Sofa giant DFS has appointed affilinet as its affiliate marketing network of choice and together they have started working on a call-tracking programme that will help shape future marketing activities. The deal will see affilinet help to better integrate online and offline marketing to maximise sales and ROI from digital marketing channels.
DFS has built a strong brand presence through TV and traditional display advertising, and with affilinet the company will build on this using the web and call tracking technology to improve the number of leads generated to the retailer’s call centre, via the internet. Each affiliate will have a unique phone number, making it clear where the sales leads are coming from.
Each of affilinet’s publishers can use the phone numbers online in their promotional activities, and unique numbers will also be used in TV and press advertising. DFS finds it useful to encourage customers to research items on the web and then speak with the call centre team to order products.
Richard Thirsk, head of marketing at DFS said: “Working with affilinet allows us to greatly extend our online reach beyond our traditional online media buys and search activity. We are collaborating with specific affilinet publishers on a performance basis offering them unique telephone numbers to display on their websites so that consumers can immediately call our customer support team without having to leave the publisher site.
He added: “This approach means that customers benefit from researching what they want online and then making their bespoke orders with one of the team over the phone. Publishers benefit from real time reporting of the calls they generate, previously they could only be rewarded for leads generated by a call back request form.”
Peter Rowe, managing director, affilinet UK said: “affiliate marketing is no longer simply a channel to deliver sales, but also a flexible way to maximise high quality lead generation activity for brands. Our work with DFS utilises a new call tracking technology which will allow them to fully leverage our carefully monitored and fully transparent network of publishers”
affilinet has a presence in seven countries across Europe, and has over 1,600 affiliate programs on its network.
