December 9th 2019

Acceleration Partners' Publisher Spotlight is an ongoing series where members of our Publisher Development team shine a light on innovative publishers from across the world.

This month, Cassandra Scarbeck, Publisher Development Manager at Acceleration Partners, chatted with Chad Loughmiller, Partnerships Success Manager with LifeWorks by Morneau Shepell.

For those that haven't heard of LifeWorks before, give us your elevator pitch.

LifeWorks is a closed loop employee benefit platform which encompasses health & wellness, employee assistance, employee engagement, as well as discounts and perks. Users engage via desktop as well as the LifeWorks app.

Lifeworks has established relationships with more than 15,000 organizations worldwide. Tell us about some of the ways you support employees and their families globally.

We offer a variety of services including 24/7 employee counselling & coaching support and well-being content resources across all aspects of work and life.

We are also a platform for HR communication as well as building community within organizations. We'boost company culture by leveraging your company news feed to celebrate great work and recognizing peers for a job well done.

Our Perks & Savings'for Life Events help employees save everyday with discounts at over 1,000 retail brands. We also pro-actively reward & engage employees physical well-being through health risk assessments, challenges and health and wellness coaching.

What are the Top 3 reasons an advertiser should work with LifeWorks via your Perks and Savings feature?

LifeWorks passes back 100% of commissions to users in Cashback. Additionally, we boost cashback 100% (funded by LifeWorks) for the first $100 spent each month!

Closed-Employee networks allow advertisers to target new customers with more aggressive exclusive offerings while protecting the wide-spread distribution of these codes.

LifeWorks is a daily work resource for our users with a highly engaged audience ' users average 2.6 logins per day & newsletter open rates averaging 32.9%.

Share with our readers the various ways you are able to get your users engaged with their brand.

LifeWorks offers a variety of placement opportunities throughout the platform including home page banners, featured exclusive & cashback offers, Top 10 Merchant page, newsletter sponsorship and newsfeed posts which include a push notification to all LifeWorks app users.

Due to the nature of your business model being an employee reward, you need an exclusive offer from advertisers that cannot be found in search. For advertisers that are concerned about these offers being made available to people outside of Lifeworks, explain how they are protected.

LifeWorks is a closed-employee network that requires individual users to login through a company portal setup for each individual employer. Therefore, we find users are less likely to abuse a benefit provided by their employer.

We are constantly monitoring code usage and ensuring that any LifeWorks exclusive code is only being used within our network. As an added layer of protection, we will also work with advertisers in changing out their code on a monthly or quarterly basis, if desired.

Do you require coupon codes, or can you work with specialty landing pages created for your users that automatically apply a discount?

LifeWorks does not require a coupon code and we are happy to work with specialty landing pages where the code is automatically applied!

Can advertisers provide you with an evergreen offer?

We would only post an evergreen offer if it was semi-exclusive in nature, for example, if a coupon code was made available to all closed-employee networks.

You promote offers in a variety of verticals including electronics, fashion, food & drink, health & fitness, home, travel and entertainment. Where have you seen the strongest engagement and conversion?

We have found that there is not a specific vertical alignment. We tend to follow traditional affiliate trends, but performance is directly impacted by the strength of the offer, timing and promotional support.

In addition to discounts, you also offer cashback powered by Incentive Networks. Please describe this relationship for our advertisers.

Incentive Networks is a 3rd'party white-label publisher network that allows us to track & facilitate the cashback tracking on the LifeWorks platform. The LifeWorks team manages all cashback relationships, Incentive Networks is simply used for the page setup & on-boarding.

Is there a minimum rate you require or a recommended cashback rate you suggest to advertisers in order to see the most success?

There is no minimum requirement to launch on the platform, however, we would look for a competitive cashback rate within each vertical. It is important to remember that LifeWorks passes back 100% of commissions to users. Plus, we fund an additional 100% boost for the first $100 spent each month, which allows us to stay very competitive in the cashback space.

Anything new and exciting planned for your roadmap in 2019 that you can tell us about?

LifeWorks will be launching a new Top 10 Merchant page in August 2019 which will provide for additional promotional opportunities on the platform. Additionally, LifeWorks is working on an aggressive internal on-boarding initiative to bring on all EAP only clients within the new LifeWorks by Morneau Shepell platform.

Lastly, Chad, we both live in Chicagoland. So, tell our readers' Cubs or Sox' Favorite pizza joint in Chicago' Best spot for live local musical talent in the Windy City'

First and foremost, GO WHITE SOX!

Lou Malnati's is my go-to for deep-dish, otherwise Piece Pizzeria in Wicker Park is great for thin crust.

Kingston Mines is my favorite local place for live music, but you have to be ready for a bit of a late night!