In 2013, the year Amazonlaunched its operations in India,a deal-seeking ecommerce
buyer tweeted to ask Swati Bharga-va if her company CashKaro hadpartnered with the etailer. Bharga-va suggested he should try Flipkartor Snapdeal (both CashKaroclients), as she didn’t know anyonein Amazon then.
Amazon saw the tweet, got intouch with Bhargava, and the part-nership began. CashKaro offersadditional cashbacks and couponsover the discounts the ecommercefirms give, if a person goes to the
ecommerce company via CashKaro.“India is a deal seeking country,”says Bhargava. “We have 2.5 mil-lion members (registered users)who want deals.”
CashKaro, an affiliate marketingplatform, charges 15-20 per centcommission for every sale it drivesto an etailer. It has 1,500 ecom-merce companies as partners andpushes $100 million worth ordersto them every year. Its averageorder value is $40, up from $30 ayear ago, and on an average a con-sumer uses CashKaro 18 times in ayear. Commissions, Bhargava says,have gone up by about 20 per cent.
Affiliate marketing companies
pass a portion of the commission toecommerce buyers. According to aNasscom and PwC report, the Indi-an ecommerce industry, which was$35 billion in 2018, is expected totouch $100 billion in 2022 — that’sa big opportunity for affiliates.
Some ecommerce companiesbelieve that affiliate marketing isthe most cost-effective way toacquire new users and maintainbetter return on investments. Thereare more than three dozen affiliatemarketing companies in India,including Flipkart and Amazon,who run their own affiliate market-ing programme.
“We look at affiliate marketing as
a means to reach end-users withofferings that are relevant andcompelling to them, based onwhere they are in their shoppingjourney,” says Kishore Thota,Director-Customer Experienceand Marketing, Amazon India.The program allows bloggers torefer traffic to products by provid-ing their reviews. “The (Amazon)associates are enthusiasts, blog-gers, experts… who can beexperts and have an audience whotrusts them,” he says.
The Amazon Associates Pro-gram, Thota explains, helps pub-lishers and bloggers who are cre-ating high quality content to mone-tise it. The content creators helpAmazon get involved in a cus-tomer’s purchase journey as theycan research and make buyingdecisions.
Another affiliate platformGoPaisa, too, relies on content. “Ifa person must buy a mutual fundor an insurance, they would like toread about it,” says Ankita Jain,Co-Founder of GoPaisa, a boot-strapped affiliate marketing firm,which provides cashbacks anddeals.
With summer vacations aroundthe corner, travel companieswant to promote international get-aways. Domestic flight tickets,Jain says, are becoming expen-sive, almost as much as taking aflight to Thailand or Singapore.GoPaisa created writeups to helppeople compare the domestic hol-iday and an international holiday. Itcounts companies like Make-MyTrip, GoIbibo and OYO as itsclients. “We are working with all ofthem. We drafted a campaign topush international travel,” saysJain.
Many believe that affiliate mar-keting is the most cost-effectiveway to get customers. “I haveunlimited budget for affiliate mar-
keting if it is cost per order,” saysSandeep Aggarwal, Co-Founderand CEO of Droom, a used-car sell-ing platform. “Registration, down-loads, page views and user engage-ment are theory.”
Others, like online pharmacyMedLife, agree. “We witnessed adrop in users after it stopped anongoing TV ad,” says IshaPatel, manager-affiliate mar-keting, MedLife. To stop thedrop, in January, MedLife
launched two differ-ent online offers: 30 per cent off fornew users and 25 per cent for allusers. For every order that MedLifegot from an affiliate, it paid them15 per cent for new users and 5 percent for repeat users. “There was20-25 per cent growth in new cus-tomers,” says Patel.
Some say that affiliate marketingis better than spending money onGoogle and Facebook. “Cost pervisit is lower compared to paidsocial or
paid search. In Google or Face-book, it takes time to scale up acampaign,” says Sougata Sengup-ta, manager-performance and appmarketing at Tata Cliq.
As affiliates help in making directsales, etailers make better mar-gins. Sengupta says that affiliatemarketing contributes 20-30 percent of Tata Cliq’s gross merchan-dise value.
Then there is referral in affiliatemarketing. “Referrals is a higher
quality form of affiliatemarketing,” says
Manshu Agarwal,CEO of Ponder, agamified referralapp. “Affiliatemarketing isthrough people
that you don’tknow personally,
whereas referrals arefrom your friends. There
is a greater degree of trust."Bhargava is heading in
that direction with EarnKaro,which combines affiliate mar-keting with influencer market-ing. Much similar to CashKaro,
which gets 1,00,000 new usersbecause of influencer marketing,every time an influencer endorsesa brand on EarnKaro and thattranslates into a purchase,EarnKaro gets a commission fromthe brand. A part of that commis-sion is passed on to the influencer.
Celebrity makeup artist, AnjieGogna-Dhawan, who did make upfor Sabyasachi Mukherji and Ambi-ka Anand in the Band Baja Brideshow says, “If I post something on
Instagram, and someone asks whatlipstick you are wearing, I sendthem the link from EarnKaro… Youget `2,000 or `2,500 just by sharinga link.”
DIGITAL MARKETING - INCLUDING AFFILIATE - ISA SIZEABLE CHUNK OF AD SPENDS
Affiliate marketing sees a growing opportunity in India as it promises todrive real sales and not just grab eyeballs
India is a deal seek-ing country. We have2.5 million members(registered users) whowant deals.
SWATI BHARGAVACo-Founder,
CashKaro & EarnKaro
❝
Source: FICCI Frames *In ` billion
Segment Total ad Digital's spent in the share in thesegment* segment
Video 38 19%Search 36 26%Display 34 21%Classified 7 6%Total 115 100%
DRIVING GROWTH: BEYONDDISCOUNTS AND PROMOTIONS
CONSUMER CONNECT INITIATIVE
THE TIMES OF INDIA, MUMBAI FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 2019 11
CCI NG 3.7 Product: TOIMumbaiBS PubDate: 29-03-2019 Zone: MumbaiCity Edition: 1 Page: TOIMOPED User: nilesh.kocharekar Time: 03-28-2019 20:52 Color: CMYK
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