Affiliate marketing growth agency

Affiligence.
An affiliate agency that scaled the harder side of the marketplace.

Affiligence helps brands build and scale affiliate programs from zero to seven figures in attributed revenue. The problem with affiliate is well known: the merchant side is hard to acquire and the affiliate side has every program chasing them. We rebuilt their merchant acquisition motion and added a parallel partner-recruitment engine.

All case studies

● Affiligence

donut

Affiligence · Affiliate marketing growth agency

Tracks live

Show rate

76%

Time to first merchant close

Day 19

Reply rate (merchant track)

13.6%

01 · Before vs after

The numbers, side by side.

Six metrics that show how the engagement changed the business.

Metric

Before

After

Delta

Merchant calls / mo

+340%

Affiliates recruited / mo

107

+792%

Merchant close rate

27%

41%

+14 pts

Avg merchant retainer

$6,800

$11,400

+68%

Program ramp time

78 days

39 days

-50%

Pipeline / quarter

$148k

$920k

+521%

● Pipeline curve

growthChart

Pipeline value over 90 days for Affiligence.

● KPI snapshot

kpi

Aggregate KPIs after 90 days of engagement.

02 · The challenge

What was actually broken.

Affiligence had two acquisition problems at once: convincing merchants to invest in affiliate (often a category they did not yet trust) and recruiting top-tier affiliates onto programs they already managed. Most agencies only solved one. We solved both in parallel.

● Pipeline leak

funnel

Where the prior engine was losing prospects.

03 · The approach

What we built and shipped.

Step 1
Merchant track: cold email to ecommerce and SaaS marketing leaders with a 'is affiliate the right channel for you' assessment as the lead magnet.
Step 2
Affiliate track: outbound to top performers in adjacent verticals with a 'pre-qualified merchant brief' instead of a generic program invite.
Step 3
Built a shared dashboard that showed both pipelines together so the agency could pitch merchants with affiliate roster strength as a proof point.
Step 4
Layered LinkedIn ads with case study video on the merchant side and creator-platform ads on the affiliate side.
Step 5
Created a quarterly 'state of affiliate' report as a perennial top-of-funnel magnet.

Engagement specs

ICP: Merchant side: Heads of marketing / DTC founders, $5M-$100M revenue. Affiliate side: top 5% performers in adjacent verticals.
Duration: 110 days
Channels: Cold email (2 audiences), LinkedIn DM, LinkedIn Ads, Creator-platform ads

● Channel stack

stack

The channels we ran for Affiligence.

04 · Week-by-week

The 12-week build, plain English.

● Engagement arc

timeline

Five milestones from kickoff to steady state.

Week 1-2Two-track ICP, two sequences, two lead magnets.
Week 3-4Both tracks live, dashboard correlating merchant and affiliate pipeline.
Week 5-8Quarterly report drafted as evergreen TOFU.
Week 9-14Ad layer added, creator-platform sequences refined.
Week 15+Steady state, expansion into vertical-specific tracks.

05 · The outcome

What actually changed in the business.

Affiligence onboarded 14 new merchant clients in 90 days and recruited 320 high-intent affiliates across existing programs. Average merchant LTV rose because programs launched with affiliate rosters already in place.

● Channel mix

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Where the booked calls came from after 90 days.

06 · In their words

What the team said after 90 days.

"Solving both sides of the marketplace in parallel changed how we sell. We do not pitch affiliate anymore, we pitch a program that already has a roster waiting."

— Affiligence team

07 · What's next