“The fact that Social Snowball prioritizes the affiliate experience is a game-changer for us. They make it as optimized as possible so that it’s easy for them to join our program and get going.”
Samantha Kwok
VP, Global Operations & Brand Partnerships, IM8
ABOUT IM8
IM8 is the fastest-growing supplement brand ever. Their premium daily health products combine all-in-one nutrition and longevity support to simplify the modern wellness routine. Co-founded by David Beckham, IM8 develops science-backed products with an advisory team that includes experts from Mayo Clinic, NASA, Cedars-Sinai, and Yale.
Building word of mouth at scale
IM8 has built one of the fastest-growing brands in wellness, with a massive influencer and creator engine at the center of their growth. They’re known for working with high-profile actors, athletes, and nutrition experts, as well as launching partnerships that build awareness and credibility at scale.
Alongside their highly visible Global Ambassadors, the IM8 team runs a powerhouse affiliate program.
Samantha Kwok, VP of Global Operations & Brand Partnerships, is a founding team member and has been working with the IM8 founders since before the brand launched. As the brand grew, Samantha and her team began seeing more physicians, customers, and smaller creators who wanted to recommend IM8 and join their affiliate program.
For IM8, the affiliate channel plays a different role from their celebrity ambassadors. High-profile partnerships can introduce the brand to millions of people, while affiliates and micro-creators bring IM8 into thousands of smaller, more personal conversations.
As Samantha puts it:
“At the end of the day, you’re most likely to convert because your friend said that they had a great experience with IM8 and they love taking it every day.”
Word of mouth was becoming an increasingly important part of IM8’s broader creator strategy. The opportunity was to make it possible for far more people to participate in their affiliate program without creating an equally large operational burden for Samantha’s team.
As demand for the program grew, IM8 needed creator marketing infrastructure that could scale with them.
CHALLENGE
Growth started outpacing the systems behind it
Before Social Snowball, onboarding a new affiliate involved numerous manual steps.
The IM8 team collected their information via email and phone call, created an account, assigned the appropriate discount code and commission rate, and then added them to a separate payout system. One by one.
Every new affiliate meant more operational load for their team.
“We couldn’t jump on a call with 10 [new affiliates] a day.”
Payouts were another clear example of growing pains.
IM8 managed commissions and payments entirely outside their affiliate platform. Everything lived in Google Sheets, was reconciled through their ERP, and then had to be assembled and processed for payment.
As their affiliate roster grew, payouts got slower. The full payout cycle stretched to 75-90 days. That meant creators weren’t getting paid until months later.
That created a recurring operational burden internally, but Samantha also saw the effect it had on the affiliate experience. IM8 wanted new ambassadors to be able to join, generate their first sale, understand what they earned, and get paid without months of uncertainty.
“You’re only able to build trust if you’re able to payout promptly.”
IM8’s subscription model added another layer of complexity. While subscriptions and recurring purchases drive a meaningful share of revenue, affiliates earn commissions on first orders. The team needed to distinguish qualifying first purchases from subscriptions and ensure commissions were being attributed accurately.
Things were manageable when their program was smaller. But as the roster scaled, it became clear that the fragmented, manual, but functional systems that got them from 0→1 would not get them from 1→100.
IM8 had already proven that people wanted to join their program and that affiliate could become a meaningful growth channel. What they needed next was creator marketing infrastructure capable of supporting that growth, without operational overhead swelling at the same rate.
SOLUTION
Building an affiliate program that could scale with IM8
IM8 migrated to Social Snowball to improve their affiliate experience, build automated systems that reduced admin work, and scale the program.
Streamlined onboarding
One of the biggest changes they made out of the gate was self-serve affiliate onboarding.
With Social Snowball’s signup forms and automated approvals, affiliates could submit their information, receive their code and dashboard, and begin participating immediately.
Within five months, nearly 7,000 new affiliates were onboarded. That’s 80%+ of the entire roster. All without IM8 needing to do manual approvals.
For the IM8 team, this was an operational unlock.
The program could continue accepting more creators without creating a pileup of administrative work behind every signup.
“Social Snowball solved 90% of the manual workload problems for us, and we’ve seen the program grow exponentially since.”
Improved commissions and payouts
The team also configured IM8’s first-order commission structure within Social Snowball. Subscription and recurring rates could be zeroed out and tagged appropriately, allowing the rules of the program to be applied as conversions happened rather than reconstructed manually afterward.
Payouts were streamlined through Social Snowball’s integration with Tremendous. The new workflow removed roughly five steps from IM8’s previous process, eliminating much of the work that had taken place across Google Sheets, ERP reconciliation, and manual payouts.
A payout cycle that once took 75-90 days now takes less than 15.
“Being able to build up trust fast by getting affiliates to their first sale and paying them out efficiently helps us optimize the program to be successful and scale up quickly.”
For the IM8 team, the value of faster payouts extends well beyond the time saved internally. Getting an affiliate from signup to first sale to first payout faster helps establish confidence in the program early and gives IM8 a stronger foundation for building long-lasting relationships with their ambassadors.
A fast, flexible infrastructure layer that keeps up with IM8’s marketing velocity
IM8 needed affiliate data to connect to the rest of their marketing stack.
Using Social Snowball’s API and integrations, affiliate activity now flows into board reporting, internal dashboards, Klaviyo, and lifecycle communications. New affiliate registrations can automatically trigger IM8’s welcome series, while those same connections support campaigns, webinars, challenges, and other initiatives designed to keep affiliates engaged.
Affiliate is now a live input, not a monthly manual export.
That matters for a team that moves quickly. IM8 is constantly testing new incentives, community programs, content ideas, and ways to activate creators. Their recent David Beckham Challenge went from concept to launch within minutes.
“With Social Snowball, all the basics are there for us, and it’s done well. They don’t overcomplicate things, and we’re able to move at speed as a result.”
The infrastructure behind their affiliate program now supports IM8’s pace and is flexible enough to plug into their technology stack.
As more of the repeatable work moved into Social Snowball, the nature of their team’s work changed with it. Samantha describes the shift as “moving from processing to judgment.” Less time spent creating new accounts, reconciling payments, and moving data between fragmented systems. More time spent optimizing their programs, building partnerships, and helping affiliates succeed.
RESULTS
5.8x program growth without 5.8x the overhead
Five months after IM8 recorded their first conversion through Social Snowball, their affiliate program had grown to 8,070 affiliates (up from 1,385).
During that period, affiliates generated $7.4M in revenue across 31,603 orders.
In the most recent 30-day period alone, the channel generated $1.64M from 6,929 orders, while another 652 affiliates joined the program.
Their creators are winning too. Since IM8 migrated to Social Snowball, IM8 affiliates have earned more than $1M in commissions, with top performers taking home over six figures.
The revenue and program growth are impressive on their own, but one of the most important metrics is actually what didn’t grow at all: the IM8 team’s operational workload.
Before Social Snowball, more affiliates meant more manual tasks, compounding complexity, and slower workflows.
Self-serve onboarding, automated commission logic, streamlined payouts, and connected data streams allowed the IM8 team to scale their program by 5.8x without operational overhead compounding at the same rate.
As IM8’s program grew in size and complexity, the platform underneath it absorbed more of that complexity instead of passing it back to the people running it.
Turning their affiliate network into a content engine
Affiliate has become much more than an organic revenue channel for IM8.
It’s an increasingly important part of their content flywheel.
In many ways, IM8 operates like a media company, consistently producing a massive volume of content across paid, organic, ambassador, and creator channels.
As their affiliate network has expanded, it has become another major source of that creative volume.
Over the past five months, IM8 generated 2,409 creator posts, driving 3.6M views and reaching 2.6M people.
Today, their affiliate community submits more than 100 pieces of content per day through IM8’s challenges and creator programs. The team collects usage rights along the way, reviews the submissions, and moves strong creator content into paid ads.
That means a successful affiliate relationship can create value well beyond an organic post. A creator can drive attributable sales, introduce IM8 to their community, produce organic content, and provide high-converting creative that the performance marketing team can put paid behind.
For a brand that has built such a significant part of their business around creators and content, affiliate is now a natural extension of the broader growth strategy rather than a standalone sales channel.
Building the community behind the numbers
With Social Snowball taking the manual work off their plate and removing operational barriers, the IM8 team can spend more time designing a thriving program: recruiting affiliates, helping them get to their first sale, and giving them reasons to keep producing.
Recruiting new affiliates
IM8 isn’t relying on inbound interest alone to scale the program. They’re actively building top of the funnel with Social Snowball’s Marketplace and Creator Search. The team has discovered and recruited thousands of high-fit creators who are verified through Meta’s creator marketplace.
IM8 now has a scalable way to keep expanding their affiliate roster beyond inbound applications, while keeping discovery, outreach, gifting, and onboarding connected under one roof.
A program built around progression
Once someone joins, the focus shifts quickly to activation.
IM8 gets product into affiliates’ hands fast and uses a 30-day journey that gives them a framework for talking about the product. Since the benefits of IM8 are often something customers notice over time, affiliates are encouraged to document their experience as they go: how they’re using the product, daily rituals, how they feel over time, and what changes they notice.
That helps creators start producing authentic content early while also shortening the gap between signup and their first sale.
The team has seen that the longer someone goes without that first win, the greater the chance they disengage.
“The longer you leave it, the more likely they’ll become inactive if they’re not successful.”
Once affiliates start generating sales, IM8 gives them a clear reason to keep producing. The strategy is designed around clear milestones and tiers, built directly into their Social Snowball programs.
As affiliates move up, they unlock more perks, including exclusive merch, early product access, and VIP experiences. There is always a next milestone, and something worth working toward.
“The fact that Social Snowball prioritizes the affiliate experience is a game-changer for us. They make it as optimized as possible so that it’s easy for them to join our program and get going.”
Fostering a community people want to be in
IM8 has curated a thriving affiliate community across their Discord, Strava club, and newsletter. The team posts challenges, runs webinars, hosts events, drops exclusive merch, and builds VIP channels for their strongest performers.
They have also started giving top affiliates a bigger role in the community itself. Their most engaged members can share what’s working, answer questions, and help newer affiliates get up to speed, making the program less dependent on one-to-one support from IM8.
The team continues to experiment with new ways to create momentum, from cash bonuses and recognition to IRL experiences. One recent challenge offered an affiliate the chance to fly out to meet David Beckham and IM8’s executive team.
With less time spent on the mechanics of running the program, the IM8 team can focus more of their energy on the things that actually make it stronger: finding great affiliates, helping them succeed early, and giving them a reason to keep producing.
A creator program built to keep scaling
In five months with Social Snowball, here's what the IM8 team accomplished:
- Grew from 1,385 to 8,070 affiliates
- Generated $7.4M in affiliate revenue
- Drove 31,603 affiliate orders
- Moved 82% of affiliate onboarding to self-serve
- Reduced payout times from 90 days to under 15 days
- Generated 2,409 creator posts, driving 3.6M views
- Scaled the program by 5.8x while keeping operational workload flat
These numbers tell a remarkable growth story. They also showcase what happens when the infrastructure behind an affiliate program is capable of scaling with the ambition of the people running it.
IM8 built the strategy, community, and creator relationships that have spurred one of the highest-performing affiliate programs we’ve seen to date. Social Snowball gives them a platform capable of supporting their program as it scales.
IM8’s affiliate program continues to grow rapidly. The difference now is that the admin work and operational load behind it no longer handicap how far they can take it.
Ready to build a creator program that scales with you?
Social Snowball gives ecommerce brands a unified platform to recruit and onboard creators, manage cross-channel affiliate programs, run gifting campaigns, automate commissions and payouts, turn creator content into influencer whitelisting ads, and measure attributable revenue – all in one place.
Every creator program. One platform.
