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Furthr & City Beach

Unlocking stellar online performance to drive in-store sales

The Results

The Furthr and City Beach partnership kicked off in March 2023. Leveraging the stellar success of its online program, City Beach unlocked the Furthr partnership to drive in-store sales. The campaign has gone from strength to strength, resulting in:

+4.6K

orders

$61

average-order-value, 40% higher than Furthr online orders

93%

of transactions occurred in-store

+$241k

in Q4 sales

About the Brand

Less effort. More Joy. Furthr is a simple and smart cashback and loyalty app powered by seamless card-linking technology. Launched in Australia, the Furthr team is on a mission to save people time, effort, and money to redirect them towards the things that really matter in their own lives.

What began as a tiny store off Queen Street Mall in Brisbane, City Beach, has become part of many Australians’ lives. From humble beginnings in 1985 until now, City Beach is committed to building huge stores that are fun to visit and great places to hang out when shopping with friends. Now, City Beach online makes it even easier to shop for all your favourite surf and streetwear brands whenever they suit you.

The Story

Keen to explore offline partnerships through the affiliate channel, City Beach chose Furthr to test the waters and launch its first O2O affiliate campaign. After recognising the opportunities and growth Furthr drove for its online program, City Beach leveraged the team to increase brand loyalty with Aussie shoppers by rewarding them for online and in-store transactions.

A purely performance-based partnership, with an agreed CPA, made the campaign with Furthr an easy entrance for City Beach into the omnichannel world. The campaign ran throughout Q4 of 2023, with the promotion nationwide across 59 City Beach stores.

The Rakuten Advertising Solution

Technology is key, but campaigns go from good to great when underpinned by a true partnership founded on human connections. Here is how the Rakuten and Furthr teams worked together to deliver results that outperformed expectations:

The human connection

The Rakuten client services team brokered the partnership between Furthr and City Beach, ensuring KPIs and goals were aligned and all parties understood what was needed for the campaign to succeed.

Great technology

The City Beach and Furthr partnership is underpinned by Rakuten’s technology, capturing transactions through an FTP-style transfer within the Rakuten dashboard and generating real-time performance reports for campaign optimisations.

Seamless integration

Furthr’s cardlinking technology works anywhere debit and credit cards are accepted and is directly integrated with the Rakuten platform. The direct integration removes the need for technical setup and in-store staff training, enabling the partnership to be set live within as little as two weeks.

We initially secured sign-off for a trial with Furthr, as part of our growth strategy for the affiliate channel. The trial of an omnichannel partner to drive online and in-store activation was a game-changer for our department and effectively changed how the business looks at the channel. We used to only focus on online, when in fact, our customers are omnichannel shoppers and deserve to have the same experience regardless of where they shop. The success we witnessed during the trial solidified our decision to continue our collaboration with Furthr and served as a catalyst for exploring other innovative strategies from the Rakuten team. The inventive approach and the tangible results achieved together have undoubtedly set the stage for our growth and continued partnership.
Cristel Gonzales
Digital Marketing Manager, City Beach

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