And wherever there's potential for sales there's also potential for learning & talking about growth. So here we are, barely weeks away from Black Friday, having a chact with Nick about affiliate marketing and ways to always do better.

Nick is in the UK, while his team at Cartbooster is spread across the continent and even South Africa.

"Black Firday is a big time of the year & we have learned a lot from 2024. Our team has a bigger job to do this year as we have doubled our number of clients so planning has to start early"

Some background info

So, I’m Nick & I am the CEO at CartBooster. I am based on the south coast of the UK (Brighton) with the rest of my team located around the world, in Norway, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Romania & South Africa.

I have been in digital since 1998 & got into the Affiliate space in 2009. Since that time I have been MD at a couple of UK networks, spent several years in mobile gaming & then moved publisher side, eventually setting up CartBooster 3 years ago.

Cartbooster

CartBooster is often perceived as a conversion tool but while we obviously want to drive sales we do things in a very different way. 

Our two core drivers at present are Beacons & Code Correct.

Beacons are a transparent remarketing & recovery system that operate after a visitor has left a website but before they are lured away by competitors.

We all know how much is spent across eCommerce stores to drive traffic & 90% leave without purchasing, draining budgets. As soon as a visitor enters a website they are regularly exposed to offers in order to collect emails or consider special offers. We consider this a part of the user journey & our number 1 rule is not to intrude & stand down.

Key exit points that we consider essential to address are from product pages & cart. At both points many disappear to compare alternative products & this is a critical time.

After a set time, a Beacon is used to deliver a message, via the clients idle tab, in order to bring them back to a customised message, usually a discount offer in order to give them a little push. Beacons are always triggered, at an agreed time, after a visitor has 100% left a site, for say, 30 seconds. These subtle Beacons are designed to be non aggressive & as such are only triggered once per week. However, we still see a 20-25% recovery rate which translates to a lot of second chances to convert.

We actually created an explainer video for the Business League on YouTube:

The other point at which visitors leave a site is to search for discount codes. This creates another potential budget drain as, on average, 20-25% of these codes are invalid leading to 30% of potential customers abandoning the sale.

Code Correct is designed to sit in the background, invisible, until such time that an invalid code is entered. Code Correct recognises this & delivers a valid code, in real-time, to protect the sale & visitor experience.

As a company we decided that we would channel these solutions via the affiliate channel & on a commission only basis rather than a SaaS model that ties companies in. We work exclusively through affiliate networks across the globe.

How did you discover BusinessLeague.com? And how would you describe it so far?

Having been in the affiliate space for some time, I had been aware of 2Performant Business League for some time so it was natural for CartBooster to join. As our solutions are pretty unique, we took a little time to start getting our message across, but in the last few months we have seen great traction & are growing month on month. I am personally excited about the potential to bring our current & new solutions to the wider community in the Business League. The team at 2Performant are also great to work with.

Merchants & partenerships

We can work with pretty much any eCommerce shop. If I look at our 300+ clients they span fashion, tech, homes, beauty, pets, adult etc. so pretty much all verticals.

Personally, my main goal is to speak with affiliate marketers who are open to exploring new ways of driving incremental sales. All our meetings include a live demo of our solutions & it is normal for people to say that they have never seen anything like this before. 

Beacons are usually the number one driver & our clients are pleasantly surprised how it delivers. Code Correct is a no brainer as well as it just sits in the background, cleaning up & fixing issues.

Very soon we will also be introducing an updated referral engine. Our current, lesser known, Ambassador tool is undergoing a major overhaul & rebrand. This is very exciting & this is the first time I am announcing this.

Why? Customer acquisition costs are increasing rapidly, making referral marketing by far the most cost effective method to gain new customers. US studies show that a high percentage of sales are driven by recommendation.

Now imagine that all those that visit a website can become influencers & these people can earn credits or cash each time one of their friends or families makes a purchase? You have potentially thousands of new affiliates driving new traffic at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.

We have spent 18 months building a back end solution to process the complete flow to make this possible. It’s a massive opportunity & will be the first of it’s kind.

 The Challenges in BusinessLeague

Happy to say, I signed up for the Revenue Rally yesterday & had our first success! Also going well on Target Strike today. In terms of approach, it’s mainly to deliver for our client partners. If we do, we will hopefully gain many more successes as we grow within the Business League. 

Let's talk Black Friday

It’s a big time of the year & we have learned a lot from 2024. Our team has a bigger job to do this year as we have doubled our number of clients so planning has to start early.

We saw a lot of sales driven by Beacons in 2024. Obviously people are shopping around for the best deals so we will be working with clients to make sure we have the best offers to recover those that leave.

This year will be different as we had not launched Code Correct so we are expecting a lot of codes to fail so again we need to be in line with client strategies for BFCM. We are already seeing clients send over the required changes as it seems to take over most of November.

All of our solutions are fully customisable so we can make necessary changes in real time, as required.

Rankings & plans

We quickly moved up to the Start Up league & are pushing hard to reach the Companies league this time around. The potential is huge for CartBooster & as long as we keep enhancing our products & innovating, we can keep delivering the performance we have shown so far. 

My main goal is to introduce as many marketers to a new way of driving sales through the innovative solutions that I am proud that we have developed.