Australia is a fast-growing market, and it has definitely come a long way in the performance marketing sphere over the last year or so. This year Australia has been named the number 10 e-commerce market in the world by AT Kearney as e-commerce sales have grown by over 9% this year, but there is still a way to go with performance-based marketing.
For many Australian companies, affiliate marketing and coupon sites in particular are dirty words, and this is maybe why it hasn’t seen massive growth, but instead a steady trickle of advertisers willing to join in. This has been caused by bad websites advertising get rich quick schemes, weight loss programmes, and generally terrible quality shops all within the affiliate marketing sphere. Big players like David Jones and Harvey Norman have declined to work with coupon code websites, and this attitude is often reflected when we approach potential new affiliates who have no network yet as they don’t think it will be good for their business.
Negative perceptions of performance-based marketing need to change in order to encourage faster growth within the industry and we can do this by making sure that the networks get rid of low quality publishers, and work with high quality advertisers with a strong focus on longer-term success, instead of a focus on high turnover in a short period of time.
However, there are some good things happening within the performance-based networks themselves. They are working hard to change perceptions of affiliate marketing, and they are working hard for publishers too on new innovations like clickless tracking. This means that if you get an exclusive coupon code, and a competitor takes it, you will still earn commission. This can only be seen as a positive thing.
The rise of shipping companies has opened up the market in a big way
As soon as Australia Post jumped on the bandwagon of other shipping companies that have been around for years, the market has opened up in a massive way. A shipping company provides you with a US P O Box address so you can order online from shops like Amazon, and pay much less for shipping to Australia. It means that retailers like Amazon.com, Ebay.com and more are now more accessible because of it. And now there is so much choice in shipping companies that consumers can really pick and choose the best one for their needs.
It’s good to keep in touch with the people you work with in affiliate networks
Because of our location in Amsterdam it is impossible for us to go to networking events so we keep in touch digitally – Linkedin, Skype and e-mail are our primary modes of contact. Many of the people we work with move around to different companies or networks which usually pays off for us because they know who we are and what we’re doing. Quite often we get approached by people we have worked with before asking us to work with them again in their new role.
More women shop online than men
This was a big surprise for us because in our Dutch markets more men prefer to shop online. We had originally held the assumption that women prefer to be able to touch and feel something in a shop and make a decision there. There’s not a huge percentage difference between men and women shopping online in Australia, but there is a difference. This meant we learnt is to never make assumptions when it comes to entering a new market.
Click Frenzy is a huge shopping event in the year
Click Frenzy have several events throughout the year, but these simply aren’t as popular as their November event. It is the Australian version of Black Friday, and it’s huge. It really opens the Christmas shopping season in Australia. Since we weren’t familiar with it when we started out, we weren’t sure what to expect. It was a busy 24 hours, and at the end of it we realised that it was an unmissable event, that people are waiting for.
The positive certainly outweighs the negative in Australian performance-based marketing, and there are shifting attitudes. That, combined with the opening up of the market by shipping companies, and regular shopping events mean that affiliate marketing will grow substantially in Australia, though this might take more time to really take off. With networks working hard to change perceptions of affiliate marketing and coupon sites it is certainly going in the right direction.