Publisher Spotlight: Honey

Celiena Adcock, Honey

Most of us know Honey and its many savings benefits to shoppers, but for those who don’t, can you tell us about the company, its customers and what makes Honey so unique?

Celiena: Absolutely. Honey is an online shopping community built on trust. We provide our customers with a great way to shop and our partners with a great way to help drive sales. The company was founded in 2012, so we’ve been around for almost a decade now, and we launched in Australia in 2015. Then, in 2020, Honey was acquired by PayPal, so we’ve been going through quite a few changes over the past year or so, as you can imagine. All fantastic changes, of course, for us, our partners and for our millions of loyal members.

Speaking of Honey members, we have more than 29 million of them globally, with 1.5 million in Australia. They’re savvy and sophisticated shoppers who value quality and reinforce their identity as smart shoppers by finding a great deal versus just finding an item at a great price. This is how they shop and buy everything. Plus, they’re a healthy balance of males and females, with 65% of our new members being between the ages of 18 and 34, and nearly 2/3 of them have an average household income of US$100,000+. This adds up to Honey members that brands want to engage with, who have money to spend and like to save while they’re online spending it.

Source: Honey proprietary data July – December 2020 and Honey Internal Study, Spring 2020

What sets you apart from publishers in your category? Why should advertisers partner with you?

Celiena: What sets us apart? Again, in two words: our members. They’re highly engaged and intelligent buyers who search for deals because they value being able to buy with confidence. That’s exactly what we offer them, so they come back for more, time and time again. And they don’t just see us as a provider of good deals, they rely on us from the beginning through to the end of the shopping journey.

Another differentiator is our unique range of Rewards features: Honey Gold, Offers, Smart Coupons and Savings Finder. Through these features we offer our members rewards for their loyalty, and great deals and savings on their purchases. For partners, this offering presents smart and cost-effective ways to drive sales, customer retention and repeat business in ways that align with their business model and objectives. So, it’s a win-win for everyone.

How do you help advertisers add value and drive incrementality?

Celiena: We work closely with our partners to offer programs that align with their business models and objectives. Offers are personalised to our partners, just as deals and rewards are personalised to our members. By doing this, we’re able to help our partners drive incremental sales, increase their AOV and discover and retain higher value customers.

A great example of this is a recent partnership we had with an Australian high fashion retailer. The merchant was looking to gain more market share and capture incremental revenue during one of its peak shopping periods. By using Honey Gold, in a matter of weeks the retailer was able to achieve a 164% increase in sales value, a 10% increase in Average Order Value, a 139% uplift in conversions and a decrease in cart abandonment by 6% compared to the same shopping period the year before.

Source: Honey Internal Data (comparison period from 28 Mar – 5 April 2019 / optimisation period 26 March – 2 April 2020)

What excites you about the affiliate marketing industry and where it’s headed? What new innovations will we see from you this year?

Celiena: We’re excited about the mobile space and the release of our app on iOS and Android earlier this year. The Honey app gives members a smoother shopping experience and it gives partners the ability to showcase their products and deals to our shoppers. This is big when you consider that we already have over 320,000 Australian visitors to our mobile site every month. Another great thing to note is that our partnered merchants are all automatically included in the app and are discoverable by our users the moment their partnership goes live.

As for the rest of the year ahead, we expect to see strong user growth as PayPal members are introduced to Honey’s unique offering. To date, we have over 1.5 million Australian users who have tapped into the power of Honey organically, and we are excited to tap into that momentum further.

Contact us to partner with Honey today or visit joinhoney.com/business to find out how Honey can help your business grow. To hear more from our publishers in the future, subscribe to our blog.