Successful Commission Strategy for Loyalty Space

Overview

The loyalty and cashback spaces are an important part of affiliate strategy. To be effective, careful attention to publishers and payouts needs to be given and regularly reviewed. PartnerCentric employed this tactic to save our client, a Top 50 retailer by both Internet Retailer and Bizrate, upwards of $100,000. During our annual review with this client, we identified a significant cost saving opportunity within the cashback space. Our audit revealed the client was overpaying on some cashback sites; giving out far more than competitors. Over time loyalty cashback rates had become inflated and were on inefficient performance tiers.

Approach

By leveraging our competitive analysis and cashback audit, the PartnerCentric team set out to create a strategy that would govern loyalty commission rates and maintain the retailer's competitive advantage. We establish a strategy for commission rates that factored in-network fee rates, coupon usage, and competitor cashback. Adjustments were made for the following types of publishers: Loyalty pubs across all networks, premium cashback sites, and perk malls.

Results

Commission optimization was implemented on 67 publishers in the loyalty space. This saved the client an estimated $140,000 in commissions over the next twelve months. Since we were careful to maintain cashback against competitors, this also prevented a drop in revenue.

For more information on effective loyalty strategies to increase ROI, contact sales@partnercentric.com.