Sigma Sports: the move from cashback to content focused publishers
Last updated: Jan 2025
It’s funny how things go full circle. Our founder, Andrew, started as a copywriter for Sigma Sports eight years ago when they were a team of 25 before joining Specialized as their Digital Content Developer.
Now, Sigma Sports are one of the UK’s largest omnichannel retailers in the cycling, running, and triathlon space with a team of 100+ and a turnover of £45m+ in 2024.
Sigma Sports has become one of our largest merchants since they joined in October 2024 and this case study explains how they became so successful, what channels were used and what the outcomes of the past 4-month have been.
Before we get started, it’s important to highlight that Sigma Sports has a huge variety of products on offer at competitive prices. They focus on road and gravel cycling so we tailored our approach to promoting their program to relevant publishers. We don’t talk total numbers in case studies due to that data being protected under NDA, but we are permitted to disclose percentages.
Why did Sigma Sports join Avelon?
Sigma Sports’ experience with affiliate marketing over the past five years has been interesting, to say the least. Like most of the cycling industry, they used AWIN (Affiliate Window) to get their affiliate program up and running.
AWIN has a broad range of affiliates and are very good at what they do, but focus on coupon code, comparison sites, cashback sites and browser extensions. In fact, over 85% of all affiliate sales are through these types of affiliates.
Whilst discount and cashback sites do, in fact, shift a lot of stock – it does cannibalise profit margins and lead you to rely on heavily discounted sales to acquire new customers who are solely shopping on price, not on the publisher experience.
Throughout 2023 and 2024, Sigma Sports 3% of their total turnover through AWIN’s affiliate network, but 90% of this was through a single cashback website. Sigma Sports came to Avelon to explore our direct relationships with publishers in the sports industry and to diversify their affiliate base.
Low bar, high results
Sigma Sports set a trial target for Avelon to deliver 10% of what AWIN was generating per month, both in revenue and traffic, exclusively through sports publishers. It was a low bar, but as Sigma Sports would be our largest account, we were excited to exceed expectations.
Andrew personally managed the Sigma Sports account, to ensure we had full control over every affiliate relationship and the ability to take advantage of gaps in the market. With 80,000 products in the Sigma Sports product feed, we assessed that there were 8,320 contextual link spaces in our network with no valid links to products. These missed opportunities were costing Sigma Sports potential revenue.
Sigma Sports chose to work with a select number of publishers, including Cycling Weekly, Bike Perfect, MBR, BikeRadar, Bikesy, Road.cc, Affilizz, Which?, and a few of their own ambassadors. We provided enhanced commissions as a “welcome” bonus and focused on building strong relationships with these key partners.
What was the outcome?
Our goal was to reach 10% of AWIN’s monthly turnover, but by the third month, we’d exceeded AWIN’s total sales — all without any discount code or cashback websites.
Update: we now attribute 50% higher than what AWIN was tracking.
Avelon works directly with publishers and uses product feeds to sync affiliate links contextually, ensuring relevant and accurate product links. As a result of this success, Sigma Sports ended their agreement with AWIN and works exclusively with Avelon.
The average order value driven through each publisher wasn’t drastically different, but the breakdown of the categories was expected. Riders are looking to layer up, change components and get their bikes ready for winter in October and November – and this is shown through the purchases we’ve recorded (as you can see below).
The below graphic shows that accessories were 9% of all items within an order, whilst clothing totalled 48% and components 34%.
Traffic and conversion rates are something to consider when using affiliates to drive new sales. Too much traffic and a low conversion rate can indicate a lack of context, or an unengaged audience supplied by the affiliate and anything sub 1% is cause for concern. However, anything 2% or higher is considered top-tier and indicates great relevance to the end-consumer.
As we tailored Sigma Sports’ approach and looked to build meaningful relationships, publishers were highly motivated to link from relevant articles and not from just about anywhere. How did they do this? Product feeds.
Product feeds allow publishers to match the exact product they’re reviewing/analysing to the best price, commission and stock availability across the internet through an automated deep link. These feeds help publishers build trust with their audience as it’s virtually impossible to link to an item that’s out of stock, so the consumer knows that when they click they’re not only getting the best price, they’re finding a product that’s in-stock.
A new term we’ve conjured is also ‘mixed category purchases’ – which means consumers were purchasing across categories. 24% of all orders were mixed category purchases with one or more items from two or more categories.
Improving the program throughout 2025
Affiliate marketing is all about relationships. The more trust and better communication you have with someone, the better they’ll perform. With Sigma Sports and the publishers we’re working with, we constantly communicate new deals and ensure product feeds are up to date and offer the highest chance of success.
We’ll be working closer with Sigma to identify new opportunities and grow their program into new markets. We’re excited about the future of this partnership and, as we expand into running, health and wellness, and general fitness, we’re confident that there will be huge growth for the Sigma Sports team.