Cents of Style

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 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. 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.

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We liked the fact that LeadDyno isn’t as web-centric as most affiliate platforms. It’s also easy to use, which made it a great fit for all of our affiliates.

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 influencers 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. Women get paid quicker, they see the benefits of their labors 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 

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.

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.