Overview

Four, a buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution, has worked with Sovrn for the past three years. The company uses Sovrn Commerce to power affiliate links through their consumer shopping app. As a fast-growing online platform, Four is focused on maximizing affiliate revenue — and they’re open to experimenting with new strategies and tactics that can help drive higher earnings. 

The Opportunity

Four’s product manager, Yossi Klein, works closely with Sovrn and his account manager to optimize the company’s affiliate strategy and ensure they are taking full advantage of Sovrn Commerce capabilities. 

It became clear that one of Yossi’s biggest pain points was uncertainty regarding the rates he could earn with Sovrn Commerce. At the same time, Sovrn was looking for a way to win back Four’s affiliate traffic with a top retailer. Sovrn recommended testing out Fallback URLs, a new feature in the Commerce platform that could help Four earn higher, more reliable affiliate rates and give Sovrn a chance to win back that traffic.

The Solution

Fallback URLs are an easy-to-use Sovrn Commerce feature that lets you explore whether Sovrn can beat your best available rate per click. Here’s how it works:

• Rather than building your affiliate links with a single product URL, Fallback URLs let you set a bid floor and specify an alternate (or fallback) URL to lock in your target rate. 
• When someone clicks the link, the Commerce technology automatically checks to see if Sovrn’s rate can beat the bid floor you set. 
• If Sovrn can beat the bid floor, you’ll earn the higher affiliate rate. If not, the reader is shown your Fallback URL and you’ll earn the rate you’ve secured with another partner. 

Fallback URLs offered Four significant upside with no risk of losing out on higher rates from another affiliate partner. At the beginning of the test period, Four had secured an EPC of $0.30 on every click from a top retailer so they used the Fallback URLs feature to set their bid floor at $0.30.

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The Results

Four started seeing positive results in just two weeks. After running the fallback URL test for 45 days, Four had earned an average $0.59 EPC on the retailer’s traffic — nearly double their target rate of $0.30. In addition, Sovrn’s win rate during that time was an astonishing 90%. That means Four was able to earn more with Sovrn on nine out of every 10 clicks for that retailer — and they still earned their target $0.30 on the other 10% of transactions.

Yossi has now incorporated fallback URLs into Four’s regular affiliate strategy, so they can continue to maximize affiliate earnings with Sovrn without missing out when another partner can offer higher rates.