Secret Sales, a premium online marketplace, have a passion for fashion and delivering great value for money to their customers. A go-to destination for primarily luxury products at famously low prices, Secret Sales are a digital outlet village providing savvy discounts on the latest clothing trends, designer homeware, cutting-edge cosmetics, and more.
In seeking to explore new avenues for increased profitability, Secret Sales partnered with Tyviso, an Awin brand partnership solution provider, to unlock a new high-margin revenue stream with added conversion-driving benefits.
The challenge
Secret Sales offer a selection of over 2,500 luxury and high-street brands, including iconic names like Ted Baker, Gucci, and Dolce & Gabbana. They are also proud to be home to over 12 million registered account holders. Despite their popularity, fierce competition has Secret Sales grappling with incredibly tight profit margins.
The ongoing challenge is finding new ways of increasing profitability while continuing to offer great value for money. Tyviso’s brand partnership solutions were therefore suggested by Awin as a solid option for driving revenue away from the core business.
The main challenge of increasing profitability would theoretically be achieved by brand partnerships creating a fresh stream of income. However, Secret Sales wanted to measure Tyviso’s contribution against three core goals:
- Increase conversion rates (CVR)
- Raise average order value (AOV)
- Find third-party brand offers that resonate with their audience
The solution
One of the major advantages of enabling brand partnerships via Awin is the speed at which you can find suitable advertisers and start promoting their offers. Secret Sales took minutes to deploy Tyviso’s gift-with-purchase widget on their basket page. The rapid integration was especially valuable in this instance, allowing Tyviso to launch just in time for the Q4 peak trading period.
For the offers themselves, Secret Sales focused on promoting ‘free gifts’ from third-party advertisers. By requiring customers to complete their purchase to redeem these rewards, the strategy had the dual purpose of boosting purchase intent while generating profitable revenue for Secret Sales via referrals.
Through an integration with Secret Sales’ CRM platform, Tyviso were able to send redemption instructions directly to each customer’s inbox post-purchase. These instructions were dispatched in a separate email to avoid disrupting the order confirmation process.
Further steps to create a seamless journey had Secret Sales outlining a clear design brief for the solution. Tyviso’s customisation options meant both teams could tailor the widget to fit natively with the brand’s existing on-site experience.
Overall, each side benefited heavily from the partnership. The availability of gifts from well-known brands such as SimplyCook and Cellar Rats gave customers an improved experience at no extra cost. Meanwhile, in exchange for being featured on the basket page, advertisers paid Secret Sales a commission for each successful referral, creating a mutually beneficial arrangement between the brand partners.
The results
Awin's advanced partner tracking capabilities made it easy for Secret Sales to accurately gauge the effectiveness of their newly established partnerships and Tyviso overall.
Just 60 days after launching the gift with purchase widget, Secret Sales noticed a hugely positive impact on customer behaviour. When a shopper opted for a gift from one of the advertisers, they were:
- More likely to complete their purchase, evidenced by a 66% increase in CVR
- Spending more on their order, demonstrated by a 14% increase in AOV
The widget’s bottom-line impact was made even clearer during December when Tyviso was found to have contributed to a +11% increase in total revenue for Secret Sales.
“Working with Awin and Tyviso, and their proprietary technology, to be able to help bring affinity third-party offers to our customers has been instrumental in both improving our performance and customer proposition over the last six months.
“It's important that when we identify secondary revenue streams for the business that we do so in a way which is seamless or helps improve our overall customer experience and proposition, which Tyviso unlocks for us.”
Alex Adamson, CMO at Secret Sales
