You asked, we delivered – we’ve launched our affiliate system, the Unpacked Partners programme.
Why?
Our associates, friends and others in the student industry have been asking us to open an affiliate programme, for a while now, so that they could help their own customers and readers find quality homeware for upcoming moves to university. Up until now, we’ve helped other businesses provide benefits to their customers by giving out coupon codes to them, which they passed on to their own customers. This system worked ok, but didn’t quite entice our partners nor their customers to the maximum potential level.
How the new system is better
- Ease of access: we now provide our partners with unique links to place on their own websites or, for example, send in an email. So, partners’ customers can now click a link, rather than having to copy-n-paste a coupon code (and first remember to do so). This increases conversions for partners, but also benefits the end customer where the customer receives a benefit for being a partner’s referral (e.g. free shipping).
- Trust: depending on our agreement with a particular partner, we may install partner-specific branding on our website on the affiliate link landing pages. This helps build the trust, of the customer, between the partner and ourselves, by confirming the association. This, again, in turn leads to more conversions and more happy customers.
- Better reporting and transparency: our partners now each get their own Partner account in our Partner Area, where the partner can view all referrals; commission owed per referral; and status. This reduces time spent by both ourselves and our partners.
Tried and tested
After 2 months of testing the new system in production, with a couple of our close partners, we’ve now officially launched the Partners programme. Both partners in the testing phase have seen great results. They are now: earning a commission from existing customers and/or readers; and adding value to their own businesses by providing their customers with more useful products.
We gave the job of building the Partners Area and system to our long-time web developer, Dan over at Cosine Dev in North London / Hertfordshire. Being a PHP and WordPress Developer, he was a good fit when we decided to redesign our website and migrate away Joomla several years ago.
Want to become a partner?
To ensure the satisfaction of our customers, we vet all partner applications to ensure our partners comply with our guidelines, so we currently do not have open partner registration on our website. Instead, if you would like to become a Unpacked Partner, please email us at info@unpacked.co.uk. We look forward to working with you!