Next generation pay-per-call affiliate marketing

Dell’s challenge was to drive sales results through its affiliate programmes and integrate online and offline activity to improve results.

The main focus was for Dell’s SMB (small-medium business) programme to bridge the divide to offline channels by implementing a pay-per-call technology (td Talk) that would deliver more sales. The technology allows online browsers to transact offline via a phone call, while still tracking their journey and rewarding the pre-agreed cost-per-action commission. Research has shown that people like to research products online, many like to speak to an actual person about a more expensive or complex transaction like the SMB products. Until td Talk tracking, commissions would have been lost as soon as a customer decided to close a sale by phone. This way affiliates can be rewarded for the referral they drive to the call centre. The technology works as so: A td Talk number is placed on the publisher website, then the visitor makes a call directly or after going to a landing page. The allocated td Talk number connects call to the advertiser’s call centre and the transaction is tracked by TradeDoubler. Visitors then get connected to the advertiser’s call centre and the call is qualified once the visitor has been connected for an agreed period.

Dell extended the campaign to mobile using the same td Talk technology with an affiliate publisher Net Media Planet. NMP bid for search listings within Google mobile, with the unique td Talk phone number contained in the listing copy.

Overall, the Dell SMB programme achieved 200% Y-O-Y increase in profitability and 33% Y-O-Y increase in order value (2008 versus 2007).