HelloFresh: Maximising partnerships

Client: HelloFresh

Industry: Food subscriptions

Territory focus: UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland

Target customers: Young families with disposable income

HelloFresh is a subscription model recipe box service, with a strong presence in EMEA and sister brands in the US, Australia and Canada. The brand provides customers with easy-to-follow recipes and fresh, high-quality ingredients. 

The HelloFresh team needed an agency to improve the overall affiliate mix of their programmes in the UK and Europe, with the aim to ensure the programmes didn’t rely too heavily on one type of affiliate partner. Team Silverbean also needed to nurture the programme’s brand awareness to increase new customer acquisition and improve consumer lifetime value (LTV).

Onboarding relationships

To improve the overall affiliate mix, leveraging our strong publisher relationships was essential. We built and nurtured good relationships from the outset: every new publisher received a welcome pack giving them an overview of the brand, insight into the programme, tips and advice for promotion and more. 

Budget maximisation

We spread our programme management budget strategically across the mix of affiliate types, which ensured HelloFresh is visible at various touchpoints along the consumer journey. The largest portion of the budget we reserved for strong ROI exposures, and we kept back 15% for test-and-learn exposures as well as brand awareness, upper-funnel content pieces. 

Online and offline

The team used several different strategies to increase new customer levels in conjunction with new affiliate partners. We tapped into online to offline partnerships, working with premium content publisher, Grazia, on a campaign that included both digital and print, including online advertorial, a competition mechanic, social amplification, an exclusive discount code and a display page in a fitness special print edition.  

Paid social and display tactics

Another campaign combined content, paid social and targeted display ads, ensuring visibility across all touchpoints. Upon revisiting the publisher’s website, the consumer was served a banner with an incentivising offer, encouraging them to subscribe to receive HelloFresh boxes. This resulted in a 14% conversion rate.

App integration

We also used tactical partnerships, for example with a banking app which had a relevant demographic. There, we trialled a rare offer available for both new and existing customers, with an added cashback incentive for new customers to encourage the core acquisition element. This became a top 3 performer for the two-month period we ran this offer and our efforts at balancing acquisition vs retention worked with only 39% redemption from existing customers.

Seasonal gift cards

We implemented added value incentives, introducing gift cards to improve loyalty and customer acquisition, and changed the gift card brand depending on the consumer moment we were tapping into, for example a floral gift card for Mother’s Day campaigns.

Team Silverbean developed HelloFresh’s affiliate programmes in the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland from traditional, lower-funnel focused programmes to mature, partnership-led channels. All now boast a diverse range of partnerships and huge new customer acquisition growth.

We established long-term, upper-funnel partnerships with premium media partners and continue to broaden our reach to encompass new partners and tap into new audiences. For the UK, we achieved 22% above target for upper funnel contribution, and drove content contribution for the programme to 15%. For the Swiss programme, our work drove content contribution to 20%. 

We also worked strategically with lower-funnel partners and focused on diversifying the traffic sources coming through the programme. These combined efforts drove an average 1200% increase in new customer leads per month over four territories.