beehiiv, a leading force in the newsletter industry, is rapidly gaining traction among digital creators and small businesses worldwide. With its innovative newsletter tool, beehiiv is helping users to captivate their audiences, scale their operations, and generate sustainable revenue.
While beehiiv has taken the competitive newsletter market by storm, it wasn't an easy start. To stand out, beehiiv turned to affiliate marketing. By harnessing the power of mouth-to-mouth, beehiiv aimed to drive new leads and foster brand advocates without investing in high-risk marketing strategies such as paid advertising.
We spoke with Tyler Gillespie, beehiiv’s Head of Partnerships and SEO, to explore their experience using Rewardful. Tyler shared insights into the team’s favorite Rewardful features and how their relatively new affiliate program has already contributed to 12-14% of beehiiv’s monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
Since this was the first affiliate program that beehiiv would be launching, they sought a straightforward, cost-effective affiliate management tool that would meet its core needs without unnecessary complexities.
Initially, beehiiv considered affiliate platforms like Impact and PartnerStack. However, these platforms presented challenges during sales calls and misalignments in pricing and feature offerings. For instance, Impact’s premium price and PartnerStack’s affiliate marketplace and service fee (PartnerStack charges a percentage based on your affiliate revenues) did not align with beehiiv’s affiliate program requirements.
Rewardful emerged as the ideal solution, offering a robust and affordable affiliate program solution with seamless onboarding, fair pricing, and 0% commission fees. Rewardful quickly became the perfect choice for beehiiv, especially considering their lack of prior experience in affiliate programs and their desire for a low-risk solution.
Related: dive deeper into the comparison between Rewardful and PartnerStack as well as Rewardful and Impact.
"With other affiliate platforms, like Impact or PartnerStack, we had a lot of friction during the sales call, in the evaluation process, pricing, and more. On the contrary, Rewardful made it really easy to integrate and onboard. We got started quickly with minimal friction and in a very cost-effective way."
Beyond the quick onboarding and seamless setup of the tracking system, Tyler was particularly impressed with Rewardful’s built-in self-referral fraud detection. This feature has been invaluable in identifying suspicious sign-ups and self-referrals, instantly notifying the team of potential fraud, and allowing them to take swift action against bad actors.
Rewardful’s flexible APIs also enabled Tyler to integrate their affiliate program directly within the beehiiv app. This seamless integration allows users to discover and join the affiliate program while using the platform, enhancing visibility and boosting recruitment for beehiiv’s affiliate campaigns.
Additionally, Rewardful’s PayPal mass payment feature has streamlined affiliate payouts, making it easy for Tyler to reward affiliates’ hard work. Even with hundreds of affiliates, paying commissions now requires just a single click, saving time and reducing human error. Rewardful automatically calculates and generates the payout list, and PayPal handles the transactions.
The combination of Rewardful’s robust affiliate marketing tools and beehiiv’s strategic affiliate marketing initiatives has proven to be highly effective. In a relatively short time, beehiiv's affiliate program now contributes 12-14% of its MRR, and it’s projected to reach $1.2 to $1.5 million by the end of the year (2024).
See how the free affiliate course offered by Rewardful helped Tyler lay the foundation for beehiiv’s thriving partnership program, including:
Seeing the rapid success of beehiiv’s partnership program, Tyler aims to expand it even further. The team plans to introduce additional partnership tiers, rewards, and milestones to boost affiliate engagement—and they intend to leverage Rewardful to help achieve these goals.
"If you're looking for affiliate software that can scale with your business—whether you have an existing program or you're just looking to start a new program—Rewardful is extremely flexible and simple, offering exactly what you need without unnecessary extras."
Interested to see how Rewardful affiliate management solution can transform your business’s affiliate program?
