Admitad and Revolut case study

Revolut’s affiliate program has become a hit with publishers in dozens of countries. Thanks to its attractive fixed rate for acquiring new users and allowance of traffic from many sources, publishers are eager to promote the program, creating thousands of new users for the Revolut app.

Client profile: Revolut

Revolut is one of the most popular financial applications in the world. It offers personal and business accounts, currency conversion at favourable rates, loans, investment portfolios, subscription management and even hotel bookings. More than 25 million people worldwide use the app, including almost 2 million in Poland alone. Established in 2015, the British fintech firm has so far raised $1.7 billion in funding and is one of the best-known unicorns globally, with a valuation of $33 billion.

Business objectives of the campaign

As the flagship brand of the innovative fintech sector, Revolut has focused itself on new, disruptive ways of customer acquisition – ways often avoided by legacy competitors like banks and other financial institutions.

Recent years have seen the company testing the potential of affiliate programs for customer acquisition. In early 2022, Revolut decided to work closely with Admitad, inspired by its position in the affiliate market and success stories from other clients. The company’s goal was to use new channels to acquire users, primarily on the competitive European market, but also on promising markets in APAC countries.

A new formula for success

Revolut’s affiliate program launched on the Admitad Partner Network in February 2022, covering more than 30 other European countries, including Poland, as well as Singapore and Australia. In November 2022, a second partner program for Revolut Business was launched on Admitad’s network.

Revolut’s formula for success included offering publishers highly-favourable terms of cooperation. For each new user acquisition, a publisher would receive a competitive rate. This rate has since increased by 12.5% since the start of our collaboration. 

A liberal traffic acquisition policy also contributed to their success. Publishers could utilise many traffic sources without restriction, such as advertisements in social media, internet forums, messenger apps, YouTube videos, blogs, e-mails, banners or contextual advertisements. The program was therefore open to a large number of publishers, each of whom could test a variety of ways for reaching their audiences. 

Some of their most effective tactics included:

• User acquisition on content websites (blogs, rankings, YouTube videos and Google Ads). One lifestyle & fashion portal prominently featured a piece of content on their homepage, resulting in more than 10% of total registrations for the whole campaign. Another website, an online shop for campers, hikers & travellers, placed a Revolut banner on its main page, driving a significant number of new registrations.
• Cashback services were offered on all purchases using Revolut, for buying Revolut premium products (like its Metal card), and percent cashbacks for transactions using those products. Users of the Opera browser gained access to an exclusive in-browser cashback feature. 
• Promocodes were offered providing 3 months of Revolut Premium for free, a bonus after registration and free delivery on premium products like the Revolut Metal card.
• Some publishers provided discounts for premium Revolut products during Black Week and other big shopping opportunities. 
• Others provided hints on how to successfully solve Revolut’s cryptocurrency quiz, incentivising users to try out this new functionality.

Results

Between February to December 2022, Admitad increased Revolut’s overall user acquisition by 1330%. On average, publishers participating in the Revolut program earned more than twice as much as with other programs in the financial sector. As for benefits on the side of Revolut, 50% of signups converted into new, active users.