Adrian Vella (00:00)
Thank you for joining me today. Much appreciated. Lee, was wondering if you could just give me a bit of background about yourself. And yeah, to start us off, if you could give us a quick interview about your role, your experience in the world of partnerships and how it connects with the work Awin is doing in the brand partnership space, that’d be great.
Lee Metters (00:13)
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, so I’m Lee Metters, Regional Senior Lead for brand partnerships and retail media at Awin. So my remit covers UK, Benlux and the French market. I’ve been at Awin for coming up 11 years, which is scary. Spent a lot of that time, early part of the years in client services, managed different client accounts, overseen different client accounts, but…
For the last five years, it kind of spearheaded our brand partnership proposition. So my team work with our network of brand partners. We’ve got about 400 of them on the Awin network. We offer strategic consultative advice to help them optimise their performance and also support them with matchmaking brand collaborations. Then we also support our portfolio of strategic solution providers like Tyviso, working to support your pipeline.
by engaging Awin clients, and then again, working collaboratively to help optimise that performance. And then I guess the third in the Tri-Party is we support advertisers as well. So we help advertisers connect with relevant brand partners and again, just help with that matchmaking experience.
Adrian Vella (01:30)
Outside of pure acquisition, what are other benefits that you see brands are getting from brand partnerships at the moment?
Lee Metters (01:36)
Yeah, so I guess the benefits from brand partnerships, I’ll split it into two. I think for advertisers, the vast bulk of the benefit from brand partnerships is around different, right? So it’s that ability to, I guess, target highly relevant customer audiences, align with brands that have very similar demographics or complement the customer shopping experience that they’re kind of undertaking with you. But I think there’s also a point around
brand awareness and brand resonance being promoted by a host or a brand partner, I think adds value to brands in that non-tangible way. Then I think from the brand partner or the host side, it’s very much about influencing the customer shopping behaviour, right? So how can we positively influence that customer experience?
Things like increasing conversion rate optimisation at Check High, rewarding customer loyalty, reducing trend reduction. These are all things that we can start to see within brand partnerships. And I think the benefits are becoming more clear to advertisers and brands.
Adrian Vella (02:37)
I’ll throw in a question Do you see a value, like a lot of brands tend to decide to do one or the other? Do you think there’s like kind of almost a mistake that some brands are not doing it both at the same time? And do you think extra value can be unlocked from doing both at the same time?
At the moment, as to your answer there, know, brands tend to be like a promoter or an advertiser, but there’s not many brands maybe that are doing both. Do you kind of feel like that’s a mistake or that’s something that extra value could be made from doing both at the same time?
Lee Metters (03:00)
Extra value, yes, 100%. In terms of is it a mistake? Yeah, I think it probably is. I think the reason for that is ultimately the benefits that a brand gets from being the advertiser and being promoted are very different to the benefits that they get from being the brand partner. I think
What we tend to find is the stakeholder team that manages the advertiser side of that partner relationship is perhaps different to the stakeholder manager, the brand partner side of that relationship. We have cases where the stakeholder is the same contact. Those are the brands that are typically playing on both sides of the coin, if you like, and then they’re seeing greater value from it. think the advice or the takeaway there is probably to…
align with different stakeholder teams and see how you can make brand partnerships almost playing to every part of your business organization.
Adrian Vella (03:56)
Nice, cool. There’s many different formats. So for example, there’s pre-checkout, post-checkout, rewards, and even more than that. How would you just say that a brand should go about deciding what’s best for them?
Lee Metters (04:09)
Yeah, think in terms of deciding what’s best for a brand, think it ultimately comes down to the primary KPI that the brand is looking to achieve, right? And I think just calling three out. So if a brand wants to increase their conversion rate optimisation or their average order value, we would recommend that they display an ad format that is pre-checkout because then we know we can incentivize those metrics with customers that are passing through the checkout journey.
If the KPI is all about revenue and increasing the profit margin that you get from individual customers, we recommend post-checkout because that’s then when you can start to insert third-party brand offers that will typically pay a higher CPA. You generate higher CPMs and that’s how you then start to drive more profitability from customers once they’ve completed their shopping journey review. think third, if you’re looking for loyalty, churn reduction, increased shopping behaviour, then
thinking about a reward programme that entices customers back into the site or provides customers with value beyond the services and experience that you provide them, that’s then when you can start to play into that KPI and that benefit as well. So I think in terms of the format that the brand takes, it’s very reliant on what the primary KPI is. And that’s how we would best position it. We try to understand what the KPI is first.
Adrian Vella (05:25)
And maybe a follow up to that. Do you see any problems with brands running multiple formats at the same time?
Lee Metters (05:31)
No, I think, I think we would try to encourage it because I think each format, again, like it plays into different KPIs, but it provides a different experience to the customer as well. So let’s just take pre purchase and post purchase, right? Pre purchase is very much about can we incentivize that customer to product basket or complete that basket and checkout on site. When they’ve then got to post purchase, you can then start to tell more of a story to that customer and you can start to.
educate them on why the third party complimentary brand complements the shopping experience that they’ve just had with you. So I think even those two, pre-purchase and post-purchase, can be used together to just round off what is quite a compelling story. Get the customer to complete their action on site, then when they have completed that action, tell more of the story and kind of provide them with upsell and added benefits, I guess, post-checkout.
Adrian Vella (06:19)
Have you seen any recent trends in format choice? So for example, obviously, we talked about pre-purchase, post-purchase. Are you seeing Awin brands move in a particular direction at the moment?
Lee Metters (06:30)
think it depends on the sector that we’re talking about with the client. So quick commerce brands, fashion, retailers are typically looking to increase conversion rate optimizations. So they’re electing for pre-purchase formats where we can really start to shift that needle on basket completion. In sectors where profit margins are typically a little bit tighter, so something like electricals, those retailers are looking to drive more value from the customer and drive more profit margin.
they’re opting for push tech out where they can start to buy it up and it becomes a revenue play. think what we’ve then seen is this emergence of rewards. Rewards has been used for a long time within telecoms, think, financial insurances, banking, where brands that are almost locking customers into a contract use rewards as a value add to reward that customer during the contract period.
think we’re seeing more retailers now use reward programmes as an ability to offer customers value outside of shopping moments. It doesn’t then have to erode their own margin. So an example being a fashion retailer that offers a reward programme, rather than offering 5%, 10 % on your next purchase with said fashion brands, they can provide the customer with a third party discount and entices them back into site. Once they’re on site,
the fashion retailer can then make the website work hard enough to get that customer to convert and repeat shop. So rewards, think, is shifting. We’ve seen a lot of great work for years within the telecom sector. We’re now seeing more traditional retailers start to integrate rewards into their ecosystem.
Adrian Vella (08:03)
Interesting. Thank you. More retailers are moving from advertiser to host slash publisher. What does this shift mean in practice and have you got any good examples of brands doing this well?
Lee Metters (08:15)
I the ease of integration through Awin solution providers has really helped this, right? And I think partners like to be so you’re integrated into our Awin mass tag that enables grip deployment within hours, which makes it much easier for these advertiser brands to become brand partners. think a good example of a brand doing this well, think someone like SharkNinja they’ve always been an advertiser brand that’s been promoted by brand partners.
that work with you guys actually they’ve become a really important and I think compelling brand partner for the advertising audiences to tap into as well.
Adrian Vella (08:48)
Nice. And then On that note, what role does the Awin Tag has to play in brand partnerships? How does that help accelerate this space?
Lee Metters (08:58)
Yeah, so the master tag is effectively a container tag. any advertiser brand that works with Awin, we have a master tag solution that typically sits across all pages of their site. Solution provider scripts have been embedded within that. So that means that through our plug-in store, a client can come, they can toggle on to work with Tyviso. Your script is automatically then integrated into that client’s website through our Awin master tag.
And I think that helps with the speed of deployment. But the important thing is that campaign does not go live until the client has come to the Tyviso and created the campaign. So we almost do all of the brunt work and all of the hard work to deploy your script, but the client then gets to come into your platform and do the fun part, which is selecting the visual layout, selecting what advertisers they want to promote, branding it up, and then obviously putting the campaign live. So I think.
The Awin Master Tag plays a key role in just ensuring that speed of deployment and that ease of deployment. But the brand still then has to, I guess, go into the Tyviso platform and build out the campaign and put something together that they would want to display to their customers.
Adrian Vella (10:08)
So there’s lots of hungry developers in the street who you’ve made unemployed is basically what you’re saying. Cool. What trends or innovations do you think will shape the future brand partnerships and performance media?
Lee Metters (10:11)
Yeah.
And think we’ve seen more ad formats. think if we think about the successes we’ve seen with gift purchase to prepurchase, the primary objective of that is to positively influence customer behaviour. We show them a gift at the checkout as an incentive to complete their order. I think
We’ve obviously done some work with you guys to take where we show that offer slightly earlier in the journey. So showing an offer at product page, pre-pre purchase, if you like, can we incentivize that customer to basket? If we know them when they get to the basket, there’s offers there which incentivize them to convert. You’re ultimately filling the bucket to then get it to convert harder. And I think an interesting thing to consider as well would be taking it even earlier again, so almost onto the homepage.
which is where customers typically land and then bank straight away. If a brand partner can show an advertiser offer that is front and center on their homepage and that then incentivizes the customer to go through that product discovery journey and you’re reducing bank straight, again, you’re just driving higher quality traffic just through that purchasing funnel so that ultimately when they do get to the basket page, they’re going to convert at a far greater rate.
One of the other things that we’re exploring as well is almost this blend of in-store to offline. So one of the things that we’ve been looking to explore, guess, is within digital till receipts. So a ⁓ lot of fashion retailers do this, where you’ll go into store and they’ll ask you if they can email you a till receipt. It is ultimately a data play, right, to try and get more behaviour and shopping data from you to then
segment you into a profile. it’s the same email that you shop with online, they can match that together and create a pretty comprehensive data profile of you as a shopper. Right now, I don’t think there’s enough incentive for customers to just give up that data. Now, if you could offer them a gift for doing so, so using what we have done in the online world with gift repurchase so successfully, and you can give that customer some sort of digital reward with their digital tool receipt,
I think you then start to see a greater opt-in of customers willing to give data. And I think the third one, third trend or third innovation, I think we’ll start to see more supplier or vendor funding basically come into brand partnerships. So for example, if you bought a Dyson vacuum on Argos,
could fund a partner offer from small that you could then give to the customer. So I think what that will enable advertisers to do is effectively give stronger offers because it’s going to be funded by a supplier or a vendor to then offer to the customer. I think that that’s something that could be really interesting because it pulls more spend in, but it also allows, I think, greater offer because it’s being part funded by one of your supplier brands. I think that’s something that we’ll start to see more of.
within this space.
Adrian Vella (13:15)
So yeah, lot of it’s around the of the transactional moment, but what you’re kind of anticipating is just stretching more either side of that, Like separate data collection or ongoing multi. Okay.
Lee Metters (13:22)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah,
it’s about how you reward the customer for design of action, right? And if that desired action in store is to give up data, you have to come to some sort of understanding of how you’re going to reward that customer for doing so.
Adrian Vella (13:37)
What verticals so many verticals are doing well at the moment in brand partnerships right. Do you think there’s any that being left behind or could be doing better.
Lee Metters (13:41)
There’s a couple. think FMCG brands could be doing more on win back campaigns, particularly subscription brands. We were working quite closely with one of the food box subscription retailers to look at how they can use partner offers to basically reward customers and incentivize them to come back and repeat subscribe. So again, it goes back to that point I made earlier, but rather than eroding your margin and giving a discount, why not
bundle that with a third party offer and use some of that margin to offset the discount that you’re offering. I think there’s an opportunity there. think we still haven’t really cracked gravel. I think there’s an obvious alignment within travel to pair relevant retailer purchases. Just booked a ski holiday, direct the customer to some sort of ski equipment. You’ve just booked a summer holiday, direct them to sunglasses, swimwear.
there’s an opportunity there that I still don’t think we’ve quite got right. And again, I come back to that point around rewarding desired actions. think within finance, I think there’s an opportunity to reward for quotations. So we reward for practices within retail. There are a number of finance brands that are looking to get customers to complete a quotation. I think there’s an opportunity there to give that customer a reward.
when they complete the quotation. And again, an incentive to go through the five page question or whatever it might be to get the quote that you need.
Adrian Vella (15:08)
Interesting, so almost like a reward for a CPL, if you will. So it’s like, you know, the first action towards a purchase that will incentivise you to try and help push you along that journey.
Lee Metters (15:15)
Yeah.
Yeah, like again, particularly with a quote, right, where it sometimes takes five, six, seven pages of inputting into a form to get car insurance, as an example, if you could be shown a reward, let’s say, I don’t know, breakdown cover insurance at a discounted rate once you’ve completed your car insurance proposal, like that makes sense to me as a consumer to go through the ordeal of that quotation process, knowing that I’m going to get a discount on breakdown cover at the end of it.
Adrian Vella (15:46)
Nice, good answer. What are some of the best in-class campaigns you’ve seen so far and why were they the best in class?
Lee Metters (15:53)
Good question. I’ll give you a couple. I’m going to give you a couple, right? So I’m going to go Shark, which was one of your own campaigns. And I’m not just saying this because I’m talking to you, I think Shark was a great campaign, right? Because they were able to dynamically populate what was shown at the basket based on the contents of the customer’s cart.
Lee Metters (16:15)
I think the example was if they had a beauty product, you showed them a beauty description. If they had a vacuum in basket, then you showed them some sort of home cleaning. And I think not only did that boost conversion rate at the basket, but you also saw a greater redemption of the partner offer because the customer is likely more inclined. So dynamically populating it based on the customer’s previous shopping habit or what they have in their basket, I think is just the key to optimal success here. We also did a campaign a couple of years back with David Lloyd in Audible.
which still sticks out as one of my favorites. It wasn’t a sale driving campaign. It was all around brand awareness. But part of that exposure involved the D6 screens and David Lloyd clubs. An Audible offer was promoted and linked back to the David Lloyd member benefits at where customers could then redeem. It got something like 9, 10 million impressions over the one month campaign period. So like huge reach for Audible. And I think it’s still something that they talk about today and used to kind of benchmark campaigns against.
And then the third one, putting like a reward spin on it, again, one of your campaigns, but eRewards. We obviously submitted that into a PMA entry this year, EE saw, was it 35 % likelihood reduction in customer churn with customers that interacted with the reward app. So again, I think like we talk about loyalty now across all sectors and how challenging it is to encourage customers to come back to you. I think that’s a great example of how
were able to integrate a reward programme and reduce likely churn, which is obviously so prevalent in the telecom space, with customers that interacted with that reward programme. So then they’re the three that probably stick out.
Adrian Vella (17:49)
We talked about a lot of kind of like the good bits of brand partnerships, if you will. I’m just curious as to what some of maybe the most common mistakes that you’ve seen brands make in this space.
Lee Metters (17:53)
I think there’s sometimes a biased or unfair assumption, particularly within retail. And I think it’s important that brand teams are appeased. And of course, you have to have a partner offer that plays into your brand values and fits with your customer demographics. get that, that absolutely makes sense. But we often get feedback that
perhaps a brand partner offer devalues the brand image. And that I think is a common mistake because of all the campaigns that we have live across multiple clients in multiple sectors, in multiple sub-sectors, everything from, like I said, quick commerce to luxury fashion. We know that partner offers drive decent value to a business, whether it’s conversion rate optimisation, whether it’s increased revenue. So I think sometimes there is
biased or perhaps unfair assumptions that are put on some partner offers that just aren’t true. And think what we typically try to recommend with that is just allow us to A-B test it, right? Allow us to put a campaign live and we’ll almost show you the value that this can drive to your customer. If your customer is interested in interacting with a food box, they will take that offer, regardless of whether it’s premium enough that it matches your brand audience or not.
customers will take that offer if it’s relevant to them. So that, I think, is the common mistake. It’s just around that biased or unfair assumptions, I think.
Adrian Vella (19:22)
I definitely agree, by the way, or I think the other thing that I see sometimes is that someone who’s maybe running the campaign is biased about what they like rather than necessarily what their customers like, which is a very easy trap to fall in, right? Because you think, oh yeah, like, I need a new laptop, of course, like, I’ll, I’d love 10 % of that, but you know, in reality, how often do you buy a laptop? You don’t, right? So.
Lee Metters (19:35)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And again, that’s why
it should always be A-B tested, right? Or run split testing around partner offers, what customers want. And you very quickly, I think, start to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Adrian Vella (19:54)
I agree and I think it’s probably unfair to say that every partnership is 100 % successful. I think for me the key thing is to win big and lose small, right? And when you lose small, learn from those little losses and then turn it into next big win. I think that’s kind of the key.
Adrian Vella (20:10)
Now that we’re moving towards wrapping up, if you had to give a final piece of advice to a brand who hasn’t committed to try and brand partnerships yet, what would it be?
Lee Metters (20:18)
I so I presented an Awin event a couple of weeks back and the headline I led with is no matter what your marketing challenge is, brand partnerships can support, right? So every client across every sector has challenges and I genuinely believe that brand partnerships can support with all of them. We’ve spoken about increasing conversion rate optimisation at Checkout. That has to be relevant for every retail client.
We’ve spoken about customer loyalty and term reduction. That has to be relevant for every telecom brand, every finance brand. So I think no matter what that marketing challenge is, I think we can support. the other thing I would say is brand partnerships, retail media, however you want to coin it, I guess it’s here to stay. I think the economic climate that we find ourselves within, retailers need to work harder for revenue.
I think these are tools which can help them to do that. But I think also if you look at it from the advertiser side, the ability to target customers based on very aligned lookalike customer audiences, demographics that are aligned to your own, think making your marketing spend go further by tapping into an audience that is really relevant to you, I think that will continue to drive growth here. then again, the demise of third party cookie tracking will make it harder within
other marketing channels to target those lookalike customer audiences, aligning with a brand partner that has a similar demographic to your own and allows you to tap into large-party databases that are very relevant. yeah, I don’t think we’ve reached the peak of the opportunity yet. So if you are a brand listening to this and you haven’t done it yet, like it’s absolutely not too late, but I think if you’re not already active or at least not already thinking about it,
I can probably say with some certainty that your competitors will be and are. So I think it’s an opportunity for you to almost jump on this quite quickly or risk getting left behind. That’s what I would say.
Adrian Vella (22:16)
Nice, and was going to throw in one extra bonus thing, actually. I was going say, I’m sure there’s many brands who are on the Awin network.
necessarily tried brand partnerships or aren’t sure. Obviously you have a team that’s basically dedicated to this Awin. If someone is on Awin, how can they get in touch with you? How can they take that first step and kind of speak to a trusted source and who they already work with in terms of Awin?
Lee Metters (22:37)
Yeah, so speak to your Awin account contact or feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and I can put you in touch with my team. We can offer a consultative advice and basically just help you along that venue and explore what brand partnerships can do for you and your business and how we can help you with your marketing challenge, I guess.
Adrian Vella (22:56)
And what’s the email address for anyone who’s definitely not able to find it somehow on the website?
Lee Metters (23:00)
Email address to contact my team is ukbrandpartnerships@awin.com
Adrian Vella (00:00)
Thank you for joining me today. Much appreciated. Lee, was wondering if you could just give me a bit of background about yourself. And yeah, to start us off, if you could give us a quick interview about your role, your experience in the world of partnerships and how it connects with the work Awin is doing in the brand partnership space, that’d be great.
Lee Metters (00:13)
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, so I’m Lee Metters, Regional Senior Lead for brand partnerships and retail media at Awin. So my remit covers UK, Benlux and the French market. I’ve been at Awin for coming up 11 years, which is scary. Spent a lot of that time, early part of the years in client services, managed different client accounts, overseen different client accounts, but…
For the last five years, it kind of spearheaded our brand partnership proposition. So my team work with our network of brand partners. We’ve got about 400 of them on the Awin network. We offer strategic consultative advice to help them optimise their performance and also support them with matchmaking brand collaborations. Then we also support our portfolio of strategic solution providers like Tyviso, working to support your pipeline.
by engaging Awin clients, and then again, working collaboratively to help optimise that performance. And then I guess the third in the Tri-Party is we support advertisers as well. So we help advertisers connect with relevant brand partners and again, just help with that matchmaking experience.
Adrian Vella (01:30)
Outside of pure acquisition, what are other benefits that you see brands are getting from brand partnerships at the moment?
Lee Metters (01:36)
Yeah, so I guess the benefits from brand partnerships, I’ll split it into two. I think for advertisers, the vast bulk of the benefit from brand partnerships is around different, right? So it’s that ability to, I guess, target highly relevant customer audiences, align with brands that have very similar demographics or complement the customer shopping experience that they’re kind of undertaking with you. But I think there’s also a point around
brand awareness and brand resonance being promoted by a host or a brand partner, I think adds value to brands in that non-tangible way. Then I think from the brand partner or the host side, it’s very much about influencing the customer shopping behaviour, right? So how can we positively influence that customer experience?
Things like increasing conversion rate optimisation at Check High, rewarding customer loyalty, reducing trend reduction. These are all things that we can start to see within brand partnerships. And I think the benefits are becoming more clear to advertisers and brands.
Adrian Vella (02:37)
I’ll throw in a question Do you see a value, like a lot of brands tend to decide to do one or the other? Do you think there’s like kind of almost a mistake that some brands are not doing it both at the same time? And do you think extra value can be unlocked from doing both at the same time?
At the moment, as to your answer there, know, brands tend to be like a promoter or an advertiser, but there’s not many brands maybe that are doing both. Do you kind of feel like that’s a mistake or that’s something that extra value could be made from doing both at the same time?
Lee Metters (03:00)
Extra value, yes, 100%. In terms of is it a mistake? Yeah, I think it probably is. I think the reason for that is ultimately the benefits that a brand gets from being the advertiser and being promoted are very different to the benefits that they get from being the brand partner. I think
What we tend to find is the stakeholder team that manages the advertiser side of that partner relationship is perhaps different to the stakeholder manager, the brand partner side of that relationship. We have cases where the stakeholder is the same contact. Those are the brands that are typically playing on both sides of the coin, if you like, and then they’re seeing greater value from it. think the advice or the takeaway there is probably to…
align with different stakeholder teams and see how you can make brand partnerships almost playing to every part of your business organization.
Adrian Vella (03:56)
Nice, cool. There’s many different formats. So for example, there’s pre-checkout, post-checkout, rewards, and even more than that. How would you just say that a brand should go about deciding what’s best for them?
Lee Metters (04:09)
Yeah, think in terms of deciding what’s best for a brand, think it ultimately comes down to the primary KPI that the brand is looking to achieve, right? And I think just calling three out. So if a brand wants to increase their conversion rate optimisation or their average order value, we would recommend that they display an ad format that is pre-checkout because then we know we can incentivize those metrics with customers that are passing through the checkout journey.
If the KPI is all about revenue and increasing the profit margin that you get from individual customers, we recommend post-checkout because that’s then when you can start to insert third-party brand offers that will typically pay a higher CPA. You generate higher CPMs and that’s how you then start to drive more profitability from customers once they’ve completed their shopping journey review. think third, if you’re looking for loyalty, churn reduction, increased shopping behaviour, then
thinking about a reward programme that entices customers back into the site or provides customers with value beyond the services and experience that you provide them, that’s then when you can start to play into that KPI and that benefit as well. So I think in terms of the format that the brand takes, it’s very reliant on what the primary KPI is. And that’s how we would best position it. We try to understand what the KPI is first.
Adrian Vella (05:25)
And maybe a follow up to that. Do you see any problems with brands running multiple formats at the same time?
Lee Metters (05:31)
No, I think, I think we would try to encourage it because I think each format, again, like it plays into different KPIs, but it provides a different experience to the customer as well. So let’s just take pre purchase and post purchase, right? Pre purchase is very much about can we incentivize that customer to product basket or complete that basket and checkout on site. When they’ve then got to post purchase, you can then start to tell more of a story to that customer and you can start to.
educate them on why the third party complimentary brand complements the shopping experience that they’ve just had with you. So I think even those two, pre-purchase and post-purchase, can be used together to just round off what is quite a compelling story. Get the customer to complete their action on site, then when they have completed that action, tell more of the story and kind of provide them with upsell and added benefits, I guess, post-checkout.
Adrian Vella (06:19)
Have you seen any recent trends in format choice? So for example, obviously, we talked about pre-purchase, post-purchase. Are you seeing Awin brands move in a particular direction at the moment?
Lee Metters (06:30)
think it depends on the sector that we’re talking about with the client. So quick commerce brands, fashion, retailers are typically looking to increase conversion rate optimizations. So they’re electing for pre-purchase formats where we can really start to shift that needle on basket completion. In sectors where profit margins are typically a little bit tighter, so something like electricals, those retailers are looking to drive more value from the customer and drive more profit margin.
they’re opting for push tech out where they can start to buy it up and it becomes a revenue play. think what we’ve then seen is this emergence of rewards. Rewards has been used for a long time within telecoms, think, financial insurances, banking, where brands that are almost locking customers into a contract use rewards as a value add to reward that customer during the contract period.
think we’re seeing more retailers now use reward programmes as an ability to offer customers value outside of shopping moments. It doesn’t then have to erode their own margin. So an example being a fashion retailer that offers a reward programme, rather than offering 5%, 10 % on your next purchase with said fashion brands, they can provide the customer with a third party discount and entices them back into site. Once they’re on site,
the fashion retailer can then make the website work hard enough to get that customer to convert and repeat shop. So rewards, think, is shifting. We’ve seen a lot of great work for years within the telecom sector. We’re now seeing more traditional retailers start to integrate rewards into their ecosystem.
Adrian Vella (08:03)
Interesting. Thank you. More retailers are moving from advertiser to host slash publisher. What does this shift mean in practice and have you got any good examples of brands doing this well?
Lee Metters (08:15)
I the ease of integration through Awin solution providers has really helped this, right? And I think partners like to be so you’re integrated into our Awin mass tag that enables grip deployment within hours, which makes it much easier for these advertiser brands to become brand partners. think a good example of a brand doing this well, think someone like SharkNinja they’ve always been an advertiser brand that’s been promoted by brand partners.
that work with you guys actually they’ve become a really important and I think compelling brand partner for the advertising audiences to tap into as well.
Adrian Vella (08:48)
Nice. And then On that note, what role does the Awin Tag has to play in brand partnerships? How does that help accelerate this space?
Lee Metters (08:58)
Yeah, so the master tag is effectively a container tag. any advertiser brand that works with Awin, we have a master tag solution that typically sits across all pages of their site. Solution provider scripts have been embedded within that. So that means that through our plug-in store, a client can come, they can toggle on to work with Tyviso. Your script is automatically then integrated into that client’s website through our Awin master tag.
And I think that helps with the speed of deployment. But the important thing is that campaign does not go live until the client has come to the Tyviso and created the campaign. So we almost do all of the brunt work and all of the hard work to deploy your script, but the client then gets to come into your platform and do the fun part, which is selecting the visual layout, selecting what advertisers they want to promote, branding it up, and then obviously putting the campaign live. So I think.
The Awin Master Tag plays a key role in just ensuring that speed of deployment and that ease of deployment. But the brand still then has to, I guess, go into the Tyviso platform and build out the campaign and put something together that they would want to display to their customers.
Adrian Vella (10:08)
So there’s lots of hungry developers in the street who you’ve made unemployed is basically what you’re saying. Cool. What trends or innovations do you think will shape the future brand partnerships and performance media?
Lee Metters (10:11)
Yeah.
And think we’ve seen more ad formats. think if we think about the successes we’ve seen with gift purchase to prepurchase, the primary objective of that is to positively influence customer behaviour. We show them a gift at the checkout as an incentive to complete their order. I think
We’ve obviously done some work with you guys to take where we show that offer slightly earlier in the journey. So showing an offer at product page, pre-pre purchase, if you like, can we incentivize that customer to basket? If we know them when they get to the basket, there’s offers there which incentivize them to convert. You’re ultimately filling the bucket to then get it to convert harder. And I think an interesting thing to consider as well would be taking it even earlier again, so almost onto the homepage.
which is where customers typically land and then bank straight away. If a brand partner can show an advertiser offer that is front and center on their homepage and that then incentivizes the customer to go through that product discovery journey and you’re reducing bank straight, again, you’re just driving higher quality traffic just through that purchasing funnel so that ultimately when they do get to the basket page, they’re going to convert at a far greater rate.
One of the other things that we’re exploring as well is almost this blend of in-store to offline. So one of the things that we’ve been looking to explore, guess, is within digital till receipts. So a ⁓ lot of fashion retailers do this, where you’ll go into store and they’ll ask you if they can email you a till receipt. It is ultimately a data play, right, to try and get more behaviour and shopping data from you to then
segment you into a profile. it’s the same email that you shop with online, they can match that together and create a pretty comprehensive data profile of you as a shopper. Right now, I don’t think there’s enough incentive for customers to just give up that data. Now, if you could offer them a gift for doing so, so using what we have done in the online world with gift repurchase so successfully, and you can give that customer some sort of digital reward with their digital tool receipt,
I think you then start to see a greater opt-in of customers willing to give data. And I think the third one, third trend or third innovation, I think we’ll start to see more supplier or vendor funding basically come into brand partnerships. So for example, if you bought a Dyson vacuum on Argos,
could fund a partner offer from small that you could then give to the customer. So I think what that will enable advertisers to do is effectively give stronger offers because it’s going to be funded by a supplier or a vendor to then offer to the customer. I think that that’s something that could be really interesting because it pulls more spend in, but it also allows, I think, greater offer because it’s being part funded by one of your supplier brands. I think that’s something that we’ll start to see more of.
within this space.
Adrian Vella (13:15)
So yeah, lot of it’s around the of the transactional moment, but what you’re kind of anticipating is just stretching more either side of that, Like separate data collection or ongoing multi. Okay.
Lee Metters (13:22)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah,
it’s about how you reward the customer for design of action, right? And if that desired action in store is to give up data, you have to come to some sort of understanding of how you’re going to reward that customer for doing so.
Adrian Vella (13:37)
What verticals so many verticals are doing well at the moment in brand partnerships right. Do you think there’s any that being left behind or could be doing better.
Lee Metters (13:41)
There’s a couple. think FMCG brands could be doing more on win back campaigns, particularly subscription brands. We were working quite closely with one of the food box subscription retailers to look at how they can use partner offers to basically reward customers and incentivize them to come back and repeat subscribe. So again, it goes back to that point I made earlier, but rather than eroding your margin and giving a discount, why not
bundle that with a third party offer and use some of that margin to offset the discount that you’re offering. I think there’s an opportunity there. think we still haven’t really cracked gravel. I think there’s an obvious alignment within travel to pair relevant retailer purchases. Just booked a ski holiday, direct the customer to some sort of ski equipment. You’ve just booked a summer holiday, direct them to sunglasses, swimwear.
there’s an opportunity there that I still don’t think we’ve quite got right. And again, I come back to that point around rewarding desired actions. think within finance, I think there’s an opportunity to reward for quotations. So we reward for practices within retail. There are a number of finance brands that are looking to get customers to complete a quotation. I think there’s an opportunity there to give that customer a reward.
when they complete the quotation. And again, an incentive to go through the five page question or whatever it might be to get the quote that you need.
Adrian Vella (15:08)
Interesting, so almost like a reward for a CPL, if you will. So it’s like, you know, the first action towards a purchase that will incentivise you to try and help push you along that journey.
Lee Metters (15:15)
Yeah.
Yeah, like again, particularly with a quote, right, where it sometimes takes five, six, seven pages of inputting into a form to get car insurance, as an example, if you could be shown a reward, let’s say, I don’t know, breakdown cover insurance at a discounted rate once you’ve completed your car insurance proposal, like that makes sense to me as a consumer to go through the ordeal of that quotation process, knowing that I’m going to get a discount on breakdown cover at the end of it.
Adrian Vella (15:46)
Nice, good answer. What are some of the best in-class campaigns you’ve seen so far and why were they the best in class?
Lee Metters (15:53)
Good question. I’ll give you a couple. I’m going to give you a couple, right? So I’m going to go Shark, which was one of your own campaigns. And I’m not just saying this because I’m talking to you, I think Shark was a great campaign, right? Because they were able to dynamically populate what was shown at the basket based on the contents of the customer’s cart.
Lee Metters (16:15)
I think the example was if they had a beauty product, you showed them a beauty description. If they had a vacuum in basket, then you showed them some sort of home cleaning. And I think not only did that boost conversion rate at the basket, but you also saw a greater redemption of the partner offer because the customer is likely more inclined. So dynamically populating it based on the customer’s previous shopping habit or what they have in their basket, I think is just the key to optimal success here. We also did a campaign a couple of years back with David Lloyd in Audible.
which still sticks out as one of my favorites. It wasn’t a sale driving campaign. It was all around brand awareness. But part of that exposure involved the D6 screens and David Lloyd clubs. An Audible offer was promoted and linked back to the David Lloyd member benefits at where customers could then redeem. It got something like 9, 10 million impressions over the one month campaign period. So like huge reach for Audible. And I think it’s still something that they talk about today and used to kind of benchmark campaigns against.
And then the third one, putting like a reward spin on it, again, one of your campaigns, but eRewards. We obviously submitted that into a PMA entry this year, EE saw, was it 35 % likelihood reduction in customer churn with customers that interacted with the reward app. So again, I think like we talk about loyalty now across all sectors and how challenging it is to encourage customers to come back to you. I think that’s a great example of how
were able to integrate a reward programme and reduce likely churn, which is obviously so prevalent in the telecom space, with customers that interacted with that reward programme. So then they’re the three that probably stick out.
Adrian Vella (17:49)
We talked about a lot of kind of like the good bits of brand partnerships, if you will. I’m just curious as to what some of maybe the most common mistakes that you’ve seen brands make in this space.
Lee Metters (17:53)
I think there’s sometimes a biased or unfair assumption, particularly within retail. And I think it’s important that brand teams are appeased. And of course, you have to have a partner offer that plays into your brand values and fits with your customer demographics. get that, that absolutely makes sense. But we often get feedback that
perhaps a brand partner offer devalues the brand image. And that I think is a common mistake because of all the campaigns that we have live across multiple clients in multiple sectors, in multiple sub-sectors, everything from, like I said, quick commerce to luxury fashion. We know that partner offers drive decent value to a business, whether it’s conversion rate optimisation, whether it’s increased revenue. So I think sometimes there is
biased or perhaps unfair assumptions that are put on some partner offers that just aren’t true. And think what we typically try to recommend with that is just allow us to A-B test it, right? Allow us to put a campaign live and we’ll almost show you the value that this can drive to your customer. If your customer is interested in interacting with a food box, they will take that offer, regardless of whether it’s premium enough that it matches your brand audience or not.
customers will take that offer if it’s relevant to them. So that, I think, is the common mistake. It’s just around that biased or unfair assumptions, I think.
Adrian Vella (19:22)
I definitely agree, by the way, or I think the other thing that I see sometimes is that someone who’s maybe running the campaign is biased about what they like rather than necessarily what their customers like, which is a very easy trap to fall in, right? Because you think, oh yeah, like, I need a new laptop, of course, like, I’ll, I’d love 10 % of that, but you know, in reality, how often do you buy a laptop? You don’t, right? So.
Lee Metters (19:35)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And again, that’s why
it should always be A-B tested, right? Or run split testing around partner offers, what customers want. And you very quickly, I think, start to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Adrian Vella (19:54)
I agree and I think it’s probably unfair to say that every partnership is 100 % successful. I think for me the key thing is to win big and lose small, right? And when you lose small, learn from those little losses and then turn it into next big win. I think that’s kind of the key.
Adrian Vella (20:10)
Now that we’re moving towards wrapping up, if you had to give a final piece of advice to a brand who hasn’t committed to try and brand partnerships yet, what would it be?
Lee Metters (20:18)
I so I presented an Awin event a couple of weeks back and the headline I led with is no matter what your marketing challenge is, brand partnerships can support, right? So every client across every sector has challenges and I genuinely believe that brand partnerships can support with all of them. We’ve spoken about increasing conversion rate optimisation at Checkout. That has to be relevant for every retail client.
We’ve spoken about customer loyalty and term reduction. That has to be relevant for every telecom brand, every finance brand. So I think no matter what that marketing challenge is, I think we can support. the other thing I would say is brand partnerships, retail media, however you want to coin it, I guess it’s here to stay. I think the economic climate that we find ourselves within, retailers need to work harder for revenue.
I think these are tools which can help them to do that. But I think also if you look at it from the advertiser side, the ability to target customers based on very aligned lookalike customer audiences, demographics that are aligned to your own, think making your marketing spend go further by tapping into an audience that is really relevant to you, I think that will continue to drive growth here. then again, the demise of third party cookie tracking will make it harder within
other marketing channels to target those lookalike customer audiences, aligning with a brand partner that has a similar demographic to your own and allows you to tap into large-party databases that are very relevant. yeah, I don’t think we’ve reached the peak of the opportunity yet. So if you are a brand listening to this and you haven’t done it yet, like it’s absolutely not too late, but I think if you’re not already active or at least not already thinking about it,
I can probably say with some certainty that your competitors will be and are. So I think it’s an opportunity for you to almost jump on this quite quickly or risk getting left behind. That’s what I would say.
Adrian Vella (22:16)
Nice, and was going to throw in one extra bonus thing, actually. I was going say, I’m sure there’s many brands who are on the Awin network.
necessarily tried brand partnerships or aren’t sure. Obviously you have a team that’s basically dedicated to this Awin. If someone is on Awin, how can they get in touch with you? How can they take that first step and kind of speak to a trusted source and who they already work with in terms of Awin?
Lee Metters (22:37)
Yeah, so speak to your Awin account contact or feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and I can put you in touch with my team. We can offer a consultative advice and basically just help you along that venue and explore what brand partnerships can do for you and your business and how we can help you with your marketing challenge, I guess.
Adrian Vella (22:56)
And what’s the email address for anyone who’s definitely not able to find it somehow on the website?
Lee Metters (23:00)
Email address to contact my team is ukbrandpartnerships@awin.com
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