Case study
How Affirm saw multichannel success with a Prime Day campaign with Amazon Ads
For consumers browsing for the latest TV or treadmill or more during Prime Day 2022, Affirm and the Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab (BIL) worked to inform shoppers about a “smarter way to pay” for their favorite items. Affirm’s “Seize Prime Day” campaign with Amazon Ads helped educate consumers about ways they could pay for purchases over time without any late or hidden fees.
In the lead-up to Prime Day 2022, Affirm collaborated with the BIL to launch a custom brand Store where consumers could earn rewards (like a $1 credit or incentive), shop Prime Day deals, and play with a dynamic calculator to visualize various payment plans.
Along with Affirm’s branded Amazon boxes, an interactive Fire tablet wake screen, and an Amazon homepage hero ad placement ahead of Prime Day, Affirm helped raise awareness and educate Amazon customers during one of Amazon’s biggest shopping events of the year.
Calculating the right plan to help Affirm inform consumers
After launching on all Amazon.com traffic in the fourth quarter of 2021, Affirm wanted to build awareness for their payment solutions with shoppers.
“We knew that the lead-up to Prime Day was the perfect time to help ensure Affirm was top of mind—so shoppers knew there was a new, flexible, and transparent way to pay,” said Erika White, the vice president of marketing and communications at Affirm. “We wanted to ensure that consumers understood we provide the total cost of a purchase up front with no tricks or ‘gotchas’ hidden in fine print and that they could use us virtually anywhere on Amazon. The lead-up to Prime Day was critical for building this understanding so that eligible consumers could easily check out with Affirm on Prime Day.”
With the intention to help inform customers ahead of and on Prime Day, Affirm worked with the BIL to develop the “Seize Prime Day” campaign built around a custom hub in Amazon Stores. The hub included custom photography of curated products aligned to the most popular “Buy now, pay later” categories. The page featured custom photos for 16 products across four categories, which each featured their own GIF. Two intro video scenes were shot for the hero section and used to activate the rewards-based ads. Affirm offered an incentive for visiting the brand hub (“Earn $2 for Prime Day when you visit the brand hub”) and a deeper offer for Prime Day (“Get $25 Amazon credit when you spend $100 with Affirm”).
The custom Affirm hub also offered consumers a calculator that showed various payment options. Using a slider, consumers could indicate the price of a purchase they wanted to make, and the calculator would show options for each plan’s monthly payment.
Meanwhile, Affirm and Amazon Ads spread the word for the campaign with an interactive Fire tablet wake screen that teased the campaign, and surprised and delighted customers with a link to the hub where they could earn their rewards. They also shared the message via Amazon boxes and a homepage ad that explained to customers how Affirm works.
A campaign to “Seize Prime Day” for consumers and Affirm
Affirm’s Prime Day campaign with the BIL was a success for the financial technology company. The Fire tablet wake screen delivered 2.4 million impressions, the homepage hero ad generated 137 million impressions, and 1.2 million boxes promoted Affirm through Prime Day.
“We considered our first Prime Day with Amazon groundbreaking and a big win in many ways,” White said. “We drove over 450 million impressions and over 2 million unique visitors to the Affirm hub. We also saw an increase in brand awareness from those who were exposed to the campaign.”
The wide reach of the campaign helped Affirm build greater awareness for their payment solutions.
“Despite our rapid growth, there’s still a huge number of consumers who are unfamiliar with Affirm and our points of differentiation. Consistently building awareness and comprehension of our benefits is key to building distinction and this campaign helped us do just that,” White said. “Our work with the Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab was truly collaborative: We found a way to highlight Affirm and how it fits into the payment options on Amazon. Our teams worked together on a custom photo shoot in order to create content for the brand hub and explain the Affirm brand benefits. The content was educational and engaging, with shoppable products, a dynamic calculator [to show APR offers], and Prime Day deals. Amazon Ads and Brand Innovation Lab helped us create a full-funnel campaign that helped drive the necessary reach and frequency to get consumers to engage with Affirm.”
Following the success of Prime Day, Affirm collaborated again with the BIL later in 2022 for a holiday campaign.