Affiliate marketing promotes discovery and drives revenue.

Upon launching with the Rakuten Affiliate Network, Bonds were working with multiple affiliate networks. In June 2015, Bonds decided to migrate their program and work exclusively with Rakuten Marketing to consolidate the management of their affiliate program and grow revenue through the channel.

• 66% growth in publishers on the program
• Continual publisher recruitment with content and mummy blogger focus
• Ongoing Pacific Brands program growth, launching Berlei and Sheridan affiliate programs on the Rakuten Affiliate Network

“Since migrating exclusively to the Rakuten Affiliate Network, the program has seen consistently strong growth. We have a fantastic relationship with our account manager who has been integral to the expansion of the channel through continually working to provide new opportunities and to promote our brands to the publisher community.”

Head of Online, Pacific Brands

After years of international growth, luxury fashion retailer STYLEBOP.com decided to focus on global reach through affiliate partnerships. After working successfully with Rakuten Affiliate Network in the US and UK for a number of years, STYLEBOP.com launched its Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Japanese Affiliate programs with the Network in August 2015.

• Overall orders grew 50% YoY
• Through the careful selection of publishers, the brand has built long-term partnerships with strategic and coherent growth

“We chose Rakuten Affiliate Network in these markets due to their proven expertise in the fashion space and the APAC region. Together with their broad luxury publisher pool and excellent customer services, we were confident that they would have a significant impact on our objective of increasing brand awareness among high-end fashion customers in APAC.”

Hanna Tuchnitz, Affiliate Marketing Manager, STYLEBOP.com

Australian online retail success story Vinomofo were excited to embrace new marketing technology.  After relying predominately on Facebook and Search as marketing channels, they wanted to expand their media mix to drive new site visitors and increase the volume of sales through retargeting.

• 82% increase in ROAS for prospecting
• 52% increase in conversion rate for prospecting campaign
• Retargeting drove 51% increase in sales volume
• Retargeting click-through rates increased by 25%

“The use of the display channel has been a phenomenal success of Vinomofo. The team at Rakuten Marketing have proven the power of dynamic creative and personalisation in retargeting campaigns, and further highlighted the necessity of creative marketing fueled by data in order to reach your audience and grow your brand.”

Kip McMillan, Head of Marketing, Vinomofo

After successfully launching their Australian affiliate program with Rakuten Marketing, Cotton ON utilised their affiliate program as a key channel for their strategy to expand to new international markets. Through the Cotton ON Australia program, publisher partnerships in the key markets of Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore are accessed, with a bespoke US affiliate program being managed by local US account managers.

• Between July 1^st and December 31^st 2016, global affiliate sales grew 260%, with affiliate driving approximately 10% of all online sales
• Affiliate sales from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore account for 41% of the AU/Asia program’s sales
• In 2016 sales on the Asia-Pacific AU/Asia program grew an average of 24% MoM
• US program experienced average growth of 35% MoM

“Rakuten Marketing has truly demonstrated the value and effectiveness of affiliate marketing. By using the affiliate channel to increase our brand awareness we have been able to successfully propel Cotton On worldwide.”

Head of Group Digital Marketing, Cotton On Group

Looking to cut through the noise of other apparel ads, PacSun needed new audiences to boost website traffic and sales. These couldn’t be just any new audiences; they need to be audiences that would become loyal customers.

To discover these audiences, PacSun tested a prospecting campaign using a comprehensive data set. Compared to a control group, this campaign returned:

• 73% average new customer rate.
• 321% higher return on ad spend.
• 260% higher conversion rate.
• 72% lower cost per acquisition.
  
  

“Rakuten Marketing technology and data has helped us reach new acquisition strategies that have grown our percentage of new customers every month.”

Eugene Lai, Director of Digital Marketing, PacSun

Internet Retailer Top 500 merchant, JanSport, partnered with Rakuten Marketing on a series of cross-channel marketing campaigns promoting the launch of its Disney Collection, which features popular Disney characters on JanSport apparel and accessories. The campaigns, executed across search, display and affiliate strategies, leveraged valuable consumer data and insights to focus on shoppers who expressed the most interest in Disney themed products.

• 90% YOY increase in search traffic
• 711% YOY increase in affiliate sales
• 120% YOY increase in display driven revenue

“The Rakuten Marketing team developed and executed an online marketing performance strategy that far exceeded our target goals for brand awareness, new customer acquisition and ROAS in our first-ever partnership with Disney. The campaign was such a success, we’re aiming to replicate the results with the launch of our Incredibles Collection launch this year. We look forward to continued, long-term program success with Rakuten Marketing’s expertise and proven technologies.”

Carolina Gomes, Director, eCommerce at JanSport

HP Australia leveraged the expertise of the Rakuten Marketing social team to achieve their aggressive growth targets by utilising product intelligence tools for automated social advertising. The Rakuten Marketing social offering integrated product discovery and optimisation with consumer intelligence to drive incremental revenue through prospecting and retargeting campaigns, and then collecting, testing and optimising product-performance data in real-time.

With help from Rakuten Marketing, HP Australia exceeded their desired ROI goal of $15:1 by 44%. Other campaign highlights include:

• 1.6m impressions served throughout the campaign duration
• Click-through-rate of 2.66%
• Average PC ROAS of $6
• ROAS of $27:1

“At HP we value our customers and constantly strive to drive better user experience for them across all channels. Data is at the center of all our decisions. The Rakuten Marketing team has been working with HP for the past 3+ yrs helping to drive higher conversions through display and social retargeting campaigns. Their dedication in understanding the HP business and commitment to work towards achieving our goals have seen some great results over the past years. We continue to see growth and value in this partnership.”

Paromit Mitra, Head of Digital Marketing, HP Omnichannel 

As a key sponsor of the Australian music and arts event, Falls Festival, Travel Insurance Direct wanted to run a lead generation campaign utilising the social expertise of the Rakuten Marketing team. The lead gen incentive was a competition to win a VIP experience to the annual Falls Fest for the entrant and three friends. In addition to achieving the cost-per-lead (CPL) target of AU$6, the TID team had two focus goals:

1. Tap into a key millennial audience
2. Grow their audience by 10,000

The campaign was a massive success for TID with day one alone achieving 1,454 leads. The campaign in total saw 13,415 leads and a CPL of $3.82.

“This lead gen campaign exceeded our expectations with the CPL much lower than forecasted. The Rakuten team were great in running the campaign from audience and strategy set up through to optimising effectively once the campaign had gone live.”

Brona Hyndman, Acquisition Marketing Manager, Travel Insurance Direct

Famous for denim, Jeanswest was founded in Perth in 1972 and now boasts more than 220 stores across Australia & New Zealand. That’s over 45 years of experience in fitting the perfect pair of jeans so it’s safe to say, they know a thing or two about denim. Their quality collections include wardrobe staples right through to fashion must-haves – knitwear, leather, wool, accessories and an award-winning maternity range. The saying “Jeanswest Fits Best” rings true in everything they do.

Jeanswest achieved a 50% Year-on-Year (YoY) increase in affiliate sales following the implementation of the Recruit, Activate, and Optimise (RAO) package. Jeanswest is experiencing a consistently strong return from their affiliate program and has received an upgraded level of service from Rakuten Marketing from exchange (self-managed) to advisory. Further results include:

• 78% increase in Week-on-Week (WoW) sales from the use of the coupon API
• Click-through rate increase of 104% YoY
• 83% growth in YoY orders
• Conversion rate doubled for the affiliate channel during this time

In 2015, YOOX Asia Limited identified a need to invest in their emerging markets. In the interest of scale and growth, they migrated their existing affiliate program from a competing network to Rakuten Marketing.

Initially intended to be an Australia-only program, the potential for growth across the wider Asia-Pacific region was identified by the YOOX account manager and the Rakuten Marketing Publisher Development team. Migrating YOOX’s existing program to Rakuten Marketing was handled expertly, while also being rolled out to an additional 13 Asian domains and key consumer regions.

The expansion into APAC, strategically guided by Rakuten Marketing, helped YOOX grow their affiliate program by 2320% in GMS year-over-year (YoY) in their first year with Rakuten Marketing (2015-2016). Further results include:

• Traffic to site from affiliates increased by 1514%.
• Order active publishers more than doubled.

Growth has remained strong with 2017 delivering +112% GMS YoY and 2018 delivering a +20% YoY growth.