A new experience for Red Letter Days

Following its purchase out of administration by Dragon's Den entrepreneurs Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis in 2005 gift experience brand Red Letter Days was looking to re-establish itself. The challenge was to cut through the noise with a smart affiliate programme. Red Letter Days teamed up with Affiliate Window and engaged media owners, ISPs and other branded portals through its Partnerships Team. These partners had previously relied on tenancy and cost per click deals to drive revenue.

An events calendar, incorporating key seasonal peaks and the key Christmas trading period was drawn up in conjunction with marketing plans for a number of key partners to identify the most relevant opportunities from launch. Red Letter Days also identified new technology as an area they wanted to explore encouraging greater interaction with their brand and gift experiences. Pigsback, a points reward site, was one of the first affiliate sites Red Letter Days worked with, acting as their official Father's Day sponsor. Tiscali soon followed, co-branded landing pages carrying the branding message from one site to another whilst boosting click to sale conversions. As well as CPA deals, merchant to merchant promotions were brokered. Borders, who launched their own transactional site in July 2008, ran a Red Letter Days competition incentivising email opt-ins whilst driving additional brand awareness and offering data share. Other CPA deals brokered included Virgin Media. Additional promotions saw Red Letter Days featured on the homepage of The Sun online, The Daily Mirror's cash-back site and Sky's shopping portal.

Red Letter Days launched one of the most compelling, results driven affiliate incentives ever seen, offering prizes dependent on volume delivered. Results for the second half of 2008 when compared to the same period in 2007 showed. Number of sales increased by 51% and sales value increased by 45%.