How 5 leading brands are thriving with impact.com [+ strategies to replicate success] 

Brands like iubenda and Castlery have experienced impressive results through their partnership with impact.com. For example, iubenda boosted its traffic-generating affiliates by 30 percent, while Castlery achieved a remarkable fivefold increase in quarterly U.S. orders. 

According to Aaron Ting, Senior Marketing Manager at Castlery, “From partner onboarding to offer setup, performance tracking, reporting, and payout, the impact.com platform has saved us from drowning in excessive admin work.” 

Explore strategies and tools that streamline affiliate management, expand networks, and drive industry success. 

iubenda increases traffic-generating affiliates by 30% with impact.com 

Milan-based software, iubenda provides easy-to-use privacy solutions, ensuring website and app compliance in multiple countries. 

In the same year as its launch in 2011, the company started an affiliate program for specialized publishers, with the goal of expanding globally. 

The team sought a tool to launch their program and achieve three objectives:

1. Expand the network by connecting with potential affiliates to drive traffic. Identify and connect with potential affiliate partners to drive qualified traffic to their sites. 
2. Improve affiliate management. Improve communication, partner support, and performance tracking. 
3. Track return on investment (ROI). Use analytics to measure campaign success and make better decisions. 

iubenda moved its affiliate program to impact.com for better features to help it achieve these goals. 

4 Key improvements

The team prioritized using impact.com’s features to improve four key areas: 

1. Network expansion: Relied on impact.com’s affiliate marketplace to recruit international partners.
2. Affiliate management: Used live chat and newsletter features to communicate and support partners consistently. 
3. Performance tracking: Created intuitive dashboards for real-time data analysis and ROI evaluation.
4. Scalable systems: Customized payment tiers and bonuses to adapt messaging for diverse markets.

Results 

Thanks to impact.com, iubenda quickly saw tangible results:

• Increased affiliates: 30 percent+ rise in traffic-generating partners.
• Consistent branding: Maintained brand standards through effective partner communication.

Plus, the brand customized its payment tiers to different regions, provided bonuses, and adapted its messaging to different regional markets. 

Key lessons:

iubenda’s success highlights some key lessons that you can implement to drive success in your affiliate program: 

• Tool selection: Choose a scalable and versatile platform that aligns with your expansion goals.
• Communication: Maintain open lines of communication with affiliates to uphold brand integrity.
• Continual support: Provide ongoing training and resources to align partners with your mission and product.

Castlery experienced a 12% AOV increase within a year using impact.com

Castlery is a digital-first furniture brand that faced a few significant challenges with affiliate management.

Initially, Castlery struggled to find effective affiliate partners and lacked a system to identify successful partnerships. Overall, it was hard to monitor the performance and success of their affiliate partnerships. 

As the team looked to improve their affiliate management, they set three key goals: 

1. Increase average order value (AOV)
2. Recruit high-performing partners
3. Streamline affiliate management processes

4 Key improvements

Castlery moved their affiliate program to impact.com to streamline their affiliate program.

Using impact.com, Castlery made a few small improvements to their affiliate program that generated huge results:

• Customizable reports: Enhanced data insights tailored to Castlery’s specific needs.
• Automated tools: Improved efficiency in managing and communicating with affiliates.
• Partner recruitment: Used Discovery tools to onboard over 300 global partners.
• Performance monitoring: Implemented precise tracking and reporting mechanisms.

Results

These improvements quickly translated into impressive results for Castlery––most importantly, they achieved or surpassed their initial goals: 

• Increase in AOV: Achieved a 12 percent rise in average order value within one year.
• Growth in partners: Recruited over 300 global partners, expanding their reach significantly.
• Expansion in US orders: Experienced a fivefold growth in quarterly US orders.
• Enhanced efficiency: Transformed their affiliate program into a high-performing channel through streamlined processes.

Key lessons:

From recruiting higher-value partners to choosing software that scales with your program, Castlery’s experience highlights a few key lessons: 

• Effective partner recruitment: Tap into advanced Discovery tools to identify and recruit high-value partners.
• Continuous monitoring: Regularly monitor and analyze performance to optimize strategies and achieve better ROI.
• Scalability: Customize approaches to adapt to different markets and partners, ensuring sustainable growth.

RealtyNinja saw a 2x increase in conversion rate from referrals 

RealtyNinja is a SaaS company that provides website solutions for real estate agents in Canada. The business saw the potential of a customer referral and initially started a manual referral reward system. 

However, they soon realized that manually maintaining and scaling the program to achieve their growth goals wasn’t the answer. Manual processes for managing referrals were inefficient, and time-consuming maintenance processes distracted the team from other pressing business priorities. 

As RealtyNinja set out to optimize their referral program, they set a few key goals: 

• Automate and scale referral programs.
• Leverage word-of-mouth marketing effectively.
• Integrate seamlessly with existing billing provider, Recurly.

4 key improvements

RealtyNinja migrated their manual referral program to impact.com so they could automate and scale. Initially, the company focused on improving four key areas: 

• Automated referrals: Implemented a double-sided referral program offering discounts for referrers and new customers.
• Seamless integration: Integrated natively with Recurly to streamline billing and reward distribution.
• Incentivized growth: Designed tiered rewards, including a 100 percent free website for customers referring 10 friends.
• Execution excellence: Avoided internal development, focusing on core business activities instead.

Results

By automating time-consuming parts of the referral program, incentivizing customers, and investing their energy in higher-value tasks, RealtyNinja saw tangible improvements, including across their referral contributions: 

• 16 percent of new users come from referrals.
• 136 percent higher conversion rate than free trials.
• 2x higher conversion rate than paid ads.

The team noted better customer loyalty and huge improvements in their referral program. Their continuous discount incentives help retain more customers, and their bug-free referral system encourages customers to continue referring others. 

Since the team no longer has to spend time on slow manual tasks, they can focus on more valuable strategic initiatives. 

Key lessons

RealtyNinja’s impressive results showcase a few key takeaways that other businesses looking to automate their manual referral can learn from: 

• Automation: Use automated tools to scale referral programs and reduce manual workload.
• Effective incentives: Design tiered rewards to motivate ongoing customer referrals.
• Continuous improvement: Regularly analyze performance metrics to optimize referral strategies.
• Customer retention: Use consistent discounts and rewards to enhance customer loyalty and reduce churn rates.

IG Group migrates to impact.com and increases productivity partnerships by 128% 

The IG Group is a global online trading and investment company founded in 1974. While successful, the company had an existing partnership program that wasn’t maximizing its full potential. 

With its initial partnership program setup, IG Group faced a few core struggles that got in the way of growth, including: 

• Non-scalable manual partnership management processes.
• Limited capacity and expertise in managing local affiliates.
• Inefficient compliance monitoring for influencer campaigns.

As they decided to optimize their program, IG Group set three key objectives. Spoiler alert––they smashed these initial goals:

• Expand into new partnership types and increase productive affiliates by over 100 percent.
• Automate manual processes to reduce time spent on affiliate management by over 70 percent.
• Ensure compliance with industry regulations while scaling affiliate and influencer partnerships.

3 Key improvements 

IG Group partnered with impact.com and Silverbean to overhaul their partnership program.

To enhance their existing partnership program, the team prioritized three core improvements: 

1. Affiliate management: Relied on impact.com’s discovery, recruitment automation tools, and dynamic payouts to optimize affiliate partnerships.
2. Influencer management: Used lookalike search functionality and compliance monitoring to effectively manage influencer partnerships.
3. Efficiency improvements: Streamlined internal resources, reducing time spent on affiliate management from 7.4 days to 1.9 days per month.

Results

Ultimately these changes to how the IG Group managed their affiliate program allowed them to surpass their initial objectives with impressive results: 

• Increase in productive affiliates: Achieved a 128 percent increase in productive affiliates.
• Reduction in dormant partners: Reduced dormant affiliate partners by 146percent.
• Cost efficiency: Decreased average cost per click (CPC) from £5.20 to £1.60.
• Enhanced ROI: Realized a 223 percent increase in return on investment for partnership channels.
• Market expansion: Expanded into three additional markets, increasing affiliate markets from seven to ten.
• Influencer success: Connected with a new generation of consumers, bolstered brand awareness, and acquired new customers.

Key lessons

From analyzing IG Group’s initial struggles, solution, and impressive achievements, you can take away three key lessons: 

1. Automate manual processes: Significantly reduce time spent on partnership management by relying on automation tools.
2. Compliance monitoring: Implement robust compliance tools to ensure compliance to industry regulations.
3. Data-driven decisions: Use comprehensive reporting and dynamic payouts to optimize strategies and achieve better ROI.

Stio enjoys a 25% hike in sales with clique Affiliate and impact.com 

Stio is an outdoor apparel and mountain lifestyle brand based in Wyoming. Although the brand already had an affiliate program, some core inefficiencies hindered its ability to scale and reach its goals. 

Some challenges the Stio team faced include: 

• High costs and complex program management.
• Limited reporting capabilities and data manipulation difficulties.
• Imprecise attribution and restricted commission terms.
• Manual and labor-intensive partner recruitment process.
• Issues with unrestricted coupon codes leading to revenue loss.

As Stio set out to maximize the potential of their affiliate program and boost sales, they set three key objectives: 

1. Optimize their underperforming affiliate program.
2. Enhance visibility into customer purchase journeys.
3. Improve partner control and streamline program management processes.

Solution

Stio completed partner migration in four days and data migration within hours with impact.com’s Shopify plugin. What would have been a challenging process in the past was simple and finished within hours. 

• Easy integration: Used impact.com’s no-code Shopify plugin for quick setup.
• Robust reporting: Gained insights through the Optimize reporting suite, including Contribution, Leapfrogging Summary, and Crediting Concerns reports.
• Automated partner recruitment: Relied on Discovery tools to recruit top-tier partners efficiently.
• Coupon code regulation: Implemented Match Expression Tool and Promo Codes Exception list to manage coupon distribution.
• Flexible commission terms: Optimized reward strategies using Switch Contract functionality and Group-Based Commission model.

Results

Due to the team’s commitment to the new process, Stio achieved tangible results: 

• Increase in sales: Achieved a 25 percent increase in sales year-over-year.
• Reduction in expenses: Saw a 7.5 percent decrease in total expenses and an 8 percent drop in commission expenses.

The team also significantly improved their efficiency across several key metrics: 

• Reduced average cost percent of revenue by 1.4 percent.
• Lowered action cost by 10 percent.
• Increased Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) by $2.

Stio’s impressive results highlight two key lessons that businesses of all sizes can implement: 

• Effective coupon management: Implement technology to monitor and regulate coupon code usage to prevent revenue loss.
• Flexible commission strategies: Customize commission terms to reward top-performing partners and align with business goals.

Get inspired by other businesses and take action

These real-life examples highlight how you can achieve affiliate success on impact.com. 

Businesses in all industries can drive significant growth and overcome challenges by using proven strategies and building strong partnerships. Now is the time to explore the potential of affiliate marketing with impact.com and unlock new opportunities for your brand’s success.

To explore affiliate marketing further, we recommend reading: 

A 3-step guide to aligning partner incentives for business growth
5 impact.com features small ecommerce businesses need for affiliate partnership success
3 reasons why measuring partner and channel incrementality benefits your brand