Only 18% of merchant offers are effective. Here’s what works.

What makes a merchant attractive to a publisher? You might think it’s just providing them with an increased commission rate but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With years of experience helping publishers build their commerce strategies, and over $2.5 million a day driven in the network, the insights from Skimlinks platform shows what key actions merchants need to take to scale revenue with top content publishers.

Time-limited Rate Increases do not drive performance

The analysis of 441 time-limited rate increases in the Skimlinks Platform shows that for well established merchants with a long standing relationships with publishers, time-limited rate increases are a good way drive additional performance, but it does not work for merchants who are still building relationships with publishers. In fact, we saw a negative effect of 3% in performance for time-limited offers from Self Serve merchants. So what does work? Below are key insights from the Skimlinks platform that Self Serve merchants can do today, to make a difference to their performance and revenue growth.

Increasing Base Commission Rate drives merchant revenue

From, Skimlinks performance data, we can see that those self serve merchants that increase their base commission rate drive a high level of success. One example we’ve seen is a self serve merchant that increased their rate from 5% to 24%. Following the increase, their total order value rose by 26% YOY. In dollar amounts that’s an increase from $618,916 to $782,854 and a 7% increase in the profit generated.

Providing an offer increases merchant performance

Across the Skimlinks platform, there are over 150,000 offers set up by merchants. The top 4 performing offer categories for self serve merchants are Free Shipping, Sales, Coupon and Hot Product. The table below shows the performance of the top 4 categories over the last 18 months, it shows that while coupons drive a high earnings per click and conversion rate, Hot Products and Sales deliver a great AOV.

Merchants should consider the offers that perform best with their audience and ensure these are set up in the Skimlinks Platform so publishers can promote them.

Over the past 18 months, the top 10 performing offers seen through the Skimlinks platform are:

British Fashion Retailer: 30% off
Footwear Company: All Boot Styles $60
High End Jewelry: 15% off all orders
Leading Beauty Retailer:: 50% off
Homewares Retailer: 30-70% off site wide
Artesian Marketplace:: Father’s Day Sale 15% off sitewide
Music Merchandise: free shipping
Leading Vacuum Manufacture: 50% off
American Cosmetics Retailer: 3 free samples with purchase of $65 and over
Cosmetics Brand: free samples with $35 and over purchase

Skimlinks Preferred Partner Program

All Self Serve Merchants are eligible to join the Skimlinks Preferred Partner Program, find more details and sign up here.