The Challenge
When the retailer enlisted JEBCommerce to help them raise the benchmark for its affiliate results, we approached the challenge with a proven process in hand.
Our client is a well-known outdoor and gear multi-channel retailer with two distinct brands. The retailer has stores all over the Northeast and Midwest, in addition to robust catalog and online channels. Its brands cater to the adventurer and the farm, ranch and construction worker.
Our client recognized that to succeed in its marketplace, it needed to generate consistent growth through its affiliate channel. We’re not talking about users who are looking for a deal after they decide to order and already have items in their cart. Our client was seeking consistent, measurable growth that they could count on each and every month.
When the retailer enlisted JEBCommerce to help them raise the benchmark for its affiliate results, we approached the challenge with a proven process in hand.
The Process
JEBCommerce is a process-focused company—so much so that it’s one of our core values. Simply put, systems drive us, day in and day out.
In a digital marketing landscape that’s constantly evolving and ever exciting, processes are often viewed as the antithesis of innovation. But that’s not how we see it. Processes and systems allow us to be efficient, operate with more freedom and unlock the bandwidth for a higher level of strategy. Processes are the cornerstone of craftsmanship, a springboard for innovation and fuel for creativity—the kind that produces replicable results.
At JEBCommerce, we’ve honed and refined our merchandising process into a proven tool for driving growth. We use this process to identify products that different categories of affiliates—and even individual affiliates—need and that their audiences desire. We scour our clients’ sites for those items and then connect the affiliate with those golden opportunities.
Processes are the cornerstone of craftsmanship, a springboard for innovation and fuel for creativity.
To help our outdoor and gear client drive consistent affiliate sales, we started by analyzing its three-month promotion and production calendar. Working hand-in-hand with our client, we determined which of its products and promotions would last long enough for the affiliates to take full advantage of them—regardless of whether they were site-wide or specific product-focused deals. Once we identified those opportunities, we compared our client’s prices and promotions with those offered by other retailers. The goal? Determine which ones were “best of web.”
We have many ways of determining what’s “best of web.” During our process, we scrape both competitive and affiliate sites to see what’s in demand and what the prices are for those items. We cross-reference that data in Google Shopping to ensure “best of web” price tags. We ensure that our clients have enough product in stock to be attractive to both the consumer and the affiliate. After using this system to identify our client’s “best of web” deals and products, our team looks to see if any current coupons or offers stack on top of the items we have chosen to share with the affiliate.
What’s the result of all that scouring, refining, analyzing and stacking? A hand-curated list of products and promotions that we’re confident will do really well with our affiliates. In the case of our outdoors and gear brand, our list was geared specifically toward some of our top “best of web” affiliates: Slick Deals, Brad’s Deals and Hip2Save.com.
We sent our curated deals to the brand’s affiliate along with any stackable promotions. Then came the fun part: analyzing the results of our merchandising process.
The Process
This merchandising process delivered big for our outdoors and gear brand. In a one-week period, we helped our client achieve a number of increases over the previous period.
- Slick Deals Brand #1
- 6,000% increase in revenue
- 9,767% increase in clicks
- 8000% increase in orders
- Slick Deals Brand #2
- 768% increase in revenue
- 22,095% increase in traffic
- 2,281% increase in orders
- Brad’s Deals Brand #2
- 7,650% increase in revenue
- 12,457% increase in traffic
- 1520% increase in orders
- Hip2Save.com Brand #2
- 4,309% increase in revenue
- 330,200% increase in traffic
- 8400% increase in orders
The Bottom Line
In the often-elusive search for “crazy” ways to innovate and increase sales, too many marketers overlook the fundamentals.
In the often-elusive search for “crazy” ways to innovate and increase sales, too many marketers overlook the fundamentals. While not as sexy as “out of the box” thinking, a process-driven approach provides a structure that ensures brands execute fundamental and foundational revenue-producing activities consistently.
In the case of our outdoors and gear retailer, process-driven merchandising delivered
exponential growth and new customer acquisition—not once, but each and every month. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of our merchandising process’ ability to yield consistent, exponential growth. If that’s not “sexy,” we don’t know what is.
