Brands Should Be Using Customer Journey Data to Win Q4—Here’s How

Making a list and checking it twice? Make sure to add CJ’s in-platform Affiliate Customer Journey data to your list for a successful Holiday season (and check it often!).

CJ released Affiliate Customer Journey On-Demand back in June of this year to allow advertisers to see beyond last-click and understand the true value of their partnerships. This tool will be crucial to preparing for holiday shopping as well as evaluating performance in real-time.

Here's how you can best leverage these rich data insights:

Preparing for Holiday

Peak Week and the surrounding weeks are unlike any other time of the year. Competition is at an all-time high for exposure and it’s important to understand which partners are bringing you that exposure across all stages of the customer journey. To decide who you should invest with:

• Use Affiliate Customer Journey’s contribution widget to review your top-performing partners based on not only decision metrics (last-click) but also discovery and evaluation. This data may paint a very different picture in terms of your top performers, allowing you to make smarter investment decisions! Use this data to help get the budget you need so that your brand is front and center where your potential customers are.
• Shoppers spend more during the holiday season than at any other time of year. To capture the largest spend from shoppers, take a look at the average order value (AOV) that publishers are driving during the different stages of the customer journey. Which partners are driving the highest AOV during the discovery and evaluation phase, but not always the decision phase? Promoting your higher ticket items with those partners can help ensure you get the visibility you need among shoppers that are willing to spend.

Evaluating Performance during Holiday

We know that tons of eyes are on performance during the holiday season—across all levels of your organization. The peak weeks of the holiday season are gone in a flash, and everyone wants to get the most out of them. The best part about Affiliate Customer Journey during Holiday? This data is available in real-time, meaning a highly responsive experience that informs your strategy on-demand.

• Looking to monitor a one-day promotion? Use Journey data to find out which partners are driving the most engagement throughout the big day to ensure your strategy and exposure are in line to meet your goals. For example, if your investment in a content article is driving a lot of discovery but ultimately leading to sales (decision) with your coupon partners, make sure your coupon partners have your one-day promotion highly visible on their sites.
• Need to put together a recap of partner performance for your leadership team the Tuesday morning after Cyber Monday? When looking at return on your investment in exposure with partners, make sure to include discovery and evaluation revenue alongside decision so you’re showcasing the true value of that spend.
• Need an extra boost to meet your daily or weekly goals? Take a peek at the top performers in the decision phase. Have you invested in additional exposure with these partners? If not, you’re leaving opportunities on the table. Some partners may have inventory still available for purchase—site placements tend to be easier to buy into last-minute than newsletters, for example, and often do not require creative assets.

Hot tip: Another quick lever with loyalty partners is to increase commission rates to get your customers a higher reward/cashback. Check out what your competitors are offering and match or beat it. Rewards and cashback can be the trigger to get those shoppers in the discovery and evaluation phase to make a decision and become customers.

Review Journey Data Often

There are so many ways Affiliate Customer Journey data can be leveraged in addition to those reviewed here. Dive into the data now to see the true value that each partner brings to your brand. And as the busiest shopping season of the year begins, make sure that you’re coming back to the Affiliate Customer Journey dashboard to look at each partner’s discovery and evaluation influence (not just decision!) when analyzing your return on investment on that Holiday exposure.

Publishers, make sure you’re also reviewing your contribution to the Affiliate Customer Journey in our on-demand dashboard developed to help you uncover where shoppers interact with your properties during their purchase decisions and focus your efforts where they matter most.