Scribbler Affiliate Program Case Study

The Client

Scribbler has been selling greeting cards for over 30 years and are well known for their great designs and edgy humour from the best independent card designers in the UK. They offer amazing personalised cards that you can customise by changing a name, adding a photo and putting a personal message inside.

Objectives

Scribbler’s affiliate program was launched and managed in house before we took it over in August 2012. Our objectives were to drive more traffic to their website, expand their digital foot print and ultimately generate more sales.

Strategy

We took over the program in August 2012, three months after it was launched in house. To build up a strong base of affiliates we carried out a big recruitment strategy to engage the cash back and voucher sites as well as long tail affiliates such as birthday and gift sites. In order to grown the program, we are constantly recruiting affiliates and send out regular communications to ensure affiliates have the correct and most up-to-date offers.

The introduction of retargeting affiliates to the program, has had a significant impact on sales. We also manage multi-channel promotions (in-store and online discounts), which are run through the voucher sites. When we took over the program, Scribbler were paying a flat commission fee for all sales. Managing new and existing customers is a key strategy for Scribbler’s affiliate program; reducing commission for existing customers allows them to offer higher headline commission figures for new customers, without altering the cost of the program. Consequently, driving sales from new customers is a key focus for our affiliates and we have seen significant results from this. We also manage a limited budget for the program, as AOV at Scribbler is fairly low, therefore we push tenancies and promotional packages during peak times in the year, in order to generate the biggest ROI.

Results

Affiliate marketing is a significant channel for Scribbler as the program makes up about 20% of their online revenue.

• Revenue increased through the channel by 286% in 2013 compared to 2012
• Revenue increased by a further 270% in 2014 compared to 2013
• So far this year, 45% of sales has been from new customers