As a Germany-based startup, Naughty Nuts produces high-quality nut-based products, including nut butter, nut butter cups, and spreads.
The brand was born out of a unique gap in the market: peanut butter, a staple in countries like the United States and New Zealand, was virtually unknown in Germany. Recognizing an opportunity, Naughty Nuts set out to introduce and popularize this versatile, protein-packed product among German consumers.
But entering the market wasn’t easy. German consumers weren’t familiar with peanut butter, as traditional spreads like jam and honey were more widely used.
The odds were stacked against NaughtyNuts: an unfamiliar product, high production costs, and a market rooted in traditional habits. NaughtyNuts realized they couldn’t win everyone over at once. Rather than appealing to the masses, they sought out the people who would already understand and value their product.
The brand focused on a specific audience: vegans, fitness enthusiasts, and clean-eating advocates. These groups were already familiar with the health benefits of peanut butter, such as its high protein content, making them ideal early adopters.
But how could the brand effectively reach and convince these groups? The answer was affiliate marketing.
Leverage affiliate marketing to manage influencers
Naughty Nuts saw an opportunity to engage their target audience by collaborating with Instagram micro-influencers. With smaller but highly engaged followings, these influencers were perfect for reaching niche communities and building authentic connections with potential customers.
However, paying influencers upfront for promotional posts wasn’t a viable option for a startup working within a limited budget, especially since it carried the risk of little to no sales.
That’s why the brand decided to leverage affiliate marketing, a performance-based model where influencers earned commissions only when their efforts generated actual sales. The result was a win-win: influencers were rewarded for their performance, and the brand ensured a positive return on investment.
From the start, Naughty Nuts chose to use UpPromote to run their program. With advanced automation features and a robust tracking system, the platform enabled the team to focus on scaling their program without the additional administrative burden of manual processes.
The key to the success of Naughty Nuts’ affiliate program is their strategic approach to selecting the right partners and keeping them motivated to deliver results. Read on to find out how they do it.
Be selective in choosing quality partners
The brand took a strategic approach to recruiting micro-influencers by running targeted paid ad campaigns on Instagram. These campaigns were designed to reach a specific audience, German content creators with 3,000 to 30,000 followers who could authentically connect with niche communities.
However, running ads was just the first step. Naughty Nuts implemented a careful screening process to ensure that each influencer met their strict criteria.
To maintain a localized and authentic presence, influencers were required to have a primarily German audience. Additionally, they required a minimum of 5,000 organically grown followers, excluding bots, fake accounts, or purchased followers.
Once potential partners were identified, the brand directly reached out to them, often through Instagram. Before contacting them, Naughty Nuts carefully reviewed their content to determine whether it reflected the brand’s values and resonated with their health-conscious audience.
This thoughtful recruitment process set the foundation for authentic collaborations and meaningful connections with their target audience.
Foster strong partnerships with fair rewards & incentives
Naughty Nuts relied on UpPromote to set up commissions for their partners. The brand offered micro-influencers a fixed commission rate of 10% on every sale they generated.
In addition, UpPromote enabled the brand to automate the creation of personalized discount codes for each influencer. As soon as an influencer joined the program, a unique 10% discount code was automatically generated and ready to share with their followers.
This automation eliminated the need for manual code assignments, saving the team significant time and resources while ensuring a seamless onboarding experience for new partners.
A lifestyle micro influencer promoted Naughty Nuts with her exclusive discount code
One example of Naughty Nuts’ collaboration is with lifestyle micro-influencer Andreea Man, better known as @andreiutza2001 on Instagram (12.5K followers). In a recent post, she expressed her cravings for the brand’s Happy White Hazelnut Create and shared her exclusive discount code NN-ANDREEA10 with followers.
Micro-influencers like Andreea have a strong connection with their niche communities, making it easier to build trust and authenticity with their audience. Their close-knit relationships with followers allow them to create more relatable and impactful content, which helps Naughty Nuts drive engagement and boost sales effectively.
Moreover, the brand provided each influencer with a €50 gift card per month, allowing them to purchase the peanut butter products at better prices. That way, influencers can directly experience the products and then create more authentic promotional content. Naughty Nuts can also encourage these partners to remain engaged and committed to the brand.
With UpPromote, merchants can even set up some gift packages by selecting products from their inventory. Once the gifts were sent, affiliates automatically received an email notification to claim them, simplifying the process for both sides.
Although the primary focus was on micro-influencers, Naughty Nuts occasionally collaborated with macro-influencers who had audiences of up to 500,000 followers. These partnerships were managed differently, often involving story posts and formal contracts to clearly define deliverables and terms.
Besides promoting products, macro-influencers played a key role in elevating the brand’s image. Their significant reach and influence helped Naughty Nuts appear more credible, authentic, and professional to a larger audience.
Filter partners based on real performance
Naughty Nuts takes a strategic and data-driven approach to managing their influencer partnerships, ensuring that only committed and effective collaborators remain in their program. Thanks to UpPromote’s real-time analytics, the brand reviews influencer performance over the last 90 days to identify underperforming partners.
The process involves filtering influencers based on their sales data. For instance, influencers whose sales rank in the bottom 50 but have not generated zero sales are flagged for review.
Within the UpPromote app, Naughty Nuts can then send emails to these influencers to address the issue. The first type of email is designed to be supportive and encouraging, aiming to foster collaboration.
We’ve noticed there haven’t been any sales yet. Do you need any help? Let us know if there’s anything we can assist you with! Otherwise, we might need to reevaluate our partnership in a couple of weeks.
However, if an influencer hasn’t posted any content about the brand but continues to redeem their voucher codes, the brand sends a firm yet professional email letting the influencer know that their partnership is ending.
Results
UpPromote has helped Naughty Nuts track over 8,000 referrals while significantly reducing the time spent on manual work.
The team is more than satisfied with their experience and often shares the tool with fellow e-commerce professionals. As Kristian Heichen, Head of Paid Marketing at Naughty Nuts, explained:
We’re really happy with UpPromote, and I actually recommend it all the time to others in our e-commerce community. It’s such an easy tool to use! We’ve been using it for about three years now on the 50-euro plan. It’s super affordable, and it saves us so much manual work—it’s pretty amazing.
Kristian also pointed out how UpPromote simplifies processes compared to brands running affiliate programs manually:
From what I hear from other brands, they have to jump into Shopify once a month and do manual reporting when they don’t use a tool like this. UpPromote just makes everything so much smoother. We’re really happy with it.
Ellie Tran, a seasoned SEO content writer with three years of experience in the eCommerce world. Being a part of the UpPromote team, Ellie wants to assist Shopify merchants in achieving success through useful content & actionable insights. Ellie's commitment to learning never stops; she's always eager to gain more knowledge about SEO and content marketing to create valuable content for users. When she's not working on content, Ellie enjoys baking and exploring new places.
