Table of Contents
We are excited to announce the recent addition of the Chewy Affiliate Program to our auto-affiliation support for Geniuslink! Founded less than ten years ago, Chewy had quickly become one of the most famous names for pet food and pet-related products in the US. With over 65 thousand products in their catalog, Chewy.com takes Amazon to town in the pet category. With the Chewy + Geniuslink integration, you can now build affiliate links and earn commissions through Chewy’s affiliate program easier than ever!
Overview
While specific to the “Pet” niche, Chewy does a great job covering all types of pets, including dogs, cats, fish, birds, reptiles, horses, and small pets, including rabbits, Guinea pigs, ferrets, hamsters, and rats.
Chewy has done a great job differentiating themselves from others with having an online pet pharmacy that carries pet prescriptions for all types of animals, including veterinary medicines, and is managed in coordination with a team of in-house veterinarians. They also have a manic focus on ensuring their shoppers and their furry and scaly friends are taken care of and recognized for those efforts with winning the Stevie Award for Favorite Customer Service in Retail in both 2017 and 2018. Both of these have helped Chewy earn the title as the most beloved pet retailer in the world.
With 12 fulfillment centers and three customer service centers and over 12,000 employees backing the online retailer, Chewy.com is ranked as the #1 site for “Pets and Animals > Pet Food and Supplies” and is the 173rd most popular site in the United States, according to SimilarWeb.
The Chewy Affiliate Program
With a vast selection of pet-related products and pet food, the Chewy Affiliate Program is an excellent alternative for diversifying your affiliate portfolio away from using only the Amazon Associates program. This well-established affiliate program, run through Partnerize, offers numerous advantages to the affiliate programs of their peers.
The Chewy affiliate program is unique in various ways, including how they commission and their US-specific focus.
Chewy Affiliate Program Rates and Cookie Windows
While most affiliate programs pay a percentage of the sales that the affiliate publisher referred, the Chewy affiliate program does things a bit differently. The commission structure is instead focused on paying a flat fee for bringing in new customers. Affiliate publishers will receive a flat $15 commission for each new customer order. According to Chewy, for most partners, this is the equivalent of an 8% commissions on all orders.
In comparison, Amazon drastically reduced their pet commission rate to 3% in the most recent April 21st, 2020 commission update.
A quick look at SkimLinks shows an astonishing 28.4% average commission paid out for Chewy.com affiliate program over the last 90 days on their network. Skimlinks also reports an average of $0.42 earnings per click (we traditionally see about $0.05 EPC for Amazon in our earlier analysis), with an average conversion rate of 10.87% and an average basket size of $13.69.
The Chewy affiliate program offers a 15-day affiliate cookie and is based on last-click attribution (so if they click your link multiple times, the 15-day cookie keeps resetting). This cookie duration is also remarkably different than the 24 hours that Amazon offers.
Because the Chewy affiliate program pays on “New Customers,” it’s essential to understand their definition, which, as expected, is simply “A new customer is someone who has never purchased with Chewy before.” If you were worried about losing out, the Chewy affiliate team shared that, on average, about one in every three orders tracked via an affiliate referral is a new Chewy customer order!
While this set up is a bit different than the traditional model, it appears to benefit Creators and Content Producers with YouTube channels and Niche and Authority Sites. This is because it rewards those that are introducing the brand (often referred to as “Top of Funnel” or TOFU) compared to the discount and coupon sites whose strategy is focused on grabbing a buyer right before they buy (often referred to as “Bottom of the Funnel” or BOFU). Chewy does not work any Coupon/Deal sites who often appear at the end of a consumer journey, ensuring you receive credit when credit is due. As a result, we at Geniuslink are big fans, as this tends to benefit our clients!
In addition to the payment mode, there are a few other things that help differentiate the Chewy affiliate program from different affiliate programs, like the Amazon Associates program. These include:
- Active Management. Chewy’s Affiliate program is managed by a two-person in-house team. They are incredibly responsive, and there to help partners grow.
- Customer Service. Chewy supports it’s customers 24/7 across phone, email, chat, and social media – holidays and weekends. And while Amazon claims something similar, the personality of the smaller company is evident.
- Pet Focused Charitable Work. Chewy has a Rescue and Shelter Network committed to supporting non-profit organizations that help animals in need. For example, Chewy donated $7.2 million in pet food, healthcare supplies, and other essential products to support animal welfare organizations impacted by COVID-19 in communities throughout the US.
- Autoship. Like Amazon’s Subscribe and Save program, Chewy’s Autoship allows shoppers to schedule regular deliveries of pet supplies and offers a 30% discount on their first order. After your first Autoship order, you can save 5% – 10% off with regular Autoship deliveries.
- Pharmacy. Chewy includes a licensed and accredited Pharmacy, which makes it easy for pet owners with Chewy being a one-stop-shop for pets by offering both prescription foods and medications.
- Direct Fulfillment. Unlike Amazon, where the majority of their sales come from their marketplace of 3rd party sellers, Chewy fulfills all orders directly. This helps remove quality assurance and return concerns.
Chewy Affiliate Program Signup or Login
You can learn more about the Chewy affiliate program from their website – https://www.chewy.com/app/content/affiliate – and from there, you’ll find a link to Partnerize, the affiliate network they use, to sign up for the affiliate program – https://signup.partnerize.com/signup/en_us/chewy.
If you are already signed up for the Chewy affiliate program (via Partnerize) you can simply log into the dashboard via https://console.partnerize.com/login/partnerize/en_us to review commissions and sales.
Chewy + Geo-Fragmentation
Unlike Amazon, with a global network of storefronts and affiliate programs, Chewy is focused on just selling to pet owners in the United States. This means that the site is optimized for sales in the US (English language and USD currency). It also means that if you have a decent percentage of international traffic, you’ll want to take advantage of the “Advanced” link feature of Geniuslink to ensure your international shoppers are directed towards an online pet retailer that is better set up to sell in their country.
Terms & Conditions
The Chewy affiliate program Terms and Conditions, found inside the Partnerize dashboard, are relatively standard for an affiliate program. While you should always read and be familiar with the Terms and Conditions (or “Operating Agreement” in Amazon Associates speak), we’ve pulled a few things we thought were interesting and important about those dictating the Chewy affiliate program.
You are allowed to use Chewy affiliate links on your website and social media, as well as with user-generated content. Additionally, it appears that Chewy is okay with “online software applications” (e.g., browser or toolbar extensions).
However, regarding that last piece, Chewy calls out that they know there will be those out there looking to innovate in the affiliate space, so they ask you to clarify your ambitions and get written permission before you push any unusual forms of marketing. They roughly state:
Chewy recognizes that its Affiliates may want to advertise in new and innovative ways. To allow this while still maintaining the integrity of Chewy’s brand, we ask that you seek written permission from Chewy before proceeding with any activities not specifically authorized. Specifically, Chewy requires authorization for the following:
- Use any technology deemed by us to fall outside the realms of the Affiliate Program, including, but not limited to, your use of any toolbars, retargeting technology, browser enhancements, and basket abandonment;
- Use voucher or coupon codes;
- Offer monetary or points-based rewards to customers for account applications;
- Carry out unsolicited emails through the Affiliate Program.
When in doubt, you should contact [email protected] for clarification before proceeding.
Chewy takes disclosure and FTC compliance serious (good for them!) and have a sizable section of their Terms of Service calling out your requirements. This includes:
- Making it clear that your Affiliate Link is a paid advertising placement and/or sponsored material. (Note that we do this automatically when you use Choice Pages!)
- Similar to Amazon’s FTC/disclosure preferences, Chewy has a pre-canned sentence you should use for disclosure: “As a Chewy affiliate I earn commissions for qualifying purchases.”
- Chewy also understands that for individual social media postings, the whole sentence doesn’t make sense but still requires that you be a good affiliate marketer and make your disclosures clear and conspicuous. For these instances, they suggest “Sponsored content for Chewy.”
Like Amazon, Chewy doesn’t allow using their trademark in your domain or subdomain but are okay with you using “Chewy” in the path part of your URL. Further, Chewy doesn’t want you to grab social media accounts or other online profiles that might infringe on their trademarks.
Chewy also understands the importance of “shopper trust” (this is a cornerstone of Amazon’s affiliate program) and specifically calls out the importance in their Terms and Conditions.
Finally, in the same light of “Shopper trust,” Chewy also includes a specific note that is similar to the infamous line in Amazon’s Operating Agreement about “Cloaking” but is a bit more clear:
(f) your use of the Affiliate Links on your Site or any other platform shall not serve to mislead or deceive consumers (e.g., by masking referring URL information in Affiliate Links;
Note that using a shortened geni.us link with Chewy’s affiliate program does not violate this line as we pass through the referring URL when provided. However, to be a good affiliate marketer, you might follow the advice we give Amazon Associates using geni.us links — simply include “Amazon” near your link or use Choice Pages!
Chewy + Geniuslink
While the Chewy affiliate program offers a range of link creation tools via the Partnerize dashboard, it can still be a bit of a process to take a product link from the Chewy website and convert it into a fully functioning affiliate link.
We are excited to announce, however, that any Chewy product link can now be used in a geni.us link, and you can be sure that your clicks will be sent to the correct destination with a correctly formatted affiliate tracking link.
We call this process “Auto affiliation” and it’s straightforward to set up. You simply need to grab your CamRef (aka Campaign Reference) value from your Partnerize dashboard and then drop it into the Geniuslink Affiliate tool. Once we have your CamRef, all of your geni.us links for Chewy will start using the tracking info appropriate for your affiliate account.
Please note our support of Sovrn Commerce (f/k/a VigLink) and Skimlinks also enables you to monetize Chewy links through either of these monetization services. There are multiple benefits of using Sovrn Commerce or Skimlinks, but signing up directly for the Chewy affiliate programs and adding your CamRef directly into Geniuslink allows you to keep 100% of your commissions earned from the program (vs. the ~ 75% that is paid out when using an affiliate aggregator).
Are you excited to try out using Geniuslink with the Chewy affiliate program? We have a few suggestions if you are up for a challenge and want to experiment with augmenting your Amazon affiliate links.
Choice Pages
We believe that curation and choice are good for the consumer and have built out Choice Pages to enable you to promote a single product but offer multiple destinations for the consumer to choose from (and you’ll monetize the sale either way). You can see an example here — geni.us/HillScienceDietDryFood— and we bet you’ll see a boost in overall conversions and total commissions. More info on how to set up a Choice Page can be found in our Knowledge Base.
To help aid in the quick and efficient setup of a Choice Page, the Chewy affiliate program is now supported with our Suggestions feature. With this time-saver feature, any Amazon link that you drop into the Geniuslink dashboard will be searched for across 80+ retailers, including Chewy, to see if the same product exists in their product catalog. You can then automatically add those destinations to your Choice Page with a click of a button (and with the auto-affiliation mentioned earlier, it will be an affiliate link).
Further, you can also type the product name or a key phrase, hit enter, and we’ll search for the product across the Chewy product catalog as well.
With a Choice Page, you can place Amazon and HP affiliate links next to each other in a clean, easy to buy way to optimize your affiliate revenue and better support the buying preferences of your diverse audience. This keeps you from making an “either/or” decision about using Chewy instead of Amazon, and from our research, this helps increase your affiliate earnings!
A/B Split Links
The Amazon.com Associates program is often a mainstay way to earn commissions from US-based clicks. However, we’d encourage you to run an experiment if it’s the best option for your audience and recommended products. The A/B Split Test links provide a platform to track between two or more affiliate programs closely.
Using an A/B Split Test link allows you to compare the performance of Amazon’s affiliate program to the HP affiliate program in case you wanted to evaluate replacing your Amazon affiliate links with another affiliate program.
Conclusion
We roll out direct affiliate support for new affiliate programs every month, and we hope you enjoy the recently added support for the Chewy affiliate program run through Partnerize.
We look forward to hearing your feedback about using the Chewy Affiliate Program and Geniuslink.
If you want to learn about some other fantastic affiliate programs that a) work seamlessly with Geniuslink and b) allow you to earn good commission rates beyond Amazon, then check out:
