One 24-hour cashback campaign. Over 400 new customers. Here's how it happened.
The Results
Download the full customer story
Want a shareable summary? The PDF slide deck covers the campaign, strategy, and results in one place, making it ideal for sharing with your team.
The Challenge
A leading Health & Beauty retailer partnered with Commission Factory through the Grow Package to understand whether cashback mechanics could influence customer spend behaviour. Specifically, the brand wanted to test whether customers could be encouraged to increase basket sizes to access higher cashback tiers.
The CF Team were tasked around 3 key objectives:
- Determine if tiered cashback can shift consumer spend upward.
- Evaluate whether increased cashback rates drive meaningful AOV uplift.
- Run testing outside peak periods to isolate the impact of cashback from seasonal or promotional noise.
A critical commercial requirement was to maintain performance efficiency, with ROAS required to remain above 14%.
The Solution
To understand how cashback could influence spend behaviour, the campaign was structured to directly test basket elasticity through a meaningful, value-driven tiering model.
The initial cashback tiers showed limited impact, prompting a strategic tier optimisation to introduce clearer incentive steps that would encourage customers to stretch their baskets.
Refined Cashback Structure (ShopBack):
$75 and under: 2.5%
$76–$149.99: 7%
$150+: 10%
This structure created deliberate value breaks, contrasting with a previous test where smaller variances failed to shift spend, highlighting the importance of material differentiation between tiers.
To ensure clean attribution:
- The campaign ran during BAU trading conditions, with no overlapping peak sales or major on-site promotions
- Activity was limited to a 9-day window, balancing visibility with control
- Platinum placement on ShopBack ensured consistent exposure without materially inflating traffic volumes
The Results
The tiered cashback model delivered a significant increase in customer spend, lifting the average order value to $78.04, a rise of $20.29 and +35% compared to the previous period.
Average Order Value:
-
- Baseline (ShopBack Jan - Sep): $61.46
- Campaign period: $78.04
- +27% vs ShopBack baseline
- +35% vs previous period
This uplift was not reflected across the wider program, indicating that the change was directly driven by the cashback test rather than external factors such as on-site promotions or broader consumer shifts.
This confirms that the cashback strategy primarily impacted basket size, prompting customers to increase spend specifically to access higher cashback tiers.
Supporting Performance Metrics
While secondary metrics were not the primary success indicators, they provide additional context:
- Revenue: +12%
- Clicks: +26%
- Final ROAS: $13.50, exceeding the efficiency benchmark and secondary campaign goal
What Worked
- Meaningful tier gaps successfully encouraged customers to stretch their baskets.
- Controlled BAU testing environment ensured clean attribution and reliable insights.
- Optimised tier structure proved more effective than prior “commission by basket” models with minimal variance.
Want results like these?
Commission Factory works with brands across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region to build affiliate programs that deliver measurable, trackable growth.
Get in touch at commissionfactory.com/contact-us
Commission Factory is not only the Asia-Pacific region's largest affiliate platform, working with more than 900 of the world's biggest brands, it is also a performance marketing platform that allows affiliates, partners, and content creators to earn money and online businesses to increase sales.
Get started with Commission Factory and see how brands and partners grow their affiliate marketing strategies.