CASE STUDY

Unsure not unwilling:
how Awin discovered
their employee influencers

How Awin's employee advocacy program created a more engaged workforce, greater brand awareness and became a leading source of website traffic.

Awin Case Study Logo

Client

Awin

Headquarters

Berlin, Germany

Industry

Advertising Services

Company Size

1,400 employees

Summary 👇

As global leaders in affiliate marketing, Awin supports their clients’ businesses growth. One area that helps to keep the company ahead of the market is through constant innovation, both in terms of its service and also in its thinking.

It was this thinking and desire to keep moving forward that led them to identify their employee influencers, empowering their team to become brand ambassadors.

Awin quickly realized that with their employees all at differing levels of social confidence and willingness, a modern approach would be required in order to succeed. They identified the DSMN8 platform as the ideal employee advocacy platform, introducing the technology across multiple offices, departments and languages.

Awin DSMN8 Case Study
Awin Netball Team DSMN8 Lens
Awin #ThinkTankUK DSMN8 Lens
Awin DSMN8 Case Study

The People 👋

Founded in 2000, Awin (formerly Affiliate Window and zanox) are a global affiliate marketing network. Headquartered in Berlin, Germany part of Axel Springer, Europe’s largest digital publishing house.

The company consists of over 200,000 publishers and 15,500 advertisers, with over 1,000 employees split across 15 offices.

In 2018, Awin helped clients including ASOS, O2, HP, Business Insider and Marks & Spencer generate sales of over £11.3bn. The organization is passionate about empowering publishers and advertisers of all sizes to grow their online businesses.

The Challenge 🤔

Awin wanted to support and guide their employees to become more active on social media. Over time, they aimed to turn them into Awin brand ambassadors and influencers.

Having been introduced to the possibilities of employee advocacy early on, they understood the benefits of such a program.

There was also a need to centralize company content whilst maintaining local relevance. With multiple teams and languages, differing levels of employee experience and willingness to share, ensuring smooth integration and adoption was going to be vital to its success.

The challenge was set.

How could Awin effectively launch an employee influencer program across different markets and drive business results?

Lisa Hammond, Group Marketing Director - Awin

”The simple-to-use platform empowers Awin employees to share industry and Awin news to bolster their professional networks. DSMN8 has provided invaluable support from the beginning. From launching the tool across our teams around the world to helping us continue to grow our advocacy program to its full potential.

Lisa HammondGroup Marketing Director

The Solution 💪

Having completed a review, Awin selected DSMN8 as their employee advocacy tool of choice due to the innovative features and ease of use.

Awin’s biggest requirement was to provide a solution which would not only drive employee participation but also support employees.

DSMN8’s user-friendly desktop platform and mobile app helped employees build personal brands and become more confident on social media, while increasing company exposure.

Key Fact: Typically less than 2% of employees share company content on social media without an employee advocacy program.

The key elements behind the success of Awin’s employee influencer program:

1. Segmentation and Personalization
2. Gamification and Leaderboards
3. Authentic and Unique Post Copy
4. Strategic Onboarding Strategy

Segmentation and Personalization

DSMN8’s segmentation and personalization capabilities were critical to the success of the Awin program.

The organization was now able to curate and serve the most relevant content to every employee, no matter their department, region or language.

Awin employees were also able personalize the text accompanying the content, which proved a powerful approach.

This increased the authenticity, quality and impact of the content shared by employees.

Key Fact: Content shared by employees generates 2x engagement versus when distributed by a company page.

DSMN8 Dynamic Display Multiple Social Media Captions Feature
DSMN8 employee advocacy mobile app

Gamification and Leaderboards

Another element that helped drive the effectiveness of the program was DSMN8’s gamification and leaderboards features.

Awin was able to tap into the power of competitive employees with the points-based engagement system and company leaderboards. This was supported by key senior leaders in the organization.

Key Fact: Gamification improved user engagement by over 3X.

Authentic and Unique Post Copy

DSMN8’s platform makes it easy for Awin to provide variations of imagery and text for every piece of content.

This prevents duplicate content being shared by employees, increasing the authenticity and originality of their social profiles.

Key Fact: Adding just 5 alternatives for images, post text and preview title creates 125 unique content previews.

DSMN8 platform tiled feed screenshot
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DSMN8 V2 Awin Feed

Strategic Onboarding Strategy

One of the key elements of Awin’s employee advocacy program strategy was to focus on engaging platform users with tailored onboarding.

The DSMN8 platform enabled the company to adapt to 3 specific employee groups identified:

1

New Starters

Built into the Awin onboarding program, employees receive training and a registration link in their ‘new joiner’ materials. They also receive DSMN8’s built-in welcome email, comprehensive induction and training sessions.
2

Key Senior Stakeholders

Initially engaging team leaders and senior staff in the tool encouraged wider adoption by the rest of the company. Leading by example increased interest across the organization.
3

Existing Users

Continuous engagement was achieved through a regular communication plan. This included content update emails, performance updates and encouragement to use the mobile app. The admin team also received quarterly reviews with insights to support user adoption.

Key Fact: Engaging new joiners at Awin increased active users by over 50%.

Key Features Used:

Groups & Teams

Get the right content to the right employees.

Dynamic Display

Multiple captions and images for every post.

Gamification & Leaderboards

Encourage participation with friendly competition and optional rewards.

The Impact 👊

Since implementing an employee advocacy program with DSMN8, Awin has achieved huge success in bringing social selling and personal branding to the forefront of their company culture.

Employees are now more aware of the key messaging and content the company produces. The platform has made it easy for Awin to communicate with its employees.

With 40% of all employees now actively using DSMN8, Awin has tapped into the power of employee influencers to help boost its PR and social footprint.

The company now sees a higher percentage of employees sharing on a monthly basis when compared to all industry competitors.

On average the program generates the following results each month:

650

Avg. posts shared

4,000

Content clicks

0.23

Comparative cost per click
Sarah Ruzgar, Global Communications Lead - Awin 2

”Employee shares on their personal social channels via DSMN8 has become one of the highest referrers of traffic to the AWIN site, securing employee advocacy as a core part of our marketing strategy. Seeing the results further motivates our teams to continue sharing company content.

Sarah RuzgarGlobal Communications Lead

Discover DSMN8

Watch the 90 second platform tour 👇

We help brands empower employees to curate, create and share on-brand content.

Your employees gain access to a desktop and mobile application where they can effortlessly share your content across social media, messaging, email and SMS.

Boost your organic reach while keeping employees up to date with company news and industry trends.

Ready to see how you could turn your employees into motivated social influencers like Awin?

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