Noom is a weight loss app taking a bold stand against legacy apps like WW International (formerly Weight Watchers International). Founded in 2008 by Saeju Jeong and Artem Petakov, they have already reached a $3.7 billion valuation against $4.08 billion for WW International, which was founded in 1963. According to Bloomberg, they also saw a $200 million increase in sales from 2019 to 2020, doubling their total sales. Part of the reason they’ve been so successful is because of their influencer program.
In a Mediakix survey, brands reported that the ROI for influencer marketing is equal to or better than other marketing channels. In fact, 71% of marketers from the survey think the quality of traffic influencers send their way is better than the quality of traffic from other sources.
According to Forbes and Bloomberg data, Noom saw a 3333% growth in sales numbers over four years, thanks in good part to its influencer program.
But not every influencer program is as successful as Noom’s. Many brands reported challenges with finding the right influencers for their campaigns, with most citing fake followers as the #1 problem. The brands experienced trouble measuring and improving return on investment. Here’s how Noom avoided those problems and created an influencer program that yielded and continues to deliver results.
They Found an Effective Pool of Influencers
The success of an influencer campaign starts with a good product-influencer match. Instead of focusing on only weight loss influencers who were already fit and may come off as ingenuine, they used an agency called BEN to find influencers with different body types who could drive the highest engagement rates.
Some of their influencers looked just like regular people struggling with their weight, which was perfect for attracting the right audience.
One of the influencers Noom works with is a mom blogger called Laura. Between Laura’s Noom YouTube review and blog post, she’s generated thousands of engagement actions for them.
The typical way to find influencers is to work with a brand monitoring service that finds influencers in your niche based on the influencer’s reach and clout. But some influencers artificially inflate reach numbers with purchased followers, so looking at reach and clout can be misleading.
Alternatively, BEN uses a custom neural network to find influencers for their clients, which is precisely what they did for Noom.
BEN was able to find effective influencers using its deep learning AI technology. And with the custom neural networks built for Noom’s specific needs, BEN was able to predict the best-suited influencers for Noom’s campaign based on predicted reach and conversion rates.
Once they had a good roundup of influencers to reach out to, the agency used human experts to establish contact with the influencers so they could set up high-quality campaigns.
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They Established an Attractive Affiliate Marketing Program
Noom offers affiliates up to $15 in commission when a new user signs up for a free trial through the affiliate’s link. In contrast, WW International offers a base commission of $10, and only when a new paying customer signs up.
Noom also has a better affiliate cookie tracking duration. Affiliates have a chance to make a commission for up to 30 days after someone clicks on their affiliate link. WW International lets affiliates cash in on the commission from a signup only within 14 days of a click. Some other weight loss affiliate programs have durations as short as seven days even.
When it comes to affiliate bonuses, Noom has a leg-up against most competitors too. Instead of offering a flat commission and leaving it at that, Noom offers all affiliates a free account for personal use and increased commissions and more bonuses for top-performing affiliates.
With all the rewards for their affiliate program in place, Noom’s next step was to host their affiliate program with Impact, a user-friendly affiliate campaign partner. By which we mean a partner that creates a landing page and affiliate site with a user experience that makes it easier for potential affiliates to sign up and navigate the affiliate site and dashboards. Here’s what their signup page looks like compared to WW International’s, which is hosted on Commission Junction.
Noom’s affiliate sign-up page also loads a full 3.9 seconds longer than WW International’s page.
Even after signup, Noom’s affiliate user interface remains more friendly, making it easier for affiliates to stick around.
Noom made their affiliate program more attractive with higher payouts, an easier-to-sell program — free trial vs. paid signup for WW International — bonuses and free accounts, and a better affiliate interface.
They Turned Their Influencers into an Affiliate Marketing Army
Noom, to incentivize influencers to keep promoting their product beyond their campaign contract period, gave influencers affiliate links so they (the influencers) could make more money selling the program.
Noom also gave the influencers coupon codes to share with their audience to increase conversions and free accounts so the influencers could use Noom themselves. The result was that the influencers-turned-affiliate marketers could form genuine opinions about Noom’s product. In a UniNetto University research paper on influencer marketing, the researcher shared a theory called the Amplification hypothesis. Basically, it means that an audience tends to prefer an influencer who’s clearly knowledgeable about the content they share.
It’s that knowledge and authenticity about the product that generates interest and engagement from followers — just like with Laura’s Noom videos.
Once they built up that hype and interest around their product, Noom used hashtags like #noomnerds and #NoomNationto build communities that encouraged even non-paid influencers to join their peers, share their experiences, and boost the flywheel.
Noom Amplifies the Results of Their Influencer Program with Referral Marketing
Noom does a great job of increasing conversions and sales with their influencer program, but they don’t stop there. They understand that up to 50% of new signups can come from peer-to-peer referrals. That’s why they offer a $20 Amazon credit for referring a friend. Their referral program then amplifies the results from their influencer program.
Smart brands like PayPal use referral marketing to strengthen their services. Extole is an industry-leading referral marketing solution. We’ve helped brands like Xoom, Intuit Quickbooks, and DocuSign create and optimize effective referral marketing programs to increase customer acquisition. Schedule a demo to learn about how Extole can help you amplify your influencer program with referral marketing.