1.8x peak revenue growth, same budget
A London luxury gifting brand with an established affiliate programme and a strong seasonal trade. The programme was stable but unoptimised: every partner, whatever their value, sat on the same flat 4% commission.
Vertical
Luxury Gifting
Focus
Commission restructure
The problem
Commission restructure
A flat rate pays the voucher site that appears at checkout — on a customer who has already decided to buy — the same as the content partner introducing the brand to someone new. You overpay for checkout-stage activity and underpay the partners building long-term value, so the ones who matter most have the least reason to prioritise you. A flat rate is a hidden subsidy from your best partners to your worst.
What I did
Audited every active partner by behaviour, not category: who introduces new audiences, who converts mid-funnel, who intercepts at checkout, who only fires on a discount.
Moved the programme to tiered commissions — checkout-intercept partners on a defensive rate; content, loyalty and affinity partners higher, each tier with a clear reason behind it.
Removed voucher sites that weren’t adding incremental sales.
Activated the partner mix ahead of every key trading period: rebriefed priority partners, refreshed creative, lined up exclusive offers — so incremental partners got visibility before generic discount sites did.
Peak-month revenue, YoY
Peak-month orders, YoY
December sales, YoY
The results
Every comparable trading period has grown year on year — December went from £72,927 to £115,632. Orders grew faster than revenue, which points to more first-time buyers entering through the programme. And the effective commission rate didn’t move: the same percentage of revenue, redirected away from checkout interception and toward the partners bringing new customers in.
