Having origins from the financial crisis in the U.S. in 1869, the term “Black Friday” didn’t always have the most positive connotation. Fast forward to today, where many countries have adopted this term to signify one of the most revenue-driving days of the year – in fact this phenomenon has sparked what we have recently called “Cyber Week” and could have potentially extended to longer, especially in 2020.
Recently, we interviewed Angelica Boué from Afiliza, to talk about what key trends she saw for EMEA on this critical holiday for the partnership and affiliate industry. Afiliza connects leading e-commerce brands with savvy online shoppers across the UK, France and Germany.
1. Was Black Friday relatively the same for you this year as it was last year? Why or why not? Were there any big surprises?
2020 has been a pretty unconventional year as we all know, and revealed a lot of surprises. Throughout Black Friday we generated over 100M€ for our partners, making it a +100% growth vs 2019 Black Friday; an outstanding result! One of the factors of this success is the significant growth of Widilo.fr, which is now France’s second leading cashback site offering the market’s highest cashback rates. We recorded 2.4M visitors in November, 1.5M subscribers and +10k new members/day.
Furthermore, 30% of our transactions come from the Widilo extension. The extension makes it possible for our users to activate their cashback with just one click directly on the merchant website. You can download it for free on the following link: https://www.widilo.fr/extension
2. What was the biggest take-away from this Black Friday that you will take into 2021?
This year, anticipation and organisation have proven to be the key to a successful and smooth Black Friday. By sending our media kits at the start of September, we were able to facilitate the relaying of our opportunities to our partners. This allowed us to be more available and offer exposure meeting 100% of our partner’s needs. This is definitely a major take-away that we will take into 2021 to achieve even better results.
3. If there is one tip each that you could share for both our brands and the partners working Black Friday and Cyber Monday week, what would it be?
If we were to give a recommendation, it would be to urge advertisers to book exposure packages as soon as possible to promote their Black Friday offers. Indeed, here at AFILIZA we launch our Black Friday campaign on November 1st with a special Pre-Black Friday event.
Throughout the month, we carry out numerous teasing operations to maintain users’ interest and to create a true loyal community. This has proven to be effective, with over 12M visits on our sites during Black Friday month and over 600,000 on D-Day! Brands positioning themselves at the beginning of the month on our sites benefit from full exposure and have more chances to reach a new high-quality audience. For publishers, it is therefore important to create monthly or even ad hoc marketing campaigns to spark the advertisers interest as well as the users’.
4. What is a piece of advice you would give to partners (of any type) just starting out in the affiliate industry?
Affiliate marketing is a very competitive sector, so it is very important to choose the leverages one wishes to work on. This is an essential strategic choice because advertisers will work with different types of affiliates.It is imperative to follow market trends in order not to be outdated.
We would advise brands wishing to get started in affiliate marketing to invest in long-term exposure plans. The more a brand will be present throughout the year, the more users have a high recognition of it.
Finally, we would say that the most important thing is to adapt to your environment and innovate to always offer more impactful content that is likely to respond to a larger audience.
Knowing that 60% of transactions were made through mobile devices during Black Friday, we decided to capitalise on the launch of the Widilo app, available in the UK and FR markets (App Store and Playstore).
Angelica is a Key Account Manager at Afiliza, a French company based in Paris. She has been passionate about digital marketing since the age of 18 and now at Afiliza, she found the perfect opportunity to get a new approach on the e-commerce industry and the affiliate marketing world. She manages several client portfolios, analysing clients’ needs and carrying out regular follow ups to help them to reach their business goals.
