Plan of Attack for

generating new

affiliate business Tradedoubler and Affiliate Marketing

Silvia Alongi

1

Index

1. Tradedoubler – Business Concept........................................................................... 2

1.1. Advertisers or Merchants. ................................................................................. 2

1.2. Media Agencies. ............................................................................................... 3

1.3. Publishers or Affiliates. .................................................................................... 3

2. Tradedoubler – Business Model. ............................................................................ 4

3. Digital marketing channels. .................................................................................... 6

3.1. Affiliate Marketing. .......................................................................................... 8

3.1.1. The different types of affiliate marketing. ..................................................... 9

3.1.2. Affiliate Marketing Advantages. ................................................................. 10

4. Plan of attack in the first three months. ................................................................ 11

4.1. How generate new affiliate business for Tradedoubler. ................................. 11

4.2. Strategies for an effective affiliate marketing program. ................................. 12

4.3. Possible results. ............................................................................................... 14

Bibliography. ............................................................................................................... 15

Webography. ............................................................................................................... 15

2

1. Tradedoubler – Business Concept1.

Tradedoubler is a leading international performance marketing company. Founded in Sweden in

1999, Tradedoubler pioneered affiliate marketing in Europe and remains the most successful pan-

European performance marketing company today.

Tradedoubler delivers powerful performance marketing for a broad community of adverisers, media

agencies and publishers, to share connections and grow revenues.

Tradedoubler creates results by improving the clients’ digital marketing. This is done through the

performance-based advertising network and tools which help advertisers to make the most of their

campaigns. The performance marketing network helps the advertisers, agencies and publishers,

seeking profitable growth.

1.1. Advertisers or Merchants.

Tradedoubler currently works with over 2,000 advertisers, across all key industry sectors, - including

American Express, Dell, ClubMed, Disney, Expedia, Ebookers, The Body Shop, Bwin, Direct line

and Ariete – and well-known brands from all over the world. The objective is to achieve the business

goals through its high quality affiliate network of publishers, giving the opportunity to partner with

affiliate marketing programs that leverage strong brand awareness and help to build credibility for

the sites as an advertising environment.

Tradedoubler’s approach to performance marketing empowers a network of thousands of online

publishers to increase sales and generate leads for the business using an innovative range of

performance-based advertising and powerful, integrated product calls-to-action across desktop,

mobile and apps. This guarantees profitable sales growth and marketing ROI. In particular,

Tradedoubler increases online sales and generates leads, whilst the leading mobile optimised network

drives revenue and improves marketing ROI across all mobile devices.

The advertisers have the unique option of accessing the technology platform to run own private

network activity, or benefiting from the scale and reach of extensive publisher network. The solution

can be tailored to the particular business needs so it’s even possible to create a hybrid combination of

the two.

Advertisers can benefit from lower costs, close relationships with the partners and the mapping of the

entire customer journey across all channels, with real-time monitoring and reporting.

1 To write this paragraph, I got a lot of information from the websites http://www.tradedoubler.com and

http://financials.tradedoubler.com/en-GB/.

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1.2. Media Agencies.

Tradedoubler works with a number of media agencies to offer the customers the most effective

solution. Tradedoubler's affiliate network can be a part of the media mix that media agencies offer

their customers or represent the whole deal. The mission of the media agencies is to help advertisers

choose the media in which they will advertise as well as negotiate prices on their behalf. Many media

agencies are working over the complete span of media whilst others are specialised on certain types

of media.

The unique approach to performance marketing provides agencies to generate sales and drive leads

for clients, to deliver performance marketing’s secure ROI across digital platforms including desktop,

mobile and apps, and to leverage Tradedoubler’s white-label technology platform to manage the

clients’ performance networks. In particular, the performance network provides a highly effective

channel for generating profitable sales and securing marketing ROI across a range of campaign

objectives and payment models.

Tradedoubler offers a powerful range of performance advertising formats, product feeds and targeting

tools, all supported by in-depth reporting and optimisation-focused analysis.

Leveraging mobile opportunities throughout the path to purchase extends the power of performance

networks to the mobile space, using a device that never leaves the consumer’s side, to maintain

engagement and drive purchase intent. Innovative integrated ad formats such as voucher codes

provide you with powerful calls-to-action to drive traffic and generate sales leads in the mobile space.

1.3. Publishers or Affiliates.

Tradedoubler has over 115,000 active publishers in its network. Publishers can be well-known media

sites, price comparison sites, trade portals, newsletters, key word sites, blogs and other special interest

sites.

The quick start guide2 has everything you need to get started in performance marketing, including

advice on applying to different advertiser programmes and tools to help create relevant, compelling

ads and to use their automated product feeds.

Tradedoubler can help them create more effective calls-to-action, extend their business onto mobile

platforms, and integrate ads and feeds within their site content. The international reach means

Tradedoubler provides the global and local support you need.

2 For the four simple steps, visit the web page http://www.tradedoubler.com/uk-en/publishers/get-started/

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Tradedoubler will be provided with in-depth real-time information on tracking, payments and

reporting either through our interface or via an API.

Tradedoubler regularly runs networking events to connect advertisers and publishers.

With global brands, Tradedoubler attracts interesting publishers within various segments who help

the advertisers with sales and help them reach the right target groups. Tradedoubler works with

advertisers that want to boost their online sales. The company devises and implements digital

marketing strategies and matches them with publishers, that want to increase their advertising

revenue. The websites then drive traffic to the advertising company’s website and Tradedoubler is

rewarded on a performance basis.

Success for all parties is achieved when advertiser and publisher have the same target groups.

2. Tradedoubler – Business Model.

Tradedoubler creates results by improving the clients’ digital marketing. This is done through the

performance-based advertising network and tools which help advertisers to make the most of their

campaigns.

Tradedoubler works with advertisers on a market-by-market, regional or international basis and can

provide a single point of contact for co-ordinating international performance marketing campaigns.

By working closely with the publishers of the international affiliate network, Tradedoubler helps

advertisers to identify sales opportunities in new markets.

Through the international reach, Tradedoubler is able to identify new potential market opportunities

and provide a low-risk model for launching products in new territories.

Tradedoubler tecnology is an in-house, white label affiliate platform that enables larger advertisers

and agencies, to manage all aspect of performance marketing activity. The platform supports the

administration and management of all performance marketing activities as well as the tracking of

other online channels such as email, search and display. The Tradedoubler Technology Platform

offers an advanced, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that provides larger advertisers and digital

media agencies with the means to manage performance marketing programmes in-house.

The industry-leading technology platform includes bespoke tracking, targeting and ad serving

technology, and enables the management of performance marketing campaigns across own private

network whilst integrating seamlessly with the extended reach of Tradedoubler’s publisher network.

In particular, with the Tradedoubler Technology package, it will get:

extended reach through Tradedoubler’s affiliate network, taking direct control of performance

marketing and run own private networks

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industry-leading tracking, reporting and deduplication tools for cross-media tracking across

online and mobile. The deduplication software will help to ensure the quality of traffic across

affiliate and performance marketing activity and the reporting tools provide a powerful basis

for ongoing optimisation.

versatile and powerful targeting solutions. The unified system of tracking will enable efficient

and effective retargeting3 across media platforms and performance networks, enabling truly

integrated performance marketing that drives conversions across all digital media.

bespoke affiliate ad serving technology. The ad serving platform is designed around the

particular demands of performance marketing: smart, self-optimising and equipped to manage

multiple display ads, product feeds and voucher codes across a range of sites and creative

environments.

Tradedoubler creates results by improving the clients’ digital marketing. This is done through the

performance-based advertising network and tools which help advertisers to make the most of their

campaigns. This network is built around the affiliate network of paying only for actual sales or

conversations.

The performance marketing network uses a results based business model, which means that you only

pay when a sale or lead is delivered across a range of pay-for-performance models. The pay-for-

performance model is ideally suited to businesses seeking a low-risk approach to launching products

into new territories.

Tradedoubler arranges and optimises ads and campaign space between advertisers and publishers of

websites. Through the knowledge of internet marketing, technical platform for handling transactions

and tracking technology, advanced administrative system and affiliate network, Tradedoubler

improves business for both advertisers and publishers. Tradedoubler is able to receive payment in

relation to the result generated since the outcome is clearly measurable. Tradedoubler’s system tracks

the customer activities generated by a certain advert in order to calculate the remuneration.

A large portion of Tradedoubler’s revenues are performance-based. Remuneration from the advertiser

to publishers – and to Tradedoubler – is only paid when the visitor performs a certain activity, such

as clicking on an ad or executing a purchase. In particular, a part of the gross profit also comes from

the operations within the Technology business unit where clients pay a start-up fee and licensing fees

for using the platform.

3 The retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses simple a Javascript code to anonymously “follow” your audience

all over the Web.

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The activities which determine the remuneration are CPA (cost-per-action) and CPM (cost-per-

thousands impressions). Which one or combination of these activities forms the basis for the

remuneration is decided on a case-by-case-basis.

The CPM (Cost-per-thousand impressions) is a price model in which the advertisers pay a fee based

on the number of timed the advertisement is displayed.

The CPA is an online advertising pricing model, in which payment is based solely on qualifying

actions such as sales or registrations. This price model can be divide into:

CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay Per Click): where the advertisers pay the publishers when

the ad is clicked.

CPL (Cost Per Lead) or PPL (Pay Per Lead) or Online Lead Generation: where the advertisers

pay for an explicit sign-up from a consumer interested in the advertisers offer.

CPS (Cost Per Sale) or PPS (Pay Per Sale): where the advertisers pay in proportion to the

number of sales generated by an advertisement.

Example: Consider a merchant that sells mobile phones and will pay € 0.05 PPC, € 1 PPL and PPS

5%. On website publisher you describe a phone model and put links to the website that sells it to €

200. 100 users click the link, 5 register on the site that sells it and one of them buys it.

The profit will be 100 x 0.05 = € 5 for the click, 5 x 1 = € 5 for the lead, 5% of € 200 = € 10 per sale.

The publisher or affiliate have earned a total of € 20.

3. Digital marketing channels.

Marketing is the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer

relationships in order to capture value from customers in return”.4

Digital marketing involves the internet, but it refers to marketing through the use of any electronic

media. This could be through a potential consumer using a computer, mobile phone, television, or a

combination of these. E-commerce refers to the process of buying and selling products and services

online. E-commerce also refers to all the efforts involved in creating the most effective systems in

this process, which include digital marketing and the logistics involved in delivering the product to

the consumer. Businesses employ digital marketing and e-commerce techniques in order to increase

revenue, decrease costs, and improve customer satisfaction. 5

4 Kotler, P. et al (2008), “Principles of Marketing”, 5th European Ed. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd. 5 Warren-Payne A. (2012), “Digital Marketing and E-commerce Careers Guide”, Econsultancy.com Ltd.

7

M-commerce (mobile commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services through wireless

handheld devices such as cellular telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).6 The m-

commerce, known as next generation e-commerce, enables users to access the internet without

needing to find a place to plug in.

The company bears (directly or by relying on specialized agencies) advertising investments to

intercept potential customers, which in the network are allocated to the various digital marketing

channels7, such as:

Paid Search (e.g. Google AdWords)8: is about reaching the customers through paid

advertisements on search engines,

search Engine Optimization (SEO)9: is about improving the search engine visibility by

identifying how search engines work and people search for products and service online. Also

SEO can involve the identification of the keywords (when the people use the words to search

relevant information) and optimising of contents to gain rilevant links back t a website,

display advertising: is a type of advertising that is located on websites. It can also occur on

mobile devices and email applications and contains items such as text, images, flash, video

and audio,

social media marketing: involves listening to and joining conversations happening about

brands, products and services online, and working with the key influencers within the relevant

industry,

e-mail marketing: is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using e-

mail,

content marketing10: involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing the content,

to acquire and retain the customers,

social advertising: (e.g. Facebook Ads): is advertising that helps to reach the potential

audience and also hearwhat is being said about the company, product or service,

price comparison: is a method in which the selling price of a new product is arrived at by

comparing the benefits it offers with those offered by the competing brands,

6 Mohapatra S. (2013) “E-Commerce Strategy: Text and Cases”, Springer. 7 They are also defined as digital performance solutions.

8 The Paid Search or Search Engine Manrketing or Pay Per Click is focused on paid listings.

9 The Search Engine Optimization or Search Marketing Organic/Natural is focused on natural or organic search results.

10 The content marketing is closely tied to SEO.

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market place (e.g.Amazon and Ebay): is an open area or square in a town where a public

market or sale is set up. They provide online business the opportunity to enjoy a worldwide

audience by listing products or services and offering enormous customer base.,

retargeting: is a cookie-based technology that uses simple a Javascript code to anonymously

“follow” your audience all over the Web.

3.1. Affiliate Marketing.

There is also another channel that allows the company to access a multitude of subjects, who will

promote the business on its behalf. The affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based11 marketing

in which a merchant or advertiser rewards one or more affiliates (publishers or website publishers)

for a sale which has been shown to derive from affiliate’s website or e-mail activity.

In this business agreement, the advertiser want to bring users to it website through advertising

available on other online channels managed by its affiliates.

The affiliate program12 includes four core players:

potential customers: people interested in buying products and services in internet,

merchants or advertisers: is the provider of the offer, who creates a product/service and pays

a commission. This player promote an affiliate program to recruit the publishers, who want to

promote their business on-line,

affiliates or publishers: is the promoter of the offer, who markets the merchant’s

product/service to make a commission. This player participates in an affiliate program by

entering the website, portal or web property, by placing javascript code13 that will host the

ads. Then the affiliates will acquire the traffic to their web garrison, promoting the ads of the

Merchant with their content and using the digital performance solutions,

affiliate network: acts as an intermediary between the merchant affiliate programs and

publishers. The intermediary task is to provide the system managing payments and exchange

of advertising, verifying the location of customers, resolving the dispute between the various

publishers and providing sales statistics procured.

11 A general term for online marketing activities in which publishers only receive payment when a predetermined

transaction is generated.

12 The affiliate program is also called “Revenue sharing”, “Referral Program” and “Partner Program”.

13 The tracking is done with the coding javascript generating payment types such as post-click and post-impression.

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3.1.1. The different types of affiliate marketing.

There are different ways to run an affiliate marketing campaign, depending on the presence or absence

of a subject intermediate:

direct affiliate14: the merchant can choose to work directly with other sites or publishers,

which means the merchant will be responsible for making payments and tracking the number

of clicks and sales generated,

affiliate network15: the merchant can opt to join an affiliate network. These are companies

that will manage the affiliate marketing campaign on merchants behalf. 16

The direct affiliate pros are:

direct contact with affiliates;

absence of intermediary costs.

The direct affiliate cons are instead:

the cost of technical and administrative additional resources,

cost of the software platform,

cost of direct assistance to affiliates,

investment for the initial involvement of the affiliates.

The affiliate network pros are:

the absence of costs for the technical and administrative management;

the initial involvement of the affiliates is cheaper (the network has already started);

the cost of assistance to the franchisees is mostly absorbed by the network.

The affiliate network cons are instead:

the brokerage network has a cost (almost always variable);

you do not have direct contact with the affiliates.

The common costs of direct affiliate and affliate network are basically two:

relegation / commission to affiliates (as we have seen is still proportional to the results);

the development of advertising resources (for example creatives graphic and the material for

the landing pages).

Relative to the affiliate network marketing, the two costs that most often the company is required to

support are:

14 This is the case of e-commerce players like Amazon and eBay.

15 This is the case of players like Tradedoubler, Zanox and Merlin Wizard.

16 Kim B. (2007), “Starting Your Own Online Business”, Crimson Publishing.

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the setup for entry in the platform and the management report (almost always also a share of

the results produced),

at least one internal reference can manage the relationship with the network of brokerage or

with the agency that it is headed.

3.1.2. Affiliate Marketing Advantages.

Affiliate marketing allows to:

sell their products and services at low cost,

get new contacts,

achieve measurable results,

diversify the channels of promotion (intercepting niches or markets yet unexplored or

otherwise unsearchable);

brand awareness.

And this is done by paying only for results: pay for performance.

Affiliate marketing involves a product developer paying commissions on sales to another party for

marketing his product.17

Affiliare programs are both consumer-based and business-to-business oriented. Most programs

follow a revenue sharing or pay per sale model. The amount varies depending on how it is calculated.

The merchants can agree to pay a fixed amount per sale (known as cost per sale), a fixed amount per

lead or enquiry, or a percentage of sale (this is common for those sites that sell a variety of products).18

For what kinds of customers is affiliate marketing effective?

The customers most impacted by affiliate marketing are those who already shop online. Fortunately,

their online shopping behavior drives website publishers to structure and create websites to meet

those demands. These include (but are not limited to):

Comparison-shopping websites and directories,

Coupon and rebate websites, which collect and advertise special promotions,

Niche-market websites, which often provide product review,

Blogs and vlogs (video blogs) with subjects related to your product,

17 Costa A., Connell D., (2010) “Business in a Backpack: How to Build and Run a Profitable Business While You Travel

the World”, How to Books.

18 Patel N., Puri R., (2013), “The beginners guide to online marketing”, Quick Sprout, LLC

11

Websites, which use adbars with dynamic content, generating ads relevant to page content.

How affiliate marketing works in pratice?

The process can be divided in these steps:

A consumer visits an affiliate’s website, which can be a shopping portal or other retail website,

where an ad or link to your website, service or product is displayed,

The customer clicks on this ad and is taken to your site to complete the purchase,

The sale is completed online. The software records data such as what was purchased, when

and for how much. The merchant then pay a commission to the affiliate for the sale that has

been generated.

4. Plan of attack in the first three months.

4.1. How generate new affiliate business for Tradedoubler.

The first step to make money with affiliate programs is to recruit one or more merchant in which to

affiliate.

One question to ask a potential merchant could be the following:

“Have you a business and want to increase your sales, your customer base or promote your brand to

an audience that you have not intercepted or too expensive to be intercepted by your own strength?

So you are a potential merchant.”

Factors to consider are:

Website merchant quality.

You need to ask yourself these questions: Would like buy on that website? Has it affordable

prices or products hard to find elsewhere? Is it a famous brand? Inspires it confidence?

Type of products/services.

Can be the users interested in some products sold by the merchant? Are you able to create

content on those products?

Willingness to pay of merchants.

Estimate when you can earn per sale.

If you get paid with a pay per click you only have to worry about sending as many visitors as

possible to the merchant website. If you paid with a percentage of acquired sales, you have to

make sure that users of your site should be on the merchant website only when they are really

looking to buy. Otherwise you'll just free publicity.

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Avoid the merchants who do not use the cookies.

The merchant must use cookies to store the provenance of the customer. The merchant must

also assign you a sales commission even if the customers buy many days (or months) after

clicking the links on your site.

Recruit new affiliate business that generate good revenue is not a simple, requires adequate market

knowledge and at the same time the use of tools and right levers to attract quality affiliates.

To develop an efficient and powerful network of affiliate marketing, it is necessary to find a right

balance between your interests and those of affiliates.

The important thing is:

not to offer low fees, because no affiliate will lose time if the proposal is not in line with the

average earnings of the market,

use the right strategies and techniques, especially in the creation of a website affiliate network

able to have a good flow of visitors and an adequate level of sales.

The steps in the generating new affiliate business can be the following:

figure out the needs and expectations, in order to create an optimized network, able to give

the best results based on the right combination between the interests of the parties and the

characteristics of the type of market,

develop appropriate recruitment strategy highly selective, creating a precise map of the

roadmap and setting the deadlines,

focus on quality and not on the quantity, attracting those who allow you to have good revenue,

use more effectively the network to increase sales,

personalise and communicate to improve collaboration and exchange suggestions,

take care of them, generating links and providing campaign objectives,

ask for feedback on the marketing affiliate program, identifying any problems,

work with patience and perseverance in the search for products that have good market space

and numerous quality affiliates. Before reaching the first targets it will take months of hard

work, but when these two elements will find a meeting point, the results are more than

satisfactory.

4.2. Strategies for an effective affiliate marketing program.

Chosen the merchants, I elaborated several successful ways to market other people’s products:

Only promote products that you have used.

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Promote a quality poduct and know the product you are promoting. In this way, the return of

investments (ROI)19 on quality product can be greater the return of investments on a unknown

product.

The way to earn money with affiliate links in all your online businesses is by promoting only

products that you have used, and only what you would recommend to my friends who want

to achieve similar results.

Also promote products expensive.

Not only to promote the products that are cheap, because there is no guarantee that a product

that costs less to sell more than a product that costs a lot. So with the products are expensive,

you can have the best quality guarantee and need to make fewer sales to achieve the same

revenue.

Always describe the product that you are promoting.

Share your knowledge with your audience, and they will be intrigued and more likely to click

through to learn more.

Create a review site and link to affiliates.

Review the product, without hiding the weaknesses of the product. If you are doing affiliate

marketing, you are doing it for an audience that know you, trust you and accept your advice

on a product that you know.

You must have first-hand knowledge of the product in qustion. Never include an affiliate link

if we don’t personally use and receive value from the product.

Share the experience with the product.

Not to hide your relationship with affiliate marketing of that product. Try to make clear that

the specific link is made to promote a product for someone else. This will reward you when

you have a solid relationship with your target audience and the readers trust you.

When describing whatever it is your promoting, share your experience. If you can throw in

some data or graphs to go along with it.

Make sure there is an existing market.

Promote a product that the people want and not just promote a product that the people need.

Make sure there is an existing market and not only consider some products are very popular

on social networks, ensuring the products are competitive in the marketplace.

By following these strategies, everyone will win:

19 ROI measures the amount of return on an investment relative to the investment’s cost. To calculate ROI, the benefit (or

return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment, and the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

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the creator of the product (merchant) gets more sales,

the buyer purchases a product that provides real value,

the visitors to marketing affiliate network can access the information for free, thanks to the

revenue the links provide,

only then the affiliate deserve to get paid.

4.3. Possible results.

The possible goals that the merchants can reach are the following:

increase online and offline sales,

acquire new contacts (lead generation),

promote the brand, improving the visibility and coverage,

identify sales opportunities in new markets,

correct performance measurement.

Definitely the possible results, which I want to achieve for Tradedoubler will be:

generate new affiliate business, who decide to work in the Tradedoubler’s affiliate network,

identify and reserarch new merchants opportunities for the company,

optimize activities for the merchants with different business model (voucher, cash back,

emailers, content, etc…),

mantain accurate records of my activities in Tradedoubler’s CRM.

15

Bibliography.

Costa A., Connell D., (2010) “Business in a Backpack: How to Build and Run a Profitable Business

While You Travel the World”, How to Books.

Kotler, P. et al (2008). “Principles of Marketing”, 5th European Ed. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.

Mohapatra S. (2013) “E-Commerce Strategy: Text and Cases”, Springer.

Patel N., Puri R., (2013), “The beginners guide to online marketing”, Quick Sprout, LLC Kim B.

(2007), “Starting Your Own Online Business”, Crimson Publishing.

Warren-Payne A. (2012), “Digital Marketing and E-commerce Careers Guide”, Econsultancy.com

Ltd.

Webography.

advertitaly.wordpress.com

alverde.net

blog.tradetrackeritaly.it

econsultancy.com

en.wikipedia.org

financials.tradedoubler.com/en-GB/.

investopedia.com

marketing-schools.org

mrwebmaster.it

quicksprout.com

searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com

smartpassiveincome.com

thefreedictionary.com

tradedoubler.com