How a UK and US apparel programme with 68% of its revenue sitting in voucher and cashback was rebalanced towards content and creators — including two months where we deliberately let revenue fall to get there.
The programme looked healthy at $214k a month, but 68% of that revenue came from voucher, deal and cashback partners bidding on the last click. The brand was paying commission on sales it would largely have made anyway, while the partners who create genuine demand had no commercial reason to promote.
We were asked to rebalance the mix, and we were explicit from the outset that doing it properly would cost revenue before it added any.
A programme that only pays out at the last click isn't an acquisition channel. It's a discount desk.
Diagnostic figures come from the opening audit; revenue figures are actual tracked sales. The Jan–Feb decline was a planned consequence of withdrawing discount-partner exposure, shown here rather than smoothed out.
You cannot recruit content partners into a programme that pays everyone the same. We rebuilt the commission architecture first so that incremental partners were paid like incremental partners, then went and got them. The gap between those two things is the trough in January and February.
Flat commission was replaced with rates set by publisher type, basket value and position in the journey, with de-duplication and commission-by-assist enabled so upper-funnel partners were credited rather than overwritten. A full product feed was made available and generic links were replaced with SKU-level deep links across every partner.
With the commercial logic fixed, content partners had a reason to say yes. We recruited into seasonal drop calendars shared in advance, and layered creators alongside editorial so the programme had demand creation as well as demand capture.
Share of tracked sales through the managed period, by partner type
The engagement ended with the programme 51% larger than the month we inherited it, the partner mix rebuilt and the commission architecture documented. The brand kept the audit, the task list and the recruitment materials — the same ones we used to run it.
Commission architecture, de-duplication, assist crediting and product feed rebuilt and documented, so the structure holds after the engagement ends.
Recruitment lists, seasonal drop calendar templates, activation sequences and commercial logic, written down for the in-house team.
We stay on call after handback. Whenever the account manager needs guidance, we're there — the relationship doesn't end when the programme moves in-house.
$1,916,000 in sales · 14,969 transactions · 4.2M clicks · 36% active partners
Recruitment is easy. Getting the commercial terms right so good partners want to stay — that's the work.
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