5 brands in Australia winning with affiliate partnerships—and the right management platform

A comprehensive study into Australian consumer behavior in 2022 revealed impressive statistics: 

• With more Australian consumers opting for “add to cart” shopping sprees, online spending skyrocketed to AU$62.3 billion.
• The country’s ecommerce industry grew nearly nine percent to reach AUS47 billion. 
• Almost 30 percent of ecommerce businesses reported significant changes in revenue. 

To adapt to the evolving online shopping trends, brands had to strategize ways to connect with consumers—leading to reported growth in affiliate partnerships in Australia: 

• Brands (69 percent) increased their budget for affiliate marketing. 
• Affiliate marketing achieved an average rating of 7.8/10 for delivering a return on investment compared to other marketing activities. 
• Most brands and agencies leveraged the influential power of affiliate partners, adding new partners to their program monthly (83 percent) and weekly (47 percent). 

Brands in the retail and commerce space rely on affiliate marketing to drive more revenue and build trust. Consumers (73 percent) are more likely to buy a product or service recommended by a person, business, or media source they trusted. So, one of the smartest ways to attract consumers is through affiliate partners such as coupon and loyalty sites, social media influencers, and bloggers. 

A Power Retail Consumer Research Report

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As a performance-based marketing channel, brands and partners also benefit from affiliate partnerships. Brands reward affiliate partners for successful conversions—increased traffic or sales. An investment in affiliate partnerships drives an average of $12 in online sales.

These stats are enough to impress, but stories from top brands in Australia show you how the right partnership management platform powers affiliate partnership growth. 

Five brands achieve success with partnerships marketing in Australia

Aside from providing an authentic link to consumers, brands that tap into affiliate partnerships enjoy the following benefits: 

• improved brand image
• increased brand loyalty
• stronger community relationships 
• greater visibility 
• competitive advantage 

1. Brand Collective achieved a 34% increase in revenue from partnerships since upgrading management solutions

Brand Collective, a prominent Australian apparel and fashion retailer, boasts a diverse portfolio of renowned local and international brands, such as Reebok, Superdry, Review, and Hush Puppies. 

The brand operated its partnerships program with agency support, presenting several challenges, including recruitment barriers, limited tracking and visibility, and duplicated reporting. 

Motivated by the need for greater control and efficiency, Brand Collective transitioned their partnership management to an in-house team. The team then migrated their program to impact.com to streamline processes, build stronger partnerships, and capitalize on opportunities swiftly.

Case study: Brand Collective

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The platform’s tools and features brought significant improvements: 

• Efficient partner recruitment: Marketplace offered the team the ability to independently find and recruit new partners. 
• Enhanced tracking: New tracking parameters provided actionable insights to optimize spending towards objectives. 
• Direct engagement: Features like in-app messaging improved channel growth and operational efficiency. 

Advanced reporting: Real-time reporting provided a clearer view of performance, allowing the team to replicate successful strategies across campaigns

With impact.com’s partnership platform, the brand scaled up and achieved impressive results: 

2. LVLY blossoms with partnership and achieves 127% revenue growth year-over-year 

A brand on a mission to keep loved ones connected and spread joy—LVLY offers affordable flowers and unique gifts that break out the ordinary roses and teddy bears. The team turned to partnerships to help the brand expand to new locations. However, managing their affiliate program through time-consuming manual processes had become overwhelming. 

Case study: LVLY

Learn how LVLY leveraged impact.com's platform to grow partnership revenue to $2.85m.

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The LVLY team needed a centralized, efficient way to automate partnership management tasks. The impact.com platform introduced the team to a user-friendly dashboard that helped: 

• connect and foster relationships with new publishers
• manage diverse partner types 
• customize and individualize contracts and terms 
• track partner performance for growth

Moving to impact.com allowed LVLY to weed out many manual and time-consuming tasks. When the team put greater focus on executing its affiliate marketing strategy, the brand reached the following:

3. Big Red Group enjoys a thrilling 117% ROAS increase by boosting topline growth with partnerships 

Big Red Group (BRG) is the largest experience marketplace in Australia and New Zealand. Customers buy or gift memorable excursions, from hot-air balloon rides to driving lessons in a Formula One race car. 

The brand has a unique market of customers that search for trusted opinions and reviews before making an exhilarating experience purchase—amplifying the need to tap into a diverse partner mix. 

Case study: Big Red Group

Learn how BRG migrates to impact.com and achieves success with partnerships.

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The impact.com platform gave BRG the tools to discover, recruit, track, and optimize partnership efforts. The team gained full visibility into the customer journey and access to an array of community-driven partner types. BRG used the platform’s tools and features—like multi-level commissioning, deduplication, and cross-channel conversion tracking— to overcome partnership management challenges. 

Since joining impact.com, the brand has enjoyed the following: 

4. Sephora glows up its partnerships and triples revenue 

Sephora has a powerful global beauty presence by offering high-quality skincare products and cosmetics brands along with expert in-store support and guides for product use. 

A fragmented network of affiliate channels caused the team to lose time and resources due to the lack of customization, payment confusion, and overlapping affiliates. The beauty brand needed unified partnerships management solutions to overcome four challenges: 

1. find fresh ways to manage partners across different regions
2. improve partner recruitment processes
3. discover other options for contracting partners 
4. access to more in-depth reporting tools 

Case study: Sephora

Find out how Sephora blended diverse partnerships with impact.com.

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The Sephora team gained access to the following features for partnership growth through impact.com:

•  Streamlined partner approval and contract setup saved time by eliminating manual processes. 
• Comprehensive discovery tools supported a quick partnerships expansion.
• Flexible contracting tools allowed the team to customize and finely tune each contract. 
•  In-depth reporting and data allowed for quicker optimization and segment performance. 

With the help of impact.com’s powerful platform, Sephora found great success. 

5. Virgin Australia elevated partner performance by 168% 

Virgin Australia—an airline offering travelers award-winning services and great fares across Australia—needed to expand into new revenue streams by tapping into the true potential of the partnerships channel.

Case study: Virgin Australia

Discover how Virgin Australia diversified its program with innovative partnerships.

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By partnering with Silverbean agency, the team leveraged the impact.com platform to help propel their partnership efforts through diversification and tactical recruitment of new affiliates.

• Discovery tools diversified the partner mix to include partner types with strong brand affinity by offering comprehensive filter features. 
• Dynamic Payouts opened more opportunities for creativity and drove performance. 
• Robust reporting analyzed partner performance to optimize the program performance. 

Using the right management solution—impact.com—helped Virgin Australia turn its program into a high-performing powerhouse by ramping up activity with key partners and recruiting new, high-quality partners.

When paired with a robust partnership management platform like impact.com, affiliate partnerships can open surprising new doors for growth. To learn more about how impact.com can help take your business to greater heights, reach out to an impact.com growth technologist at grow@impact.com today.

Check out these impact.com resources to expand your affiliate partnerships knowledge: 

• 9 types of partnership marketing [with examples] [blog]
• Recipe for success—how to succeed in partnership marketing [ebook]
• Ultimate guide to partnership marketing [ebook]
• Essential partnership platform launch kit [worksheet]