How Cents of Style Made $1.7M+ in Affiliate Sales with LeadDyno
$218K
Paid in commissions
80%
Increase in web sales
400+
Affiliates
About Cents of Style
Cents of Style is a multi-million dollar women’s fashion brand located in Bluffdale, Utah. Founded in 2007 by stay-at-home mom Courtney Brown, the company is empowering women to lead bold and full lives while offering the latest in fashion.
Challenges
Empowering a diverse group of female influencers
After experiencing a few years of flat growth after launching in 2011, Cents of Style’s business took off when founder and CEO Courtney Brown pivoted to affiliate and influencer marketing.
It was a smart business decision and, more importantly, it dovetailed with Courtney’s vision to reshape the traditional marketing model by empowering female entrepreneurs.
“We’re empowering female influencers to disrupt
the traditional marketing model, and LeadDyno
is the easy-to-use, affiliate platform we’re using
to do it.”
Courtney Brown,
Founder & CEO, Cents of Style
“We’re a purpose-driven business,” says Courtney. “So paying affiliate commissions to female entrepreneurs who’re making their way in the world and changing how media is distributed and consumed aligned with our vision.”
While the shift to affiliate and influencer marketing was a huge success, the Cents of Style marketing team wasn’t satisfied with their affiliate marketing platform. It wasn’t intuitive to use, which was a problem when serving a diverse group of affiliate marketers and influencers with varying degrees of technical expertise
“Our platform was big and powerful but also painfully slow and overly complicated,” says Courtney. “Some called it the dinosaur.”
Another issue was that affiliate marketers and influencers are, in general, a skeptical bunch. If they’ve been in business for any length of time, they’ve probably had a bad experience with an affiliate marketing program. Thus, program transparency was critical.
“Most influencers have been burned by affiliate programs before,” says Courtney. “We wanted a platform where affiliates could check the math any time they wanted so we could build the relationship on trust.”
Courtney and her team also wanted the ability to easily customize their affiliate marketing program. In particular, Courtney was intrigued with the idea of implementing a multi-tier program where different commission rates are paid for different sales levels, with tiers resetting each month.
“Ten percent commission is pretty standard these days in eCommerce, especially for small brands,” says Courtney. “But we saw other businesses using a tiered commission model, and we wondered if we could compensate our affiliates even more.”
So Courtney and her team searched for an easy-to-use affiliate marketing platform they could customize to suit an unconventional commission structure. After exploring their options, they decided on LeadDyno.
“We liked the fact that LeadDyno isn’t as web-centric as most affiliate platforms,” says Courtney. “It’s also easy to use, which made it a great fit for all of our affiliates.”
Highlights
Challenges
- Remaking the traditional marketing model by empowering female entrepreneurs
- Meeting the needs of a diverse group of affiliate marketers and influencers
- Overcoming skepticism of affiliate marketing programs
- Customizing the program to a new commission model
Solution
- Cents of Style implements the LeadDyno affiliate marketing platform
- Implement tiered commission model to increase affiliate interest
- Inspire trust with greater program transparency
- Deliver “cut and paste” content via built-in affiliate newsletter
- Track leaders and encourage them to reach the next tier level
Results
- $1.7M+ in affiliate sales annually
- $218K paid in affiliate commissions
- 80% increase in web sales
- 400+ influencers
Solution
LeadDyno’s powerful yet easy-to-use affiliate marketing platform
Courtney was immediately impressed with how quick and easy LeadDyno was to set up.
An easy-to-customize
platform
With LeadDyno in place, Courtney and her team had a platform with the flexibility to implement the multi-tier commission structure she had dreamed of—and it quickly proved wildly popular.
- “We set up a commission tier system that starts at 10% and ramps up to 18%, which is unheard of for apparel,” says Courtney. “With this structure, some of our big influencers are making $15,000 in sales a month.”
The new commission structure encourages affiliates and influences to share Cents in Style content more often.
- “Some people who were posting only a couple times a quarter are now posting a couple times a month,” says Courtney.
In addition to setting up a new commission structure, Courtney and her team also used the platform’s flexibility to change how often they pay influencers, switching from monthly to weekly.
Paying weekly rewards affiliates and influencers more frequently, which keeps them motivated and engaged.
- “Paying influencers every Monday has been huge for us,” says Courtney. “Women get paid quicker, they see the benefits of their labours faster, and so they post more often.”
Valuable integrations
and features
Cents of Style is also using LeadDyno integrations to make program management easier than ever before.
For example, Cents of Style has integrated PayPal with LeadDyno so it can compensate affiliates and influencers directly from the LeadDyno platform.
In addition, the Cents of Style marketing team is using LeadDyno’s built-in newsletter feature to communicate daily deals to its affiliates—a strategy that is also paying off.
Courtney explains:
- “Every week we feature a deeply discounted item to promote multiple purchases and quick buying. We put these features in a newsletter that we send to affiliates every week. All they have to do is cut and paste the deal into their posts. We’re serving up our content to them on a platter, which is greatly increasing our take-up rate.”
Leaderboard to identify
additional sales opportunities
The Cents of Style marketing team is also using LeadDyno’s leaderboard to easily identify affiliates that could use additional encouragement.
For example, if an affiliate is just shy of reaching the next commission tier, the marketing team will let them know and encourage them to push a bit more to meet the next tier.
Program transparency
inspires trust
The LeadDyno platform has also been successful in overcoming the natural skepticism of affiliates by bringing transparency to the program.
Affiliates can log into the platform at any time to see their sales and commissions for themselves, which gives the reassurance and security they need to fully commit to the program.
- “Everything is very transparent, which is a big deal to our affiliates,” says Courtney
Growing program popularity
Cents of Style’s affiliate and influencer marketing program is so popular, Courtney and her team recently purged inactive affiliates, confident that new ones would soon take their place. Prior to the purge, the program had about 650 affiliates. Today, the team has reduced the number to about 270.
In fact, the program is in such high demand that Courtney and her team have instituted an affiliate application process. Each applicant is assessed to help ensure they align with the company’s vision and values.
"Everything is very transparent, which is a big deal for our affiliates.”
Results
$1.7M+ in revenue from affiliate sales in one year
With the help of LeadDyno, Cents of Style’s affiliate marketing program is booming, earning over $1.7M in revenue from affiliate sales and paying out $218K in commissions.
All of these marketing efforts have also led to an 80% increase in web sales.
There’s no question that moving to an affiliate and influencer marketing model made all the difference to the success of Cents of Style. But as the team discovered, having the right platform in place—one that is intuitive to use, easy to customize, and transparent—is just as important.
“The other affiliate software we were using was Web 1.0,” says Courtney. “LeadDyno is a 2.0 affiliate marketing software for the modern age.”
