On the opening day of the Affiliate Summit West conference (#ASW19), LinkConnector’s Co-President, Choots Humphries, moderated the panel discussion, Coupon Affiliates Speak Out About Incremental Value. The room was packed with attendees; a testament to the strong interest and chance to learn from three Coupon affiliate experts.
On the panel were representatives from three industry-leading coupon affiliates, Jacob Huang of Slickdeals, Jasmine McCoy of Coupons.com, and Paul Snyder of Offers.com.
The cardinal question the panel tackled: Can coupon affiliates add value to a merchant’s Affiliate Marketing program? The panel shared insights and strategies as to why and how the answer is a resounding YES. Beyond success stories and challenges, the panelists also explained how merchant brands could empower their coupon affiliates with data and tools to better reach a brand’s Performance Marketing goals.
Here are just a few of the topics discussed with wisdom shared from each influential panelist.
CH: Describe the value proposition representative of Coupon Affiliates.
JM: Coupon affiliates earn the trust of users. Consumers seek out the best deal or coupon offer; they often don’t trust that the merchant’s deal is the best attainable.
PS: User experience is enhanced through the cost-savings gained from storefront pages on Coupon sites resulting in a happy customer for the merchant.
JH: The forums available to users of Slickdeals enables users to engage others and help to highlight what they have found to be the best coupon offer.
CH: What is a key data element that empowers your company to drive incremental growth?
JH: Attribution data; Slickdeals.net wants to know where we fall in the purchase funnel.
PS: If a merchant values new users, share that data within the transaction reporting. Offers.com can be a better partner to you with more data.
JM: Coupons.com values when merchants share ad copy and offers that have proven effective; they will then add that into the Coupons.com content.
CH: Fill in the blank; I wish more merchants would provide________.
JM: More details and data. For example, rather than communicating that our performance is down; share with us specifically where it’s down so we can better optimize against what is important to the merchant.
PS: Merchant goals. Offers.com will work harder to achieve maximum performance in accordance with merchant goals. Are you seeking a higher AOV, more orders from a certain promo? Tell us what is important to you.
JH: Nimbleness. Slickdeals constantly receives feedback from our members which may merit consideration of a different type of promotion by the merchant (single use coupon codes as an example). We value when a merchant takes that feedback to heart and adjusts their offerings.
The panel concluded with a glimpse into one exciting development on the horizon with each of these companies in 2019. Choots spoke of LinkConnector’s newest technology, Infinity Codes which allows the creation and deployment of an infinite number of coupon codes giving affiliates the ability to create unique codes to positively affect conversion. Check out these developments being unveiled this year from the panelists:
JM: Coupons.com will soon be offering cash-back to our users.
PS: Offers.com will be combining in real-time what we know and what the merchant partner can share which will empower us to customize user content in an effort to boost performance.
JH: Slickdeals will be placing greater emphasis on paid content and diving in to how to grow our B2C partners, current and new ones.
For merchant success in the coupon vertical, cooperation is necessary. The panelists underlined that we are in a relationship industry. It is critical for networks to work with their affiliates to proactively set up meetings with their merchant partners to illustrate the path to incremental value. Affiliate Summit is an ideal venue to connect with and meet members of the industry.
This session is a must watch when the ASW19 videos are released!
Are you a merchant brand seeking a partnership with any of these three exceptional Coupon partners? Or, an affiliate interested in the ability to have an infinite number of Coupon codes at your disposal for optimization? LinkConnector wants to help you. Leave us a comment or contact us at [email protected].
Photo credit for our blog pictures goes to Affiliate Summit.