Affiliate Marketing Blog: Affiliate Marketing More Expendable Than Search Marketing

Friday, 19 December 2008

Affiliate Marketing More Expendable Than Search Marketing

Not what many agencies and networks would want to hear, but a report by Epsilon apparently shows that affiliate marketing is much more expendable than email marketing, search marketing, social marketing, online display advertising, direct mail and TV:

Now the data is US-based so maybe its not 100% relevant, but surely that sort of information must be a tad worrying if it is replicated in the UK.

I'd be interested to hear if any merchants had the same opinions or if they completely disagree with the report's findings.

3 Comments:

At 19 December 2008 at 23:17 , Anonymous said...: Hello Lee

I'm surprised by what you show as other than giving a percentage of the profit away per sale, I would have thought an affiliate scheme would be one of the cheapest forms of advertising.

Thanks

Mally
At 21 December 2008 at 22:14 , Chris said...: Really interesting find Lee. As a merchant, I don't agree with how they've prioritised these, but given who the survey respondents are it doesn't surprise me - fairly indicative of the lack of buy in to the channel that lots of larger retailers have.

Have taken the liberty of blogging about it! http://chrisdalrymple.com/2008/12/affiliate-marketing-still-low-in.php
At 3 January 2009 at 00:15 , Anonymous said...: Actually I think this makes complete sense, a lot of affiliate marketing sales these days are from some form of brand hijacking, voucher sites or cashback sites. If you're lucky enough to have very high quality content sites sending you traffic then fantastic, but I don't think that is at all the norm and the paradise this channel appears to offer - performance based marketing - is not impossible to get right, but compared to other channels often a lot less achievable efficiently...

Our affiliate programme is indispensable, but we are lucky to be in area where there are lots of very good quality content affiliates, and yes we have them all inhouse as we know them all and paying surcharge to a network is pointless :)