*At a time when measures to prevent the spread of the new COVID-19 have limited the number of flights, the BestValue team is offering access to the site based on a virtual airline ticket automatically offered to customers’ accounts, a solution designed to bring back part of the mirage of travel, namely access to the premium duty free products they used to indulge in shopping before take-off.

BestValue.eu launched online in 2016. They started doing affiliate marketing from the very beginning, because they felt that this channel had potential. However, the results started to show last year, more precisely, from July 2019 it started to grow, with the peak being reached on Black Friday last year, when, through affiliates, they recorded 4 times more sales in November than in October 2019.

Right now, BestValue’s affiliate program is ranked 9th in the overall Advertiser Ranking and 2nd in the Beauty category, and that takes constant commitment.

We caught up with Janette Andrei, Performance Marketing Manager, who joined the BestValue team in June this year at the height of the pandemic. Janette took over a well-functioning affiliate program and her challenge was twofold: to maintain and at the same time increase results to the next level of performance, and this in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis. With affiliate sales at 18% of total business in May, the pressure was indeed high, but the affiliate program is still performing very well.

Because Janette already had over 10 years of experience in online marketing (PPC, SEM, SEO, Analytics, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, website optimization, etc) but had not had any contact with affiliate marketing, I asked her how she adapted to the situation:

“I’ve never had contact with affiliate marketing before, but it’s not complicated, the platform is very simple to use, plus there’s plenty of material if you have questions. If you understand affiliate marketing, as an advertiser it should be pretty quick to get used to the platform, which is intuitive and user-friendly.“

The BestValue team works 90% remotely, and Janette has started working with her colleagues online, as indeed we also have colleagues in the same situation. Was it hard?

“I can’t say it was very hard to adapt to working from home, that’s because many times the teams I worked with previously on projects were not located in the same city/country as me, I’m used to working remotely. Calls with the team have taken the place of physical meetings, however, we have set up workflows from the beginning according to which we carry out our daily activities and everything works in harmony. We feel we are more productive, efficient and focused on tasks and results. The BestValue team is united, supportive and, most importantly, focused on performance and results. This is definitely a result of agile working methods and close inter-departmental communication.”

All online, for online

There is a seamless integration between the marketing channels used: affiliate, PPC Facebook & Google & Bing, Social Media and newsletters.

Promotion via Google & Facebook Ads is also allowed in the affiliate programme and campaigns are always communicated to affiliates.

Moreover, the BestValue team has managed to create a healthy predictability, very useful for affiliates, by running weekly campaigns, usually on the same day of the week.

“We are open and 100% flexible to all forms of promotion and types of affiliate projects, from content marketing to cashback and PPC. It all depends on the affiliates’ strategy, we want to have as many collaborations as possible that generate profitable sales for both affiliates and us.”

In May, Affiliates accounted for 18% of total business

BestValue’s business is based in a high proportion on offline retail, business2consumer, operating stores in all Romanian airports. However, the fact that they have built a good online presence in recent years helped them when physical stores were temporarily closed due to lockdown measures in our country.

April and May were exceptional months for the online store, with affiliate sales making a strong contribution (18% of total online sales in May).

Over 300 active affiliates. BestValue’s best performing affiliates earn a minimum of EUR 400 each per month.

The BestValue affiliate program is constantly attracting new affiliates (over 1,000 are already signed up), and this year over 300 affiliates were active.

The top 5 BestValue affiliates earn a minimum of EUR 400 each per month.

Transparency of information, the platform’s greatest asset

“The biggest benefit is the transparency of information. Both advertisers and affiliates can choose who they work with by making decisions based on business data, statistics and not on feeling.

Ranking is also useful, you understand if your actions have an impact on the results, in the sense that you provide the necessary information to affiliates, so you make sure you get promoted.

I think affiliates also find Advertiser Ranking helpful in choosing who they will promote.”

Affiliates as business partners

What do you do in your affiliate programme to ensure success?

• We trust our affiliates and build our growth strategy based on the affiliate program
• We constantly improve the conversion rate on the website
• We are always looking to capture opportunities and turn problems into opportunities (e.g. current pandemic)
• Process commissions as often as possible
• Communicate all campaigns to affiliates without fail
• We always have new campaigns
• We upload dedicated banners for each campaign
• Our affiliates are familiar with our established marketing campaigns such as Mystery Sale or Speed Race and know that these are great for them to generate conversions for BestValue

Collaboration and organization

BestValue’s affiliate program benefits from account management, and Janette says about collaborating with our colleague Silviu:

“Having a dedicated account manager for the BestValue account is great, because it’s much easier to validate your strategic directions throughout the whole process of actions that affiliate marketing involves”

✳ One interesting thing I learned from them is that they have a dedicated board in Asana, the team works on tickets and so it is much easier for them to see at any time the statuses of projects, what they have worked on, what is pending and also to quickly resolve one-off situations. 

Black Friday 2020

“We are preparing a very special Black Friday, BestValue will offer all DUTY FREE shoppers the opportunity to shop online on our website based on a virtual airline ticket that we are providing for free.

We are preparing VIP access – we offer for those who will sign up for VIP: a 3-hour advance on shopping, extra 5% discount, cumulative with other discounts up to 60%, we will reveal the most desired products in the Black Friday offer, free delivery on any order, regardless of its value, anywhere in Romania, airport prices exclusively dedicated to travelers and a shopping experience totally unique.”