Case Studies

Cutter & Squidge

Cutting costs and maximising efficiency

The Results

This transformation exceeded all initial objectives, establishing a leaner, more profitable, and strategically optimised affiliate program. Cutter & Squidge is now set for even bigger partnerships and continued growth in 2025 – stay tuned! 🚀

Together, we helped Cutter & Squidge achieve:

+46.8%

ROI increase

+40.7%

increase in clicks

+148%

revenue increase

About the Brand

Cutter & Squidge, a family-owned bakery with a strong presence in Soho, London since 2015 and have been recognised in the Sunday Times 100 as one of Britain’s fastest-growing private companies.

The Story

The bakery underwent a major business transformation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With 90% of sales shifting online, the brand needed to optimise its affiliate marketing strategy to drive sustainable customer acquisition and improve ROI. They previously struggled within the affiliate space with a flat CPA structure which didn’t differentiate between new and existing customers resulting in high costs, lower efficiency and limited control.

The Rakuten Advertising Solution

After carefully reviewing platforms Cutter & Squidge chose Rakuten, as it offered the Strategic Launch Package (SLP). Rakuten Advertising then worked with Cutter & Squidge to build and execute several key steps to help deliver against the objective to increase efficiency and control, improve customer acquisition and enhance ROI and long-term scalability.

Strategic Partnerships

By utilising the Partnership Discovery solution Cutter & Squidge were able to start of with a clean slate approach where they were able to input certain criteria and then handpick from a selection generated high-performing partner rather than migrating existing publishers with the aim of prioritising quality over quantity.

Improved Reporting

Leveraging the Rakuten Advertising Analytics Portal and Affiliate Intelligence to build and customise reports as and when needed. For example, Prompt instantly delivered a breakdown in a table or graph to help Cutter & Squidge to understand new versus exiting customer in terms of the split and their % of total sales.

Leveraging Audience Engine with Skimlinks

Skimlinks were able to activate premium content sites, ensuring high quality traffic from editorial sites exclusively; leveraging our audience engine technology to commission accordingly. Budget and exposure were auto‑optimised toward partners driving stronger engagement and conversions, protecting the margin.

Optimised Commission Structure

Introduced a differentiated commission model based on publisher verticals, with separate tiers for New and Existing customers to maximise ROI. Whilst avoiding voucher sites, the brand partnered with closed-user groups, gaining full control over discounting while preventing overspending from leaked coupons.

Having an agency partner has transformed our affiliates strategy. As a small business, it’s difficult for us to have a dedicated expert within our business and having someone who knows the affiliates network and strategy inside out, as well as managing the day to day, has been an excellent investment for us. We’ve seen huge MoM and YoY growth and have the confidence that the partnership will just keep growing as our business does.

Rebecca Dickinson
Senior Brand Marketing Manager, Cutter & Squidge

Since C&S’s main goal right now is new customer acquisition, I use Prompt to quickly build reports comparing new versus existing customers. For example, I’ll just type in a question like ‘show me the customer split and % of total sales’ and Prompt instantly delivers the breakdown in a table or graph. I can drop those insights straight into my weekly client reports without spending extra time running manual queries or formatting data.

Camila Carosone
Affiliate Consultant, Rakuten Certified Agency Partner

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