Top 5 Actionable Insights for Apparel Retailers

June 26 marked the first in a series of insightful webinars from one of CJ's affiliate marketing experts, Director of Strategic Insights Sandrine Thompson. During our recent "Connect and Convert: Actionable Insights for Apparel Retailers" webinar, Sandrine reviewed her Apparel Shopping and Benchmark Report, which shows apparel retailers how to convert more customers in 2015.

Sandrine's Top Five Takeaways:

Connect Online and Offline

The data reflects retail chain Advertisers—Advertisers with both an online and offline presence—grew sales 24 percent YoY, outpacing sales of other retailer types. By coordinating technologies that allow for the tracking of in-store affiliate sales, affiliate marketing has become adept at connecting the online and offline stores and effectively serves as a bridge between the two.

Attract New Customers with Affiliate

Last year, on average, apparel retailers noted 36 percent of their affiliate sales from new customers. If your rate of new customers lies below the average apparel category rate of 36 percent, then it might be time to tweak the mix of Publishers in your program in order to tap new audiences.

Affiliate Leads in Acquisition Rates

By comparing new customer acquisition rates by marketing channel, we learned affiliate exceeds other channels by 12 percent on average. Whether you are looking to add affiliate marketing, or have a program already in place, be sure your marketing mix is optimized for this higher acquisition rate.

Luxury Find Success with Affiliate

Of all apparel retailers, women's apparel retailers achieved the greatest growth at 7 percent YoY, most of which occurred in the women's luxury apparel category. Fashion bloggers delivered the highest basket sizes for men's and women's apparel (about $150 on average).

Capture the "Super Shopper"

A recent CJ case study of an apparel retailer in the Internet Retailer Top 50 showed that affiliate customers spend more and buy more frequently than other shoppers. Affiliate marketing serves as a key tool for capturing the attention of this "Super Shopper" and delivers loyalty to your brand, resulting in higher average sales per order, more frequently.

We hope these insights help you to better strategize your marketing efforts and ultimately convert more customers.

Download the 2015 Apparel Shopping and Benchmark Report (PDF) for a complete overview of the data.

Look for additional thought-provoking and actionable content to help you capitalize on your affiliate program from CJ Affiliate soon. In the meantime, let's keep the conversation going! Please email liwalker@cj.com with questions, comments, or content ideas you'd like to see us cover.