Branduo is a brand collaboration network where verified eCommerce brands find complementary partners and run co-marketing campaigns together, including social giveaways, email and SMS swaps, gift with purchase, packaging inserts, shared mailers, and co-branded products.
A brand collaboration is a marketing campaign that two eCommerce brands run together so each one reaches the other's customers. Common formats include a joint social giveaway, an email or SMS swap, a gift with purchase, a packaging insert swap, a shared mailer, or a co-branded product. Both brands share the audience, the work, and usually the cost.
Paid acquisition keeps getting more expensive as brands bid against each other, and privacy changes made targeting less predictable. A partner has already paid to acquire their customers and has already earned their trust. Co-marketing borrows that reach and that trust instead of renting impressions, so the cost sits in coordination rather than media spend.
A complementary brand sells to the same customer but does not sell the same product. A running shoe brand and an electrolyte brand are complementary. Two running shoe brands are competitors. The test is whether a customer could reasonably buy both in the same month, and whether each product makes the other more useful rather than redundant.
Lead with what the other brand gets. Name the shared customer, propose one specific format with one specific date, and state what you are bringing, such as list size, social reach, or budget. Keep the first message short enough to answer from a phone. Vague requests to collaborate get ignored because they leave all the work with the recipient.
Agree on the format, the launch date, and who owns each task. Then write down the offer, the creative approvals, the promotion each side commits to, how costs are split, how any shared revenue is split, who holds the customer data, and the usage rights for shared assets. Most collabs that fall apart fail on promotion commitments, not on creative.
Most brands start manually, through founder networks, DMs, agency introductions, and Klaviyo contacts. That works for the first few partners and then stalls, because it depends on who you already know. A brand collaboration network like Branduo replaces the search step: you list your brand once, then get scored matches with verified brands that share your customer.
Check four things. First, audience overlap, meaning the same customer with a different cart. Second, reach, so neither side carries the whole promotion. Third, brand safety, since your list sees their creative. Fourth, follow through, which you can test with a small collab such as an insert swap before committing to a co-branded product.
No, but each side needs to contribute something the other values. A smaller brand can offset a smaller list with higher quality creative, a more engaged audience, budget, or product for a prize pool. Uneven partnerships work when the trade is stated up front. They fail when the smaller brand assumes reach it cannot deliver.
Branduo documents fourteen formats: social giveaways, email and SMS swaps, co-funding influencers, gift with purchase, post purchase promos, AEO and SEO content, shared mailers, packaging inserts, media production, gift bundles, co-branded products, TikTok Live, events, and sponsored packaging. Each one has a written playbook at branduo.io/collaborations with steps, a checklist, and a template.
Two or more brands each contribute product to one prize bundle, then promote a single entry page to their own audiences. Entrants usually opt in to both lists. It is the fastest collab to launch because it needs no fulfillment changes and no new product. The main risk is list quality, so weight entries toward genuine interest rather than raw volume.
In an email or SMS swap, each brand sends a dedicated message introducing the other brand to its own subscribers, usually with an exclusive offer. No list is ever transferred, so it stays compliant. Both sides agree the send dates, the segment, the creative, and the offer in advance so the volume each brand delivers is comparable.
Each brand puts the other brand's card or offer into its outbound orders for an agreed period. It reaches a buyer at the moment they are already opening a package, so intent is high and the cost is print plus a slot in the box. Track it with a unique code or landing page, since there is no click path.
A social giveaway or an email swap. Both run on assets you already have and need no change to product, packaging, or fulfillment, so a pair of motivated brands can go live in one to two weeks. Co-branded products and shared media production deliver more, and take a quarter or more because they involve sourcing and production.
Branduo is a brand collaboration network where verified eCommerce brands find complementary partners and run co-marketing campaigns together. Brands verify their store, complete a profile, get AI-scored matches with brands that share their customer, connect, and then run collabs such as social giveaways, email swaps, gift with purchase, packaging inserts, and co-branded products.
Branduo is for verified DTC and eCommerce brands, and for the founders, partnership managers, social managers, and performance marketers who run their growth. Brand collaborations work best when both partners can contribute meaningfully, and brands doing at least $1M in annual store revenue tend to make the strongest partners. Branduo works with brands of all sizes.
Create a free account and verify your domain, then complete your brand profile with categories, audience, reach, and the collab types you want. Browse AI-scored matches, send connection requests, or let a Duo AI agent send them for you. When a brand accepts, you become partners and can run unlimited collabs together.
There are two gates. Branduo first checks that the brand is a real trading eCommerce business using public traffic and industry estimates, and brands that do not pass can appeal. The brand then verifies ownership of its own domain. Until a brand completes domain verification it cannot discover partners or connect, which keeps the network free of placeholders.
A connection request is the ask to connect with another brand, sent by you or by a Duo AI agent. Once that brand accepts, they are a partner. A collab is the campaign you then run with that partner. Plans meter connection requests sent per month. Partner connections and collabs with an existing partner are unlimited.
Duo AI is Branduo's automated outreach. You define a search segment of the kind of partner you want, and the agent scores brands in that segment by match rate and sends connection requests on your behalf. When a brand shows interest you are notified so you can review them and choose to connect or pass. Agent requests count against your monthly cap.
The pitch board is where a brand posts a specific collab opportunity, such as a Q4 giveaway or an insert swap with a set date, and other brands apply to join it. It inverts discovery: instead of searching for a partner and then agreeing on a format, you publish the format and let interested brands come to you.
Branduo is brand to brand, not brand to creator. Tools like Shopify Collabs connect a brand with individual creators and affiliates. On Branduo both sides are verified eCommerce stores with their own list, their own social audience, and their own packages going out, so the exchange is audience for audience rather than payment for a post.
The most common alternative is the manual process: founder DMs, agency introductions, and Klaviyo contacts. Dedicated tools also exist, and DojoMojo is the closest, focused on partnership giveaways with list growth. Branduo differs in two ways: every brand is verified before it can connect, and the network covers fourteen collab types rather than giveaways alone.
No. Signing up is free and needs no store connection and no credit card. Branduo verifies your brand through your public store and a domain verification link, not through a platform integration, so Branduo works for brands on Shopify and on any other eCommerce platform.
Branduo has three plans. Free is $0 and includes 3 connection requests per month. Starter is $29 per month, or $23 per month billed yearly, and includes 30 connection requests and 1 active collab pitch. Growth is $149 per month, or $119 per month billed yearly, and includes 50 connection requests and 5 active collab pitches.
Yes. The Free plan costs nothing and needs no credit card and no store connection. It includes your network listing, 3 connection requests per month, unlimited partner connections, messaging, and asset sharing. Paid plans raise the monthly request cap and add full discovery, collab pitches, and automated Duo AI outreach.
Only connection requests sent, whether you send them yourself or a Duo AI agent sends them for you. Partner connections are unlimited on every plan, collabs with a brand that has already accepted are unlimited, and brands that join through your own invite link do not count against the cap.
Give every collab its own tracking before launch, using a unique discount code, a dedicated landing page, or a UTM tagged link per partner and per channel. Then measure referred customers, new subscribers, revenue, and the cost you actually spent. Compare cost per acquired customer against your paid channels over the same window rather than against a lifetime average.
Total everything the collab cost you, including product given away, print and postage, creative time, and any media spend. Divide that by the new customers it produced in the attribution window you use for paid. The comparison is only fair if both channels use the same window and both include the labour, not only the media.
Plan on a few weeks. Verification and a complete profile take a day. Finding a partner and agreeing on a format is the variable part, and depends on how quickly the other brand replies. Once both sides have agreed, a giveaway or an email swap typically needs one to two weeks of lead time for creative and scheduling.
Every collab format has its own playbook on the collaborations page, and longer guides live on the blog.