The Shed & Intelsio Anchor Affiliate Story: Weight Lost & $431K Gained

The Power Of An Anchor Affiliate

One anchor affiliate is all it takes to make a program a success. 

For Shed, launching its first-ever affiliate program proved just that.

Within its first month, Shed’s telehealth weight loss offer generated $431,601.34 in gross sales, driven entirely by a singular healthcare loyalty affiliate.

How did such rapid success happen?

‍Intelsio, a seasoned affiliate management agency, sought out Shed to match a healthcare loyalty affiliate with a strong GLP-1 weight loss offer. From launch, everything the affiliate needed to run their new campaign—optimized funnels, creatives, and seamless onboarding—was ready.

The Rising Popularity Of Weight Loss Offers

The weight loss industry is booming, and semaglutide-based solutions like Ozempic and Wegovy are leading the charge. These groundbreaking products have captured global attention, creating unparalleled demand for telehealth services offering similar treatments.

Shed’s telehealth weight loss program was already positioned to capitalize on this surging interest, ready to provide affiliates with a high-performing offer in a red-hot category.

This combination of market demand, along with the anchor affiliate’s expertise in reaching engaged healthcare audiences, made Shed a natural fit for immediate success.

Intelsio & The Anchor Affiliate: Tipping The Scales Towards Success

What sets affiliate marketing apart from other channels is that it develops through the strength of long-term relationships. When affiliates make good money and have great experience with an agency or brand, they want to keep working with them. These lasting relationships allow affiliate agencies to bring partners to the table that can launch quickly.

Intelsio was already working with the anchor affiliate through other clients when the opportunity with Shed emerged. Knowing their anchor affiliate wanted a strong telehealth weight loss program, Intelsio scoured the market and identified Shed as the ideal company.

With an existing anchor affiliate relationship, Intelsio was able to launch the Shed program quickly and confidently, resulting in the affiliate delivering $431K in revenue in just the first month.

Fighting Audience Fatigue

The anchor affiliate promotes campaigns via a healthcare loyalty program, offering exclusive discounts to members. While effective, loyalty audiences can face fatigue if presented with the same offers too frequently.

Intelsio tackled this challenge head-on by working closely with Shed to refresh messaging and optimize performance continually.

For example, for high-fatigue channels like social media, Intelsio created new ad copy every two weeks, ensuring fresh content to maintain audience engagement. By tailoring funnels to the affiliate’s specific traffic placements, they optimized conversion rates at a granular level via Everflow’s partner marketing platform, delivering a 31% improvement in CVR within four months.

Shed’s commitment to rapidly developing new creatives and landing pages based on Intelsio’s data-driven insights played a crucial role in overcoming audience fatigue and driving consistent results.

Event Tracking: Weighing Every Step For Maximum ROI

For complex topics like telehealth weight loss, even minor messaging missteps can confuse consumers and create significant drop-offs in the customer journey. 

Intelsio leveraged Everflow’s event tracking capabilities to monitor every stage of the funnel, from lead submissions and appointment scheduling to prescription requests, giving them unparalleled visibility into performance.

By collaborating closely with the anchor affiliate, Intelsio was able to pinpoint underperforming areas and optimize accordingly. For example, specific channels sometimes experienced messaging issues that led to a sharp drop-off in later-stage progression. Intelsio worked with the affiliate to refine and rework the messaging, ensuring that users who signed up consistently moved through the final stages to become Shed customers.

Social promotions, in particular, posed unique challenges for telehealth campaigns. Just a few poorly chosen words could lead to misunderstandings about the process, causing friction for potential customers. Everflow’s real-time event stage tracking allowed Intelsio to quickly identify when messaging wasn’t resonating, enabling rapid adjustments to improve results and reduce drop-offs.

This commitment to proactive optimization ensured that the affiliate’s campaigns stayed on track, driving better outcomes and enhancing overall campaign performance.

Scaling With Media Buying

To expand Shed’s reach beyond the anchor affiliate’s core audience, Intelsio employed strategic media buys. These investments secured premium placements, such as email newsletters, to drive high-intent traffic to the affiliate’s loyalty section for Shed.

Intelsio used multi-touch attribution to measure direct and indirect performance, using Everflow to capture the full impact of these campaigns. For instance, many users who received a loyalty newsletter would visit Shed’s website directly to learn more before signing up, rather than following the standard affiliate funnel. By tracking this indirect lift, Intelsio and Shed were able to determine the true value of their media buying efforts and optimize accordingly.

A Formula For Long-Term Success

Wouldn’t we all want an agency to come knocking at the door to deliver $430K in new revenue during the first month?

While the immediate results for Shed were remarkable, they reflected months of preparation by Intelsio and years of cultivating affiliate relationships.

As Anna Jefferis-Lewis, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Intelsio, explains: 

“Affiliate is such a strategic channel when all parties work together. With the right margins and right economics to share with the affiliate, the channel could drive 40% of all conversions. Many brands have a mistaken impression about the channel, are overly focused on the coupon side, and thus miss out on how much strategic growth opportunities it provides. “

The anchor affiliate may have set the stage for Shed’s success, but maintaining momentum requires constant effort. Intelsio’s ongoing optimization, creative testing, and relationship-building ensured the program not only thrived, but set the foundation for future scalability.

For Shed, the partnership delivered more than revenue—it created a blueprint for sustainable, strategic growth in the booming telehealth weight loss space.