INTRODUCTION

Founded in 2010, the Texas-based fire and home goods brand has grown into a large public company with national household recognition. In 2022, Purple Orange was tasked to reorient Solo Stove’s affiliate marketing around high-quality content partnerships, affiliate partners with strong search rankings, and smart coupon management

Over the course of 12-months, Purple Orange executed a data-driven affiliate recruitment strategy paired with strong campaign measurement and closely aligned PR strategy. The PR and affiliate teams relied on proprietary software that harvested performance data from search engines to help guide partner recruitment and PR outreach.

After the first year of the program, Solo Stove measured impressive gains while decreasing overall program spend.

OBJECTIVES

In addition to traditional advertising, Solo Stove recognized the value of connecting with consumers through product storytelling and quality content (PR) partnerships.

Solo Stove partnered with Purple Orange to achieve the following goals:

• Expand their network of content creators & quality affiliate partners.
• Foster alignment between PR and affiliate teams.
• Tighten coupon management without canceling them altogether.
• Improve tracking and measurement to sharpen focus and improve outcomes.

WHAT WE DID

ALIGNING  PR + AFFILIATE

Working with editorial and affiliate teams needs to be a highly coordinated effort, since many publishers seek to maintain editorial independence between “commerce & deals” content and editorial.

As an agency rooted in public relations, Purple Orange is accustomed to winning top-shelf editorial stories, awards, and other brand-supporting PR. What’s unique about our work is how we work with affiliate data to inform our media targeting and amplification strategies.

Example: Affiliate teams can amplify the PR team’s work by providing financial incentives for the publisher AFTER an independent review has been written and published. This often takes the form of getting further amplification of PR wins in newsletters, etc.

DATA-DRIVEN RECRUITMENT

Purple Orange didn’t just put out a blanket call for new partners and affiliates. Instead, our team relied on PR synergy and data-driven decision-making to build out the program. The team deployed proprietary scraping software to gather performance data from thousands of target keywords—filtering millions of search results by click-through rates, CPC value, and other key metrics.

Using this data, our team identified top-performing publishers and creators and then performed a gap analysis to highlight potential partners not yet in Solo Stove’s program. Then, Purple Orange’s public relations team got to work sending out personalized pitches to the new content outlets while the affiliate team recruited the outlets and negotiated terms.

Before long, Solo Stove established lasting relationships with partners who may have never been considered using traditional recruitment strategies. Relying on solid data and leaving no stone unturned helped Purple Orange expand and grow partnership program enrollment by over 60%.

PR teams doubled down, working with creators who drive value:

• In 2022, YouTuber “Barbecue Lab” drove $161K in revenue for Solo Stove with great content and in-depth product reviews
• PR teams work in coordination with Affiliate to have CNN promote flash sales.
• Coverage of one such Solo Stove “flash sale” netted $97K in revenue and 17,700 clicks in 3 days.

HELPING GOOD RELATIONSHIPS GET BETTER.

Solo Stove and Purple Orange value creators’ perspectives. After all, our desire to work with them is due to their proven ability to engage audiences and win top positions in Google.

Purple Orange coordinated in-person product demonstrations / events to strengthen relationships and better contextualize how their products are meant to be used and enjoyed. In one such example, the PR team invited top publishers, influencers, and media affiliates (HGTV, Good Housekeeping, Bon Appetit, etc.) to an outdoor pizza-making workshop in New York City.

Additionally, the Purple Orange team regularly engages the commerce teams from top publishers on video calls and in-person meetings to gather feedback and inspiration from affiliates and publishers. Our team seeks partnerships at all levels to ensure that our affiliate partners find mutual value in our client programs.

We ask questions like:

• What strategies are working best with your audience?
• Are exclusive codes a good option for you?
• What promotions/campaigns would you like to see?
• What assets or support would help you be most successful?

Partnerships thrive on open communication and collaboration. By adding more of a human touch, Solo Stove and Purple Orange were able to make the most of each partnership.

TRACKING + MEASUREMENT

After revamping recruitment efforts, Purple Orange’s team focused on scaling productive partnerships and cutting unnecessary spending. To do so, in-depth performance analysis and measurement had to be put in place.

Purple Orange used a suite of tools to measure Solo Stoves affiliate marketing, but selected Impact.com as the primary network partner. The agency also used Affluent.io for data visualization and more advanced tool sets within Impact’s family like “Optimize” which allows for more powerful click tracking and commission attribution. 

THE THING ABOUT COUPONS

While coupon sites might be the final step before a sale, upper-funnel content creators often do the heavy lifting to win first-click, only to lose the commission down funnel to a coupon site.

However, cutting coupons entirely isn’t necessarily the solution either. Rather, Purple Orange weeded through the various coupon sites in Solo Stove’s program and only kept those who were willing to engage with the agency and abide by program guidelines.

Utilizing a range of coupon/cookie tracking technology, Purple Orange ensured all partners received appropriate commission compensation.

• Decrease all coupon sites commissions to 1%.
• If cookie-tracking indicates a content-site was part of the customer journey up-funnel from the coupon site, the content-site is awarded 100% commission.
• Only work with coupon sites that abide by program rules and engage in dialogue with the agency.

OUTCOMES

After 12-months with Purple Orange, Solo Stove saw outstanding improvements to their affiliate performance. High-quality content helped reach consumers directly—strengthening brand recognition and affinity over the long term.

Between the first quarters of ‘22 and ‘23, Solo Stove’s new, data-driven recruitment strategy led to:

• 61% increase in productive publishers
• 88% increase in active publishers

Affiliate-driven revenue accounted for approximately 11 percent of Solo Stove’s total company revenue. But were they able to boost revenue without raising marketing spend in the same timeframe too? The answer is a resounding yes:

• 7% decrease in ad spend
• 58% decrease in customer acquisition costs
• 72% increase in revenue
• 85% increase in return on ad spend