This case study was written by Webgains for the APMA report, State of the Nation 2024: Affiliate and Partner Marketing
Who are Webgains?
Webgains is the service-first affiliate network, delivering outstanding support, strategic expertise, and winning affiliate partnerships to over a thousand leading retail brands worldwide. Providing powerful platforms for advertisers and publishers, Webgains combines seamless experience with powerful tools and automations to maximise every user’s output. Webgains are also a founding member of the APMA.
Case study overview
Webgains worked with a leading male skincare and grooming brand to diversify their publisher mix, supported by tenancy placements across a wide range of affiliate sites. Broadening reach among new customer groups, while driving new customer acquisition and revenue remains a central focus.
The Challenge
It can be easy to allocate tenancy budget to partners and opportunities you’ve used before; a sure, low risk bet. Reaching the same audience time and again might produce good ROI but will result in more returning customers. It can also mean you’re targeting the same customers with other marketing activity, especially campaigns geared towards retention. Cannibalisation through affiliates was negatively impacting new customer acquisition and revenue for our skincare brand.
What we did
Tasked with turning the programme around, the Webgains team set about diversifying the brand’s affiliate mix, reducing dependency on a handful of key affiliates. We worked with them to unlock investment in new publishers and build a new customer report to monitor this important KPI. Focusing on this meant affiliates with real potential were identified and fast-tracked, scaling activity rapidly with increased commissions and investment.
The team also approached affiliates targeting 30 to 50 year old males. Employee benefit closed groups, a previously untapped publisher type, and male focused content via Future proved successful as did audience segmentation through email newsletters with publishers like English Heritage.
Budget was retained to continue optimisation and volumes from top performing Voucher and Cashback publishers.
The Results
Publisher diversification proved a big success. From previously being very top heavy across three publishers (two voucher and one cashback), now only one publisher drives more than 15% of affiliate sales (26%). Employee Benefits went from almost zero channel contribution to 17%, and Content sites more than doubled. 49% of sales were new customer free trials, underpinning the success of a strategy tailored to new customers.
Get in touch
If you’re interested in joining our affiliate network or would like to see more Webgains case studies aligned to your business and objectives, please get in touch – [email protected] or visit our website www.webgains.com.
