Acer India is the Indian subsidiary of Acer Inc., the Taiwanese multinational computer hardware and electronics company. Since its launch in 1999, it has grown to become one of the leading computing brands in the country, offering a wide range of products including laptops, desktop computers, tablets, monitors, projectors, and accessories. 

Description

Acer India launched their online store in Dec 2019. Initially, they were focused on boosting their brand awareness campaign and planning a smooth logistical movement for a better experience for their customers. In a span of just a year, they grew, evolved their UI, and gained the trust of their customers.

We started our discussion for a partner program towards the end of 2020. According to Acer India, they chose the Admitad partner network for its vast reach, extensive publisher base, and rich experience with similar clients. Focusing on sales performance, they started the CPS Affiliate Campaign with Admitad in March 2021.

Clear objectives

The main objectives of Acer’s campaign were promoting their online store, boosting total sales — and researching the efficiency of affiliate channels on the way. 

Over that, Acer pursued communicating with its users and understanding the needs and aspirations of customers. During the time of the pandemic, many people got stuck to their screens, and prolonged exposure started causing eye-related problems. Larger screens and Acer’s BlueEyeShield and ComfyView technologies were advertised to address this problem, reducing eye strain and providing a more comfortable experience to the user.

Accurate marketing — and hitting the precise pain of customers — helped Acer publishers to receive more impressions and higher conversion rates. The results? Since its inception, the campaign has seen an impressive growth of more than 200%, proving that affiliate as a channel has big potential if nurtured properly for a long time period

Innovation and creativity

Apart from their active customer-centric approach on social media, we also understood the need of the hour and produced innovative buying options and customer care options. This is why we did our best to promote not only the products themselves but also the various add-ons and benefits that come with them.  

The pandemic brought along a financial crisis for many of us. To combat the falling buying capacity in a time of growing demand, Acer introduced ‘Buy Now – Pay Later’. The feature is somewhat similar to a loan — customers can acquire their dream laptop and pay for it after a couple of months when they have enough money. 

Keeping in mind the safety of customers and employees, Acer also introduced a remote servicing facility where customers could get help via TeamViewer. 

As for the creativity that we as a partner network showed in this promotion, we took all the engagement tactics that Acer wanted to engage on all possible formats — contextual ads, coupons and cashback, tech blogs, and various product & price comparison websites.

Coupon and Cashback websites were instrumental in kickstarting the campaign and increasing the outreach. The involvement of loyalty websites, especially the banking/credit card rewards platforms enabled us to acquire high-value customers with great long-term value (LTV). Price Comparison and Product Discovery websites played their part in reaching the more discerning and price-conscious segments of the market. In addition, activities such as Email/Newsletter marketing and promotions on instant messaging apps like Telegram allowed us to test the waters and assess the popularity of the Acer brand in India. The learnings and insights from these activities enabled us to optimize the campaign better across multiple promotional channels.

Human touch 

In spite of its growing scope, Admitad has managed to keep the very core of its business — the customer-first approach. Acer was no exception — the brand was assigned a personal manager to look over the campaign and control its efficiency. This way, Admitad was in sync with Acer and understood the need to promote specific products and categories — including the new Series of Gaming and Office laptops.

Communication helped us get more exposure to the advertisers’ store, at the same time providing a seamless journey to the user — from the first click to the final call-to-action.

Smart execution

The campaign was well thought out and discussed with the advertiser at every juncture

• Choosing publishers

While initiating the campaign, we made sure that every publisher was in line with the brand’s stature. The initial focus was on coupon and cashback providers — sites that seemed most appropriate for the Acer India CPS campaign. Once the base was created, managers moved to onboard other publisher categories: tech review sites, content sites, and bloggers/vloggers. This enabled us to target customers at all stages of the sales funnel.

• Getting the attention

To increase the number of publishers and overall popularity of the partner program, Admitad made sure it is present in the media, made social media announcements, as well posted promotional banners on the in-house publisher dashboard, and pushed email blasts to local publishers.

• Giving Tips

Traffic optimization was done at the product level. The idea was to identify the top-selling products and give them greater visibility. Newly launched products were also given more attention to generate more sales. 

• Publisher Retention

When developing partner programs, it is important to give publishers what they need — or at least not to hinder their working process. To keep publishers motivated, we turned on automatic approval for requests for Product feeds and Lost orders. No lag time = no obstacles for sales.

• Keeping in touch

Finally, we kept checking on the brand. Regular feedback sessions were held with the advertiser to gain new insights about the brand course and positioning. Feedback from publishers and their wishes were also periodically addressed. Brand was also keen to participate in various sale led events such as March-a-Thon and October Gala where it participated as a platinum sponsor. Participation in such events helped the brand earn incremental revenues.

Results and Effectiveness

Since Inception, the campaign has delivered an impressive ROI of 3.5% for a paid order, clocking 2947 in sales and delivering a total GMV of approx $2.5 million.