At Affilifest Margate, a panel featuring leaders from HelloFresh, Skyscanner, New Balance, and impact.com tackled one of the biggest topics in modern partnership marketing: the convergence of affiliate and influencer strategies. Here's what affiliate managers and need to know.

Why the Old Playbook Doesn’t Cut It Anymore

Many marketers still cling to the idea that influencer marketing sits neatly at the top of the funnel and affiliate is firmly planted at the bottom. But today’s customer journey is far from linear, and sticking to outdated thinking is a recipe for stagnation.

“We’re leveraging different types of influencers throughout the funnel,” said Mashal Hussain, Growth Partnerships & Affiliates Manager at HelloFresh & Green Chef. “We’ve had success taking influencer content and distributing it through affiliate and paid channels to create more cohesive, high-performing campaigns.”

Skyscanner’s Julie Wojtkiewicz echoed the need to break down silos. Her team formed a joint affiliate-influencer unit to create the Skyscanner Creator Programme allowing them to scale creator relationships and align content more closely with performance goals.

✅ Affiliate manager tip: Stop thinking of channels in isolation. Treat affiliate, influencer, and referral as integrated components of your broader partnership marketing plan.

Structuring Teams to Drive Affiliate Program Growth

How your teams are structured can make or break your success in this new era.

At HelloFresh, influencer marketing is split between brand-focused and performance-focused roles. This dual-track approach allows the company to optimise for both reach and conversions while creating more synergy between brand messaging and affiliate promotions.

Meanwhile, Skyscanner created a hybrid team blending affiliate and influencer skill sets, helping them scale without sacrificing personalization or performance.

🧩 Practical insight: Consider forming cross-functional pods that bring together affiliate experts, influencer managers, and content strategists to work toward shared KPIs.

Expanding Your Reach Through Unexpected Personas

When David Mirshahi took over affiliate partnerships at New Balance, he leaned into influencer testing, and made some unexpected discoveries.

“Nobody at New Balance would have suggested working with momfluencers. But when we did, sales went through the roof,” he shared. “Affiliate allowed us to test personas we never would’ve considered through traditional brand or PR.”

The ability to test and learn is a recurring theme in retail affiliate insights. For David, performance partnerships with non-obvious influencer segments are now a core growth strategy.

🎯 Tactic to try: Use the affiliate channel as a low-risk testing ground for new audience personas. Track both upper- and lower-funnel performance to gauge effectiveness.

Measuring the New Metrics That Matter

While traditional KPIs like conversions and CPA still hold value, today’s best programs go deeper.

Mashal explained that HelloFresh tracks both first-click and last-click attribution to better understand the customer journey and determine how influencer content nudges users along.

Julie added that in travel, success often starts with traffic and user engagement, not just bookings.

“Inspiration often happens weeks before a booking. We look at engagement signals to measure whether a creator has successfully pushed a user down the funnel.”

📊 Affiliate manager advice: Don’t get stuck on last-click metrics. Use multi-touch attribution to understand how each partner type contributes across the funnel.

Unlocking Authenticity with Long-Form Content

One major advantage of influencer marketing? Storytelling.

“Affiliate formats often don’t give you space to tell a full story,” Mashal said. “Influencers can bring the emotion and lifestyle aspect to life - and that’s something we’re now trying to repurpose across channels.”

Skyscanner uses long-form content to showcase unique travel experiences like camel rides in Morocco or White Lotus-style getaways in Thailand, sparking interest before users even know where they want to travel.

📢 Partnership marketing move: Repurpose influencer-generated content across your affiliate placements and brand channels to maintain authenticity and boost ROI.

Rethinking Payout Models: It’s Not Just CPA Anymore

The panel unanimously agreed: performance-based compensation alone won’t cut it with influencers.

“CPA doesn’t work for influencers,” David stated bluntly. “Payouts are delayed, and it’s hard for creators to sustain their work on that model. We’ve shifted to CPC or hybrid models, where they get immediate feedback and reward for performance.”

Skyscanner built a gamified milestone model that rewards creators with bonuses as they hit traffic and engagement benchmarks.

💡 Affiliate manager tip: Introduce hybrid models like CPC + bonus, tiered revenue share, or milestone incentives to motivate influencer creators without sacrificing performance accountability.

Budgeting for Affiliate and Influencer Campaigns in 2025

When asked how they budget for affiliate versus influencer campaigns, the panel offered a refreshingly honest answer: they don’t always get it right.

“Affiliate is hard to predict,” said David. “Things can go viral. We used to overspend and apologise later, but once we proved results, the business gave us more.”

Julie shared that Skyscanner starts small, tests performance, and scales investment only once a partner proves ROI.

🔁 Affiliate strategy tip: Use a test-and-learn mindset. Start with pilot campaigns, show incremental value, and grow budgets based on outcomes, not assumptions.

Social Commerce Is Coming. Are You Ready?

Julie noted that platforms like Instagram and TikTok are shortening the discovery-to-conversion window, especially for travel.

“With booking functionality embedded in social platforms, we’re seeing a shift toward ‘instant inspiration’ - a user sees a destination and books within a few clicks.”

Social commerce isn’t just for retail anymore. With affiliate links and creator content baked into social media, travel, fashion, beauty, and food brands alike have a new way to monetize moments.

🔮 Trend to watch: Social platforms are becoming commerce engines. Make sure your affiliate program includes social-savvy creators and the tech to support fast-click attribution.

Final Advice for Affiliate Managers Kicking Off Performance Influencer Campaigns

We closed the panel with some hard-won lessons from the trenches.

• David’s advice: Don’t bet everything on one creator. Use affiliate influencer platforms to test at scale.
   

• Julie’s takeaway: Start small and build tiers within your creator program to keep both micro and macro influencers engaged.
   

• Mashal’s insight: Work closely with other teams. PR, brand, content, to align on messaging and leverage learnings.
   

🧠 Affiliate manager tip: Building a strong affiliate-influencer strategy takes patience, collaboration, and clear communication. Don’t go it alone.

The Future of Performance Partnerships Is Full-Funnel

The key message from Affilifest Margate? Affiliate, influencer, and referral marketing are no longer separate tools - they’re part of a unified strategy.

Smart affiliate managers are:

• Creating integrated teams
   

• Testing new personas through influencer channels
   

• Rewarding performance with flexible payment models
   

• Driving ecommerce affiliate trends by merging authenticity with measurability
   

Whether you're launching a new affiliate program or optimising an existing one, the future lies in partnerships that span the funnel and align with consumer behavior.