Publisher Spotlight: Global Savings Group

Can you please introduce yourself?

My name is Alexander Hold and I am a Senior Manager at Global Savings Group (GSG), responsible for taking our new marketing products and services to our global markets. At GSG we strive to be the preferred affiliate partner for our 20.000+ advertisers and offering the latest innovative solutions is a cornerstone in our strategy.

1. What is the story behind GSG?

GSG is a PubTech platform for commerce content. We help publishers monetize their readers by delivering products, recommendations, deals and discounts to consumers. We operate 100+ digital assets with world leading publishers like Business Insider, DailyMail, Focus Online, and many more.

Founded in 2012, GSG has been on a fast growth trajectory, expanding to 20+ markets with over 400 employees, in record time. Our talented staff of Marketers, Account Managers, Editors, etc. funnel more than 2 million purchases every month through our platforms. By aggregating the editorial curation and distribution of commerce content on one unique technology stack, GSG is transforming the way consumers buy, brands sell, and digital publishers earn – one transaction at a time.

2. What is the secret behind GSG’s success?

The most important factor behind our success is the team we have at GSG. Young, ambitious and innovative, our team of over 400 talented marketing specialists, programmers and editors from all corners of the globe, continuously drives the company to new highs. Besides the superior technology stack developed by our team, we are obsessed with our customers, as well as the customers of our customers. Our mission is to empower people to make smarter purchasing decisions and help them save lots of money.

3. In which ways is GSG currently maintaining its current market position in a competitive market?

In order to achieve our aim, we have a strong vision that looks beyond discounting, setting us apart from our competitors. We are constantly improving our products and developing new ones, such as dynamic coupons and rewards. Furthermore, we are selective about the merchants and publishers we cooperate with, which enables us to offer the highest standards to consumers in terms of content and deals.

4. Which challenges do you most often face as an affiliate?

The main challenge we currently face is one faced by the entire affiliate industry: the rise of app commerce and the slow adoption of in-app tracking by many brands and retailers. The failure to implement in-app tracking is not only problematic for affiliates and publishers – who miss out on commissions – but also for the merchants themselves. They fail to acquire extremely valuable data, their affiliate managers miss out on considerable bonuses and they miss the chance to get included in publishers’ VIP-programmes.

5. What is the future of voucher codes according to GSG?

The future belongs to Dynamic Coupons. We have already seen a number of very successful cases in which the ability to provide real-time and personalised discount rates led to considerable upselling rates. Furthermore, the future of vouchers will consist of offering consumers a combination of different options such as rewards, regular and personalised coupons and receiving notifications about discounts when they need them.

6. What developments do you expect within affiliate marketing in 2020? And also, within the voucher codes sector?

We expect merchants to put an increased focus on customer loyalty and the affiliate options that contribute most to promote customer loyalty. This means that saving opportunities will increasingly be combined with loyalty products like Rewards, Cashback, Points or similar programmes.

7. What is your advice to advertisers when they want to set up a successful campaign with affiliates?

Affiliate marketing is a very powerful marketing channel with very low risk, as it is primarily paid on performance, most popular is Cost per Acquisition (CPA). This is why affiliate marketing should be part of every marketer’s marketing mix. If you are new to affiliate marketing, securing good commercials for the publishers is a great help to kick-start your program. If you are already active in affiliate marketing, I recommend pushing exclusive offers and/or content, as this aligns well with publisher’s ambitions to differentiate from competition and brands typically see better performance related to this strategy.

8. What are the benefits of working with GSG for a merchant? What makes GSG so unique?

The benefits of working with us are threefold. First, we achieve incredible reach through our partnerships with some of the world’s most renowned publishers, like CNN, Business Insider, the Daily Mail, etc. This also means we always offer a premium and brand safe environment to merchants. Second are our innovative product solutions, like Dynamic Coupons, Rewards, in-store coupons, not to forget content campaigns. Third is our strong understanding of the merchants’ needs and our ability to combine the various products on offer into a tailored and coherent savings-strategy.

9. Is there any update or feature that GSG is currently working on? What would GSG be like in 5 years from now?

The ongoing exclusive negotiations with French cashback-player iGraal about a potential acquisition will change the GSG portfolio, as cashback would open up a wide range of new opportunities for our partners. The full potential of cashback in the European market has been far from reached. If the iGraal acquisition is successful, GSG in five years will not only be market leader in the couponing field, but also Europe’s biggest cashback player.