When Bank Iowa in West Des Moines wanted to expand the reach of its deposit gathering beyond its core footprint, it turned to a CD Valet, a digital marketplace with an affiliate program that lets online depositors shop banks' certificate of deposit offerings.
Bank Iowa posted its rates on the site. The tactic has contributed to the $2.2 billion-asset institution doubling its CD portfolio over the past three years, to $615 million on Dec. 31. Marketing Director Josh Fleming called Bank Iowa's partnership with CD Valet "one of our shiniest examples of an affiliate program that's working well."
"When they work right, [affiliate] partnerships help banks establish relationships with high-target prospects they may not otherwise have been able to reach, and all without having to carry a ton of overhead costs," Fleming told American Banker.
Affiliate marketing, which was in its infancy just two decades ago, has matured into one of the financial service industry's most reliable customer-acquisition channels. Banks and credit unions have come to value the affiliate channel for its ability to drive growth in deposit accounts, credit card investment and other products, but also for the precision by which its results can be measured. In most cases clients pay only for proven relationships, accounts opened or sales closed.
"You see a lot of digital marketing where people pay for just an impression or a click," Sarah Carroll, marketing director at the $13 billion-asset Live Oak Bancshares in Wilmington, North Carolina, said. "This way, you can pay for an actual sale or account opening — something that actually flows through to a banking relationship."
A growing business line
Affiliate marketing has "become a cornerstone of performance strategy for financial services providers," Christena Garduno, CEO at Dallas-based marketing agency Media Culture, said. "The ability to connect with highly targeted, intent-driven audiences through trusted publishers, creators and platforms has made affiliate marketing not just a complementary tactic, but a key driver of growth."
Kaveh Vadat, founder and President of RiseOpp, a San Francisco-based fintech that offers fractional Chief Marketing Officer services, said, "People clicking through these channels are often comparison shopping, which means they're further along in the decision-making process."
Affiliate marketing's origins extend to 1989, when entrepreneur William Tobin began offering commissions for online referrals to one of his startups, PC Flowers. Tobin received a U.S. patent for the concept in 2000. That was a few years after Amazon launched its affiliate program, Amazon Associates, and around the time the first major affiliate networks, Rakuten and CJ Affiliate, arrived on the scene.
Today, it's a big business. U.S. companies of all types, including financial services providers, are projected to spend $12 billion on affiliate marketing in 2025, with outlays expected to grow to $16 billion by 2028, according to eMarketer, the New York-based market research firm.
"We're seeing more and more financial services companies on board with affiliate," Carroll said. "We're all having to be smarter about every dollar we spend from a marketing perspective … This is one way we can do that digitally."
Mechanics
As the affiliate space has expanded, the number of content creators has mushroomed. Digital advertising agencies have stepped in to help design and manage programs for banks and credit unions. Fintel Connect in Vancouver, Canada, has links to "several thousand relationships with content creators," its chief revenue officer, Alana Levine, said.
Maintaining wide creator networks gives Fintel and other agencies more ability to reach the most receptive audience for a client's product or service, Levine said. "It's expensive for a bank or credit union to have to pay for every application if they're not getting approved or there's a lot of fraud."
The idea behind affiliate marketing is taking content produced by a creator well-versed on a particular subject, then delivering it to what Levine termed a "high-intent" audience. "You basically have a brand on the other side looking to partner with these third parties, have them talk about their product," Levine said. Users are able to click on a hyperlink included in the copy to access the associated product or service.
A creator's compensation "is very much tied to product and a success event," Levine said. Commissions "can range anywhere from $100 to $250-plus for an approved, funded account."
More than a retail tool
Use of affiliated marketing to date has tilted toward the retail side, according to Vadat. In addition to CDs and other deposit products, it has become a go-to strategy for credit cards, personal loans and investment robo advisors. "These products tend to be digital-first, which aligns well with how affiliate traffic behaves," Vadat said.
Levine said that in the wake of the liquidity troubles that stemmed from the spring 2023 spate of bank failures, deposit-related campaigns like Bank Iowa's grew commonplace.
Now, however, institutions are tapping the channel to sell commercial products like lines of credit, merchant accounts and payroll services. Commercial-related content is becoming more common among niche business-to-business publishers, e-mail newsletters and small business influencers.
Echoing Vadat, Live Oak's Carroll said consumer usage has outpaced that of business, though that imbalance "seems to be leveling out." More and more institutions "are seeing the value of adding conversations and information around the business side, even if they had traditionally focused on [consumer content]," Carroll said.
Media Culture has worked on campaigns involving small business and commercial lending, as well as business-to-business fintech offerings. "The key is working with affiliates who understand the financial space and can create compliant, informative content that builds trust," Garduno said.
Even as its use becomes more widespread, Carroll doesn't think affiliate marketing will displace traditional marketing mediums such as radio, television, print or even billboards. "All banks are probably going to be in those spaces. I don't think they're going away," she said. "Deeper in the funnel, you're looking at some digital tactics, like affiliate … Everyone is just trying to figure out what the right formula is to break through the noise."
