PartnerCentric, Inc.

Case Overview: A leading luxury fashion brand knew they had to get creative during Covid-19 but because they have a higher-end offering, they wanted to be strategic about their investment. This brand has always respected and encouraged a well-diversified affiliate portfolio, despite being a luxury brand. They understand the value of coupon and loyalty partners but also incorporate content and influencer marketing. By accepting our suggestions to implement a varied marketing mix, they are seeing unprecedented success and growth during an uncertain time.

Approach: When Covid-19 disrupted businesses, our team developed tailored strategies for all clients based on their biggest pain points. For this brand,  our team researched and booked both flat fee placement packages and CPA increase opportunities with top-performing partners. While many retailers were pulling back on CPA increases, we suggested that they continue and this resulted in higher revenue.

During the “Annual Birthday Week” event with Rakuten, we suggested they provide a higher cashback of 12% and because of this, the brand saw $22,000 in revenue during the event. Additionally, in April and May, they gave a 4% commission increase to any partners that were giving cash back to charity and Covid-relief efforts, which provided additional placement opportunities for us to secure. Our team is also working with this brand to secure partnerships that will allow them to give back to first responders, teachers and nurses as well as new influencer partnerships to promote specific collections and collaborations.

Results: Two of the highest revenue earning weeks ever in this brand’s affiliate program were May 4th through the 10th (up 627% YoY)  and April 27th through May 3rd (up 280% YoY).

Before Covid-19, the amount of revenue-driving publishers averaged between 10-15 a week; it has now increased to 20-25 due to our team getting creative with placement opportunities and reactivating publishers. 

Overview: We began managing a small kitchen appliance brand's program. Being new to the affiliate channel, the brand needed the expertise of an agency to expand its overall reach and drive incremental sales by utilizing non-traditional affiliate partners.

Approach: Unable to compete with discounts within the retail space due to the challenges of MAP pricing, the brand was looking for unique partners who could reach an audience less concerned with costs and drive traffic directly to their site. In addition, the brand was seeking ways to utilize the affiliate channel to support other marketing channels' efforts as well as form a bridge between driving digital traffic to their big-box retail partners.

Understanding these concerns and seeing the holes in the brand's current marketing efforts, we teamed up with a variety of non-traditional partners best suited to reach the client's goals.

Results: In the span of three weeks since PartnerCentric launched the program, the client saw 17.8% of overall sales derive from the affiliate channel due to the non-traditional relationships formed at the onset of the program. In addition, over 5,000 new-to-file email addresses were added to the client's email marketing list. The brand was able to also share their new product and gain learnings received from over 10K potential shoppers. Pleased with these overall results and the current standing, the client is looking to add a second brand to the affiliate channel to further increase their reach.

Problem: Vitamin World was concerned about the escalating cost of their affiliate program. The amount of money they spent on network fees was making their affiliate channel inefficient, affecting their ROI.

This inefficiency prevented them from focusing on discovery and recruitment efforts to scale the channel, which they wanted to do-their time was taken up with pulling reports and numerous other manual activities, keeping them from developing a full-fledged program strategy.

Solution: By working with PartnerCentric, Vitamin World transitioned their program away from the networks to full-scale partnership automation using Impact's Partnsherip Cloud (PC). Automation allowed Vitamin World to achieve the efficiencies they sought, freeing up their time and money needed to grow their base of partners.

PartnerCentric and Impact's PC enabled Vitamin World to identify and cultivate strategic "beyond-borders" partners, such as employee benefit sites and new relationships with international shopping partners, which supported their global expansion efforts.

Outcome: Since partnering with PartnerCentric and migrating to Impact, in just one year, Vitamin world saved a startling six figures (more than $100,000) in network fees and grew their program rapidly.

In 2018 alone, ParnerCentric secured 40 new productive publishers to manage within the Partnership Cloud platform. Their employee benefit partners resulted in a 78% YoY growth in that vertical. Efficiency increased as well, with a 48% YoY reduction in CPC. Upon affiliate migration, Vitamin World increased revenue by 36%.

Vitamin World also enjoyed other significant benefits, such as amassing $9K savings by rejecting backlisted coupons-something that they were not able to track while fully dependent on their legacy networks.

Overview: Effective publisher segmentation is a critical component of many profitable affiliate programs. By forcing on this strategy, the PartnerCentric team helped elevate the success of a reputable water filtration company in only two months while increasing ROAS.

Approach: After a year of successful affiliate program management by PartnerCentric, it was clear that a commission segmentation strategy utilizing publisher categories would yield significant cost savings. The previous payout structure was a flat 12% payout for all affiliates, which didn't allow for any incentive increases for top publishers or seasonal campaigns. After reviewing strategies, the client and their PartnerCentric affiliate manager ultimately decided to decrease the payout percentage and segment publishers into discount, loyalty and all other publishers (though there was additional segmentation and payout increase based on performance).

Results: After only two months, $5000 was saved due to the commission segmentation strategy. Additionally, monthly average revenue increased by 0.9%, and monthly average order size increased by 9.9%. Finally, monthly publisher commission payouts decreased by 22%, and ROAS increased by $2.04.

Overview: We took over management for this American classic shoe retailer’s program after being previously managed with a network management solution. The brand wanted the expertise, perspective, and alignment of a proven agency partner to attract new customers and increase revenue and ROAS. They also wanted to work with influencers and prominent content sites but needed a team that knew how to develop and nurture those relationships.

Appraoch: After our initial kickoff with this brand, we suggested working with established content publishers to specifically push out curated collections and reach an untapped audience by focusing on editorial and content. We boosted day-to-day communication with top partners and created campaigns for the brand that featured the right products matched with the right partners. For example, we presented their full-price wedding collection to be featured in well-known wedding publications, and that increased sales due to the content that was created around the collection.Because our focus was more on editorial and content, we looked for trends with other shoe sites to see what publishers would work well for the brand, and then we presented those opportunities. We also increased commissions for publishers who provided more exposure. For another campaign, we elevated strategic engagement with key influencers and discussed how the shoes would appeal to their audience. This led to some excellent free content where the shoe collections were front and center in established publications. 

Results: Because of the tremendous growth they have seen from our efforts, this brand is increasing budget for the affiliate channel. In the first period of our  management, the total affiliate program revenue (including all publishers) was up 124% YoY. In Period 2, revenue increased by 140%. Additionally, through increased communication with top content publishers, we received top placements in Time Inc. (Real Simple and People Magazine) and Buzzfeed. 

Overview: When PartnerCentric started managing this multimedia financial services company, they were a brand completely new to performance marketing and from day one, the PartnerCentric team has driven the strategy that has exceeded all set KPIs. The brand's main goal was to add more paid subscriptions to their various stock advising and retirement products. They also set a goal for incremental weekly subscription sales solely from the affiliate channel and, on average, we consistently exceed their weekly goal by 47%. Their team is always willing to try new things and embrace our innovative tactics, so they're seeing strong success with a healthy mix of both traditional partners and relevant content sites.

Approach: When PartnerCentric first launched this brand's new program and recruited Cartera Commerce, this partner began driving significant subscription sales, so we began to recruit more partners that could successfully drive the same volume. The brand already had some partners they were working with direct (CNN, MSN, etc.), so our team recruited strong, "beyond borders" relationships that would open the brand to new audiences.

Additionally, we targeted new finance sites and new types of content sites that aren't as obvious as traditional coupon and loyalty but could still drive significant value where it mattered to the brand.

Results: The first 3 months of PartnerCentric's management of this brand, their program was up 524% YoY, 491% YoY, and 122% YoY. Our team's successful recruitment of strategic partners made it possible to reach the volume that the brand wanted to see. These new partners, including DealWiki, IMwave, and MoneyCrashers, bring a similar volume to Cartera, which was the highest performing partner previously.

Many other partners have also grown significantly since we recruited them, including iGive (up 4,832% YoY), Wikibuy (up 414% YoY), and WellKeptWallet (255% YoY), further driving the brand's success within the performance marketing channel

Case Overview

A leading maternity wear client had an existing affiliate program when they signed on with PartnerCentric. Our goal (and theirs) was to ensure the program terms and conditions were outlined correctly and to eliminate violations that were resulting in additional publisher commissions.

• With our Trademark Monitoring tool, we identified that the program’s network Terms and Conditions were inadequate for the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) policy.
  • Based on our compliance recommendation, the Terms and Conditions were updated accordingly and we sent out a program wide notice of PPC policy to discourage additional violations
  • We also expanded the keywords used in the TM policy for additional coverage
• Four publishers were expired from the program for repeat URL-hijacking violations
• We continually monitor the program and remove advertisements that are in violation to PPC policy

Results

As a result of the PC Trademark Monitoring Program:

• Trademark Violations decreased 87% from December to April! (259 Violations in December to only 33 total February through April)
• Commissions decreased by 71% for publishers who were previously repeat TM violators
• After PC TM+ Monitoring cleaned up the program a large TM publisher who had previously refused to work with the Client agreed to a partnership
• The Client also saw an additional cost savings in their internal PPC campaigns as the cost per click also decreased with the TM violators being removed.