In December 2017, Merlin Cycles — one of the UK’s leading online retailers for cycling equipment — came to us with a problem.
They had been using a well-known affiliate network for some time, running campaigns both in the UK and the USA. However, Merlin felt that they struggled to communicate effectively with their partners, which meant they were missing key opportunities to promote their products.
It all resulted in an affiliate channel that was becoming stagnant.
The team at Merlin wanted to rebuild their affiliate programme with someone they could trust to be effective, and they needed experts who could as close to the numbers as they were.
We knew our Affiliate Marketing department was up to the task.
When Merlin chose us to help grow their affiliate programme, there were two key objectives we needed to work towards:
Increase sales whilst maintaining a steady cost meant we needed to be smarter with our commission structure, tiering commissions by product, partner and country in order to gain maximum profitability.
Our initial step was to migrate Merlin onto BringConnected, our home-grown affiliate marketing platform. You can learn more about BringConnected here.
We then analysed the partners that were on Merlin’s existing program to identify and remove any stagnant or irrelevant publishers. We shortlisted around 300 publishers who we then migrated across to BringConnected.
From there, we laid out a four-part strategy that we believed would help us to achieve Merlin’s goals:
Our affiliate strategy for Merlin Cycles was a roaring success.
By completely overhauling Merlin’s affiliate programme, we were able to:
We were able to grow the Merlin affiliate account without it impacting CPAs, essentially having our cake and eating it too.
We were also able to rebuild Merlin’s relationships with the publishers for better promotion in future and a better communication.
Now, affiliate marketing is one of Merlin Cycles’ most promising channels, connecting them with their customers more efficiently than ever before.
Here’s what Merlin’s Managing Director John Moss had to say:
“Since moving our affiliate program across to BringConnected we’ve seen an increase in sales whilst remaining profitable in a competitive market. Our affiliate partners are more engaged than ever and we’re excited for what’s to come.”
Want to know how we can help your business thrive? Get in touch today to find out what we can do for you.