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Frank Darling & DMi Partners

Diversifying luxury partners

The Results

With the help of DMi Partners and Rakuten Advertising, Frank Darling diversified their luxury partner mix to better align with business goals and create a more cost-effective customer acquisition strategy. In the 6 month period after Frank Darling joined the DMi and Rakuten Advertising program, they achieved:

+185%

Increase for Top Publisher Partner

+56%

Increase in Publishers that Drove Traffic

+57%

Increase in Publishers that Generated >1 Sale

About the Brand

Frank Darling helps people commemorate life moments with bespoke diamond jewelry, specializing in modern, heirloom-worthy pieces practical for everyday wear and engagement rings. They provide a truly personalized experience, offering an ‘in-home try-on program’ and a hands-on, educational, and transparent concierge service.

DMi Partners is an award-winning, full-service digital marketing agency that deeply understands the digital channel and how to attract consumers at every step of the funnel. Their approach to affiliate marketing and CRM management is trusted by the world’s leading consumer brands. DMi successfully manages over 150 large-scale partner programs and is a 3-time award winner for Best Managed Affiliate Program through PerformanceIn and recently won Agency Team of the Year at Performance Marketing World.

The Story

Prior to working with DMi Partners and Rakuten Advertising, the program had a high reliance on loyalty partners and sub-affiliate partners who accounted for almost half of all program revenue and traffic. By further investing in the affiliate channel, they hoped to break that mold and create more partnerships with a holistic full-funnel strategy that aligned with their brand goals and created a more cost-effective customer acquisition strategy.

The Rakuten Advertising Solution

Through careful consideration and analysis, the teams sought to optimize the entire Frank Darling affiliate strategy to outdeliver on their business goals. They achieved this through:

Adjusting program commission rates on a partner-by-partner basis to emphasize the value of each unique partnership.

Creating an optimization plan to analyze which partners provided the most incremental impact, allowing Frank Darling to further increase exposure with that partner.

Implementing a recruitment strategy to garner new content publishers that educate consumers on Frank Darling’s unique offerings.

Leveraging Rakuten Advertising’s vast global network of publishers and exclusive benchmarking technology to determine the ideal partnerships for Frank Darling.

Because of the tremendous product Frank Darling offers coupled with the insights we’ve been able to garner through the technology provided by Rakuten Advertising, DMi Partners has been able to develop a strategic approach to the affiliate channel for Frank Darling which has allowed them to tap into new audiences and reap the benefits of what an incremental affiliate program can do for new customer acquisition.

Emily Spaeter
Senior Client Account Manager at DMi Partners

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