City Cruises Sees +377% Revenue After Migrating to Awin
UK agency SYYCO migrated City Cruises to Awin and instantly benefited from all the tools and data its legacy platform couldn’t provide.
+377% revenue YoY
+192% sales YoY
+114% sale-active publishers YoY
City Cruises is a popular provider of sightseeing, dining, and private event cruises. It runs water-based tours in multiple cities and countries, including London, where it takes on four million passengers every year as the no.1 sightseeing cruise on the Thames.
SYYCO is a leading UK affiliate and partnership management agency, which has a strong reputation for its experience, pursuit of innovation, and data-driven approach.
The challenge
City Cruises’ UK affiliate programme had come to a standstill. Affiliate marketing is a go-to channel for travel and experience operators, and SYYCO knew the brand could be getting more from it. Unfortunately, City Cruises’ affiliate platform had serious limitations in crucial areas like partner recruitment and tracking, making it difficult to chart a route forward.
SYYCO recommended migrating the programme to Awin for a fresh start. In doing so, City Cruises would be able to access a much broader range of partners and ensure they were fairly rewarded thanks to the platform’s robust tracking.
The biggest obstacle was City Cruises’ website, which was created using a bespoke platform. Any migration would require a custom integration plan to guarantee its partner contributions were being accurately tracked.
Better infrastructure and an improved partner selection awaited City Cruises, if the migration was successful.
The solution
Awin assigned a dedicated integration specialist to work closely with SYYCO and the City Cruises team to scope out the migration. Despite the obstacles, Awin and SYYCO worked quickly to make sure the new programme was tracking correctly and aligned with the brand’s long-term objectives.
From here, City Cruises and SYYCO went about exploring all the extra capabilities they’d been missing out on.
Finding the right partners
Awin has over one million publishers on its network, but advanced filters (e.g. location, partner type, promotional model) on the Partner Discovery tool made it easy for SYYCO to gather a list of top targets, with a special focus on content and editorial partners.
SYYCO also took full advantage of Awin’s extensive network of approved influencers – a previously untapped partner group for City Cruises that would introduce the brand to new audiences and showcase its experiences.
After narrowing down its options, detailed publisher profiles allowed the agency to make informed assessments on which to onboard.
Going quality over quantity
SYYCO conducted a comprehensive publisher audit, ensuring only top-quality partners joined the programme.
The agency then leveraged its long-standing relationships to secure high-impact placements and exposure, instantly giving City Cruises a way of increasing brand awareness and traffic, and landing new customer sales.
SYYCO maintained the momentum by devising new offers, messaging, and incentives to keep its new partners onside. These actions were greatly assisted by Awin's detailed reporting, which made it possible to look beyond sales and spot opportunities to drive conversion rates and order values for a sustained uplift.
Targeted activations
Looking beyond the initial actions, Awin allowed SYYCO to be more targeted with City Cruises’ approach to sharing offers and engaging certain partners.
For example, the Voucher Attribution tool was particularly useful in sharing exclusive discount codes with a select group of publishers. The functionality kept these codes leak-free and triggered special commission rates when they were redeemed.
The results
“Migrating to Awin provided City Cruises with a clear and strategic path forward. The platform offers reliable tracking and access to a diverse network of high-quality publishers. With tools like Partner Discovery, Marketplace, and the Insights section, integrating new partnerships into the programme has become a smooth and efficient process.”
Rather than docking its ambitions, Awin gave SYYCO a foundation to execute short, mid, and long-term plans for City Cruises.
The enhanced platform delivered instant benefits in terms of recruitment, tracking, and partner optimization, and the results soon followed.
Comparing its first full year on Awin against its final year on the previous platform, the difference was stark:
- +377% increase in revenue
- +192% increase in sales
- +114% increase in sale-active publishers
Bookings and revenue have continued to increase beyond this initial period thanks to the growing influence of content partners, which have gone from a minor consideration to accounting for 28% of City Cruises’ programme revenue.