eCommerce continues to boom and there’s no stopping the savvy online shopper. After all, unlike the brick-and-mortar shopper who shops more leisurely, the digital shopper is looking for the right thing at the right price.
That’s where Checkmate comes in!
A mobile-first shopping platform with over 300K users on its iOS app, Checkmate is ruthlessly trying to improve the end-end shopping experience by making it simple and personalized. They do this by hunting the web and collecting more discount codes than any other savings tool in history. So, it’s no surprise that they’ve hit #1 in the Apple App Store twice!
Now, while AIM does work with many partners across a multitude of niches, we do mainly focus on helping brands maximize their affiliate programs. However, we’re doing things a little differently with Checkmate and helping them maximize their reach with the right brands and programs.
Read on to learn more about what this amazing app offers and what a partnership with them can look like for your brand.
Q: How long has Checkmate been in business and what has that journey been like?
A: Checkmate began during COVID when a bunch of Australian buddies in Los Angeles put their heads together to build something new. With backgrounds in data science, shipping logistics, and engineering, the team came to the shopping space with new ideas about how to drive value. And users are responding! Growth has been rapid and the team is expanding to keep building and better support users and merchants!
Q: What are the key features of Checkmate that consumers should be aware of?
A: Checkmate helps consolidate your shopping life across devices and browsers. To power our iOS app, we pull content from your email inbox to find buried deals and offers you would’ve missed. This also lets us do useful things like tracking your packages to let you know when they get shipped or delivered. Our browser extensions help you keep track of your shopping journeys and to pull up that inbox content where you need it.
Q: And, what about brands? What unique solutions or services does Checkmate bring to the table that would make brands want a partnership?
A: We’ve acquired the user base for the iOS app (300K+ GenZ) primarily from TikTok and our robust Campus Ambassador Program. Not only is there ample opportunity to reach users in the app via traditional placements, push notifications, and social engagement, but the data set we have on these users is significantly more complete than what’s typically available.
For example, in addition to real-time shopping behavior, we also have historical purchase and affinity data via the email inbox component. In scanning emails to grab content and move it up the funnel, we learn about not only the current and historical orders they’ve made, but what merchant emails they’re subscribed to, whose loyalty programs they’ve joined, and more. It’s an email intelligence layer that can help merchants build more effective CRM and loyalty strategies, and to find and reach new customers via Checkmate surfaces.
Q: Now, let’s talk real quick about your partnership with AIM. As an affiliate marketing agency, we mainly focus on brands and their programs; what inspired you to work with AIM to help you grow as an affiliate partner?
A: AIM has a ton of expertise and experience in affiliate. For a publisher spinning up an affiliate partnership motion from scratch, you have to enlist a team that knows what they’re doing. Expertise with brands is particularly important as that’s who you’re selling to. AIM knows what brands want!
Q: What are some of the benefits you’ve seen as a partner working with an agency in this capacity?
A: We only just brought on our first in-house affiliate partnerships person last month. The AIM relationship has meant more capacity, extra sets of hands, extra eyeballs, and experienced opinions.
Q: As you’ve been working on your partnerships, how do you see affiliate marketing being important to Checkmate’s growth?
A: For anyone who wants to monetize traffic and existing user engagement, and is serious about building direct relationships with brands, affiliate is an excellent starting point. Affiliate teams have a clear process in place for measuring, funding, and scaling that’s timely and expensive to try to replicate piecemeal. While the value and insights Checkmate can provide to merchant teams outside of affiliate are significant, the relationships and trust that can be established via this channel are hard to underestimate.
