Brand-to-brand partnerships generate £1.2m in revenue for Awin clients
Written by Lee Metters on 5 minute read
Facilitating over 200 brand-to-brand collaborations in 2021, we revisit some of the most successful #AwinningPartnerships of the year.
This year, Awin has helped connect over 200 clients on our platform, creating strategic brand-to-brand partner collaborations. Initiating our Brand Partnership strategy, non-competing brands have been able to align with other opted-in brands who share similar customer demographics and brand values.
Partner marketing has typically been a time consuming, manual and often unmeasured marketing funnel, making it a challenge to scale beyond just a handful of campaigns. This often meant that partner marketing activity would sit within a brand marketing function of most businesses. Until now.
We’ve seen an increasing number of clients looking to combine their performance and partner marketing strategies, or deciding to operate them in parallel. By running Brand Partnerships on a performance model, brands have been able to successfully scale their partnership activity. All whilst measuring the success of individual partner collaborations and rewarding activity on a risk-free, pay-on-performance, payment model. In the last 12 months Awin has generated 750,000 sales and £1.2m revenue from an engaged portfolio of 140 clients who are running their partner marketing activity through their performance marketing channel.
The adoption of customer reward platforms to incentivise customer loyalty.
Our first highlight is the emergence of customer reward platforms within the partner marketing landscape. Brands like Iceland, Mobiles.co.uk and tastecard have all used Brand Partnerships to offer additional retailer rewards to existing customers. As brands slowly adapt to life beyond the pandemic, customer loyalty is stretched wider than it perhaps ever has been. Whilst the accelerated adoption of online ecommerce has benefitted so many retailers, it has made it much easier for customers to discover and purchase from entirely new brands. By offering customers non-competing retailer rewards, brands like Iceland, are able to provide an additional loyalty incentive to their existing customer base.
Harjit Heer, Project Manager at Iceland said that "Iceland have been able to work with some great brands and offer existing customers with a selection of value added rewards", and that "Brand Partnerships have helped to shape Iceland’s growing online business".
Iceland have partnered with ten brands through Awin, including the likes of Very, Virgin Media and tastecard. In addition to incentivising customer loyalty, Iceland have also generated over 1,000 sales for their partner brands in the few months that their Iceland Reward portal has been live.
Another successful showcase of a brand offering customer rewards is Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club. By running a Brand Partnership campaign with Awin, Wolves have been able to offer subscribed fans a variety of retailer offers through their fan account page and targeted CRM sends. Wolves have aligned their brand values with retailers such as Travelodge, Beerwulf and BT Sports to offer fans relevant retailer discounts.
Jack McReavie, Campaign Manager for BT Sport said "we partnered with Wolves in the lead up to their televised fixture at the beginning of the new season. Fans who weren’t able to attend the game, or were isolating, were told the best way to watch the game that was only available on BT Sport. By utilising Brand Partnerships with Awin we were able to partner with Wolves and set-up a highly targeted campaign to Wolves fans who’d want to watch the game".
James Gibbons, Supporter Insight and Loyalty Manager at Wolves said that "the Awin platform underpins the Wolves supporter reward programme, providing easy access to a multitude of offers which can be used to engage supporters across our digital channels".
Offering customers with a free gift or service add-on at the point of purchase.
Another Brand Partnership success story that we wanted to highlight involves brands offering free gifts or service add-ons at the point of purchase. Some of The Hut Group brands, including MyProtein, LOOKFANTASTIC and Glossybox, have developed a mechanism to offer qualifying customers a free gift with their purchase. In a campaign with SimplyCook, MyProtein offered customers on the checkout page with a free SimplyCook recipe box trial. Qualifying customers were then sent a co-branded post-purchase email notification with their instructions on how to redeem the free trail.
Ryan Cummings, Head of Affiliates and Partnerships at MyProtein said; “through our brand partnership campaign with SimplyCook, we've been able to offer customers a unique reward experience, and this in turn has helped to instil brand confidence and encourage customer loyalty. The campaign has been extremely successful for both Myprotein and SimplyCook, so much so, that this type of activity will be a key stream in our strategy going forwards into 2022 and beyond".
Vicki Christie, Senior Marketing Manager at SimplyCook agreed, commenting that "working with MyProtein and THG in 2021 had been a great success". Vicki also mentioned that they have found that the two brands have a strong synergy which has shown in the results. "SimplyCook's placement has helped MyProtein's conversion rates and we have seen MyProtein as a great platform to drive incremental growth. It's a partnership that I hope will continue into 2022."
Our final campaign highlight is between Buymobiles and MoneySuperMarket who successfully targeted customers based on their suitability for a new mobile phone contract. Buymobiles customers who had successfully purchased, or failed their credit check at the point of purchase, were targeted by MoneySuperMarket offering them to check their credit score. The credit check was added to the customer’s account page and as a recommended next step in the purchase journey. The campaign resulted in a +31% increase in credit check applications.
Omer Mustafa, Commercial & Partner Manager at Buymobiles mentioned that “Brand partnerships had been really great in broadening the reach of Buymobiles’ target audience. Because of this, we’ve been able to reach and convert new customers that would ordinarily be inaccessible".
Adopting a partnership strategy for your brand next year.
The ability to report and reward performance has seen a number of brands, both enterprise and SME, shift their partner marketing efforts into the performance channel. By using Brand Partnerships collaborations, brands can tackle cookie preventions to target highly engaged customer audiences that have similar characteristics and values to their own audience. As a result, we firmly believe that Brand Partnerships should form a key strategic pillar in your brands digital marketing strategy for 2022.
