Explore

Explore: Tracking with technology

For those with only 30 seconds, this is what we achieved:

• Enabled call tracking for affiliate sales, revealing sales calls drove an average of 31% of total revenue per month
• Increased revenue from calls by an average £36k per month
• Drove more accurate affiliate commission rewarding through accurate tracking and attribution.

Who is the client and why did they come to us?

Client: Explore

Industry: Travel

Territory focus: UK

Target customers: Adventure-seeking 40+ year olds

Since launching in 1981 with only six tours in a four-page brochure, Explore has grown to offer over 500 trips; from classic ‘discovery’ group tours, solo traveller holidays and active family adventures, to walking holidays, cycling trips and even self-guided options.

Due to Explore’s product offering, adventure style/ tour operated holidays, the brand had a high volume of enquiries to their call centre. Often the trip details were more complex to manage, which meant that the consumer, particularly those new to the brand, preferred to speak to someone in order to complete the booking. There were also certain tours that you could only book over the phone and not on site.

This meant there was risk of sales leakage from the affiliate channel; from consumers starting their user journey on an affiliate site but booking over the phone. Therefore, tracking the customer journey from online to phone call to attribute bookings to the affiliate channel was absolutely essential.

So, what did we do?

Team Silverbean worked with Infinity, a call tracking provider, to integrate their tech with the brand’s affiliate network. This enabled us to track calls made directly to Explore’s sales team that were initiated from an affiliate site. Liaising with Explore’s sales team, we determined 8 minutes was the minimum duration for a call that would have comprised a booking, and set up the integration so that any calls over 8 minutes then tracked on the affiliate network.

By viewing the call tracking data directly within Awin, we reported the number of calls on a monthly basis which allowed us to monitor performance and allocate budget accordingly. We also incentivised new partners to on-board with the brand thanks to our new ability to track sales calls through the affiliate network, which allowed Explore to correctly reward commissions to affiliate partners.

The results

Based on Explore’s £2000 average order value, the average monthly revenue uplift from affiliate-driven calls totalled £36,000.

What did Sarah have to say?

“Silverbean works flawlessly as an extension of our internal team and any challenges that arise, we face together. Since unifying our marketing activities, I have been continually impressed by the helpfulness and efficiency of the whole team.”

Sarah Fowler, Head of Marketing – Explore

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