Gainful’s 6-Month Affiliate Program Growth 📈
Join us on our mission to reshape the affiliate journey🚀
This blog series will showcase how we drive incremental growth for our clients across a range of industries—from ecommerce and health & beauty, to fintech—spanning the US, Europe, and the UK. Discover how we make affiliates and partnerships the cornerstone of every ambitious brand's success.
In Q1 2024, we partnered with Gainful to take their affiliate program to the next level. With a clear goal to diversify their publisher mix and scale up in anticipation of their peak season, we got to work on how we could transform their affiliate strategy. This case study reveals how we unlocked new opportunities, drove growth, and prepared Gainful for their most successful season yet.
Introduction
Gainful is a US-based personal-performance nutrition brand. Offering personalised supplements and expert guidance that prepare, fuel, and nutriture active bodies so they can feel and perform their best. With a focus on tailored supplements and expert guidance, Gainful simplifies the journey to finding the perfect nutrition for active lifestyles. Our collaboration with Gainful focuses on managing and expanding their affiliate program, driving growth through a full-funnel partnership strategy that fuels their mission and reaches new customers.
“Growth HQ has brought organization and direction to our affiliate strategy. After starting essentially from scratch, we now rely heavily on this channel for scale and see it as one of our main levers for growth at Gainful. On top of that, the team is a pleasure to work with. They are highly communicative, flexible, and efficient.” - Miranda Gieg, Growth Marketing
Objectives
We wanted to show Gainful how their affiliate program could be the most cost effective acquisition channel, as well as something they could scale and grow in the coming months and years. We identified four key objectives to execute this strategy:
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- Manage and diversify Gainful’s existing affiliate program.
- Become the most cost-effective and core new customer acquisition channel.
- Implement middle and top funnel partners into the program mix to drive awareness and consideration
- All campaigns to cost into a target bottom line CPA.
Approach
- We began by conducting a gap analysis on the affiliate program as a whole so we could identify what verticals and partners were missing.
- By using the Growth HQ US publisher network we activated our top-performing partners. One of these partners is now the top performer on the program by year to date by driving a 19% share of the affiliate program.
- We introduced more content and media house partnerships which allowed Gainful to get more media coverage through partners such as Healthline, Bar Bend, and Fortune. These have become part of the top partners in the program, with new user orders doubling month on month.
- We also introduced employee benefits as a channel by onboarding two key partners - this now makes up over 5% of the program’s share.
Challenges
Looking at the incrementality of the coupon and cashback partners on the program, we wanted to ensure we had the most accurate metrics when reporting. By using internal sales attribution as the source of truth compared to the metrics we see in the SaaS network, this allowed reporting to be as accurate as possible.
Results
- Overall, we achieved a 10% increase in average monthly growth📈
- The monthly CAC was 10% below the client’s target🎯
- Year to date we’re pacing +90% ahead of forecasted sales💥
Conclusion
Throughout the first six months of this partnership, together we not only achieved scalable growth, but also successfully diversified the program’s publisher mix. Our plan for the next six months is to continue driving publisher diversification in preparation for their peak season in January 2025.
