Historically, there’s never been a ton of crossover between affiliate and card-linked offers (CLO).
Until now.
If you’ve attended merchant-focused conferences over the past few years, you’ve heard about the power of CLO and affiliate. But what, exactly, does combining the two get you?
To understand the advantages of this two-pronged strategy, we sat down with Veronica Gauthier, former VP of Client Growth & Partnerships at Acceleration Partners. She gave us five reasons modern brands are gravitating toward this model.
Before we dive in, let’s take a step back and find out why CLO and affiliate have suddenly become so popular.
A little background on CLO vs. affiliate
Affiliate marketing, or “channel,” is a way for brands to partner with other companies or individuals to promote their products or services. If you’re a cookware brand, for instance, you might leverage these affiliates:
- Recipe websites
- Food creators on Instagram or TikTok
- Coupon sites like Rakuten
Card-linked offers (CLO) are automated cash-back rewards that consumers can take advantage of through their banking app. They’re a low-risk way for merchants to:
- Get in front of new customers
- Provide an enticing discount to get those prospects to buy
- Boost satisfaction and loyalty among existing customers
While affiliate and CLO work a little differently, they’re both appealing performance marketing strategies, particularly right now. Why?
Because marketers are looking for omnichannel strategies that (1) don’t eat up their budget and (2) actually work — precisely where affiliate and CLO shine.
5 Reasons to pair CLO campaigns with your affiliate strategy
1. CLO runs parallel to affiliate
If you already have an affiliate program, you’ve already done much of the work needed to carry out a CLO campaign.
You know:
- Who your target audience is
- What they care about
- How much they typically spend
- When they spend
And you can match that criteria to an issuer’s network and the types of offers they publish, making for a quick and effective launch.
Veronica says:
“As people become more educated around CLO, they start to realize that while the planning behind both approaches is very similar, the campaigns aren’t competitive and together can yield better results.”
2. Like affiliate, you’ll only pay when a sale occurs
With affiliate programs, brands only pay for the sales that come in. And that’s far less risky than pouring in hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront without knowing, for sure, what the return will be.
Card-linked offers are another example of a de-risked performance model. Brands only pay a fee if a consumer makes a purchase. Leveraging two de-risked strategies at the same time can get you a lot further than funneling your budget into traditional media.
Veronica shares:
“With these strategies, you have a far better idea of what you’re getting in return. Most CLO platforms can back into an ROI that’s performance-driven.”
3. CLO isn’t affected by third-party cookie deprecation
Every modern marketer is worried about a cookieless future.
Unlike other performance marketing tactics like pay-per-click (PPC) and search ads, affiliates are fairly protected. Affiliate channels know who their audience is and have alternate ways of tracking traffic.
CLO is even more cookie-proof, gathering privacy-compliant first-party data at the point of transaction. CLO platforms can tell you:
- Other brands consumers have an affinity for
- Where consumers live
- Stores consumers have shopped at before
- Directional trends in certain verticals
- Offer types most consumers respond to
With this information in hand, brands can develop even stronger campaigns that attract more new customers, prompt higher AOV purchases, and keep existing customers coming back.
Veronica comments:
“If you haven’t already, you’ll start to see emerging CMOs with more hands-on digital experience drift toward affiliate and CLO models as a way to future-proof their go-to-market.”
4. You can target on a huge scale
Card-linked offer platforms partner with banks — institutions consumers trust and use on a daily basis.
Just like affiliates, issuers can have a lot of sway. And if you find a CLO partner whose issuer network overlaps with your consumer audience, you can reach virtually everyone in your TAM.
For example, if your consumer market consists mostly of tech-savvy Gen Zs or Millennials with diverse backgrounds and lifestyles, partnering with a CLO provider like Kard can get you in front of over 47M neobank cardholders who are already transacting at brands like yours.
To put that into numbers, our customers typically see $10:1 topline ROAS, with 40% more repeat purchases.
5. CLO brings incremental value
Attribution is the pain in every marketer’s side.
Affiliate and CLO alleviate that pain with quantifiable tracking and ROI. Affiliates use links to collect data about who activated an offer and when.
Platforms like Kard take work much in the same way, using ML algorithms to match transactions directly to offers, showing merchants exactly who used an offer, how much they spent, and when. For example, our brands monitor:
- Shopper behavior (in-store vs. online)
- Purchase frequency
- Customer segment (high spender, QSR frequenter, pet owner, etc.)
- Competitor share
- Geolocation
They can use this information to further tailor their offers to draw in new customers or adjust their campaigns to retarget lapsed customers and regain their loyalty.
Diversify your digital marketing
Together, affiliate and CLO pack a huge punch — without a huge hit to your budget.
Interested in learning more about how the two complement each other and the benefits they can bring to your business?
Connect with one of our experts at Kard or reach out to the folks at Acceleration Partners to start taking your marketing to the next level.
