Abebooks is looking for a few good sites
Abebooks.com is creating more incentives, including negotiating higher commission rates, to attract more specialized web merchants to its affiliate marketing program. Abebooks, which uses Commission Junction Inc. in North America and Zanox.de AG in Europe, to manage a network of about 8,000 affiliates, wants to develop more specialized cross-selling relationships with web merchants in categories that attract more affluent online shoppers.
Abebooks, an international online retailer of rare, out-of-print and other specialty books, has an established base of repeat customers that are over 35, have annual household income of more than $70,000 and hold advanced degrees. Abebooks’ return customers generate sales conversion rates of about 18% and often purchase multiple items, says Lisa Stevens, vice president of marketing.
Abebooks, which ranks No. 58 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, noticed in a series of recent analytics reports, that its higher-end customers were often coming to its book sites after spending time on other sites that sell gourmet foods, wines, hobby products, arts and crafts and other specialized merchandise. “We noticed a strong correlation between our customers going to a gourmet food or housewares site and then coming back to us to look for a specialized cook book,” Stevens says. “We found strong correlations in other shopping segments as well.”
Additional studies of its analytics reports and online shopper profiles revealed that Abebooks shared similar customer demographics with other high-end niche retailers, a potential pool of new merchandising partners Abebooks wants to attract to its affiliate network.
To attract them, Abebooks is rolling out new incentives in its affiliate marketing program, such as negotiating commission rates that could be substantially higher than its standard commission range of 3% to 5% per transaction. How much each new specialized affiliate would be paid would be negotiated on an individual basis and based on factors such as the other retailer’s web site traffic levels and customer demographics.
Abebooks is also making technical improvements that will make it easier and faster for affiliates to link back to the retailer’s various international sites and access images, pricing and product information. “We want to build an integrated look and feel with affiliates that share the same customer demographics that we do,” says Dustin Rideout, Abebooks online marketing manager. “We can attract them with more incentives and offering them access to our repeat shoppers who generate very attractive sales conversion rates.”
Back...
