Cashback sites and their advantages and challenges

In this article, we will answer the common questions or concerns with regards to working with cashback affiliates.

Common Concerns Resolution/response
How do cashback sites add value to my affiliate program?
  • Cashback sites have large audiences to which your products can be promoted to
  • If you don’t have the tech to manage coupon codes/offers a cashback is a great incentive to your customers at no additional cost than your usual CPA rate
  • Most of the cashback sites can run segmented campaigns, which can help in targeting your competitors’ users. They might even be able to target people that clicked through to you but didn’t purchase 
  • Users are often willing to spend more money if they get cashback, resulting in a higher AOV*
  • High-end brands such as YOOX, Net-A-Porter are using cashback sites successfully
A key KPI for me is new customer acquisition, can cashback affiliates help?
  • Cashback sites know their members’ shopping behaviour. They can target members who haven’t shopped with you through their site before
  • Cashback sites can target people, who have purchased from your competitors
Offering cashback as well as CPA will erode the margin on conversions
  • Cashback sites are not dependent on advertisers offering coupons/offers. They simply give their members a cut of their own commission as cashback. All you do is pay commission to the cashback affiliate as you do with all other affiliates
Are cashback sites attracting an audience that I would want to target?
  • The average cashback user is tech-savvy and part of a higher income demographic, which means they have more money to spend**
  • Cashback users are loyal to the cashback concept or even a specific cashback site. If you are selling products that can be bought at other stores that do offer cashback, you might lose that customer to your competitor

* Reference 1

** Reference 2

We recommend considering all affiliates you wish to work with and evaluating all affiliate methods. You can find a glossary of affiliate types here. An option to consider if you are still unsure is to start a trial working with one or two cashback affiliates and evaluating over time, then open up to others if the results are positive.