitors in international markets, Visit Norway converted more visitors to customers through high-quality partners by adding their offers and products natively in the stories and articles on the brand’s website. Working closely with TradeTracker for its 2019 campaign, the pair continued the growth from 2018, using native ads to find the right offers from the right partners, matching the content’s intention and goal. The campaign resulted in an amazing 88% increase in returned value per click for Visit Norway partners with the content now converting more visitors to customers by having raised the click to sales ratio by 70%.

HP’s technology enables people to ‘keep reinventing’ – a vision that carried through when Awin strengthened HP’s US affiliate program by establishing content marketing campaigns as a key segment. The overarching goal was to execute successful content partnerships as long-term marketing campaigns that enabled creators and media houses to succeed at driving last-click revenue and demand for HP’s store using performance marketing tactics. To achieve this, HP added 73 new content partners to the program and 11% of the total programme revenue was referred by content partnerships. The results spoke for themselves with 43% growth in revenue generated by the content partners in what was indeed an outstanding campaign.

Coming off the back of a record-breaking kit launch for the second year in a row and a thrilling run to the Champions League final, sales performance for Liverpool FC was already strong. Building on the club’s 2018/19 success in Q4 was no easy task, especially with purchasing habits changing before Christmas. Therefore, NMPi shifted its creative strategy to focus on the gift purchasing process. They developed interactive gift recommendation ads, which recommended a selection of products customers could consider purchasing. The campaign increased click-through rate by 54% and conversion rate by 18%, resulting in Christmas-driven revenue soaring by 12% year on year.

Uber Eats understood the range of market complexities of expanding its operations to South Korea and came to ForwardPMX with the ambition to dominate a potentially tasty market. With local knowledge that is second to none, strategic consumer planning processes and granular optimisation targeting individual districts, restaurant type and audience type, ForwardPMX helped Uber Eats create new market opportunities through Naver in an already saturated market. The partnership with Naver drove 600% more app downloads and 963% more first trips whilst pushing search volume for brand terms by more than 488% year-on-year. ForwardPMX achieved astounding results, enabling Uber Eats to become a strong competitor in the market.

Utilising a fully immersive experience to digitalise all consideration for its gifts, the MotherBot chatbot was the answer to quickly taking customers through the user journey, successfully creating an immersive online and offline experience. With this solution, Merkle | Periscopix and THE BODY SHOP were able to dominate the marketplace by capitalising on intent and captivating the audience in a creative way. The Motherbot engaged consumers by providing a solution – helping when choosing a personalised gift for someone they cared about in a quick and efficient way. Targeting customers at the optimum time meant users engaged with the brand 53% longer than expected, increasing the conversion value of offline sales by 147%.

The TEFL Academy challenged Merkle | Periscopix to investigate using different purchase intentions and reasoning within their creative content strategy, focusing on the motives for taking a TEFL course like travel and cultural impacts. Due to the scale of cultural reasoning, creative content and the global scale of trade, personalising content proved tricky. Pulling together Google’s new smart technology with a bespoke cultural and emotive ad solution allowed Merkle | Periscopix to execute a more personalised and culturally appropriate ad strategy. The strategy enabled 640 ads with 27,000 combinations to be tested in six months less time and saving 10 hours of build time. This improved the CTR of the paid media by 18% and conversion rate by 85%, beating last year’s target.

iProspect beat a three-month target for sign-ups to open a high-interest Marcus by Goldman Sachs savings account within just one week, with the CPA 56% below target. Marcus required a significant media strategy for both its product and brand launches. By appointing the agency to deliver its entire campaign, iProspect and Marcus crafted a multi-channel approach that innovatively reached the target mass-affluent UK audience and drove them to open an account. The launch campaign resulted in a 15% increase in generic searches for savings accounts by people in the UK, and media outlets credited Marcus for lifting UK banks out of a “savings slumber”, ultimately putting the UK consumer’s interest back into savings.

Smarter Click, Carphone Warehouse and Awin teamed up in Q4 with an objective to increase sales volumes and reduce abandonment through personalisation. Instead of building campaigns to incentivise the user, they instead focused on providing the user with a more personalised journey, and created a sense of urgency for time-limited offers. This was achieved by developing a bespoke overlay product (Smarter-Layers) that could be used across multiple devices to ensure users who displayed exit-intent remained engaged. The collaboration exceeded expectations in its performance with multiple campaigns delivering strong results. The campaigns allowed Carphone Warehouse to deliver increased sales for products and ranges that were a key trading priority at the end of 2018.

As the largest global affiliate marketing agency, Acceleration Partners has elevated its global offering for clients across the US, EMEA, LATAM and APAC in the last 12 months. The agency’s unique, broad and impartial view of the market has allowed them to look beyond the traditional affiliate landscape to explore new opportunities, processes, technologies and ideas. This has led to $2.6 billion in affiliate revenue under management for the agency’s client programmes as well as a 50% increase in clients managed by global teams. What’s more, the company was named a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice of Best Small and Medium-Sized Businesses to Work For in 2019 for the second year in a row.

In a country where only 20% of all purchases happen online, Philips worked with IMA to amplify the launch of its Heated Straightening Brush in Saudi Arabia – a country known for its restrictions when it comes to showing your hair as a woman. Together with IMA, Philips amplified the launch of this product through an influencer marketing campaign that increased awareness online and even in-store. The campaign had a total combined reach of 4.2 million – 323% above the original target. Women were even going into stores asking for “the product that straightens your hair in five minutes”, proving the message recall of the campaign was a huge success.

Working in tandem with MATCHESFASHION.COM, Rakuten Marketing’s regional teams in the UK, EU, the US, and APAC helped deliver one of the largest and most innovative global performance marketing programmes in luxury fashion, generating sales in over 160 countries. Both parties partnered with AMEX Korea to run an exclusive campaign with the aim to drive brand awareness, reach and sales in South Korea through a 15% statement credit incentive. Utilising the reach of AMEX Korea and Korean influencers, they gained new customers in new markets and generated an uplift of more than 156% compared to the previous campaign – a testament to the strong and unique collaboration across brand, publisher and network.

As one of the biggest global destinations in online luxury, MATCHESFASHION.COM called on Rakuten Marketing to deliver one of the most innovative global performance marketing programmes in luxury fashion. With the aim to drive brand awareness, reach and sales in South Korea, they partnered with AMEX Korea to reach more than six million affluent Korean consumers. Campaign performance was tracked via a combination of financial data from AMEX Korea, Rakuten Marketing’s affiliate links and MATCHESFASHION.COM’s attributed data. This unique collaboration across brand, publisher and network delivered a sales uplift of 156%, generated coverage across more than 3,000 blog forums, and saw a 66% increase in average order value in South Korea.

Utilising one of the highest-grossing video games of 2018 using audience reach, user insight and advanced geo-targeting technologies, vouchercloud and Awin were able to combine both traditional and online retail experiences to drive revenue for Currys PC World with the Red Dead Redemption 2 launch. By offering an exclusive promotion to users through a £10 off code delivered through location-specific push notifications, geo-targeting and geo-conquesting via the vouchercloud app, sales went through the roof by a staggering 414.5% while vouchercloud recorded a 10.5% conversion from push notifications sent to purchase made. This campaign surpassed all expectations during a high-traction release period for a popular game title.

It’s vital for retailers to capitalise on how their customers discover, research and evaluate products online – particularly for bricks and mortar stores. Considering this, ForwardPMX helped the Landmark Group with one of their flagship retailer brands, Homecentre, using advanced analytics to understand what online behaviours led to in-store purchases. The team then adjusted its search tactics and optimised ad spend in order to produce higher returns. ForwardPMX made the journey from online to offline as seamless as possible to get a true reflection of digital and in-store profits, increasing the brand’s revenue by 410% and enabling a return on ad spend of 230%.

Following the success of its work with the Canadian division of electronics giant HP, the US team appointed RevLifter to increase the sales of premium laptops and better target gamers and business users in the region. With HP accustomed to the rigmarole of aligning different activities, goals, networks and technologies, RevLifter’s task was to unify marketing data to share with the advertiser’s global teams. Steering its award-winning RevPage solution, RevLifter met HP’s objectives through a fully branded coupon hub adept at matching customers with personalised deals. After just three weeks, RevLifter hit double-digit increases in conversion rates and average order values in addition to becoming a top-ten affiliate for the brand in the US.

With the Brazil market expecting to generate $21.3 billion in e-commerce sales in 2019, Awin helped Carrefour increase brand awareness and drive more website traffic and sales during a historically low sales quarter. With Awin’s strategic oversight, Carrefour launched an influencer marketing campaign that used the platforms’ advanced tracking solutions, strategic planning, innovative campaign tactics, and influencer partnership opportunities to centralise its efforts on Instagram and Facebook and target a specific and emerging consumer type. As a result of these efforts, the campaign reached over 4.5 million impressions, yielding a 112% increase in revenue and a 76% rise in website traffic from the previous quarter.

Tasked with driving traffic and conversions from the Indian market, Optimise launched e-commerce site Samsung e-Store to deliver their products online through the app and mobile website. Optimise used its publisher base as a channel of market insight for the mobile brand. Having developed partnerships with brand high-value publishers, including the largest travel booking site, and introduced native articles, price comparison websites, loyalty reward publishers, phone review websites and cashback websites in addition to implementing intelligent targeting, they were able to attain Samsung’s desired reach. Delivering holistic growth by encompassing multiple channels, Optimise surpassed expectations; the affiliate channel now contributes 30% of all online sales for Samsung and has seen an impressive 127% year-on-year growth.

Building on the success of Swarovski’s long-lasting affiliate programme, Resolution Media and CJ Affiliate pushed the programme further through customised promotional motives to increase sales during an off-peak period. The key challenge was to push affiliate marketing to new revenue limits without channel conflicts and without harming the brand. With customised tracking, ad serving and reporting technology, which allows to manage a multi-network approach and all partners, this new promotion concept was successfully rolled out to both ROAS and year-on-year growth. It worked wonders; they beat revenue target by 248%, surpassed ROAS by 85% and saw the order value increase to 361% year-on-year.

With nearly 1,000 retail businesses having gone into administration between January and September 2018, both CJ Affiliate and Debenhams made a solid statement in not only overcoming the challenges and achieving the retailer’s targets in Q4 but also established a healthy affiliate programme that beat the high street odds. Feeding into goals like profit maximisation, new customer acquisition, automation and publisher diversity, CJ commissioned only what was profitable while automating manual processes to execute their objectives more efficiently. By the end of the campaign, both parties achieved 7% year-on-year revenue growth and reduced the cost of sales by 13% through innovation, automation and safer spend. In the face of much adversity, this was one of the best performances the programme had ever seen.

The affiliate marketing channel has been one of the leading marketing channels for retail brand home&you since 2015, with over 400 active publishers now promoting home&you offers online. Close relationships between the brand, publishers and TradeTracker have been imperative whilst being built on mutual trust and commitment. Fast forward to 2019 and by introducing real-time attribution and new partners to the CPS-based affiliate program, TradeTracker was able to help home&you to completely move away from last-click attribution to a fully customised model, achieving large advertising reach and increasing cooperation with influencers. The mature and established campaign beat all targets, reaching 39% year-on-year growth and 16.5 million impressions on premium placements within the CPS model, all whilst increasing influencer and blogger engagement by 179%.

Bringing together thousands of brands and publishers around the world, Admitad has created a unified marketing platform for advertisers and publishers looking to form and expand mutually beneficial relationships. Actively developing new marketing and e-commerce technologies to shape their united ecosystem, which hosts a number of key projects and skilled developers and account managers, Admitad continues to strengthen its long-lasting relations with partners. Within the last couple of years, Admitad has seen advertiser growth reach $3.4 billion in total across all GEOs as well as $10 million invested in CPA start-ups. This makes the platform one of the most ambitious and exciting CPA networks around.

Since the rebrand from Performance Horizon to Partnerize, the technology platform has been focusing on several technologies and enhancements that have since been “revolutionised” to support the partnerships within the performance marketing space. From its intelligent Partner Discovery, reimagined commissions suite and industry-leading mobile capabilities to its expansion of its anti-fraud capabilities to address the needs in all regions, and improved feature-rich UI for reporting and insights, Partnerize manages more than $6 billion in partner sales and $500 million in partner payments every year. Partnerize delivers data-driven intelligence and industry-leading management tools that are essential for dramatically improving ROI from this fast-growing sales channel.

Impact’s pioneering SaaS platform provides the efficiency that affiliate marketers expect while applying it into a much larger world of partnership management. Impact has made it possible for advertisers to manage and optimise their affiliate partners, influencer, mobile app, B2B partnerships and more, all on a single, global platform. As a company, Impact has been accelerating growth by scaling the full partnership lifecycle of discovery recruitment, onboarding, engagement and optimisation of all types of partnerships. For instance, Impact’s Partnership CloudTM provides automation for the partnership lifecycle; confident decision making and optimisation through measurement and attribution; and protection from fraud. Overall, Impact is leading the charge with its precise vision of overcoming the affiliate channel’s key challenges.

Rakuten Marketing has continued to share both its expertise and experience across all levels to drive the performance marketing industry forward. The global team continue to participate and speak at industry events including PI LIVE, Affiliate Huddle, DMEXCO and more. The team was also recognised by the industry at the 2018 IPMAs and 2019 PMAs, receiving highly competitive global awards for work with their clients. Rakuten Marketing has also maintained an impressive client retention rate of 95.5% for full-service clients while having a staff retention rate of 82.5%. This year, Rakuten Marketing invested heavily in technology to develop new innovative products with a focus on AI and programmatic to bring further efficiencies to the affiliate channel.