How Hill House Home grew its affiliate from a six to a seven-figure channel and lifted AOV 31%

A fashion brand with a strong editorial point of view  and an opportunity to match it in its affiliate mix 

Hill House Home built its reputation on strong editorial appeal. Before partnering with impact.com, the US DTC fashion and lifestyle brand ran its affiliate program on a legacy platform that couldn’t keep up with that identity.

That platform brought real friction to daily operations:

• High fees and outdated technology limited what the team could do
• Commission rates couldn’t be customized to recruit different partner types
• The manual deduplication process for verifying last-click attribution validity between ShopMy and impact.com platform orders cost the team significant time and prevented a clear view of attribution.
• Platform constraints made it nearly impossible to recruit the editorial and content partners that fit the brand

Affiliate accounted for a small share of total sales, so Hill House Home sought the full-funnel view needed to grow the channel. That’s the main reason to migrate to impact.com.

A partner mix with room to reflect the brand’s values

Both consumers and editorial writers fall for Hill House Home. Seasonal drops and new collections give publishers a standing reason to cover the brand, drop after drop, season after season.

The affiliate program had yet to reflect the brand. Coupon and loyalty partners made up most of the mix, leaving the brand’s editorial strengths underused. 

The overarching goal was to double affiliates’ contribution as a share of total sales. Getting there would take more than a bigger partner mix. It would take a fundamentally different one.

Bringing in El Toro and setting a new direction

Hill House Home partnered with El Toro Interactive, a full-service affiliate agency, to lead their transformation. El Toro Interactive functioned as an embedded extension of the Hill House Home marketing team, managing partner recruitment, editorial outreach, seasonal alignment, and performance reporting.

Alongside the migration to impact.com, El Toro Interactive helped rebuild the program’s strategy around three goals: 

1. Diversify the partner mix
2. Align affiliate activity with launches
3. Build a program that reflects the brand’s content-first identity

Building a high-quality editorial-first affiliate program

El Toro Interactive got a head start on recruitment through impact.com’s affiliate marketplace. Its affiliate marketplace already housed a deeper base of quality publishers, so the agency could invite proven partners into the program rather than build relationships from scratch.

The shift showed up fast, and at scale:

• Scaled the partner base: Onboarded 399 new affiliates across editorial, loyalty, influencer, and tech categories. By moving away from an inbound-only approach, the team shifted to proactively recruiting top-tier publications built on strong direct relationships.
• Secured key partnerships: Added influential names like Rank & Style, Who What Wear, and The Editorialist. 
• Refined the partner mix: Balanced the program by prioritizing high-quality editorial partners while maintaining strategic growth with core loyalty partners like Capital One and Rakuten.

Aligning partner content to seasonal launches

Editorial outreach mapped directly to Hill House Home’s capsule collection calendar. Affiliates told the brand’s seasonal story in their own voice, staying true to Hill House Home’s aesthetic.

The coverage felt native to each publisher and tied to events that already mattered to readers: the Fourth of July, fall fashion, holiday gifting, and Valentine’s Day.

The results followed. Affiliates drove strong sell-through on the Tartan Capsule during Q4, proof that seasonal alignment translated directly into sales.

Embracing next-generation discovery channels

AI-powered shopping has changed how people find brands. El Toro Interactive and Hill House Home got in early, partnering with platforms like Qatch and Hue & Stripe to reach shoppers through personalization, fit recommendations, and curated style feeds.

Performance-based adtech platform Linkby also played a role. The team used it to deliver cost-per-click newsletter distribution at scale, reaching opted-in readers through the editorial voices they already trust.

Compensation and performance management based on partner type

impact.com’s Dynamic Payouts gave Hill House Home a level of commissioning flexibility missing on its previous platform. These capabilities included:

• Aligning the commission to publisher category and value. Content publishers earned a premium rate over other categories. 
• Applying restrictions by SKU and product category. 
• Adjusting commission rates for sales items 
• Posting partner-specific or public terms directly on the platform. 

impact.com’s Dynamic Payouts let you align payouts to value

Compared to other platforms, impact.com offered Hill House Home a broader set of tools and ideas to help publishers become productive, valuable contributors. As the program evolves, the team sees further optimization potential in the levers available through impact.com’s reporting insights.

Solving tracking, attribution, and deduplication issues

Editorial partners were self-selecting into the program, and El Toro Interactive wanted proof of which ones were converting attention into revenue.

Not every affiliate deserves equal credit. El Toro Interactive used impact.com’s advanced attribution and tracking to isolate real partner value, eliminate duplicate payouts, and streamline the program. 

impact.com enables you to track partner traffic on all your properties, across any device

The full-funnel view showed Hill House Home, which editorial partners were driving brand awareness through strong content, and which partners were simply pointing shoppers to a discount. 

Reporting gave a clear view of partner contributions across the customer journey

El Toro Interactive built a detailed full-funnel view using several impact.com reporting features:

• The new versus existing customer feature, to separate acquisition from retention value
• Sub reports to track performance across sub networks
• The Optimize report to map the full customer journey and identify which affiliates introduced customers, which closed the sale, and which stood alone in the conversion path

The payoff showed up in the conversion data. El Toro Interactive could see exactly which affiliates closed most often and which ones worked without support from any other partner, giving the team a clear starting point for optimization.

How Optimize reduced ShopMy/LTK duplication and cut manual workload

Duplicate payouts were taking up time the team wanted back. El Toro Interactive used impact.com’s Optimize feature to add ShopMy as its own tracking layer, treating it as a distinct marketing channel alongside paid and email within Shopify. That extra layer made it possible to separate ShopMy activity from the rest of the affiliate traffic.

impact.com’s Optimize suite offers reporting like the Contribution Report 

Duplications across ShopMy and LTK dropped significantly. So did the manual workload and cancellations that El Toro Interactive once needed to correct these.

High-quality content lifted AOV 31% and reshaped who was buying

The traffic source mattered more than the amount of it. Hill House Home’s average order value climbed 31%, and the reason traces directly to who was sending the traffic. As coupon sites gave way to high-quality content and stylish platforms like Hue & Stripe, the customers coming through the affiliate channel changed.

On Hue & Stripe, stylists build complete looks for clients, a vacation wardrobe, a work wardrobe, not single items. Those looks convert into large, multi-item purchases from shoppers with real purchasing power and clear intent. Editorial content partnerships introduced Hill House Home to customers who were ready to build a basket, not just make a purchase. While customer loyalty created the opportunity, the program redesign is what captured it.

The revenue growth tells the same story. Based on available agency data, affiliates moved from a six-figure channel to a seven-figure one in year one. Growth accelerated from there.

Brand loyalty played its part too. Hill House Home is a brand people already love, aesthetically and emotionally, and that appeal is exactly what draws publishers to write about it. More editorial interest means more affiliates, and more affiliates mean more revenue.

That loyalty makes affiliates’ new customer performance even more notable. With a deeply loyal repeat-buyer base already in place, Hill House Home prioritizes incremental and new-customer growth as the next source of value across all channels. The new-customer rate consistently increased and outperformed the brand average, including during peak season.

Browse our recommended resources for additional insights, strategies, and tips:

• Why your affiliate program is your most underrated GEO asset [blog]
• The Partnership Economy podcast: Navigating partnerships in the AI Age with Seth Hagerty of Best Buy
• How Sweet Zzz tripled affiliate revenue—with only 16% more traffic [case study] 
• How airSlate achieved 4X affiliate program growth and multi-product transparency with impact.com [case study]
• Why your 2026 search strategy depends on partnerships (and how to track the results) [blog]