If you’re a financial services brand that’s on NerdWallet or Bankrate, you’re already doing something right. Comparison sites are a powerful part of the acquisition mix, and ranking well with the biggest ones is very important. But if you’ve ever found yourself wondering if your affiliate channel is pulling its full weight, or if you’re scaling it right, this is a must-read.
Here’s how we think about building partnerships that really work.
Think about your publisher mix the same way you would about any portfolio
Many brands naturally stick to the big comparison sites, and that makes sense. Traffic is important and loyalty is real. But there is a real benefit to going beyond them, and it goes beyond reaching more people. If a potential customer is doing research with a savings account or credit card and keeps seeing your product well placed across different sites and in different contexts, that repetition is doing something. It validates the decision they’ve already made and builds familiarity before they even get to your site. This is sometimes called the halo effect, and it’s worth designing for it deliberately.
Medium-sized comparison sites and contextually relevant native placements (think editorial content that sits next to a product they’re already researching) can play a real role in that process. The question isn’t whether the big sites aren’t worth your investment. That’s right. Regardless of whether you are leaving something on the table by not moving forward.
Give your publishers something to work with
Here’s something to consider if you haven’t already: what data are your publishing partners actually working with when they’re trying to prepare for you?
In most affiliate programs, publishers can see clicks and account opens. That’s what they prepare for, because that’s what they show up for. But if you really care about funded accounts, long-term deposit rates, or customers who will stay, that signal is much lower than your publishers can see, unless you share it with them.
When you close that feedback process, by sharing lower funnel conversion data with key partners, the relationship changes. Your publisher is no longer just trying to drive volume. They are trying to call you their version of the ideal customer, because you told them what that looks like. That’s a more productive partnership for both parties, and in a channel built on performance, it often produces better results.
The good news is that this does not require transferring individual customer records to our publishing partners. Many brands do this through their own managed network platform, sharing indicators of aggregated results such as publisher sponsored account rate or average deposit amount per traffic segment. That’s enough to meaningfully change the way a publisher prepares, and it stays comfortably within the usual parameters of data privacy. The details will vary depending on your market and product type, so it’s worth discussing with your compliance team before you set it up, but it’s not uncommon for blockers to think it will be.
Check what your rating really tells you
The last click attribute is the default for many interactive programs, and for many channels it’s a logical starting point. In digital relationships, however, it can give you an incomplete picture.
The reason is simple. Financial services customers do not always change in a linear fashion. Someone might research on a comparison site, leave, see your product elsewhere, and then come right back to your site to apply a week later. In the last click model, that trip represents a direct visit and gives nothing to the comparison site that did the original activity. In the long run, if you make investment decisions based on that view alone, you may be looking down the channel.
Growth testing should be built into how you think about publisher performance. The key question to help you answer is: what customers did our partners bring us, compared to customers they would have gotten anyway? It takes more effort to set up than standard attribution reporting, but it gives you a much more honest view of where the station is moving the needle in earnest.
Align your spending with what the business needs
One pattern to check is whether your affiliate investment is meeting your business needs in real time, or whether it’s running on a fixed schedule. For financial services products, the value of a new customer does not change. Deposit quality, balance size, and tenure all affect how important an acquisition really is, and those priorities can change depending on where the business is located.
A more dynamic approach treats the publisher’s investment as a response to those signals. If you need high balance, long term depositors, your bidding strategy and prioritization should reflect that. If volume is more important, dial accordingly. It’s not a departure from the way many groups already think about paid channels. It’s about applying that same logic to partnerships, where it’s sometimes considered a lot of work to set up and evaluate.
Bottom line
Digital partnerships and sub-channels can be a key source of growth for financial services brands, and the good news is that the fundamentals of performance improvement are indeed in place. Expand your publisher mix beyond the obvious. Share meaningful data with your partners so they can achieve the results that matter to your business. Check that your estimate gives you the full picture. And make sure your investment strategy responds to what the business needs at any given time.
If you’re already doing all of this, great. If any of it raises a question about how your current system is set up, that’s probably a useful conversation starter.
