As Australia (and the rest of the world) navigate a turbulent economic environment characterised by inflationary pressures, global conflicts, and a retail recession, brands are facing mounting pressure to do more with less. The combination of rising tariffs, ongoing supply chain disruptions, and global geopolitical instability is sending ripples through the retail sector, pushing both consumers and businesses into a more cautious mindset. A March 2025 survey found that 38% of Australian ecommerce retailers report being affected, citing rising costs, margin pressure, and increased shipping rates.

 

At the same time, discretionary spending has slowed, with traditional retailers experiencing profit squeezes and an increase in brands going into voluntary administration. Yet amidst the uncertainty, a shift is underway. Forward thinking CMOs are turning to performance-based marketing strategies that offer a low-risk but high-control and efficient growth channel.

 

Unlike traditional models that rely on upfront media spend with no guaranteed returns, performance marketing channels like affiliate/partnerships, influencers, and loyalty-based programs, allow brands to pay only when real results are delivered. This pay-for-outcome approach not only reduces financial risk but also offers the flexibility and agility needed to adapt in real-time.

 

How Affiliate Marketing Can Help Recession-Proof Marketing Strategies

Pay for results only

Affiliate marketing operates on a pay-for-performance model, meaning brands only pay when a specific action, such as a sale, is successfully completed. Unlike traditional advertising models that charge upfront for impressions or clicks, with no guarantee of return, affiliate marketing directly ties cost to measurable outcomes. This approach significantly reduces financial risk, especially during periods of economic uncertainty, by ensuring that marketing budgets are spent only on activities that deliver tangible business results. This channel provides marketers greater control over ROI, budget allocation, and scalability, making affiliate marketing a highly efficient, accountable, and recession-resilient channel.

 

Cost-effective new customer acquisition

In a turbulent economy, reaching new customers becomes expensive as it can often cause customer acquisition costs (CAC) to increase due to reduced consumer demand, tighter marketing budgets, and intensified competition. This is where affiliate marketing proves especially valuable. By partnering with influencers, loyalty platforms, content creators, and review sites, brands can gain access to highly engaged audiences without the upfront costs typically associated with traditional paid media campaigns.

What makes affiliate marketing even more powerful during these periods is its ability to integrate with a brand’s first-party data, like purchase behavior, product preferences, and transaction history. By combining affiliate insights with first-party data, brands can better identify the partners that drive customers, tailor their marketing strategies, and optimise commission strategies accordingly for targeted campaign performance ensuring that acquisition efforts are focused on quality, not just quantity.

 

Drive customer retention

In uncertain times, brands need to have a good balance between acquisition and retention to maintain stability and growth. Affiliate marketing isn’t just a tool for acquiring new customers, it can also be a powerful driver of customer retention and long-term value. By leveraging loyalty affiliates, cashback platforms, and fostering partnerships, brands can design campaigns to re-engage existing customers. This enables marketers to customize commission structures and offers depending on whether the goal is acquisition, reactivation, or upselling. By integrating affiliate performance data with first-party insights, brands can also optimize for customer lifetime value (CLTV) for building meaningful, profitable customer relationships over time.

 

Scalability and growth 

Unlike traditional marketing channels that often require large upfront commitments, affiliate programs allow brands to scale up or down easily based on performance, budget, and business needs. This makes it an ideal channel for brands looking to grow strategically while staying agile. Furthermore, modern affiliate platforms provide real-time data and performance insights allowing marketers to see which partners and campaigns are delivering value and to adjust strategies quickly. This ability to pivot, pause, or amplify campaigns dynamically ensures that marketing spend is always optimised.

 

Supports every stage of the funnel 

Affiliate marketing supports every stage of the customer journey, from awareness to loyalty. Traditionally viewed as a more narrow channel limited to last-click incentives, this perception overlooks the broader potential of affiliate marketing. Marketers today embrace a more diversified approach that includes a wider range of partners to minimize channel risk and drive success in today’s dynamic digital landscape. Brands have the flexibility to engage with content at the top of the funnel, or drive sales at the bottom of the funnel, or maximize the value of each customer interaction in the marketing ecosystem by nurturing customers from first touch to post-purchase re-engagement. 

 

Affiliate marketing partners can help throughout the customer journey:

Funnel Stage	Partner Types
Awareness	Influencers, bloggers. and content sites
Consideration	Review sites and social media platforms
Conversion	Loyalty, cashback, coupons, and comparison sites
Retention	Loyalty platforms

 

Measureable and transparent performance

On affiliate marketing platforms like Partnerize, brands gain better visibility into their affiliate performance, understanding not just which partners drive conversions, but how those conversions occur across the customer journey. By combining performance insights with advanced attribution capabilities, brands can identify which customer touchpoints truly influence outcomes and how each partner contributes at different stages of the funnel. This level of granularity helps in ensuring that commission costs are aligned with real value, not just on last clicks, enabling fairer and more effective partner compensation. In times when margins are under pressure, this kind of transparency and accountability is essential for optimizing marketing spend, reallocating budget to high-performing channels, and driving sustainable and measurable growth.

 

Machine-mediated market

AI is revolutionising how marketers understand and optimize performance. By processing vast amounts of data in real time, AI enables predictive modeling, helping brands anticipate which customer journeys are most likely to convert. It enhances better decision-making by powering real-time analytics, AI-powered matchmaking with partners, personalized content delivery, and even fraud detection by flagging anomalies like ad hijacking or fake conversions. AI also simplifies the complexity of multi-touch journeys by uncovering hidden patterns across devices, platforms, and sessions, enabling marketers to act with more confidence and agility.

Attribution, when powered by AI, also becomes far more intelligent and actionable. Instead of relying on outdated models like last click, using AI driven attribution models, brands can shift their spend quickly, scale high-performing campaigns, test incrementality, and make better budget decisions. 

 

Benefits of the Partnerize Platform

 

End-to-end affiliate management platform

“End-to-end partnership management” means having a platform that does everything – from kickstarting an affiliate program, finding partners to work with, managing the program, paying partnerss, tracking performance, preventing fraud to ensure that no partners are violating the terms, and everything needed to optimize it. By consolidating all essential affiliate program functions into one platform, Partnerize eliminates the complexities and expenses of managing disparate tools, saving time, reducing errors, and offering a unified, accurate view of performance for optimized growth.

 

The power of automation

It’s a no-brainer that the market has shifted and manual affiliate programs are gradually being outpaced and outspent by AI-optimized competitors. Automation is key for brands looking to lead the next wave of partnership growth. With Partnerize , clients have the solutions necessary to take decisive action and gain a competitive advantage within their partner programs. With access to Konnecto a sophisticated set of solutions designed to amplify partnership management, clients will receive targeted partner performance recommendations, instantly highlight competitive gaps, and prescribe optimisations. This suite includes:

• Advanced partner discovery capabilities to identify and recruit high-potential new partners, leveraging AI for AI-powered optimisation and personalisation in affiliate recruitment and matching.
• AI-powered insights to provide data-driven guidance for partner selection and optimisation, turning enhanced data insights into actionable strategies.
• Competitive intelligence to understand competitive partner strategies and identify opportunities, facilitating diversification of traffic sources and strategic growth beyond traditional channels.
• Predictive fraud and risk scoring to protect program integrity and investment, further strengthening Partnerize’s category-leading fraud detection capabilities via our BrandVerity solution.
• Robust clickstream measurement for granular path to performance analysis.
• Benchmark reporting to measure success against industry standards.

 

Best-Match Partner Discovery and Activation

Curating and optimizing a diverse portfolio of partners is paramount to the success of a partnership program. With Partnerize, advertisers have the ability to find right-fit partners via:

• Joined partners. Evaluate partners that are joined to Partnerize using precision filtering functionality which allows you to search by partner attributes such as type, region and more–results that are served up based on relevancy for your brand using opportunity potential based on lookalike brands.
• The broader digital ecosystem. Explore limitless partnership opportunities with the capability to discover and activate partners from beyond the platform with filter functionality such as social following and promotion of your competitors.

 

Get Actionable Insights to Boost Your Return on Investment (ROI)

In affiliate marketing, tracking and analytics are key to understanding performance and maximizing ROI. Partnerize’s advanced and customizable tracking capabilities provide comprehensive, real-time insights to track, report, and commission on unlimited custom data points, identify top-performing partners, and optimize campaigns with precision. As a result, marketers have the actionable insights necessary to make data-driven decisions that drive profitable growth.

 

Maximize Profitability with Flexible Commissioning

With a technology platform like Partnerize, brands are able to work with an unlimited number of data parameters, not just for reporting, but also for commissioning. With all those additional data points and a flexible commissioning tool, the options available for commissioning are virtually limitless. Additionally, access to more and more timely data can help:

• Understand what shoppers are buying so brands can deliver better offers and creative
• Analyze the mix of new and repeat customers to align programs with business KPIs
• Understand and commission on the margins of what is sold to drive profitability
• Learn which messages and offers work best and optimize
• Unlock data to help make better decisions and drive the right growth

 

In an unpredictable economic climate where every dollar must work harder, partnerships has emerged as a recession-resilient growth engine delivering ROI, reach, and growth in one of the most challenging retail landscapes Australia (and elsewhere)has encountered. Brands adapting now will own the next decade of growth and influence. 

 

To learn more about how Partnerize can help transform your partnerships, contact us here.