Travel and leisure retailer drives growth in affiliate base and revenue using FusePump product feeds and tools
Travel and leisure retailer drives growth in affiliate base and revenue using FusePump product feeds and tools
Lastminute.com is a major online travel and leisure retailer. Launched in 1998, it floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 and was acquired in 2005 by Travelocity, part of the privately held Sabre Holdings group of travel companies.
Today, lastminute.com is a worldwide business whose ‘lifestyle’ website attracts 2.5 million visitors each week. It offers full price and discounted products including holidays, flights, hotels and car hire, as well as theatre tickets, attractions, restaurants, spas and ‘experiences’. It is also one of the most widely recognised brands for dynamically packaged travel and leisure solutions, whereby consumers can book and pay for a combination of products (e.g. flight + hotel) in a single transaction.
Suppliers engage with lastminute.com via its extranet, where they upload inventory automatically using data feeds containing a product’s attributes, availability and pricing. Alternatively, they provide this information in spreadsheets, which has to be entered manually by lastminute.com. Once it has been uploaded, the product information is filtered, segmented and re-packaged for delivery under one brand to the consumer.
Under its affiliate marketing programme, third-party website owners and digital publishers display adverts and link directly into the lastminute.com website to earn commission whenever a purchase is made. This channel has driven sales growth of over 70% year-on-year since 2007, and now contributes more than 20% of the company’s total online sales.
Positioning affiliate channel for growth
With affiliate marketing now a key channel for travel and leisure retailers, lastminute.com has made growing its affiliate base a priority under a three-part strategy which aims to: improve affiliate performance; provide them with the right tools; and communicate with them more effectively to encourage stronger partnerships. However, as well witnessing huge growth, the affiliate channel has undergone immense change, diversifying into new streams such as comparison sites, social media and mobile.
“A decade ago, a lot of affiliates were simply buying URLs and directing traffic, but now they are building their own brands and websites to attract and retain users, so the channel has really evolved,” said Lina Patel, lastminute.com head of affiliates and partnerships in Europe. “Now, it’s all about using the right product information for effective targeting. Affiliates also have more sophisticated requirements and want the information supplied and structured in different ways. So as more channels come into the mix, it becomes increasingly complex to work with different partners successfully. You need to build the relationships, understand their needs and deliver on them.”
Given the complexity of packaging and pricing products, and with huge volumes and combinations of product information feeding in and out of its website, lastminute.com needed a simple and effective way to collate and distribute its product data to affiliates. By providing them with the tools they needed to create more engaging consumer-facing content, lastminute.com recognised it could help its affiliate partners increase conversion rates and drive profits.
“The problem was that all the different suppliers serving our hotels, holidays and lifestyle categories owned the technologies. This meant we couldn’t influence or integrate across them, so there was no consistency,” added Patel.
In order to address these challenges, lastminute.com plans to create a platform serving multiple markets, where affiliates can access all the tools and information they need. With a network of thousands of affiliate partners and managing more than 17,000 supplier relationships, the need for well-structured and accurate data feeds was apparent. “It’s about having a clear channel, and one platform of distribution, and then using this to innovate,” stated Patel.
A uniform approach to product data
Lastminute.com was introduced to FusePump by an affiliate network partner. FusePump was tasked initially with creating a data feed supporting lastminute.com’s lifestyle category. By extracting product data directly from lastminute.com’s website, FusePump built a high-quality data feed that would deliver reliable, accurate and comprehensive product information to affiliates, who can then use the feed to deliver customer-facing data.
The retailer also made FusePump’s FeedCreator tool available to its lifestyle affiliates, so that it can tailor the feed and select specific products and product information relevant to its target audience. “This is really important because previously, we didn’t have a data feed, so were unable to work with these partners,” said Patel. “FusePump allows the affiliate partner to segment the feed in any way they want – e.g. hotels under £50, or hotels in a specific city, and so on. This allows them to display the relevant product information on their site quickly, easily and accurately.”
Following the success of FeedCreator, lastminute.com introduced FusePump’s WidgetCreator and AdCreator tools. These tools can be used in a number of online applications – from powering interactive dynamic advertising, to optimising product match rates, pay-per-click (PPC) automation and search terms. “WidgetCreator has worked well for our city breaks category, because it allows affiliates to create a dynamically packaged feed. The end user is able to interact with the banner advert displayed on the affiliate’s site, choose specific products, and it will then dynamically populate the fields.”
FusePump engaged directly with both existing and target publishers to assess their specific requirements, and provided lastminute.com with an end-to-end service, meaning very little resource or management was required from lastminute.com’s in-house technology team to deliver the quality of feeds required to power its affiliate marketing applications. “FusePump went away and did all the work with limited input from us,” Patel confirmed.
Data feeds and affiliate tools deliver real results
Within six months of the first FusePump-powered lifestyle data feeds going live, lastminute.com realised a 20% increase in revenue, and attracted some major affiliate partners – including Compare Theatre Tickets, Time Out and Tixdaq. “Attracting big partners has had a snowball effect, as you are then able to recruit even more,” Patel said. “But without the product data feeds, you simply could not do this.”
Similarly, using FusePump’s WidgetCreator to deliver dynamically packaged feeds for its city breaks category has enabled lastminute.com to sign Travel Supermarket to its affiliate marketing programme, and driven strong conversion rates, with bookings up more than 16%. “Working with FusePump, we have been able to assess publishers’ individual needs, grow our partnerships with them, and develop a solution that is right for each one,” added Patel, who also stresses the importance of communicating effectively and working closely with affiliate partners. “If you simply send somebody a link to a data feed, they just ignore it, because they don’t understand it. Communicating directly with all the different publishers about the range of tools we have has delivered real results.”
Lastminute.com has received great feedback from publishers, and can now be confident that its brand and products are being presented accurately. “You cannot afford to miscommunicate your offer/product, because if a customer complains to the ASA [Advertising Standards Authority], both the merchant and the affiliate could be liable,” warned Patel.
Using FusePump’s technology, tools and services, lastminute.com has ‘fast-tracked’ its affiliate marketing programme and continues to successfully gain incremental revenues through more effective distribution of product data within the affiliate channel. “We would never have managed to be in the position we are now if it wasn’t for outsourcing this technology to FusePump,” Patel concluded.
“It’s been great to have somebody that can respond really quickly to both our own and our publisher’s needs, and act really quickly if there’s an issue. Given the fluid nature of the travel and leisure sector, agility is crucial and FusePump has been really flexible in moving with us. They are really good at understanding what we need, and how we need it, and then coming to us with solutions rather than trying to sell us something.”
