Grocery Delivery Program Success

Problem: The brand’s affiliate program lacked a cohesive strategy for partner recruitment, onboarding, and optimization. Promotional campaigns weren’t being communicated effectively, payouts were not cost-efficient, and high-impact partners were being overlooked or not actively recruited.

Solution: Restructured the program with a full-funnel recruitment strategy, leveraging both outbound outreach and existing industry relationships to attract high-quality partners. Implemented optimization initiatives with current affiliates and established a cadence of weekly check-ins with the internal team to monitor performance, refine goals, and drive continuous growth.

Goals/Requirements: • Reassess payouts to result in an overall program CAC of $80 • Recruit new partners in all areas of the funnel • Partner with upper funnel content publishers pushing brand awareness

Completed full program audit: Payouts, promos, partner verticals to expand into, assets lacking, landing pages, samples, etc.

Conducted competitive analysis: Researched what their competitors were paying out to their affiliates, their promos, cookies windows. This helps inform decisions on how we might want to modify the program to stay competitive and attractive to the partners.

Recruited high-impact partners: Onboarded partners in the following verticals: deal, loyalty, card-linking, content aggregator, network, employee perk, non-branded search, review, and large content partners.

Partner Highlight: I was able to onboard a card-linking partner who proved to be a game-changer to this program. This partner was negotiated to be paid the standard baseline payout, further lowering the program CAC. They performed so well that we needed to put a cap on this partner so that the brand could assess the volume from a production/manufacturing standpoint.

Due to the efficiency of the lower and mid funnel partners, we were able to hit a CAC low of $60. Because of this, we were able to reallocate funds to more expensive larger content partners, resulting in a dedicated articles in CNET and DotDash Meredith.

Don't be afraid to try new verticals of affiliate partnership, this space is everchanging, so an open mind and a full funnel with get you results!

Note: Other relevant software I use in my daily work which is not listed in this app: Impact Radius, Pepperjame, Rakuten Linkshare, ShareASale, SalesLoft, Lemlist.