RevWise started in January 2023 as an agency for US and UK ecommerce brands wanting to grow their affiliate program without the cost and risk of recruiting an in-house team.
What began as a team of two is now a thriving team of 29 specialists managing over 50 clients. Part of RevWise’s exponential growth is owed to the agency’s attention to detail in areas like streamlining market research and publisher outreach, as well as the room it creates for account managers to focus on clients’ day-to-day activities, and its choice of network partner.
The problem
In addition to its work with a number of large enterprise and PLCs, RevWise has become something of a go-to agency for small-to-medium-sized advertisers typically managing under $65 million in turnover. These businesses can be found across many verticals, including Health & Beauty, Sports Equipment, Clothing, Gifting, Travel, and Food & Drink.
As well as the obvious challenges around having to make budgets work harder, these advertisers have highly specific requirements for their affiliate platform:
- Hassle-free integrations: Ecommerce plugins are certainly an option for SME programs. However, limited resources necessitate quick and easy integrations that require limited developer time.
- Access to partners: Many publishers are not enabled on lower-tier platforms purportedly designed for SMEs. Advertisers need access to any partner that can add value to their program.
- Influencer setup: SMEs want to build an influencer network for CPA deals with quick, easy and frictionless creator onboarding.
- Commission control: For rolling out instant changes and testing new strategies, SMEs need the ability to quickly change their commission rates as and when needed.
As RevWise grew, it saw the value in finding a trusted network partner to recommend to new and existing clients, paving the way for shared learnings and the transfer of success. The right platform would meet common SME requirements with competitive commercial terms.
The solution
RevWise decided to look into Awin, specifically the self-managed Access and Accelerate plans due to their alignment with SMEs.
Access gives advertisers everything they need to launch a simple and cost-efficient, self-managed program without the hassle of a long-term contract. Accelerate provides additional features like automation via APIs to speed up certain tasks and create a more sophisticated program.
“We considered our options and found Awin to have best-in-market technology and the easiest integration for our advertisers. It’s the default network for every major publisher and it also has plugins with every major CRM app store. Finally, with Access and Accelerate, it offers the most competitive self-service commercials. Our faith was instantly repaid from the support offered by Awin’s alliances team and self-service department, which gave us the confidence to recommend the solution to our advertisers.” - Gary Winter, Co-Founder, RevWise
With unparalleled access to the best publishers and the freedom to set up CPA-driven influencer networks and control commission, a decision was made. Awin welcomed RevWise as an agency partner and provided frequent updates on new features and how they could be leveraged to drive results for a range of advertisers.
One of the first programs to migrate to Awin was Discount Dragon, which had experienced limitations with its previous network. RevWise noted a lack of features to support dynamic commission groups and slow response times when it came to fixing bugs and tracking issues.
RevWise consulted with Awin about the client’s requirements and was offered fitting partnership terms with improved commercials and every program feature needed to move forward and scale. Awin helped to support RevWise in soft launching all of the publishers ready for the migration – a key requirement given the financial consequences of downtime on Discount Dragon’s acquisition strategy.
The program has since continued to thrive on Awin, recording strong revenue levels and month-on-month increases in the advertiser’s key goal of acquiring net new customer sales. This success, according to RevWise, would not have been possible on the previous affiliate platform.
The results
Between January 2023 and June 2024, RevWise as an agency has grown by an average of 22% per month thanks to the performance of its Awin affiliate programs. Some of the best-performing advertisers from the past year include:
Discount Dragon (Huddled Group PLC): $392k+ in monthly affiliate revenue YoY
“We are 18 months into our partnership with RevWise, and the depth of our working relationship has only gotten stronger and more effective with every new initiative. Their impact in our business goes beyond the millions generated in affiliate revenue each year, it goes to the heart of the business - RevWise is not just part of the team, they are our entire affiliate department. Since moving to Awin, our program has gone from strength to strength, allowing the RevWise team to work with publishers in a dynamic way, which wasn’t possible with our previous network” - Martin Higginson, CEO
LOVELOX Lockets & Engravers Guild: +133% program revenue year on year
“Awin’s platform is an intuitive one-stop-shop to manage and track your affiliate marketing program. Signing up and getting started with affiliates was a piece of cake thanks to them. I can’t imagine Engravers Guild embarking on the affiliate journey without the Awin platform to get us going. Our RevWise account manager feels more like a team member than an outsider. She’s always just a Slack message away, keeping us updated on how things are progressing” - CEO, James Bishton
Vitl: +97% program revenue year on year
"Since working with RevWise, we have seen significant improvement in our affiliate performance, achieving 97% YoY growth in sales through a mixture of improved existing partner engagement and new affiliate acquisition. Their dedicated team communicates well and is a joy to work with. This is all underpinned by the use of Awin as our affiliate platform which has enabled us to scale the channel over the years.” - Forest Kwok, CMO
Go Ape: +48% increase in active publishers year on year
“It’s fantastic to work with a partner [RevWise] that is agile to our needs and requirements. They get through a huge amount of work due to their setup and use of technology and have provided Go Ape excellent service to date. Awin is a brilliant platform to use for our affiliate program due to the depth of publishers on the platform, and ease of integration.” - Matt Jones, Digital Marketing Manager
