$6000 in the first two weeks and grew 243% in two months with Affiliate Marketing

Marley's Monsters is a sustainable homewares brand that offers high-quality substitutes for disposable products. Marley's Monsters’ mission is to help people transform their carbon footprint. They turned to Baotris to create an affiliate program to increase the size of their audience and expand their impact on the environment.

In order to initiate the affiliate program, Baotris decided to do three things: develop the foundation for a successful affiliate program, increase the number of clicks by increasing the number and quality of outreach, and increase conversion rates by adjusting the commission rates.

• Launch an affiliate program, utilizing Baotris’s vetted publisher partners for a shorter ramp-up period

• Create a new channel for high converting traffic at a fraction of the cost of advertising lowering CAC

• Track and measure the performance of every campaign, using data to double down and optimize flows, messaging, and promotions to create more conversions

• Developed content beyond transactional messaging.

Baotris drew on deep experience developing affiliate programs to jump-start Marley’s Monsters program. Baotris was able to get the program running within 72 hours due to our structured approach to onboarding. Baotris has a framework to ensure successful brand onboarding to multiple affiliate platforms.

Baotris decreased the risk by onboarding a large number of affiliates. Affiliate programs have a natural attrition rate as affiliates tire of a brand. Baotris advocates continuously adding affiliates to maintain a consistent size for the affiliate program. If any affiliates were to drop out or underperform, there would be others to pick up any deficiencies, and the program would continue to be on track.

While a larger affiliate network requires more time, Baotris took over the management of the program. Baotris focused on quickly onboarding affiliates who were already known to be successful partners. The dedicated Baotris team members parlayed existing relationships to create a solid foundation for Marley Monster’s program.

Marley’s Monsters Affiliate program quickly became the third highest traffic source to the website. The cost of commissions is ⅓ the cost of advertising. The traffic coming into the website from the Affiliate platforms was greater than 50% that of paid advertising–making the affiliate program a more cost-effective way to bring in new customers. Plus the AOV for new customers found through affiliate programs was higher than other new customers.

Each campaign was tracked and measured, including the performance of outreach content, where we measured engagement through clicks, bounce rates, and conversions. If a message did not perform as expected, it was swapped for one that elicited more engagement. We also looked at what content was popular with our audience - what they wanted to read about and how they interacted with it. We used this information to inform future decisions about content creation and distribution.

Another critical aspect of the Baotris affiliate process was a consistent communication cycle. Baotris uses a CRM to track all our outreach which helps us analyze the traffic coming from the affiliate’s channels as well as the number of new customers coming in.

With tracking, we were able to see a 70% increase in clicks over the first month with the adjustments we made to the communications going out. We wanted the affiliates to know Marley's Monsters better, so we included product information such as descriptions, images (aka product photos), prices, and discounts (if any) in the newsletters we sent out. This helped readers understand what they were getting before they clicked on an affiliate link.

• Marley's Monsters’ affiliate program revenue earned $6000 in the first two weeks and grew 243% in two months
• The network of Marley's Monsters affiliates grew 123% in two months.
• 70% click increase in affiliate engagement month over month due to improved content and affiliate offerings
• 68% of affiliate traffic was new customers
• A more consistent communication cycle with affiliates
• Lower churn rate on affiliates, longer lifetime value