Understanding the local flavour and uniqueness of India’s e-commerce opportunity, however, is critical to success. CJ Affiliate has had a front-row seat on this growth from its Bangalore office, the home base for its publisher development team focused on publisher growth in the APAC markets. Based on our firsthand learnings, below are the top five things to understand about the market and supporting strategies to be successful in this continually growing market. 

1. Indian shoppers prefer shopping “in app” and are fans of cross-border shopping

Massive government programs such as “Digital India” are transforming India’s cash-based economy to a paperless one, and the country’s digital population has evolved to be some of the world’s most engaged online buyers. When they shop, Indians prefer the experience and convenience of retailer branded apps — 94% of Indians prefer using apps over websites to make purchases online. This digital-forward culture has also embraced shopping from overseas retailers, primarily from brands in the US, China and Australia. Cross-border shopping by Indian shoppers is estimated to reach $2B USD in 2020. 

Affiliate Strategies for Success: Connecting with Indian shoppers means reaching them on their mobile phones and converting them requires easy digital payments. Work closely with review or content sites to educate consumers about the value of your brand and ensure you have the necessary global payment methods and mobile capabilities to streamline checkout.

2. Retail events during the religious festival season are gaining traction with online shoppers

Autumn is the biggest online shopping season in India because retailers have grown the number of promotional events they host during the Fall religious festivals: Diwali, Dussehra, and Navratri. The Big Billion Sale usually held in October by the Walmart-owned Flipcart company is one of the biggest events, rivalling Amazon’s Prime Day in sales volume and shopper interest. The Big Billion Sale has become an important sales event for sellers of mobile phones and electronics and India’s price conscious shoppers approach the event with a keen interest in getting a great deal. 

Affiliate Strategies for Success: Create customized offers for shopping events. Indian consumers are looking for special deals and savings during Holiday season and shopping events. 

3. Content publishers are a fast-growing publisher model

Similar to what we’ve seen in the UK and US markets, large media sites in India have started to use affiliate offers to monetize their content. Reaching many millions of readers, the digital newspapers and television sites launching content monetization models are currently gaining momentum faster in India than any other market. 

Affiliate Strategies for Success: For advertisers to fully take part in the vast reach into digital audiences of India’s content sites, they have to bring a deep commitment to working closely with the publisher. We’ve found content publishers in India are most inclined to work with advertisers who help them sell the partnership within their companies by collaborating on pitches and informational meetings. Advertisers should also be prepared to offer hybrid compensation models

4. Affiliate network compliance education and monitoring is key

Affiliates in India often have a different understanding of network compliance then western networks do.  For example, it may be acceptable for a local advertiser from a network compliance perspective to promote offers through direct linking and iframes. For many global brands this isn’t business as usual and such practices have inevitably given some brands pause on launching in India.  

Affiliate Strategies for Success: It is important to establish transparent and clear guidelines up front when working with local India-based affiliates. Introducing network compliance rules and practices have become a part of early (and ongoing) education and training that CJ Affiliate provides to both publishers and advertisers we work with in India.    

5. Publisher scale, transparency, and trust are key—but local connections seal the deal

Forging scalable partnerships based on trust continues to be an essential ingredient to making affiliate marketing successful in India. But at the end of the day, the local connection seals the deal. This emphasizes the importance of having a local publisher’s development team available to take calls and meetings to build relationships and trust. 

Affiliate Strategies for Success: What makes India unique is not only the digital market but also the size of affiliate partner opportunity. It is essential to create processes for recruitment and onboarding that can scale by delivering self-help tools for affiliates and giving them access to relevant offers. It is equally important to build the human connection and forge a partnership. 

With 240 million potential consumers to reach, it is clear that now is a great time to start testing the affiliate waters in India. With these strategies, brands are sure to be off to a good start in this booming market. 

The post Five Trends That Are Shaping Affiliate Marketing Opportunities in India appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Not long ago, it was a straightforward process for companies to go global. They picked the countries that showed high ecommerce potential—the options were limited—and they put a team on the ground. This took long planning periods and high up-front investments. Many companies shied away and gave a few brave ones the upper hand, including marketplaces that recognised international growth opportunities.

Today, we are in an ever-evolving, fast-paced environment, with new market dynamics, competition, and faster connectivity.  A new breed of digital consumer is growing quickly: the global cross-border shopper. This is good news for companies that are looking for additional growth. But just how big is this global opportunity? 

Accenture and AliResearch predict that the global business to consumer (B2C) cross-border ecommerce market will balloon in size from $230 billion in 2014 to $1 trillion in 2020. More than 900 million consumers, 45% of all online shoppers, will purchase products internationally on the web by 2020. 

From a market perspective, according to eMarketer 60% of all ecommerce is coming from APAC, with China playing the dominant role along with fast-growing markets such as India. Australia also adapted to cross-border shoppers early on. A 2018 PayPal cross-border study revealed that 54% of shoppers located in Australia have bought from overseas. The Americas, Europe and the Middle East are also strong contenders. 

Your business has likely seen international transactions coming from digital cross-border shoppers. CJ Affiliate network data shows that 96% of all advertisers show transactions from global shoppers. This low-hanging fruit is ripe for global opportunity. So, exactly who is the cross-border shopper?

Cross-border shoppers…shop outside their borders

Contrary to local shoppers who only shop in the market in which they live, cross-border shoppers make purchases in countries/regions outside of their core market. They value authentic products and are price sensitive. Cross-border shoppers are savvy enough to manoeuvre through non-localised sites and will accept shipping delays and/or find ways (e.g. freight forwarders or shopping concierges) to get their products shipped to them. They are also known global shopping events, such as Black Friday and Singles’ Day (Hint: Start planning now for these key Q4 shopping events!) 

In a study done by Pitney Bowes, they found that on average, retailers who were investing in cross-border shoppers saw that these shoppers had a 17% higher AOV. They were more profitable compared to their domestic shoppers, as return rates from cross-border shoppers tend to drop as well. Ultimately, these cross-border shoppers drive incremental growth to brands. 

With this new shopping persona, there is an opportunity all around the globe to get started to expand your business worldwide without high upfront costs. New digital payment options and solution providers make it more convenient to set up shop worldwide. In addition, cross-border order fulfilment service providers and innovative affiliates are making it much easier for advertisers to get started with international expansions compared to just a couple of years ago.

With all this global potential with cross-border shoppers, here are a few tips to help to get you started. 

Find out how global you are today

Use data and geo-location analytics to find out where your website/app visitors, customers/members are currently located. There are free tools such as SimilarWeb’s browser extension that can give you a high-level overview of the top countries coming to your website/app. 

Collaborate with partners also looking to expand

As you are thinking of expanding globally, so are your partners and service providers. Reach out to your partners and approach it from a collaborative point of view. No one has all the answers and/or tools, so this will help create a coherent win-win strategy for everyone.  

Understand the specific considerations that apply to your business

Depending on whether you are an advertiser, publisher, or network/agency/solution provider, there are different considerations. But first, one crucial consideration for EVERYONE looking to go global: Make sure you are globally privacy compliant, including target markets outside your country. In addition:

Advertisers:

• Track all global consumer transactions through an affiliate program.
• Have a clear understanding of your international order/shipping/return policies.
• Determine your global/local consumer focus: cross-border, local, or both.
• Find out what products/services have converted best in a given country.
• Work with other internal departments (finance, shipping, legal, etc) to ensure legitimate international orders are not cancelled by default, and that you have global shipping capabilities and/or can work with freight forwarders.

Publishers:

• Track the global distribution of your audience and take any expansion plans into consideration.
• Understand how your digital consumers interact within the countries/regions that you focus on. What is unique about their shopping behaviours? 
• Determine the type of advertisers and offers that best convert with your local and/or cross-border audience. Then, run campaigns to introduce new advertiser products to those global audiences. 

 
Affiliate Network/Agencies/Solution Providers:

• Determine your countries/regions of focus. 
• Understand any new trends in these countries/regions.  
• Know the top 50 advertisers and publishers for each of these countries/regions.
• Decide the advertiser and publisher verticals focus on.
• Learn the affiliate verticals that work best in your target countries/regions.
• Understand the current affiliate landscape in each market. 
• Create a plan for localisation, affiliate payout, and other areas of support. 
• Secure proper program management and data science capabilities to create a customised global/country launch plan.
• Enable network compliance for compliant traffic and transactions.

This list may seem daunting, but it is critical to understand the opportunity for your business and market nuances. Affiliate marketers need to remain agile in order to keep up with today’s new breed of digital consumers and the fast pace of global connectivity. If this is part of your toolset, you and your company are ready to take affiliate worldwide. 

The post Taking Affiliate Worldwide: Top Tips for Global Program Success appeared first on PerformanceIN.

It’s an exciting time for publishers everywhere. Accelerated global connectivity makes it easier than ever to reach consumers all around the world, as evidenced by the nearly 20% year-over-year revenue growth publishers are seeing across 20 of the largest countries. Whether you are a Japanese publisher looking to enter the U.S., or a UK publisher looking to expand into Asia Pacific (APAC) markets, there are a number of ways to become successful internationally without a large monetary or technical investment.

Here are five tips to becoming a successful global affiliate publisher:

1. Define the cross-border opportunity

The best way to identify new global and local opportunities is two-fold. First, examine the growth trends in cross-border e-commerce. According to Forrester, cross-border e-commerce will reach $627 billion by 2022, making up 22% of all online commerce. Second, examine the geographical make up of your existing audience; you may see a growing audience base from specific regions or countries. If the organic growth areas in cross-border e-commerce happen to overlap with one or more of your existing geographical audiences, you can focus on monetizing this traffic more quickly and effectively.

Even if the data doesn’t overlap, both perspectives will give you a better sense of how to define your cross-border opportunity. There are popular digital research firms that offer growth trend insights; and if your internal analytics do not segment by geographic regions/countries, there are also free services which provide a quick snapshot of where traffic is coming from.

2. Get to know local consumers to find relevant advertisers

One of the most important things to understand with global expansion is the local consumer. Learning their browsing, shopping and overall online habits is key to understanding the right approach and positioning. For example, Chinese consumers are often sophisticated cross-border shoppers who understand how to maneuver shipping and language barriers, as they tend to be interested in global brands and are just as likely to use mobile as much as desktops or laptops to make purchases. In adddition to promoting strategically aligned brand names, any Chinese expansion plans should include WeChat, the China-based messaging app with more than a billion global users. By maintaining a curated brand presence on this popular platform, a publisher can become a trusted voice and gain traffic. Additionally, Singles’ Day, which drove $17.8 billion in sales (up from $14.4 billion the prior year) in 2016, is a major holiday for Chinese consumers.

In countries like Japan, where consumers prefer a highly localized shopping experience, publishers should promote advertisers who offer localized sites and forms of payment. For example, a publisher may look to promote a large denim manufacturer who has several outposts in Japan and because of that, localization is flexible and offers the customary payment forms unique to that area.  . In this instance, partnering with an advertiser who’s savvy in the Japanese market, and shares their knowledge (your success is their success after all), can make all the difference in engaging Japanese consumers.

3. Investigate country/region-specific advertisement and privacy law disclosures

Businesses often underestimate how deeply they need to understand local online regulations, privacy laws and disclosure requirements. Do your research on what your company needs to disclose and the standard practices to follow in new markets. As a general rule, it’s all about disclosure and transparency around how the data captured through your site and social media activity is used. For example, with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going into effect on May 18th, 2018, publishers expanding in the EU need to familiarize themselves with the new privacy laws.

4. Test the waters

The transactional nature of affiliate marketing makes it an excellent channel to experiment and test opportunities in new territories without a heavy investment upfront. Publishers can sign up with an affiliate network or directly with an advertiser. Test the concept, evaluate and fine-tune. For example, a publisher could partner with a few global and local brands that are relevant in a particular test market, like a global fashion retailer that is gaining populariy in that region. Then, if there’s an opportunity for growth in a given region, examine what worked and what didn’t with smaller tests, and apply those at a larger scale.

5. Scale your global expansion plans

After testing what works in new global markets, putting KPIs in place, and navigating challenges, it is time to scale and focus on monetization. Remember, affiliate networks and advertisers are also seeking global expansion and have a vested interest in publishers’ success. As a result, many publishers will find value in partnering with a platform that offers full functionality, support, relationship facilitation and scale.  

Your action plan in summary

• Understand online growth trends and your existing audience from a geographical perspective to define the markets and consumers you want to attract.
• Educate yourself on local shopping behavior and cross-border shoppers.
• Ensure that you have country-specific privacy law disclosures in place.
• Start small, test, and evaluate.
• Scale to monetize.

Affiliate marketing has drastically evolved since its inception, but capitalizing on technological innovations and digital trends has always been and always will be part of its DNA. Global expansion is a more complex approach, but with the right strategy and tools in place, it is a vast opportunity for publishers.

The post Affiliate Marketing: How Can Publishers Increase Global Growth? appeared first on PerformanceIN.