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The sales journey, from desire to purchase.
I’ve always been told that it isn’t necessarily important where you end, but it’s the journey getting there that is important. It’s not so much where the train is going, just important that you’re actually on it. I think that what is true in life is also true in e-commerce and customer purchases. It is important that when customers start the process, merchants are present and available at every stop on the track.
A purchase is the culmination of a journey by the customer. Sometimes short and sweet, but sometimes long, complicated, hard to fully track and full of twists and turns through search engines, affiliate sites, catalogs and retail storefronts. It’s important for affiliates, affiliate managers and merchants to understand the different paths that a customer may take toward the ultimate goal of a purchase and detours along the way that may help or hinder them in the sales process. It serves us all good to understand the larger process outside of our affiliate silo.
Here is a great example from our industry.
One of the misconceptions that merchants have made as of late is to remove coupon sites because “they only drive discount buyers and unprofitable sales”. With several merchants I have experienced the exact opposite. Discount shoppers may be slightly misunderstood. A vast majority will simply not shop without a coupon. I’ve seen many of these shoppers come through coupons sites with much higher average order sizes and more frequent purchases. They were very profitable shoppers that simply would not purchase any item without the smallest discount first. I have family just like this. They spend more but won’t spend at all if they are not getting some sort of deal, real or perceived. This category of site serves a very important purpose and reaches a large percentage of online shoppers. Ignoring this stop on the purchase journey may only lead to your competitors gaining a sale that could have been yours. I have worked with merchants that regularly have customers coming directly to their site first, then leaving to visit an affiliate site and coming back to complete the purchase through that affiliate with a coupon. Initially, it is often viewed as an increase in the cost of the sale that was not necessary and not needed. But look closer, what step closed the sale? Did the initial visit do the trick? Did they find the product they wanted and only looked to see if they could find a discount, or did they shop because they found what they wanted AND were able to get a discount with that particular merchant. Was the visit to the affiliate site a standard part of their purchasing decision, meaning that they only purchase when a coupon is available. Would they have gone to a competing merchant if no coupon was found? Did you lose a sale because you weren’t on a coupon site? In each case the answers may be different, but I do think we need to look at this when evaluating partnerships, compensation and our overall online marketing activities.
Have you heard this one - any sales coming through existing customers are not incremental sales. At the risk of being too elementary, an incremental sale is one that would not have happened had you not engaged in that marketing activity. This line of thinking leads to placing value only on new customer sales. It is difficult to say exactly what prompted the customer to complete the purchase. Maybe they did receive a catalog and then made a purchase, but there might have been something else that closed the deal for them. Perhaps they would not have purchased from you had you not been on their favorite shopping site, thus the sale IS incremental. How do you figure out what is incremental and what isn’t? That is a great topic for another blog entry. But these questions are why you need to be very educated on your customers purchasing process. Where do they go, what prompts them to buy, how do they research the product and where do you need to be along the way to make sure you get that customer, that is what is important. A friend of mine at in the Direct Marketing department at PetSmart compared it to baseball and the age of free agency. You see customers nowadays are similar to free agents. You don’t acquire a customer once for life. You continue to acquire that customers each that time they are attempting to make a purchase. Back in the good ol’ days of catalog marketing, you rented a list, acquired a customer and that was it. The internet has changed that. You now have to continually reach out and win that customer, or they will go to the next team with a better offer.
Our focus as affiliate managers and affiliates needs to be on the customers. We need to focus on how the customers get to that purchase decision, where do we fit in along the way and how we can add more value to that journey? What affiliate sites do they use, how do they use them and how do those sites interact with our other online marketing initiatives. Looking at things in a single silo and as an island onto themselves can lead to incorrect decisions, upset partners, and overall failure of your affiliate programs.
As affiliates, you need to better understand the whole picture of your merchants marketing activities in aggregate and their customers’ behavior. Often business decisions that affect a merchant’s affiliates are made as part of the company’s entire marketing universe. Knowing more about your merchant can help you navigate better within their affiliate programs. A better understanding of how you fit into their initiatives and how you serve their customer will lead to a stronger relationship, better commissions, increase in your bottom line and may lead to you removing some merchants that may be unprofitable for you and taking up your valuable resources.
Not looking at the whole of your marketing initiatives and all your customer touch points in aggregate can lead to bad decisions. Do we follow a customer from a store, to an affiliate site, to our site and to a sale? What worked, what didn’t? Which touch points did they use, which ones did they respond to positively or ignore? Without a bigger picture, decisions can be made with incorrect information and can lead to ineffective campaigns and a drop in sales. Let’s start helping the customer with their intentions and sales will follow.
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Good article Jamie!
One thing I run into often for catalog merchants is they will offer coupons on their catalogs and then not give the affiliate a smiliar offer. The reasoning is that they are already paying us and can’t afford to add in a discount.
Are the catalogs free to print and mail? It seems to me if they can afford to offer coupons on catalogs they can give the affiliates a similar offer.
Jamie,
I have to say as an online shopper and an affiliate marketer, I look for as many discounts as possible online. Why else is a person shopping online but to save money? Coupon sites offer the double incentive. You can tell yourself how wise you are for shopping online AND using a coupon. Anyone who looks at coupon shoppers as inferior shoppers shouldn’t have an ecommerce site.. perhaps they could invest in a storefront on rodeo drive. Good article.