Commission Junction - Advertiser case study.

TaxBrain Case Study

TaxBrain Triples Affiliate Program Sales in Just One Year Using Commission Junction's CJ Access™ and Value Added Services

Of the 133 million income tax returns received by the IRS in 2005, 68.5 million were filed electronically, an 11.3 percent increase over 2004. The fastest growing segment of electronic filings was in the self-prepared category, where taxpayers turned to Web based programs to file their own returns. Millions of self-prepared returns were done last year demonstrating significant growth year over year. TaxBrain, a leader in online income tax preparation and electronic filing, has experienced a 400 percent increase in affiliate leads and a 300 percent increase in affiliate sales in just one year by utilizing Commission Junction's CJ Access solution combined with its value added service offerings.


	"We saw an incredible return on our investment using the Publisher Optimization and Publisher Prospecting services." Todd Taylor Business Development TaxBrain

An advantage for TaxBrain and publishers is that the audience for electronic filing is far-reaching – anyone who pays taxes is a viable customer. The reward for using TaxBrain is high – many get money in just 24 hours of filing their return. Likewise, the rewards are high for publishers working with TaxBrain. One in four leads converts to a sale and in peak periods that number increases to one in two. TaxBrain pays on both sales and leads, and has highly competitive payouts with a tiered payout structure. TaxBrain also provides its publishers with a series of training documents that allows publisher to stay current with messaging as well updates. These factors make it possible for the publishers to run a highly effective program.

One of the keys to TaxBrain's success has been enlisting Commission Junction's value added services, Publisher Optimization and Publisher Prospecting. The Publisher Optimization team worked with TaxBrain to review offers and incentives, communicated with publishers and created strategies to improve the performance of low-generating publishers. The goal of the 30-day program was to ensure that all publishers joined to the program were performing to full best potential. As a result, TaxBrain experienced a ten-fold growth in publisher performance in just one year. Commission Junction also worked with TaxBrain in a 30-day Publisher Prospecting program which researched and identified 100 publishers who were not yet involved in the program. Commission Junction along with TaxBrain constructed an offer that would attract these publishers to join the program.

"We saw an incredible return on our investment using the Publisher Optimization and Publisher Prospecting services," said Todd Taylor, who is in charge of Business Development at TaxBrain. "One of the publishers identified and recruited by Commission Junction became one of our best-performing partners. We are very pleased with the results."

"TaxBrain is a great example of how making a few adjustments can really make significant improvements in an affiliate program," said Dave Osman, Vice President of Advertiser Development at Commission Junction. "We offer our advertising partners a variety of services to help address their individual goals and we are glad to see such impressive results."

While tax season can be a stressful time, TaxBrain and its publishers work hard to alleviate some of that stress for the millions of people looking to file online. With competitive offers, communication with publishers and guidance from industry leader Commission Junction, TaxBrain has created one of the most competitive and successful affiliate marketing programs on the Web.

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