Why we partnered with Customer First Digital...
An initial introduction by Rakuten Advertising was made between Brastop’s Senior Marketing Manager and Customer First Digital, with the brand seeking agency support to take their programme to the next level. An initial meeting was held during Rakuten’s Dealmaker event 2024, with Customer First Digital offering their free Appraise solution, to review the current programme and develop the business case for the increased external support.
The business case was approved by the Brastop senior team at the end of September 2024, just prior to peak trading to enable Customer First Digital to implement some of the quick wins. The business case included clear short-term and long-term objectives.
Key objectives from the project included …
Objective 1: Grow the channel to ensure 40% of the publishers are click active and 20% generate sales over the first 4 months
Objective 2: Improve the ROI to reach 20:1 by the end of the 12 months, without impacting on the revenue growth objective
Objective 3: Increase revenue by 22% YoY over the course of a 12-month period
What has been delivered so far…
Phase 1: Publisher Cleansing
Challenge: A high number of publishers onboarded, with inactive or irrelevant publishers
Response: We were immediately inducted, with clear direction of what publisher type met each of their respective guidelines. We reviewed all publishers ensuring brand alignment and programme requirements
Results: Cleansed 210 publishers from the programme, due to being irrelevant or inactive
Phase 2: Brand Coverage
Challenge: Reliant on commission only optimisation, with public baselines being higher than the competition and no tenancy budgets available
Response: Moved away from flat public baseline offers, with a lower rate to improve ROI. We introduced a new customer offer to improve new customer acquisition volumes / rates. Tiered commissions were also launched based on the role in the customer journey, with higher rates awarded to publishers for exposure
Results: Our commission increase technique secured 35 pieces of coverage with 14 publishers in Q4 to the value of £14,900. The coverage supported the 22% YoY brand revenue growth
Phase 3: Premium Publishers
Challenge: All publishers were awarded the same commission
Response: Utilisation of Rakuten Advertising's new audience engine tool, to test dynamic commissions for priority editorial publishers e.g. Elle / GoodHousekeeping / Made For Mums / Cosmopolitan
Results: 293% growth in last click revenue and 106% growth in attributed revenue
Phase 4: Recruitment
Challenge: Q4 is traditionally a more difficult period to onboard new publishers, with publishers focusing on optimising existing advertisers over peak
Response: We used our learnings from Appraise, along with Rakuten Advertising’s Publisher Discovery tool and gap analysis from sister brand Curvy Kate, identifying publishers who we knew would make a difference and would onboard prior to peak
Results: 11 newly approved publishers since taking over management, these included WeDonate, Collable, Tyviso and Collinson
How Brastop have benefited…
Objective 1: Increase in click / sale active publishers
Objective 2: Improved ROI. Achieved the minimum target ahead of schedule, within the first 3 months (target 12 months)
Objective 3: Revenue Uplift (pre management vs. 3 months of management)
Growth was accelerated, with YoY increases moving from 37.5% management to 56.5%.
Driven 35.8K in incremental traffic
Additional performance:
Traffic increased, supporting an uplift in attributed sales to other channels: Traffic increased from 42.35% to 82.2% YoY, supporting additional revenue via other channels. An 18.7% growth in New Customers was also seen
Following the above period, CFD have been retained into 2025 to continue to:
Launch a reactivation programme, to activate dormant publishers and enable a second cleanse of the publishers
Support with external PR / Influencer events (rebrand)
Accelerate the revenue and new customer growth both in the UK and US
Test tenancy investment, enabled due to the improvement in ROI seen
Align with the PR team, amplifying editorial content, leveraging Rakuten Advertising’s Audience Engine as well as Customer First Digital's recently launched PR proposition
Click Active Increase
33.9% to 50%
Sale Active Increase
14% to 22%
ROI Increased to
20:1
What we think…
"We have recently started working with CFD, and what a great experience it’s been so far! Their strong publisher connections and hands-on approach to recruitment, onboarding, and performance management have freed up so much internal resource, allowing us to focus on broader strategy. The team is incredibly approachable - no hard sales, just genuine collaboration - which has been a breath of fresh air. It truly feels like they’re an extension of our team, helping us scale our programs efficiently and bringing growth opportunities to the table. We’re excited to see what we can achieve together."
Amanda Clifford
Senior Digital Marketing Manager