The Affiliate Marketing Merchants Survey Report 2007, produced by E-consultancy in association with buy.at, was published today.
The report is based on an online survey of 239 UK merchants, which was conducted during August and September 2007.
The merchants surveyed for the report represent a range of sectors, the largest groups being financial services, retail, and travel.
Based on the findings in the Affiliate Marketing Merchants Survey Report 2007, the UK affiliate marketing industry is thriving and appears poised for continued and strong growth.
On average, UK merchants involved in affiliate marketing are driving 16% of their online sales via this channel. Some other tidbits from the report…
- More than two thirds of responding organizations (67%) are now getting more sales from affiliate marketing than they were two years ago.
- Almost four out of five respondents (78%) say their organizations are spending more on affiliate marketing than they were two years ago, compared to only 7% who say they are now spending less. The same proportion (78%) said they expected to be spending more on affiliate marketing in two years time.
- Half of responding organizations expect to have more employees managing this channel in 2009 compared to only 4% who expect to have less employees involved.
Further, affiliate marketing is seen by merchants as the most cost effective channel for driving customer acquisition. The vast majority of UK merchants (95%) say that it is either ‘very cost-effective’ or ‘quite cost-effective’.
Paid search and email marketing are next in the list as the most cost effective channels, and they are rated as “very cost-effective” or “quite cost-effective” by 90% and 82% of merchants respectively.
Linus Gregoriadis, Head of Research at E-consultancy, will be covering a number of the findings from this report in his keynote address at Affiliate Summit London 2007 this coming Friday.