As we kick off 2020, never has the customer journey been more important than it is right now. The cornerstone of a successful business today hinges on making the customer experience easier and better at every stage of the purchasing funnel. We have so much data at our fingertips to tell us what consumers like to search for, what time of day do they like to browse, which devices do they use most, and what drives the final purchasing decision. 

Understanding this customer journey and being able to track shopping behaviour across all touchpoints – from web and in-app to email and digital campaigns – is extremely powerful in helping businesses get this engagement right. Combining these insights with 2nd and 3rd party data can also help identify patterns that can inform future strategy and create a more personalised, complete overall user experience.   

Where are we with personalisation?

Marketers have consistently agreed that personalisation helps drive better and more trusted customer relationships – in fact, a recent survey from Evergage shows this to be as high as 98%. This, in turn, generates measurable ROI, which is not something that has traditionally been easy for marketers – and perhaps why 50% of Evergage survey respondents rated it a top motivating factor for implementing personalisation strategies within their organisation. Yet, despite this, and even with all of this data at our disposal, we still see personalisation making merely guest appearances along the customer journey, rather than being applied to every stage of the process – from initial research to available offers and eventually ‘buy it now’. 

The affiliate marketing industry is entirely guilty of this. While digital marketing behemoths like Amazon, Google and Facebook have invested in personalisation to understand their customers better, the affiliate industry has seriously lagged behind. Case in point, Amazon estimates that it drives 35% of revenues through personalised product recommendations. That is extremely high, but not surprising given that the same Evergage survey showed that 85% of respondents said that their customers have now come to expect a personalised experience.

Yet, commerce content makes it easy to reach and engage with consumers in a relevant and mutually beneficial way by customising campaigns based on previous engagements and shopping behaviours. So why have we not seen the level of personalisation we know the industry is capable of incorporating into the entire funnel? 

Commerce content and the customer journey

Promotions and deals have long been favoured both by consumers, especially those that are savvy by nature and always on the bargain hunt, and advertisers alike, who credit them with being able to more quickly and efficiently convert visitors to paying customers. Digital couponing, voucher codes, and discount offers may not be the sexiest terms in the industry; however, the truth is these powerful platforms generate meaningful revenue opportunities. They allow brands to capitalise on the latest tech to pursue targeted strategies and extend reach outside of their own shops and sites and onto partner platforms. 

Take companies like Pouch, for example – this innovative browser extension tool alerts buyers to voucher codes and specific offers when they visit certain e-commerce websites in the UK so that consumers have a one-stop-shop when it comes to shopping and finding the best discounts available online. What’s more, PayPal’s recent acquisition of Honey further demonstrates how browser extensions can be a critical step in the customer journey, and how success lies solely in making the shopping experience easier and better for consumers at every stage of the journey.

Alas, I am getting ahead of myself though because, though this powerful technology is indeed critical to business today, it is not what will ultimately drive personalisation at each stage of the purchase funnel today. Personalisation is rather about putting the customer first – it is about customer-centricity. If you do not understand what motivates and excites your audience, you will undoubtedly fall at the first hurdle. 

Looking ahead

In 2019 alone, we have seen personalised, targeted campaign strategies drive tremendous growth for our retail partners in the UK. What’s more, we have seen acquisitions like PayPal and Honey no less show that personalisation is business-critical and more to the point, the impact it can have when combined with commerce content offers. It is no surprise that one of the keys to success in our industry is all about making the shopping experience easier and better for consumers at every stage of the purchasing funnel – browser extensions are a critical step in this process as they give retailers the ability to offer more personalised promotions and deals direct to consumers in a more relevant context.  

Enhancing the commerce content model in this way will be a key trend for the year ahead. I, for one, feel that commerce content and affiliate marketing will no longer be the ugly ducklings in our industry. As we start to see personalisation infiltrate the entire purchasing funnel at every customer touchpoint, we will see these solutions become one of the most essential parts of the overall marketing mix for advertisers looking to drive sales, improve transparency, and create and sustain the right level of engagement with their customers and prospects. 

The post How Personalisation Will Push Commerce Content to the Top of the Marketing Agenda appeared first on PerformanceIN.

At a time when consolidation is ripe and tech giants control much of the advertising spend while also indirectly influencing consumer buying habits, brand marketers and publishers alike need to look for different ways to generate revenue and reach new audiences.

For publishers, this challenge is becoming even greater, where the need to generate revenue and increase profitability in a declining and diversifying market is so much more prevalent. 

Affiliate marketing – and more specifically Commerce Content where editorially generated commercial content is integrated into the core user journey to drive online transactions – is not just a core marketing channel, but is proving to be the one true performance model for both publishers and advertisers. Commerce Content is, and has always been, part of a publishers’ DNA – for some advanced media publishers, it can account for 40% of all digital revenues. 

The need to prove ROI, increase profitability, and generate more overall revenue has never been greater, and as such, publishers need to carefully consider the partnerships they engage in – prioritising those that help them take back control of their editorial content and diversify revenue streams. 

Commerce content is increasingly becoming an important business driver for large and reputable publishers because it helps them do just this: generates revenue for publishers in a challenging and cutthroat market, creates better control over the content published, and therefore sustains high-quality, editorially-led journalism. 

Of course, incorporating commerce content initiatives into a publishers monetisation strategy must be strategic – partnerships between publishers and commerce content companies must be grounded in transparency and truth, where both parties contribute to creating real value for consumers. So how can publishers engage in the right partnerships, and what are the important considerations that must be addressed in the process? 

Transparency is trust

Content can be found and consumed across so many channels online today, and with today’s consumer audience demanding authentic, quality content, publishers must ensure transparency is a priority in their revenue monetisation strategy. 

Publishers must work closely with their commerce content partner to ensure the content generated is legitimate, trustworthy, and relevant. What’s more, as search diversity will continue to be important when it comes to creating an environment for professionally managed collaborations to outrank low-quality, non-authoritative sites – relevant commerce content partnerships will help enable trusted brands to create real value for consumers to grow and rank more accordingly in search engine results.

It should go without saying that working with a trusted, transparent, and safe commerce content partner is crucial not only to maximise revenue but also to gain long-term, loyal audiences. 

Editorially relevant

Commerce content partnerships will only ever be truly successful when there is a genuine and coherent goal to create independent, high-quality content through these partnerships. To do this, commerce content offerings should never operate outside of the control of news portals and sites and the editorial and content teams must be involved in the commerce content productions at all times – from the start of the process through to the final signoff.

With tech giants such as Google wading in, publishers need to be sure they are promoting close cooperation and collaboration between the commerce content teams to push commercially relevant, independently produced, good quality content. What’s more, publishers must ensure the commerce content offering is aligned to its overall strategic content plan – that there is always a recognisable connection between the purpose of the commerce content offer, the actual content itself, the audience, and the content across the home and main pages of the publisher’s site.

Google compliant

The commerce content industry has been somewhat tarnished by so-called ‘domain leasing’ or ‘content duplication’ – where some domain owners also rent out their well-ranked subpages – more recently. This is in juxtaposition to the powerful, transparent, trusted commerce content partnerships most publishers seek but has recently drawn attention to Google’s search algorithms and how the search engine giant ranks and prioritises content within its waterfall.

The underlying challenge with domain leasing is that the domain owner, or publisher, does not actively participate in the process or development of the commerce content, which means it is often low-quality, ambiguous, and irrelevant to the intended audience. Domain leasing does not expand offers with complementary content but merely seeks to profit from the good search engine ranking of the main domain regardless of what is relevant to the end consumer. 

Many industry experts have been very vocal about these business practices, which has recently prompted Google to change its algorithms and update its guidelines to better recognise those commerce content partnerships that promote high-quality, independent and editorial driven content offerings. Google expects and always has, that media houses and commerce experts cooperate in a genuine and coherent manner to create independent and high-quality content – with the increase of domain leasing and duplicate content, this will become even more important for publishers when choosing a commerce content partner. 

What does this mean for reputable publishers trying to put an honest and transparent commerce content offering in place? It makes it even more critical for publishers to involve the editorial and content teams right from the start at the strategic planning phase through the entire content production process in order to succeed in gaining more visibility within the potential limitations of these new algorithms. By engaging in a partnership with commerce content company that promotes the close collaboration between all relevant internal and external teams, both partners can work together to ensure the production and distribution of the content offering is in line with business practices, relevant to audiences, and strategically aligned to bottom-line profitability. 

It is no secret that many publishers have struggled to adapt to increasing digital demands, and many haven’t been quick enough to transform their businesses from print to the online market. Industry revenue has consistently declined at an annual rate of 4.7% over the past five years, a trend that is unfortunately predicted to continue as we close this year out and head into 2020.  Online subscription services have failed to deliver on revenue promises, and publishers have been forced to look at new, innovative ways to diversify revenue and increase profitability in an extremely challenging market. 

Commerce content and affiliate marketing have been a lifeline for publishers and advertisers, as evidenced by a recent study from Forrester Consulting, which predicts that affiliate marketing will grow at an annual rate of 10% by 2020. When done right, in a way that is both commercial and consumer-relevant, it is an honest, trusted, transparent and successful way for publishers to better monetise their digital offerings. 

The post #PILIVE19: How Publishers Can Monetise with the Right Commerce Content Partner appeared first on PerformanceIN.