Powering Channel Partners
with High-Performance Landing Pages

Converting as high as 46% from paid search for Millennium Bankcard

The LiveBall pages were fantastic and clean. They were just so far beyond anything else we’d seen. The thing I liked most about ion’s full-service solution was that I could say here’s a partner logo and boom there was a new, fantastic looking landing page. The service was fantastic.”
Richard Davis
VP Business Development, Millennium Bankcard

background

Millennium Bankcard is a national provider of Credit Card Processing & Merchant Account Services. They provide credit card processing solutions for all types of businesses including internet, retail or merchants taking orders by mail or phone.

In this low-margin industry reducing customer acquisition cost is the number-one priority. One way to make that happen is by creating a channel of merchant aggregators. That’s exactly what Millennium Bankcard did. They have a network of over 100 web developers and other providers for whom they provide credit card processing. As partners refer more and more business to Millennium, their acquisition cost goes down and margins go up.

the challenge

Millennium’s 100+ partners had two things in common. One, they had demand for credit card processing services. And two, they didn’t have the tools and messaging to sell those services.

To sell their credit card processing solutions through their partner network Millennium had to help their partners market and convert through search engine marketing. They had to give their partners the tools they needed to sell and educate their customers—ultimately helping them signup to use cobranded Millennium/Partner solutions.

Millennium started off by using web developers to manually create and deploy educational, conversion-oriented landing pages for their partners’ SEM efforts. This was costly and cumbersome, and the quality of the pages was sub-par and inconsistent. Millennium attended the ad:tech conference in New York hoping to find a better way. They found ion interactive and LiveBall.

the solution

What attracted Millennium to ion’s LiveBall platform was the quality of the pages. Richard Davis, Millennium Bankcard’s VP Business Development says “The LiveBall pages were fantastic and clean. They were just so far beyond anything else we’d seen.”

Millennium signed on as a full-service client soon after ad:tech. ion provided turnkey landing experiences leveraging the LiveBall platform on Millennium’s behalf. Within two weeks of finalizing the contract, Millennium was live and converting respondents into customers from paid-search traffic.

LiveBall’s flexible brand themes were utilized in full force by creating a theme for each partner. These polished, professional, cobranded themes put the best foot forward for both Millennium and their partners. Themes enabled Millennium’s partners to appear fully integrated and in lock step with Millennium. This in turn helped prospective customers feel more comfortable. That comfort and trust translated into an excellent average conversion rate of over 14%—with some partners converting as high as 46%!

Throughout the multi-month full-service engagement, ion deployed new landing pages 2-3 times per week. Richard says “The thing I liked most about ion’s full-service solution was that I could say here’s a partner logo and boom there was a new, fantastic looking landing page. The service was fantastic.”

transition to self-service

Once ion and Millennium had successfully launched over 35 partner landing experiences, it was time for Millennium to take the reins of LiveBall. ion interactive CEO Justin Talerico says “We believe the full-service to self-service model is a perfect fit for many clients. Millennium Bankcard got a great head start on their partner channel and post-click marketing using our full-service offering. Now they’re continuing their momentum using LiveBall for themselves.”

LiveBall gives Millennium an easy way to scale by getting new partners up and running fast. They also take learning from successes and apply it to all partners—increasing everyone’s efficiency. Improving page quality and lowering acquisition cost were the missions. ion delivered the services and the platform that transformed those aspirations into reality.