Lisa: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Performance Marketer's Toolkit, the series where we explore the biggest challenges modern marketers face and the performance enhancing solutions that help overcome them. I'm Lisa Maynard, VP of Marketing at Awin. In each episode, we'll look at a real world marketing challenge and how brands are solving it through the agility of the affiliate channel and the help of Awin's technology.

In today's episode, we're looking at how brands can shift specific product lines at speed. Whether that's clearing stock, boosting a new launch, or selling more high margin items without relying on slow or expensive tactics.

It's a growing problem. Back in 2023, McKinsey reported that US retailers were carrying more than $740 billion worth of unsold goods. That's inventory tying up cash flow and eroding margins. And it underlines just how urgent the challenge of moving products quickly has become.

So how can brands make sure the right products get the right visibility at the right time? Every e-commerce team knows the [00:01:00] pressure. You've got thousands of SKUs, competing priorities, and constantly shifting forecasts. You might need to move clearance stock one week, push a product launch the next, and then pivot again when supply changes. Traditional campaigns simply can't move that fast. But, the affiliate channel can.

Affiliate marketing is built for agility. Through a diverse network of partners from cashback and content sites to close user groups and niche communities, advertisers can promote specific SKUs to engaged audiences in real time. So when your merchandising team says, "Hey, we need to move this line now." You stay responsive and cost efficient.

To see what that looks like in practice, we're turning to Eliot Horn from SharkNinja and Holly Riley from Blue Light Card, a community for NHS staff and emergency workers in the UK.

They joined us on Awin-win Marketing Podcast to talk about how their affiliate partnership enables SharkNinja to respond to stock changes almost overnight.

Eliot: So as a business and, uh, how we work with affiliate marketing, we're quite sort of trade led, inventory led, and led by forecast. [00:02:00] What that means is there'll be times in the, in, in the week, in the month whereby, we need to move some inventory.

Rob: Mm-hmm.

Eliot: What we found is one of the most impactful ways and efficient ways to do that at speed is via the affiliate channel.

Rob: Yeah.

Eliot: Which is why it's great to have a partner like Blue Light who are so reliable in what they do. To a point where a lot, a lot of the time our merchandising guys are like, we've got this offer. Will, will Blue Light take it?

Holly: Of course we will!

Eliot: They're, they're, they're very aware of you guys already.

Holly: It does tend to come on a Friday, so it's right in time for the weekend, but it falls well because that's when our members are shopping the most over the weekend.

Rob: Yeah.

Holly: So. Yeah, Eliot will very kindly email normally, as soon as you get the heads up, you will let us know.

So we might not have everything we need to set the offer live, but we'll have the idea that something's coming or what's coming, and we can start to look at what we can do. Normally I'd say we turn it around within a couple of hours for you, which is great when you need to be reactive and get it live ASAP and a lot of the time they end at 9:00 AM on a Monday, so it is very time sensitive, which I assume is also why Eliot needs to make sure that he's choosing a [00:03:00] partner that can be reactive with that timeframe as well.

Eliot: That reactivity piece is, is really important for us.

Lisa: That collaboration between Eliot and Holly highlights exactly why affiliate partnerships matter. Two teams working in sync, turning around offers within hours, not days. But doing that consistently across hundreds of partners requires the right technology. That's where Awin's commission flexibility tool comes in.

Commission flexibility lets you instantly adjust commission rates on specific products or categories, incentivizing your affiliates to promote exactly what needs to move. That means when you need to clear out seasonal stock, accelerate awareness of a new launch or push high margin lines. You can dial up the reward for partners in real time. It's like giving your affiliate program a merchandising lever, one that reacts instantly to business needs.

And the results speak for themselves. Samsung, for example, used commission flexibility to reward partners based on performance during key sales periods, and they saw a 67% year on year ROI increase while reducing ad spend by nearly half. That's the kind [00:04:00] of performance you get when your affiliate strategy flexes as fast as your priorities do.

So, if you need to move stock quickly, use your affiliate partners as an extension of your merchandising team. By combining exclusive offers and Awin's commission flexibility feature, you can turn product level challenges into sales spikes.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Performance Marketers Toolkit. Join us next time as we tackle another marketing challenge and show you how Awin enhances your performance.