For many ecommerce brands, word-of-mouth marketing is a cost-efficient alternative to paid ads. However, incentivizing customers and influencers is tricky. Brands need to hire to manage onboarding, communication, and payouts, inflating budgets, increasing errors, and making it hard to scale.
Cowboy Colostrum faced these issues before they set up Social Snowball. With the affiliate marketing tool, the brand was able to set up structured affiliate tiers, automate payouts, send effective marketing messages, and keep their affiliates engaged. The results spoke for themselves:
- $473K+ in total affiliate-driven revenue
- $137K generated in the last 30 days
- $10.79 CPA from affiliates
- 1,725 affiliates onboarded
“We always knew word-of-mouth was powerful, but Social Snowball gave us the tools to truly scale it. Our affiliates are driving real revenue month after month, and the platform makes it incredibly easy.”
Taylor Fulton-Girgis, Head of Partnerships at Cowboy Colostrum
About the brand
Cowboy Colostrum is a wellness brand offering premium colostrum supplements sourced from grass-fed cows, known for their quality, rich flavor, and focus on both human health and calf welfare.
Challenges: Manual payouts, clunky platforms, and time-consuming processes
As Cowboy Colostrum’s affiliate program started gaining traction, managing it became increasingly complex and time-consuming. The brand faced multiple issues in managing their affiliate program:
Previous platforms like Impact didn’t meet their needs. The process of tracking links, managing codes, and organizing different affiliate tiers was confusing and inefficient, for both the team and their creators.
“There were pieces missing. We needed an easy way to separate tiers, manage payouts, and track everything without it turning into a headache.”
Handling manual payouts was a tedious process that took hours every month.
“It was probably a full day at the end of each month just handling payouts. And now that the program has grown, we’d probably need a dedicated accounting role to manage it.”
Working with influencers at scale was challenging. Managing relationships, providing updates, and keeping affiliates engaged required time and organizing— processes that their current setup lacked.
“We’re working with a lot of micro-influencers and customers, and anyone can get a link. But without the right platform, it was hard to keep things organized and running smoothly.”
With their affiliate program growing month-over-month, Cowboy Colostrum needed a solution that would automate the heavy lifting and help them stay focused on scaling, not chasing manual tasks.
Solution: Building a scalable, tiered affiliate program
After testing multiple platforms, Cowboy Colostrum chose Social Snowball for its simplicity and ability to manage a growing affiliate program without the need for tedious manual tasks.
“I ended up playing around on a few demos and landed with Social Snowball. It’s been super simple and straightforward — both for me and our affiliates.”
Most importantly, they used Social Snowball to structure their affiliate efforts in a way that would drive consistent growth:
- Quick and simple onboarding for affiliates.
- Automated monthly payouts through Tremendous, turning what used to take a full day into seconds.
- Track and save affiliate-generated content with Social Snowball’s Instagram integration.
Here’s how the brand set up their affiliate program:
They created multiple affiliate tiers within Social Snowball, offering different levels of commissions depending on performance. This allowed them to reward top creators and encourage affiliates to continue promoting.
With certain partners, they set up flat-fee collaborations while still tracking their performance through codes and links.
“We have a 20% off code for certain people and sometimes a flat fee instead of affiliate payouts — but we still use Social Snowball to track how much they’re actually generating.”
Cowboy Colostrum also improved their communication strategy using Social Snowball’s Klaviyo integration:
- The brand sends monthly newsletters to all affiliates, filled with product updates, fun facts, and marketing ideas that affiliates can use within their own content.
- They also leaned into organic outreach, sending product samples to interested creators and following up by offering personalized links and codes through Social Snowball.
“Our process is: send a message, get their address, send them a product, get feedback, and then offer them a link or code for their community. It’s been a great way to build relationships.”
Results: Driving $473K in revenue and turning affiliates into a key growth channel
By building a structured, tiered affiliate program and automating previously manual tasks with Social Snowball, Cowboy Colostrum transformed affiliate marketing into one of its most reliable acquisition channels.
In just seven months, they onboarded over 1,700 affiliates and generated $473K+ in affiliate-driven revenue. Their top affiliate alone has driven over 1,000 referral orders.
In the last 30 days alone, Cowboy Colostrum earned $137K in revenue at an incredibly low $10.79 CPA, a testament to the efficiency and scalability of their program.
“Our affiliate program has become one of our biggest drivers of positive ROI.”
What used to take a full day each month to manage payouts is now fully automated, freeing up their team to focus on growth and relationship-building with top-performing affiliates.
“As the program has grown, it would’ve required an entire accounting role to manage payouts. Now, it’s all automated.”
The combination of easy tier management, streamlined payouts, and consistent affiliate communication has allowed Cowboy Colostrum to turn both customers and influencers into brand advocates, fueling consistent revenue growth month after month.
Ready to turn word-of-mouth into your most powerful acquisition channel?
Word-of-mouth marketing is a proven strategy to acquire new customers. However, many brands struggle to leverage it, lacking the right incentives, making onboarding complex, and taking on manual processes to manage operations at scale.
With Social Snowball, leading DTC brands like Cowboy Colostrum have been able to turn customers and influencers into affiliates instantly, use tiered rewards to incentivize new referrals, set up effective communication, and automate payouts. With the right affiliate marketing tool in place, the brand was able to scale its affiliate program and drive revenue month after month.
.png)
.png)
