Overall Program Revenue Increased To
Revenue From Content Partners Grew By
Sage Appliances is a premium kitchen appliance brand, renowned for its innovative, high-performance products designed to enhance the culinary experience. Their range includes top-tier espresso machines, air fryers, food processors and pizza ovens, with a focus on quality and cutting-edge technology. Known as Breville in other global markets, Sage is well established in the UK, where it is celebrated for its commitment to quality, craftsmanship and design.
Sage operates in a competitive market, where maintaining a strong brand reputation and staying ahead of industry trends are crucial for ongoing success. The company places a significant emphasis on elevating customer experience and providing reliable, long-lasting products that meet the needs of modern kitchens.
Having worked together since early 2022, Silverbean and Sage have forged a strong relationship, acting as an extension of the Sage team. This close partnership has enabled a deep sense of trust, allowing Silverbean to make data-decisions on Sage’s behalf. The collaboration between both teams has been fundamental to the success of their affiliate programme, contributing to ongoing growth and refinement of the marketing strategy.
Sage UK entered 2024 with a clear objective: evolve their affiliate programme from a dependable revenue stream into a strategic, content-first marketing channel. While the programme has historically performed well, it leaned heavily on lower-funnel partners, particularly cashback, and needed to grow in a way that reflected Sage’s premium brand position and long-term commercial ambitions.
To do that, they set the Silverbean team a series of aggressive goals that would challenge even the most established affiliate programmes:
These goals had to be achieved in the context of a maturing affiliate landscape, where content publishers are increasingly seeking paid placements and long-term collaborations. Securing coverage without guaranteed fees, while still delivering revenue growth, was a major hurdle. Additionally, Sage’s desire to maintain brand integrity limited the use of aggressive discounting and restricted the scope of traditional affiliate tactics.
The challenge wasn’t just commercial, it was structural too. The team needed to:
To meet Sage’s ambitious goals, the Silverbean team implemented a multi-layered strategy focused on elevating the affiliate programme from traditional performance marketing into a sophisticated, content-led acquisition channel, all without increasing tenancy budgets.
The team restructured the affiliate programme to reduce its dependency on cashback and increase the share of revenue driven by content, CSS, and closed user group (CUG) partners. This transformation began with a forensic audit of performance data to identify opportunities for incremental growth. Content publishers were evaluated based on performance, audience alignment, authority, and conversion potential to ensure that those with the greatest opportunity for growth were prioritised.
A targeted recruitment drive brought high-quality editorial partners into the programme, selected for their alignment with Sage’s premium brand positioning and relevance to key consumer categories. To further diversify the partner mix, Silverbean expanded Sage’s programme by recruiting new CSS partners who could operate across both the UK and EU. These partners played a crucial role in extending Sage’s reach, while maintaining high-quality traffic at competitive CPAs.
Recognising the challenge of securing high-value placement in a “pay-to-play” landscape, the team reimagined Sage’s value proposition to content publishers. This involved:
Tailored campaign narratives: The team took a collaborative approach with each content partner, aligning campaign ideas with the publisher’s audience and commercial objectives to secure coverage without tenancy fees. By doing this, they ensured the partnership was mutually beneficial, providing the publishers with content that resonated with their audience while meeting Sage’s commercial objectives.
Leveraging first-party data and audience insights: Silverbean used Sage’s own data to demonstrate the value of their audience and the potential for content-driven campaigns. This insight was used to convince content publishers to engage without the need for high upfront tenancy costs.
Highlighting conversion potential: Rather than relying on tenancy payments, the team showcased the programme’s strong performance and commercial viability to secure CPA only coverage from key content partners. This approach helped exceed content revenue targets while adhering to the budget constraints.
This more collaborative and insight-led approach enabled the team to secure placement that would typically require tenancy, a key factor in exceeding content revenue targets.
The team collaborated with content partners around key moments in the calendar, particularly Q4 and Black Friday, ensuring publishers had the right product ranges, messaging and tracking in place to drive performance.
The first step here was to capitalise on the existing success within the closed user group parents on the programme. A unique code model and wildcarding on Sage’s chosen affiliate network, Impact.com was introduced, allowing for CUGs to be paid when a code was used, building trust and creating momentum. The team prioritised the largest CUG on the programme. Regular calls, along with in-person meetups at events such as PI Live, helped maintain strong relationships with partners.
This strategy, alongside alternating single-use codes and rates across different periods, resulted in a notable revenue uplift for all prominent CUG partners on the programme.
In order to reduce reliance on cashback and create unpredictability in the customer experience, Silverbean lowered default cashback rates, decreasing commission costs year-over-year from July 9th through the end of 2024. Despite these reductions, revenue continued to rise, highlighting the effectiveness of this strategy. Transparency with partners about cashback adjustments, combined with occasional CPAi optimisations during peak periods, ensured that Sage’s presence remained strong across top partner sites.
A critical element of the solution was Silverbean’s focus on data-driven decisions. The team worked closely with Sage to create objectives and strategies that were backed by performance data from 2023.
Silverbean’s use of data tools like Impact and Affluent, along with regular communications through Slack, bi-weekly calls, and monthly check-ins, ensured that all decisions were informed and aligned with Sage’s long-term goals. The result was a highly collaborative and data-centric approach to programme optimisation.
Yearly brand immersion days were arranged where the Silverbean team visited the Sage studios, providing the opportunity to learn about Sage’s products in detail. This deep understanding allowed Silverbean to more effectively promote the brand to partners and ensure alignment across all communications.
Silverbean’s strategy was not just about short-term results but also about laying the groundwork for long-term growth. Regular check-ins with publishers, clear revenue goals, and a transparent communication strategy ensured that Sage’s affiliate programme remained adaptable and scalable. By focusing on high-performing partners and driving continuous optimisations, Silverbean successfully set Sage up for sustained growth.
The team’s strategic overhaul of Sage’s affiliate programme delivered outstanding results in the first year of implementation, firmly setting the foundation for long-term growth.
The total revenue generated marked an 89.8% YoY increase and 69.9% above the set target, which was a huge milestone for the programme.
One CPAi test alone generated a revenue uplift of +26.16% and a traffic uplift of +133%, emphasising the high demand for the brand from an affluent audience.
Revenue from content partners grew by 70% YoY, surpassing the original target of 40%. This uplift was achieved without any additional tenancy investment, showcasing the strength of the redefined value proposition and the effectiveness of tailed outreach to editorial partners.
The overall content-to-revenue ratio improved significantly, proving that content partnerships had become not only more frequent but more commercially impactful. Editorial placements were secured across a broad mix of verticals aligned with Sage’s premium positioning, driving incremental traffic and conversions. Two standout examples illustrate this impact. One key content partner saw a 22.53% increase in direct content revenue and a 23.49% boost in traffic, with another delivering a 19.82% rise in revenue alongside a 54.22% increase in order volume.
Affiliate channel traffic increased by 33% YoY, outperforming the original 25% goal. This growth was fueled by the expanded partner mix, including the addition of new content publishers, CSS partners and closed user groups, as well as improved engagement with existing affiliates.
Cashback reliance was successfully reduced, with a lower share of revenue attributed to cashback partners, yet overall affiliate channel performance continued to grow. This demonstrated that the team’s plan to diversify without sacrificing revenue was not only possible but effective. YoY, the results clearly demonstrated improved efficiency across cashback partners. One partner saw a 7.3% increase in revenue while reducing partner commission by 64.5%, while another achieved a 47.9% uplift in revenue alongside a 28.8% decrease in action cost.
Key publishers that had a significant influence on the campaign’s success saw huge uplifts:
These partnerships were strengthened through bespoke CPAi tests, a more structured core model and regular contact, ensuring strong, performance-focused relationships. The tailored offers, aligned with Sage’s brand values, contributed to these impressive increases.
New CSS partners drove incremental revenue growth, expanding Sage’s presence across both the UK and EU without increasing CPA costs. Their inclusion broadened the reach of the programme while maintaining efficiency.
Perhaps most importantly, the affiliate channel was repositioned within Sage’s wider marketing strategy, with stakeholders gaining increased confidence in its ability to deliver long-term, high-quality growth. The channel is now seen as a credible, content-led acquisition stream that complements Sage’s overall digital marketing objectives. As a result, Sage has committed to further investment in its affiliate activity.
This case study demonstrates how a data-led strategy, rooted in strong brand understanding and collaborative relationships, can drive significant, sustainable growth – even without a tenancy budget.
By focusing on strategic diversification and leveraging deep publisher relationships, the programme was transformed into a high-impact acquisition stream that now commands greater internal investment and recognition.
Data-Led Growth: Precise forecasting, traffic modeling and ROI focused reporting enables confident decision making that consistently exceeds revenue targets.
Strategic Diversification: Introducing high-performing CSS and CUG partners broadened reach across key customer segments while reducing reliance on cashback.
Content-Led Impact: A 70.9% YoY uplift in content partner revenue (vs a 40% target) provided the power of editorial alignment and relationship-led activation.
Optimisation Without Tenancy: By focusing on strong relationships and creative levers like CPAi testing, the team unlocked significant results without additional tenancy spend.
Collaborative Planning: Long-term roadmapping and innovation days helped secure evergreen, brand aligned coverage across priority publishers.
Elevated channel Perception: The affiliate programme is now recognised internally as a high-performing content-led acquisition channel, unlocking further investment from sage.
