APAC Expansion Provides Affiliate Growth for YOOX

Established in 2000, YOOX is the world’s leading online lifestyle store for fashion, design and art. Thanks to long-standing direct relationships with designers, manufacturers and official retailers worldwide, YOOX offers an extensive assortment of hard-to-find clothing and accessories for men and women from the world’s most prestigious designers.

Marketing Objective:

In 2015, YOOX Asia Limited identified a need to invest in their emerging markets. In the interest of scale and growth, they migrated their existing affiliate program from a competing network to Rakuten Marketing.

Strategy:
Whilst the program was initially intended to be an Australia only program, the potential for growth across the wider Asia-Pacific region was identified by the YOOX Account Manager and the Rakuten Marketing Publisher Development team. The migration of YOOX’s existing program to Rakuten Marketing was handled expertly, whilst also rolled out to an additional 13 Asian domains and key consumer regions.

• The Rakuten Marketing team collaborated masterfully with YOOX to identify key countries of focus across APAC, capitalising upon any organic traction in market.
• Through Rakuten Marketing, YOOX was able to leverage the largest and most experienced Network Development team in all of APAC to find publishers and access new markets like Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.
• In conjunction with the Network Development team, YOOX’s account manager worked diligently to continuously recruit, activate and optimise key publishers throughout APAC. They advised on strategic paid placements and campaign opportunities.
• YOOX were open and receptive to these suggestions, and to new and innovative publisher models put forward by their Rakuten Marketing team.

Results:
This expansion into APAC, strategically guided by Rakuten Marketing, saw YOOX grow their affiliate program by 2320% in GMS Year-on-Year (YoY) in their first year with Rakuten Marketing (2015-2016). Traffic to site from affiliates increased by 1514% and the number of order active publishers more than doubled. This upward growth trend between YOOX and Rakuten Marketing has continued YoY, with 2017 delivering a +112% GMS YoY and 2018, delivering a +20% YoY growth.

Traffic and order active publishers also continue to grow, with 2018 seeing an additional 29 order active publishers for YOOX – which is no small feat for a mature affiliate program.

The collaborative partnership between YOOX and Rakuten Marketing is on target to deliver continued YoY growth in 2019.

For more information on how Rakuten Marketing can help your brand reach new emerging markets, visit rakutenmarketing.com and speak to an expert today!