Not only we organized several successful events, launched many exciting affiliate programs and expanded internationally, but we also won an award in an international competition. That was 2017 for VIVnetworks. Let’s have a look at the most important events of the last year.
Events
In the spring we organized the 10th jubilee Affiliate Conference, where the leaders of the Czech affiliate business met again. Over 150 participants heard 8 interesting lectures. The topics varied from the use of Google Analytics in affiliate marketing, through catalog creation, to the specifics of affiliate promotion in the field of pharmaceuticals. Among the lecturers were advertisers, successful publishers, and an international speaker from the UK.
At the spring conference, we launched the contest Affiliate Project of the Year for the first time. We wanted to show that affiliate marketing has its hidden depths and there are many original, interesting, well-developed and professionally managed projects using this model. 24 interesting and, first and foremost, high-quality projects were submitted to the contest. A carefully selected jury consisting of representatives of leading advertisers, with a lot of experience in the field of affiliate marketing, chose the best projects. Signing up for the next year's contest is already in full swing.
In the second half of the year we organized a conference in Bratislava, the 11th Affiliate Conference in Prague and a series of affiliate workshops with advertisers. The new school year started with the Affiliate conference in Bratislava, where the participants had the opportunity to hear about affiliate marketing in the category Fashion from the point of view of an advertiser and a partner, content creation and other interesting topics.
At the beginning of November, we organized the autumn 11. Affiliate conference, focused more on the use of social media in affiliate marketing. Other topics included UX, brandbuilding and the topical issue of GDPR.
After the conference, we launched a series of workshops with advertisers, where our partners could hear interesting information from representatives of the retailers, that helped them develop their affiliate projects. The first workshop was led by the advertiser Firmy.cz, other workshops were led by representatives of Conrad, Vemzu, Adrop, Decodoma and others. This year we will continue to organize workshops, not only in Czech republic, but in Slovakia as well. Learn more about past and upcoming workshops.
IPMA 2017 award victory
Our win at Marketing Performance Awards, an international competition which annually recognizes the best networks, agencies, programs and campaigns in the field of performance marketing, was our biggest victory in 2017. We won the category Best managed affiliate program in Eastern Europe with Zoot.cz’s program. You can see more detailed information about our victory here.
New advertisers
In year 2017 we launched several interesting programs of large Czech and international retailers. We enhanced the Health category with the new affiliate proframs of the online pharmacies Dr.Max and Benu. In category House and garden we launched the recognized brands Asko nábytek, Siko and among others, Scanquilt and Bonami. Some of our newly open programs are Gant, Alpinepro or Bambule. This year we are preparing many other interesting programs, for example, soon we’re launching the programs of the perfumeries Sephora and Marionaud. At the end of the year, we launched the program of the biggest shopping mall in Poland – Mall.pl, and we also signed a partnership agreement with Ceneo – the biggest Polish price comparison website.
Expansion
In 2017 we expanded further into international markets, especially in Eastern Europe. Now we have 68 international advertisers in our network. The countries in which our affiliate programs operate, include Germany, France, USA, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, Croatia and Greece. Of course, this means our team was joined by severeal new colleagues, native speakers of Polish, Hungarian, Romanian and Greek. Thanks to our international team, the advertisers are guaranteed high-quality management of their programs across the markets where we operate. Our biggest achievements abroad was 100% increase in revenue in Poland, up to the impressive 12 million Euro. After a thoughtful analysis, we decided not to make our entrance to the Middle East market and to wait with the expansion in that direction. We are now focusing on Italy and Denmark and seriously considering entering South America, Russia and China.
2017 in numbers
The year 2017 was very successful for us. From the beginning of the year the total value of the orders in the Czech Republic and Slovakia increased by 57%. Like every year, the strongest months were November and December. Order volume between October and November doubled. Also, the average value of an order was the highest during these months, specifically 70,98 Euro. On the other hand, February was the weakest month of the year. The biggest commission increase was noted in category Electronics, with an average commission of an order increasing by 27% since last year. The best-selling category throughout the year was the Shopping mall, followed by Beauty, followed by Fashion and Electronics.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation to our advertisers and partners for their goodwill in 2017! We wish you even more success in 2018.
VIVnetworks’s team
