Streamlining Affiliate Marketing Efforts Across Three Distinct Brands

Launched in 2005 by the founder of the leading party supply center of PartyCity, Costume SuperCenter offers a year-round source for costumes online, with thousands of options for infants, children, teens, and adults. The company also runs Costume Discounters and Wholesale Costume Club, which offer wholesale pricing on a wide selection of costumes.

Recognizing the value of online marketing in driving traffic to its sites, Costume SuperCenter had an active affiliate program in place, along with a search marketing initiative for each site. Initially, the program extended across two of its sites: Costume SuperCenter and Costume Discounters. Each with a separate and distinct brand in play, these efforts were somewhat disjointed. Multiple agencies and multiple internal personnel were responsible for managing each campaign, and there was little synchronization between them.

In July 2009, Costume SuperCenter decided to put a single agency in place to more effectively manage its affiliate marketing programs across the board, and develop a clear plan for ongoing activity and account management. Though too busy to manage its affiliate and search efforts directly, the company wanted to make sure its new agency could offer complete transparency into the process, and deliver extensive insight and reporting for each campaign.

After asking its publishers for references and conducting a comprehensive agency search, Costume SuperCenter selected iMarketing Ltd. to manage its affiliate marketing programs for both brands.

Taking over the account with only three months to go before Costume SuperCenter's busiest season, iMarketing jumped right in. The goal: to get a new affiliate approach up and running within a week – without interrupting existing relationships and activity.

One of iMarketing's first tasks was to streamline communication between the two brands and their affiliates, in an effort to clarify both the message and the approach. Previously, the affiliates were given a bevy of creative possibilities to choose from on a regular basis – and while this offered tremendous flexibility, it put too much of the burden on the affiliates to sift through the options, make the right selections, and build their programs accordingly. Instead, iMarketing tapped the extensive knowledge of the Costume SuperCenter team to identify the creative that was most effective, then provided affiliates with a more targeted set of choices on a rotating basis – instantly making their jobs easier by delivering the creative they needed for the greatest chance of success.

In addition, iMarketing developed a long-term calendar for the two brands' affiliate marketing activities, something that was missing in the past. This immediately helped to establish clear messages and timing for all affiliates, with regular monthly newsletters to keep the lines of communication open and active. To continually maintain that open communication, iMarketing offers a dedicated affiliate team who stays in close contact with the brands' affiliates. This is an essential part of giving publishers the attention and support they need to be successful for the brands on an ongoing basis.

As it dug deeper into Costume SuperCenter's affiliate programs, iMarketing also noticed that while its results appeared strong on the surface, up to 75 percent of affiliate sales were tied to a single publisher. That meant that sales numbers fluctuated based on the successes or failures of this one contact. The agency quickly implemented a new approach to round out the brands' publishing base, and more efficiently balance the sales activity. Today, though there are still larger publishers and smaller ones, there is less of a gap between the top spot and the spaces below. This ensures that sales numbers remain steady and growing regardless of the actions of any one individual publisher in the group.

• iMarketing's approach delivered near-immediate results for Costume SuperCenter and Costume Discounters.
• The initiative has been so successful that iMarketing recently added Costume SuperCenter's third brand, Wholesale Costume Club, into the mix.
• The long-term goal is to keep Costume SuperCenter on the path to continued growth, and help the company create buzz not only around Halloween but other holidays as well to sustain sales and web traffic on a year-round basis.