How brand-to-brand partnerships are helping advertisers reach new audiences

A valuable and innovative partnership opportunity

During the disruption of the past year, we’ve been focusing on facilitating brand-to-brand partnerships to drive inbound revenue streams for our clients, whilst also exposing them to new, and potentially unreached, customer audiences. We believe that brand partnerships hold a valuable and innovative strategic pillar for every brand, no matter what sector. So far this year, we’ve supported our clients in creating over 100 brand partnership opportunities, driving over 50,000 sales and £645,000 in revenue. Opted-in brands include the likes of The Hut Group, mobiles.co.uk and Iceland, alongside tastecard and plenty more.  

Putting it simply, brand partnerships provide collaboration opportunities that can be formed to increase customer loyalty, improve partner diversity and support sale and revenue growth. And this is all underpinned by the added benefit of brand equity, by partnering with complimentary brands through .

Brand partnerships, the Awin way

Awin’s brand partnership proposition introduces a new way to track brand-to-brand collaboration, providing access to thousands of brands, and supporting in the match-making process. Running your partnerships activity with Awin offers an open platform for managing multiple partners, offering performance-based rewards and incentives, and ensuring consistent reporting across all partners.

Brands can opt into brand partnership activity by entering into a reciprocal relationship with another complementary brand, or by formulating a more traditional affiliate set-up, with one brand acting as the promotor and the second brand being promoted. Awin are on hand to support with defining your strategic objectives and matching those to relevant partner brands. Awin tracking is used to power your promotional activity, be in on site, app, email or social, in exchange for a commission, and often an exclusive offer for the brands audience.

The story of tastecard

An example of a brand partnership success story is that of tastecard. Their business model focuses on providing customers with discounts and incentives within the hospitality industry, a sector which was significantly impacted by the pandemic. Tastecard were faced with a two-fold challenge; how would they continue to attract new customer subscriptions whilst restaurants were closed, and how would they stop their existing subscribers from churning.

With the help of Awin, tastecard quickly adapted a new brand strategy, with an objective of building new revenue opportunities through brand partnerships. We supported tastecard in developing new partnerships with online brands, and within the first two weeks tastecard had partnered with more than 35 Awin brands, including the likes of LOOKFANTASTIC, Sky and BT. Tastecard were able to continue to engage with their existing audience, as well as drive potential new customers by offering incentives online - and drive a completely new revenue stream for their business. All activity was managed and tracked through the Awin platform.

This pivot in strategy, and the ease and speed in which these new digital partnerships were set-up, was instrumental in driving new and continued revenue for tastecard. Over the course of the following five months, tastecard and Awin delivered a 487% increase in clicks, a 399% increase in revenue and a 167% increase in sales. Owed to the success of this campaignbrand partnerships continue to be an integral part of the tastecard business strategy with over 80 partnerships created.

Launch your own brand partnership with Awin

Start your brand partnership journey with Awin by completing our opt-in form. The form provides Awin with information about your brand, your objectives and your promotional inventory, that we then use to match relevant brands. Once vetted by our partnerships team, your brand is then added to our brand partnerships matrix, showcasing your brand and all of your exciting opportunities to potential partners.

Leverage our #AwinningPartnerships to boost your affiliate activity, fill out this form or get in touch with the team to learn more.