Ulta Beauty
Their Story
Ulta Beauty is the largest U.S. beauty retailer and a premier destination for cosmetics, fragrance, skincare, haircare, and salon services. With a strong foundation in both product and experience, Ulta Beauty continues to evolve how it connects with and serves its guests.
The Challenge
Ulta Beauty sought to expand its already successful affiliate strategy while addressing key limitations:
- Increasing growth within the affiliate channel
- Reducing reliance on the top three revenue-driving affiliates
- Improving internal technology resources and support
To achieve this, the brand needed a more scalable and diversified partnership approach.
The Insights
Analysis of Ulta Beauty’s affiliate program revealed that growth was constrained by over-reliance on a small group of top-performing partners.
Additionally, identifying partners with strong commerce content, relevant audience alignment, and low technical barriers to entry created an opportunity to scale more efficiently while maintaining performance quality.
A more structured and intentional partner selection process would enable both diversification and long-term sustainability.
The Strategy
Leveraging emerging partnership technology, Rise collaborated with impact.com to build a more robust affiliate ecosystem.
The strategy focused on a “grassroots” discovery and recruitment approach, using impact.com’s Discovery tool to identify and engage new, high-quality partners based on clearly defined criteria.
The Solution
Rise and impact.com executed a streamlined, end-to-end affiliate expansion process:
- Targeted Partner Discovery: Identified partners based on key criteria, including U.S.-based audiences, experience in beauty and commerce content, and minimal technical requirements
- Efficient Recruitment & Onboarding: Accelerated partner onboarding through improved workflows and collaboration
- Portfolio Optimization: Reduced inefficiencies by trimming underperforming affiliates and focusing on high-value partners
- Performance Tracking: Leveraged detailed metrics to guide investment and prioritize top-performing relationships
- Ongoing Optimization: Continuously refined processes across discovery, recruitment, contracting, partner support, and performance tracking
Collaboration between Rise and impact.com’s Partner Success team further expanded the pool of potential partners, increasing reach and efficiency.
The Results
Ulta Beauty successfully diversified its affiliate portfolio, reducing reliance on a small group of top earners while building a broader, more resilient partnership network.
The improved processes and technology-enabled approach allowed the team to scale more efficiently, saving time and resources while driving continued growth in the affiliate channel.
