Moneybookers discusses Skrill rebrand and affiliate program

Moneybookers and Skrill are making news these days with their rebranding efforts, their Moneybookers affiliate program and their 2011 iGB Affiliate Awards winner for Best Payment System. Julian Artope, VP Marketing gave us an interview to discuss

Moneybookers was already strong in the gaming sector and the integration of Skype and eBay helped us extend into mainstream, non-gambling areas.

This whole process started about 18 or 19 months ago.

We asked tens of thousands of our customers about what they thought of Moneybookers as a brand and we learned a lot from them.

We found that English language speakers in the gaming sector understood how to use the site. But we also found that the overwhelming international, non-gaming section of our users, with less of a grasp of English, had issues with the brand.

For example, 80% would misspell Moneybookers. Alternatively, we were confused or associated with bookmakers.

While our business operates in front of a global audience, our brand was still local and specialized and could be misunderstood.

We had to address this.

Overall, it’s a conversion-driven rebrand. We worked with The Brand Union to instill a numbers-driven approach.

Eventually, our testing across 16 languages led to over 1,500 potential name options. This list was distilled further and ultimately one scored consistently well throughout.

Skrill was significantly clearer, friendlier and much more noticeable; increasing customer’s willingness to pay for services.

At the same time it’s short, easy to spell and gives us the opportunity to own a strong word globally.

Obviously, some customers won’t always appreciate the change from something that was a very effective, market leading brand, but we promise that our product and service will get even better with Skrill.

We ’ll take our time. It’s more a process than a flick of a switch.

We presented the Moneybookers and Skrill brands together for the first time at ICE and the feedback was great.

Nevertheless, we need to be very careful to make sure we don't lose customers or disrupt merchants along the way as we have over 80,000 online-shops who chose to display the Moneybookers brand.

Our aim is not to confuse a single Moneybookers customer on where to click once we start introducing Skrill.

Big names like Skype make up a large proportion but we are also seeing strong growth in the virtual goods sector.

When players want to buy gold or a sword while playing games they want to do it with a convenient ewallet solution and not have to use their credit card for every purchase.

It was kicked it off last year. We have been busy promoting the program and recently won the 2011 iGB Affiliate Awards for Best Payment System and shortlisted for Best Newcomer Affiliate Program.

For affiliates, Moneybookers pays up to 30% revenue share on any Moneybookers customer they refer.

If you refer a customer for anything such as electronics affiliates or online gaming like betfair or whenever they use Moneybookers to pay for something online, they always earn.

So if you refer a player to Income Access or another affiliate program like NordicBet, you really earn 2 revenue share deals for the 1 player referred.

You earn commissions when they deposit at NordicBet and you earn when they make their deposit with Moneybookers.

You also earn revenue share on future payments they make using Moneybookers.

I can't disclose the details but I can tell you that it is the big players in the industry such as PokerStrategy.com, PokerNews and a list of top affiliates that are promoting us – and they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t worth their time.

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For affiliates outside of the United States use Moneybookers for receiving affiliate payments and to earn commissions promoting to your players.