Tuesday 24 March 2009

New Product Page

Check out the new LOVEFiLM product page:
http://www.lovefilm.com/film/Zombie-Strippers/97352/
http://www.lovefilm.com/film/How-To-Lose-Friends-And-Alienate-People/97847/

The new page will allow people to view trailers, news, images and reviews for each title, which will increase conversions from affiliate traffic. Watch this space for more information but this will be reflected in the product feed landing pages.

Monday 23 March 2009

Gaming Top 10: Ultra-Violence

The top rental requests for games at LOVEFiLM this week are:
  1. Resident Evil 5 (Xbox)
  2. Tom Clancy's HAWX (Xbox)
  3. Resident Evil 5 (PS3)
  4. Street Fighter IV (Xbox)
  5. Tom Clancy's HAWX (PS3)
  6. Halo Wars (Xbox)
  7. Street Fighter IV (PS3)
  8. Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360)
  9. Killzone 2 (PS3)
  10. Left 4 Dead (Xbox)

The 1st week in a long time we have had no Wii titles in the top 10, the nearest being Mario Kart at 13.

Odd to see so many big titles being released when we are nowhere near Christmas, such as Street Fighter, Resident Evil and Halo Wars. Every title is also about war, fights and violence so maybe that is just not Christmas material.

Friday 20 March 2009

LOVEFiLM - not award winners shock!

Well it had to happen eventually - after an amazing run of winning awards whenever nominated we did not win at the Fast Growth Business Awards.

Seatwave won our category for Online Business of the Year, and they also picked up Angel or VC-backed Business of the Year and made the final 4 for the T-Mobile Company of the Year. If you are going to lose it is nice to lose to a company that had such recognition, similar to ourselves last year. The overall company of the year winner was King Of Shaves.

Seatwave also have an affiliate program, which is run on Affiliate Window, BuyAt and Zanox. Well done to them for their success.

All the winners cna be seen at
http://www.fgba.co.uk/2009_winners2.html

Friday 13 March 2009

MCV AWARDS '09: The Finalists are announced

Nearly 40 companies are set to fight it out for the big prizes at the games industry's trade awards in April

The Finalists of the MCV Industry Excellence Awards have been announced – and now the countdown begins to the big event on Thursday April 23rd and our 1st ever nomination at the event.

We are up for 'Retail Innovation' and the group consists of:
HMV Gamerbase
HMV Re/Play
Play.com Live
Lovefilm Rental
CHIPS accessories

Thanks to all affiliates that have been promoting this offer. No other channel has seen the focus on telling potential members about the great service we have and the full range across all consoles.

Thursday 12 March 2009

Resident Evil 5 - Zombie fun at LOVEFiLM

The long awaited Resident Evil 5 is coming out tomorrow on PS3 and Xbox - I think a lot of people are very excited about this one and it looks amazing.

LOVEFiLM has stock for both consoles ready for rental - affiliate commission is £7.50-£17 on a 14 day FREE trial

LOVEFiLM DVDs, Blu-ray and Games rental

And we also have it ready to buy from the LOVEFiLM Shop for £33.93 - affiliate commission is 5%

Also right now we have a special promotion code for an extra 5% off for customers - the promotional code is SPRING and that brings the cost to £32.24

LOVEFiLM Shop: Found 26 results for "Resident Evil 5"

In related news Capcom have promoted the game by a leaving behind a trail of body parts from zombie victims around Trafalgar Square. This could go badly wrong and we could see London Tonight reporting on body parts scattered around London, but it sounds fun.
http://www.capcom-unity.com/snow_infernus/blog/2009/03/10/find_body_pieces_win_trip_to_africa

British Academy Video Games Awards

Some surprises at the British Academy Video Games Awards the other night.
http://www.bafta.org/awards/video-games/nominations,664,BA.html

Remember all of these winners can be rented from LOVEFiLM, here are the highlights:

Best Sports Game - Race Driver: Grid (beating Wii Fit)
Artistic Achievement - LittleBigPlanet
Best Handheld Game - Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Best Action and Adventure Game - Fable 2
Best Game - Super Mario Galaxy (beating GTA4 and Rock band)

LittleBigPlanet has been a massive rental title, but we have seen more people going for Wii games. I think gaming rental is proving popular as a way to get a group game for the weekend for families or gaming friends, and that defintely applies to myself. Sadly I do not think a lot of people realise you can rent DS and PSP titles just the same as normal console games.

Monday 9 March 2009

The top 5 worldwide selling Games of 2008

Today I received my copy of The Leveller, I-Level's monthly newsletter. Apart from the comment about Martin Lewis and MSE as an affiliate (featuring Matt Bailey's apparent dating website photo) there was a good list some affiliate might want to use.



The top 5 worldwide selling Games of 2008

1. Mario Kart Wii -1.94m copies sold

2. Wii Fit

3. Grand Theft Auto 4

4. Super Smash Bros Brawl

5. Call of Duty: World at War

source - Chart Track, NPD, Media Crate, Feb 09



Why of interest to affiliates:
It is worth noting that these can all be rented from LOVEFiLM
3 of these are Wii games, matching the trend we see for Wii rental being more popular
Anyone with a more causal gaming audience could benefit from promoting these titles


P.S - in case you don't believe me about Matt's photo I have place below - does he not look like he's about to start talking about his hobbies?





Fast Growth Business Awards

The Fast Growth Business Awards recognise the most pioneering and creative businesses and entrepreneurial owners, and once again LOVEFiLM has been nominated and made the short list.

Last year we attended the event and won Retail/Leisure Business of the Year and this year we are up for Online Business of the Year.

The 4 finalists are:

Buyagift.com
LOVEFiLM International
Seatwave
WhiteLabelDating.com

Personally I think WhiteLabelDating.com will be strong competition having seen them around at the online events and shows.

Always nice to see us up for an award, but I want to see us showing up the A4U awards this year as a contender.

More info at
http://www.fgba.co.uk/2009_finalists.html

Thursday 5 March 2009

Brands that are thriving in a recession

Marketing Magazine has a nice article on brands that are thriving in the recession:

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/886686/Case-studies-brands-thriving-recession/

Alongside Moneysavingexpert.com and The Economist is our very own LOVEFiLM with a quote from the always quotable Simon Morris.

The three words that repeatedly come up during LoveFilm's customer research are, says Morris, range, convenience and value. 'In this climate, range becomes less important [to consumers than] value.' Members are also returning discs faster and renting more of them, but this trend is as much to do with the long winter nights as it is the recession.

An article worth checking out as it has some other information on how we are doing right now.

LOVEFiLM Affiliate Activity - lets make some plans

I'll be asking some of you guys directly but I am putting out a general request as well. I am eager to agree some interesting CPA based activity through April-July so please send me your ideas.

I want to know what affiliates want to do with LOVEFiLM on loyalty, email, viral and anything else. If you get in touch now we can make sure we have everything set up and ready to roll around your plans as well. I would like to see LOVEFiLM integrated into any special promotion you might be planning.

Reviewing the previous years we have had some great success with different affiliates such as:
Ipoints Indy Jones competition
Quidco's Savvy Tips supporting TV coverage
The 1st Viral game on affiliate model with Tamba
Halloween Horror Downloads promotion
ChooseDVDrental reporting all the news and developments

It would be great to agree to similar activity in the upcoming months.

LOVEFiLM Payout Structure + Affiliate Groups

LOVEFiLM is adjusting its payout structure as we look to bring all program structures and promotions in line. This consolidation will also allow us to move onto the next stage of our affiliate marketing with greater understanding of the ROI and value of special promotions.

We are also looking at ways to integrate affiliates using APIs, Widgets, Content, Email and Mobile during these changes so please get in touch if you have a focus on these areas. I am hoping that we are developing our program in the right way so we can look at the different classifications of affiliates so we will be able to reward hard work and judge each on a more fair and consistent basis.

Please note this will be active from Sunday 8th March at 11.59PM and will be across all of the affiliate networks we work with.

NEW set up
Lead 0-49 @ £7.50
Lead 50-99 @ £10
Lead 100-199 @ £13
Lead 200-500 @ £14
Lead 501+ @ £15
Lead 749+ @ £17

Feel free to contact the guys at the networks or myself if you have any questions.

Wednesday 4 March 2009

The top 10 Movie sites of 2008

Beta Labs has an interesting article on the Hitwise Top 10 lists of 2008 out:
http://blog.betalabs.co.uk/2009/03/03/hitwise-top-tens-out-today/
http://www.hitwise.co.uk/

This includes the top 10 Movie sites of 2008

1 www.lovefilm.com
2 www.odeon.co.uk
3 www.cineworld.co.uk
4 www.myvue.com
5 www.showbiz.sky.com
6 www.movies.uk.msn.com
7 www.empireonline.co.uk
8 www.tescodvdrental.com
9 www.uk.imdb.com
10 www.uk.movies.yahoo.com

Great to see LOVEFiLM being recognised as a source for all movie related news, cinema listings and interviews as well our DVD rental.

I wonder how much of this traffic is down to our affiliates driving people to the site to sign up?

More ways to promote LOVEFiLM - bonus rentals and screenings

Here is something useful if you want to promote the extra little things a member gets when they join LOVEFiLM

http://www.lovefilm.com/micro/nokia-5800.html

You have to be logged into your account to get to the page but then just answer the question and you get a bonus rental. This is a nice little treat of members and shows what else we give to improve the value of the membership. You can get the free rental during the free trial as well and this runs for the month of March.

We often give away these bonus rentals to our members alongside prize draws and exclusive screenings of the latest releases. We even give away film props as random as Jennifer Ellison's fake leg that was used in The Cottage.