IBM Coremetrics has just added Cyber Monday 2011 data to their benchmark report I blogged about yesterday.

Here are the things that have caught my eye:

Cyber Monday 2011 — 5 Noteworthy Facts

1. Overall spending increase — Online sales were up 33% over 2010, 29.3% up over Black Friday 2011, and AOV (avergage order value) also went up from $193.24 to $198.26
2. Conversion rate — Overall conversion rate went up from 5.6% in 2010 to 5.71%, mobile seeing the best improvement (from 2.24% to 2.99%)
3. Mobile sales growth — Nearly 11% of people used a mobile device to visit e-tailers’ websites (up from some 4% last year), resulting in a nearly threefold growth in mobile sales (6.6% in 2011 vs 2.3% in 2010)
4. Social media part — While “discussions leading up to Cyber Monday increased in volume by 115% compared to 2010″, resuling in 0.93% of site traffic, only 0.56% of Cyber Monday shoppers were referred directly from social networks.
5. Facebook vs Twitter — Facebook referral traffic accounted for 0.8% of all e-tailers’ Cyber Monday traffic (up from 0.73% in 2010), while Twitter referred only 0.02% (down from 0.07% in 2010)

Important: All of the above reflects U.S. data.

To see what people have been buying (good data both for affiliates, and for merchants to review), especially in electronics — a niche that registered the highest growth – 26% over 2010 — see these lists by Larry Magid.

Make sure you also download IBM’s full 10-page Cyber Monday Report 2011 here [PDF file], which among other things also contains detailed information and 2011-vs-2010 comparisons of sales data in such categories as Apparel (one of the best in one-page bounce rates – 25.5%), Department Stores (champion in average session length – 8:18), Health and Beauty (best in conversion – 5.4%), and Home Goods (best 2011-over-2010 improvement – 68.4%, and largest AOV – $290.11).

Typically, yield is being used as an investment term that reflects a return on investment (ROI) normally expressed as a percentage, and tied to a period of time. Since ROI is what affiliate marketing is all about, a week ago I asked merchants to help me determine the yield (or percentage of sales) that their affiliate marketing programs bring in (as compared to the overall online sales in the company).

We’ve had 35 merchants participate (thank you very much for taking the time, as it will help others get a better understanding of what to expect), and here are the results of that poll which has closed earlier this morning:

We can see that the spread is pretty wide. It seems to me that splitting the votes into 4 groups would make the above pie-chart a bit more digestible:

1. Low yield (under 8%) — 40%
2. Moderate yield (9%-15%) — 29%
3. Moderately high yield (16%-35%) — 21%
4. High yield (over 50%) — 11%

Conclusions? I’ll take a stab at drawing some:

1. As initially stated, much will depend on the size of your online business, and the sales volume it generate(d)/(s) before the introduction of the affiliate program.
2. Also, as stated before, merchants operating in some niches (less crowded ones, more online-friendly ones, etc) may see a better yield (from affiliate marketing) than others.
3. The yield will also be greatly conditioned by your affiliate program’s T’s and C’s (some programs choose to exclude certain groups of affiliates [e.g.: PPC, couponers, incentive sites, etc], others auto-decline affiliates on one reason or another, and so on).
4. Finally, the results of any affiliate marketing campaign are always directly dependent on the amount of time, money and effort the business invests in the development of their affiliate program.

In a nutshell, an array of situational variables will determine the outcome, and no, there is no easy one-size-fits-all answer to the question of what to expect. I stick to my original answer: aim at least at the 15%, and strive for more; but don’t expect much unless you’re closely involved in the development of your affiliate program (read: manage it! don’t leave it on a cruise control).

If anyone has other (complimentary or even opposing) views on this subject, I would appreciate you expressing them via comments under this post. Many thanks in advance.

Over two years ago replying to a question of what percentage of sales an affiliate program can bring I wrote:

Much depends on (a) the size of the business at the point of starting the affiliate program, and (b) the niche in which the business operates. In reality, it is next to impossible to quote the exact percentage. If it’s a small business in a moderately crowded niche, 40-45% is a realistic growth to expect. If, on the other hand, it is a Fortune 500 business with a solid online presence and a good flow of Internet sales prior to starting the affiliate program, a 10-15% growth is a great result to achieve through the affiliate channel.

Yesterday, as I was listening to Ozon.ru, one of Russia’s top if not the top online retailers or the Amazon of Russia, present at the Russian Internet Forum in St. Petersburg, I’ve heard them quote some impressive stats. Regardless of the fact that roughly 80% of their customers choose cash-to-courier as their payment method (the “beauty” of present-day Russian e-commerce), they’re growing and currently getting some 4 million UVs, carrying 1 million products, having 1k employees, and registering gross sales of some 4 billion RUB (which currently equals some 143 million USD)/year at a rate of ~6,200 orders/day. Answering the question of of what percentage of their sales come referred through affiliates, one of Ozon’s directors, Anna Matveeva, replied that between 10% and 13% of the e-tailer’s sales are affiliate-driven. That makes up a range of $14.5-$18.6 million/year which is impressive not only for Russia.

I’ve asked some major American online merchants the same question, but most of them sent me replies saying “sorry, we’re not able to share that information” or something along similar lines. DaySpring.com, a Hallmark subsidiary, whose affiliate program we manage, did agree to share their numbers though; and I’m happily linking to all of their online properties, in return. Jesse Lane, the company’s Internet marketing director, shared that Year To Date 2011 numbers have been 12% to 14% of all online store sales. This seems to roughly match the range that Ozon has quoted above.

If you’re reading this as a merchant (or an affiliate program manager), I could really use your help now. Here’s a 100% anonymous poll that I’m inviting you to participate in:

I hope the above poll will help us all understand what part of an e-tailer’s sales can be affiliate-driven a bit better. Many thanks in advance for your votes.

Earlier this morning ForeSee Results has released their 6th annual Holiday Top 40 Online Retail Satisfaction Index, a ranking of the top 40 largest online retailers by revenue, scored on customer satisfaction by nearly 10,000 survey respondents. The “holiday” period is defined here as “the holiday shopping season from Thanksgiving through the last day of free shipping”.

Based on the survey results the top 7 performers of 2010 are:

• Amazon and Neflix (86 points each)
• QVC (84 points)
• Avon and LL Bean (83 points each)
• Newegg and Apple (82 points each)

The bottom of the list looks as follows:

• HomeDepot.com, Macys.com & OfficeMax.com (75 points each)
• Sears.com (74 points)
• TigerDirect.com (73 points)

Here are some other points I personally have found of interest in the ForeSeeResults’ report:

Customer Satisfaction with US Online Retailers: 2005-2010

What Are Satisfied US Customers More Likely to Do?

Amazon versus Walmart

Netflix versus Blockbuster

You may download the full 21-page Holiday Top 40 Online Retail Satisfaction Index report here.

Every year we see multiple surveys being conducted around various areas of digital marketing, but sometimes when looking at the number of respondents, we think: “Nah… This is just too small of an audience to be indicative of the overall trend!” or “350 people they’ve surveyed can’t be sufficient enough of a number to make the conclusions they’re making for the whole industry!”

In some cases, the above reactions may be right, while in others a statistically significant sample size may actually be very different from what we may imagine it should be.

Definition first:

Statistical significance — put simply, this is the likelihood that a finding or a result is caused by something other than just chance. Usually, this is set at less than 5% probability (p< 0.05), meaning that the result is at least 95% likely to be accurate (or that this result would be produced by chance no more than 5% of the time). [source]

Now let’s turn to our statistically significant sample size. How do we determine how large it has to be (to ensure our survey findings are most likely to be accurate than not)?

The following table from a paper by Bartlett, Kotrlik & Higgins answers the question:

Read about the differences between continuous and categorical data here and here. Also, see the original Organizational Research: Determining Appropriate Sample Size in Survey Research manuscript (PDF file).

I’ve just come across an interesting article by Multichannel Merchant, a Chief! Marketer publication, where the author looks at the results of The State of Retailing Online 2010 survey recently conducted by Forrester Research for Shop.org.

Comparing paid search to social media marketing, Multichannel Merchant points out:

…According to the results, merchants that earned less than $10 million in annual revenue spent 37% of their average $600,000 budgets on paid search; this group spent 5% of their budgets on social media.

Marketers with annual sales of 10 million to $100 million spent 38% of their average $3.2 million budget on search vs. 2% on social media. And merchants with more that $100 million in annual revenue spent 39% of their average $11 million budgets on search—they spent only 1% on social.

Wonder where email marketing, and especially affiliate marketing fit into the picture? Multichannel Merchant continues:

E-mail marketing — both to house files and prospects — was the second-most popular marketing spend tactic for small and medium size merchants, while affiliate marketing was the second-most popular for the merchants with more than $100 million in annual revenue [underlining mine].

Interesting data. Is affiliate marketing interwoven into your digital marketing mix yet?

A few days ago, having registered that in April 2010 “35 million consumers visited coupon sites” (a number that was up 5% from the year before), Compete reminded us of the findings of their “Online Shopper Intelligence” study originally released in February 2010.

In the ranking of sources / tools on which consumers depend while shopping online Coupon Sites (used by 35% of online consumers) are second only to Search Engines (used by 61%):

The numbers of Coupon Sites’ users are growing as it was expected [see my Bright Future for Coupon Affiliates December 2009 post], and it was interesting to review Compete‘s findings regarding online coupons and coupon shoppers:

1. Coupon codes can make or a break a sale — 57% of consumers who used a coupon code during their last online purchase said that if they had not received the discount, they would not have bought the item(s)
2. Consumers who use a coupon spend almost twice as much — The small discounts consumers receive encourage them to spend more money ($216 AOV with coupon versus $122 without coupon)
3. Coupons can increase customer satisfaction — They are an effective way for retailers to build good will with their consumers. Of those that did use the coupon, 92% were satisfied with their shopping experience (as opposed to 88% who didn’t have a coupon to use). The difference of only 4% may, however, be deemed a pretty insignificant one to make a conclusion. Hence, Compete’s usage of the word “can” there.
4. Coupons can increase customer loyalty — Those who used a coupon said they are more likely (91%) to buy from the retailer again when compared to those who did not use a coupon (86%).

More (with charts too) in the Coupons Are Good For the Bottom Line post on Compete’s blog.

If you’re an affiliate, and aren’t using merchant coupons in your marketing mix, I hope the above convinces you otherwise, and another big reason for that is that coupons help increase affiliate conversion (substantially, I must add). The above study didn’t look at things from the affiliate marketing angle, but comparing conversion rates of coupon versus non-coupon affiliates, I see a significant difference in conversion. It doesn’t mean that all affiliates should turn into “couponers”, but adding coupons into the mix will benefit any type of affiliate.

Just finished flipping through the newest eCommerce Research Report by Multichannel Merchant. It makes a good and interesting read, especially in light of the fact that online sales are currently growing considerably faster than offline ones [more here], and it is interesting to see what multichannel marketers value most, and what they overlook.

Here are the 5 things that I have found to be of most interest in this particular report:

1) Value of affiliate marketing has been ranked #6 (out of 8 option), beating display ads only by .2 points. Hmmm… I wonder if these 886 respondents really understand affiliate marketing:

2) More marketing budgets are being spent on paid search than on search engine optimization:

3) The top 3 metrics marketers are measuring in their search engine marketing efforts are: (i) conversion rate (65.6%), (ii) percentage of new customers acquired (41%), and (iii) bounce rate (39.2%):

4) Very few are currently engaged in mobile commerce:

5) Social media is extremely popular, and a vast majority of respondents are satisfied with their engagement in it:

You may download the full 9-page MCM report here.

A recently published report based on a research by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PriceWaterhouseCoopers has registered a 4.2% growth of the UK Internet advertising spending, which reached £3.5 billion in 2009. IAB has also reported that between 2000 and 2009, the Internet marketing expenditure has grown by 2,200% going from from £153 million to £3.54 billion.

The three areas that have experienced the strongest growth in 2009 were (i) paid search, (ii) online video, and (iii) affiliate marketing. Here are the highlights in brief:

Paid Search – Grew by 9.5% reaching £2.15 billion, which represented 60.7% of all online ad spend in the UK.

Online Video – Represented “the real success story as spend saw a 140% increase year on year… generating £28.3 million.”

Affiliate Marketing – Spending on it rose by 38.2% (very good to see such a strong growth), reaching £72.6 million by the end of 2009.

Read more in this announcement on IAB’s website.

Wondering how the U.S. online retail will look over the next few years?

Clark Fredricksen of eMarketer has forwarded me some interesting projection data for the period from 2008 through 2013. Here’s the table:

As you can see, the above summary was prepared by eMarketer in June 2009 (so the 2008 numbers are based on actual data, while the rest represents their revised forecast). It looks like no major boosts are expected in the growth of the numbers of U.S. Internet users, or online shoppers. However, the Internet-generated retail sales (travel packages, digital downloads, and ticket sales excluded) are expected to really pick up between 2011 and 2013, growing from $164B in 2011 to $182.5B in 2012, and then – to $201.4B in 2013 (that’s a growth of over 52% from $132B in 2010). Good stats. Thank you, Clark.