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The LFG Show
Data Monetization & Media Buying Secrets with Cari Hartman
🔥 Welcome to The LFG Show 🔥
Hosted by David Stodolak, this episode features the incredible Cari Hartman as we dive deep into the world of affiliate marketing, exploring the ups and downs of the business and sharing insider tips on how to crush it in media buying and beyond! 🚀
Cari is the powerhouse behind Policy Jar, where they excel in data monetization, paid search & social inbounds, and qualified transfers in industries like Medicare, ACA, auto insurance, life insurance, and debt relief.
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Timestamps:
0:06
Next Level Networking With LFG
Creating Value in Performance Marketing
Networking and Value Exchange in Marketing
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Speaker 3:We wrapped up affiliate summit, new york 2024. My voice a little messed up. We're still going strong. We got the energy still going tight. We got got two lemon spritzes. We got a bougie espresso $40 martini for no real reason other than the optics. And I got someone, one of my favorite people in the industry, carrie Hartman. She's a VP of this dev at Policy Jar. They are crushing shit. I'm super excited to have her here. She's got a fancy spa treatment in about 45 minutes.
Speaker 3:So treatment in about 45 minutes, but we'll do a part two. I'm not worried about that. Carrie, great to have you on the show.
Speaker 2:It's great to be here.
Speaker 3:We did this in Dominican Republic, but the audio got really fucked up so we couldn't hear it.
Speaker 2:So I'm glad we're doing it.
Speaker 3:So, Carrie, how was the Philly summer for you? This was one of my favorite ones. I thought it was pretty sick it was amazing.
Speaker 2:Um, I've been coming to these since literally 2008. Um, that's how I got in the industry, um, and I never really looked back um it. This one was particularly great because I feel like I visited all my pockets of people in the industry. So, whether it be search, arb, emailers, paper callers, nutra, e-com, I think I talk to everyone. What I like to do at these shows is really, I don't schedule a ton of meetings. I feel like it's a waste of time. I like to get a read for where things are going, where things are headed, what verticals people are running. That's, that's always my goal at these shows.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree with you, I don't the meetings I schedule, 75% don't even happen or you're at the wrong location, like I had one yesterday.
Speaker 2:You're chasing, chasing. This guy was at.
Speaker 3:Central Park somewhere I don't know where the hell we got Central Park. I'm over here. I'm like it ain't happening.
Speaker 2:Central Park yeah, I don't know how the fuck that happened. Nobody got time for that.
Speaker 3:But it's just. That's the nature of the beast, and what I find is that the longer you've been in this industry for 20 years, right.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:The longer you're in there to the top. I threw a party Sunday night. You were there. It was just this thing that started with five or seven people, I guess the word got out. We've had like 50 or 60 people there, boy, heavy hitters, right, and that's really where the action gets done. So I feel like the longer you're in it, you attract that and you find the right people somehow.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. And then at a certain point I'm like okay, I've seen you guys enough, I gotta yeah I gotta mix it up. Yeah, for sure at that. At that point you're just hanging out.
Speaker 3:So so let's talk about a couple things. Uh, first of all, a policy journey.
Speaker 2:Right, great mccarter team, good guys doing amazing team of media buying experience uh tech backgrounds, affiliate backgrounds, call center backgrounds so I feel feel like we have assembled the Avengers of really media buying and just being the direct traffic source.
Speaker 3:And great people too. You guys are fun to hang out with. You guys train with wins and it's just a great thing. You guys got good quality stuff. You guys really are experts at your craft and it's good to see you guys doing as well as you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, between Koi being an expert at Google and Carter being an expert at Facebook, on just the outbound media buying side, they're both crushing it respectively. And then what we've layered on top of that is like a sawdust business, where we're able to outbound dial the stuff that doesn't convert the first time around and monetize data for a lot of other people in the space too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel that's a big need, right, and I think I know Lion at your team. He's got a big background in that, so you guys obviously know how to outbound dial, yeah, right, so I think that that's something. Can you talk more about that Because I want to make sure the audience understands? Obviously, a lot of people media buyers here you guys are a paper core, you guys are doing leads, you, you, you, you you make money just at one time and I have a data company too, so I get it when you actually monetize that data.
Speaker 3:So you guys are helping them do that. Explain exactly how you do that.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, so for that basically, um, basically, it's super important that we have TCPA stuff in place. So, basically, anybody with an O&O that's running an inbound call campaign, if they put our DBA on their partner page and they're gathering the opt-in and they have Jernia in trusted form, then we're able to outbound dial it. For example, if it's an ACA campaign that they're running, where the user calls in it doesn't convert the first time around, then we're basically, essentially we have permission to outbound dial them and try to requalify them for ACA and some other down cells as well that are complimentary verticals. So that's how we do that and we're a little bit different than some of the other companies that do it in that we only sell it one time to keep the buyer happy and to ensure that we get the highest RPCs and rates on our transfers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you keep the integrity of the data intact. That's huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're pretty strict about that to a fault almost that's good, but that's where. Pretty strict about that to a fault almost that's good, but that's where it comes from.
Speaker 3:We are trying to connect the dots. There are a lot of companies that would crush the data. You can't win long-term. Short-term maybe, but not long-term.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it makes the media buys up front more valuable, and then you're able to bid more and just be more competitive on the front end too, because you know you don't, you're not required, You're not only selling at that one time. Basically.
Speaker 3:What's some good numbers of like companies. That is a rev share, first and foremost. Right, you do a rev share.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 40% gross usually, but it ends up being 50, 50. Once you factor in our call costs, you know it's negotiable.
Speaker 3:So what's some good numbers, someone so affiliates.
Speaker 2:I mean, would you guys do in this sort of program, um, I would say it's like a couple bucks a record okay, especially from the, yeah, from the, from the um, the phone numbers that are converting the first time, and then for co-reg slightly less, but that's to be expected for co-reg.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and uh oh, outside when we're ordering drinks. You were talking about something really interesting. You're talking about the power dynamic has been shifting, and I think you're right about that. Yeah, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that, yeah back in the day.
Speaker 2:So I come from email. Um, when I started, email was basically the only channel in affiliate marketing.
Speaker 2:Uh, there, I mean people had websites and blogs and things like 2008, 2010 yeah, 2008 I worked for an email spy tool, lashback um and kind of got to know the industry just like a bird's eye view. And not only that, but like all the things that they were people were mailing, all the dirty work, all the links you know, all the redirect links. I would study those but I just got a really good sense for, like the bigger players in the industry in the space. A lot of the mailers didn't like us because we were showing the advertisers what they were mailing and all that. But yeah so.
Speaker 2:But back then I mean the mailers held all the held basically, and you know they could make or break an advertiser campaign and decide not to run it and it was all opportunity costs for them because they already have the data that they're mailing, whereas with media buying you know like you're spending money, like in a real-time environment you're bidding. So it becomes more like the buyer becomes more important and has holds, more cards basically than they used to. Back in the day, like I can still remember there was a big advertiser and they're still big, but they were late to a meeting with a mailer and she was like crying because she thought she wasn't going to get the mailing the campaign. So that was crazy because that would never happen. Now, like, it's more of the opposite, where you're talking to a big insurance carrier and you know I wouldn't want to be five minutes late for that meeting.
Speaker 3:So I think that's a beautiful thing about working with someone like you, and you've been doing this for three decades Now. We think it sounds a lot. It's 2000.
Speaker 2:I'm not that old, yeah, almost 20 years, almost 20 years you've seen it from that email.
Speaker 3:You see the evolution yeah, there's the, you know web force, paper core age, all this different e-com you've seen all of that yes, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It's really fun like watching verticals come in and out and, um, really like it. It all sort of ties back to like where the market is, where the economy is, what's going to be hot, um, but it's fun seeing something come back that you haven't heard about in like a decade, like even nutra, I mean, I feel like nutra is making a comeback 100, but what I, what I pay attention to a lot is like whether or not interest rates where interest rates are at basically determines where the market is. So, like when interest rates are low, you have people refinancing their homes, so you get homeowner data like. The homeowner data is a steady flow of people trying to save money. But that's prime data. That's people with higher credit scores. You sell them completely different stuff home services, auto insurance. You sell them completely different products than what you're selling to a subprime audience with a lower credit score, whereas you're selling them like health insurance, aca, medicare, mass tort, motor vehicle accidents and otherwise known as MVA. But it's just marketing to those two audiences is completely different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned interest rates because I don't think people talk about that enough. I went to NYU, graduated in 2001. I wasn't scored during the dot-com bubble. I couldn't wait to get the hell out because I'm like I'm going to make all this money. My roommate got like a $25,000 signing bonus, like $120,000 salary. I'm going to be fucking rich. When I got out, the dot-com bubble imploded. Then 9-11 happened, all that crazy stuff. But all of this stuff affects the global economy and that affects what we do and the effect of money is flowing. So I saw that with solar. Solar was hot for many, many years. A lot of it was due to low interest rates. When the race went up, it changed everything. It exposed a lot of people. So I think a lot of the audience needs to look at what's going on in the macro environment because you can kind of you can kind of pivot faster than your competition can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And even sometimes, you know, when everybody's exiting a vertical for whatever reason, whatever changes, that's an opportunity too to really go. Okay, everybody's exiting, there's still money to be made here. If I can have, if I can dominate this vertical without so much competition, that's another opportunity. Another opportunity. But yeah, like right now, with interest rates where they are, um, you see a lot more people applying for loans and then if you look at inflation, like housing values are up, right, so that's one opportunity is like to push like a home equity loan or a reverse mortgage, just because people are seeing that they have a ton of value in their home but they might be cash poor, yeah, yeah. And then the senior market is always like an evergreen thing, that you can target.
Speaker 1:Age data.
Speaker 4:There's only a few months left of this. A lot of different ways to monetize data. Data is a very broad term. There's a lot more money in it. You already spent the money. Let's just say it costs you $10 for a Medicare. You make a million dollars in sales. You really only made a hundred thousand bucks and you might not get paid by your advertiser. What if I can get an extra 50 cents dollar, $2, $3 per lead in perpetuity? What does that do to my marketing campaign? What does that do for the stress of the profits of my company? A percentage or two at those kinds of numbers are huge as moving the needle. So for us, what I love about age data, the hard part's already been done. Now it's just a revenue left for your company. What would the extra 10, 20, $30,000 a week do for your business? Absolutely All of our big partners are making hundreds of thousands, if not millions, a year with us. They're never going to have this gold rush again.
Speaker 3:It's very true. I love that. You said that. I mean that's I want the audience to really pay attention to that, because I don't feel that happens enough. I mean, it happens to me because I graduate, I trade. I still trade stocks these days. I'm always watching the markets. What's going on with oil, interest rates, precious metals, crypto, all that stuff it's all connected at the end of the day. I think a lot of people don't think about it that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in some ways it's funny because if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like in the US people they need health insurance, they need this, they need this, they need like, if you look at the european market, it's completely different, you see a lot more like gambling and it's because their basic needs are met, you know like, yeah, that's a good point yeah, adult like I never thought about that, though you're right about that.
Speaker 3:It's so funny. You would feel your world is a whole different you know you go to these conferences dead, aca, medicaid, whatever. Over there is all gambling, porn, dating, crypto.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so funny yeah, yeah, what's funny in the us, though, I feel like um so recently there's like slots and gaming like on every corner now, like every like little podunk gas station will be like gaming here, gaming here. But I think that that you're mostly seeing like people that are on pensions or social security just gambling away their social security money basically. So I think it's a similar situation in Europe. If they're getting subsidized by the government, they're like spending it off. They're gambling with it.
Speaker 1:They're trying to enjoy their life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly that's those spending it off, they're gambling with it. They're trying to enjoy their life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that's those hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 3:That's great. Another thing we talked about offline, which I think is huge I know we've both been big beneficiaries of this is how this industry especially the longer you're into it, it becomes more like you know, your, your, your so-called competition becomes your partners.
Speaker 2:And your friends and your friends. Right, it's so awesome. No one else can relate to what we do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:Like honestly, if I'm being honest, it always sounds a little bit like pretentious to say that, but like it is true, like nobody can relate to this lifestyle.
Speaker 3:It's not for everybody. It's crazy. I don't even know how I'm standing. I was in Europe for three weeks, came back to Florida Saturday, came back here Sunday morning, went hard until like five in the morning, and you do it every day. That's what my voice is all about, but we do it. It's almost like you're with your family. It's a family, it's an extension of family.
Speaker 2:You call it a traveling circus, right, and I feel like I've gotten the best life advice from people in our space. Listen, not everyone you know, but some of the best life advice I've ever gotten is from other performance marketing people for sure, like a partner that I work with, like uses a company to like optimize his health, and a lot of you guys do.
Speaker 3:I know that you've got the peptides and the blood testing and all that Huge proponent of that, by the way. Yeah, because if we try to optimize our ad campaigns, optimize yourself, optimize your health, yeah. We're not doing good examples here, but fuck it, we're at the shows.
Speaker 2:Listen, it's about balance. No, I'll be home for a month hibernating on my computer, recharging my social battery.
Speaker 3:I can't wait. I'm going to do the same, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I've got Europe coming up. We're going to hit up Croatia for the fun of it, then click Bidibiza, and then I'm speaking in Budapest.
Speaker 3:Nice. Can't wait to see. I'll be there loud, I'll be cheering you on.
Speaker 2:I'm going to give away all my secrets on how to find buyers for the agenda campaign in the US. That's a big point.
Speaker 3:A lot of media buyers have no clue how to do business, develop or how to build a team, so check her out in Budapest. That's going to be a big one, well a lot of it's just a lot of.
Speaker 2:It is just persistence and compliance and having like SOPs in place to accomplish, to get actual budgets directly from buyers and then also I mean networks serve their purpose as well and agencies, because you, they do all that work for you and then you can kind of get a baseline for pricing and what you'd need to make the campaign work.
Speaker 3:Huge thing. Without the buyers you have no business. Or without right, treat them right, no business. So I love that I'll be at that event with you. And I want to go back to we were talking about really this, the win-wins that are created here.
Speaker 3:I was with a buddy of mine. He owns a completely different mine. He owns a cup completely different company. It's a little vertical as I'm in and I was talking about right now we have a lot of debt doing great for us and we want to press the gas. I had one particular buyer We've been illegal for like seven months, I don't know what the heck the problem is and he's already direct with these guys and he's like listen, run through me, I don't care, but at least go through me while you get your legal figure out and it will be good and like he didn't have to do that and obviously I would give her a bigger chunk of it, but that's a win-win at the end of the day. He didn't have to do that. But even if it's 100 calls a day, he makes five bucks a call. That's 500 a day.
Speaker 2:It adds up. Yeah, and if you see, like if you see somebody, or if you test a campaign from one source and not another and then you test it direct, sometimes the performance will be better with their intermediary because they have some sort of payout increase worked out or they have the campaign optimized differently.
Speaker 3:Or they might have some information you don't get information. They might have a bad relationship with the actual buyer and they might say, listen, we fired our manager, so don't focus on this state, focus on that state, and that's the little information that makes a difference between success and failure. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I'm a big LinkedIn user. I like to do a lot of layering of data on top of the LinkedIn and that's how I find people basically and I just keep trying until somebody responds. But yeah, the people in this space can be really helpful with those direct intros, especially if you want, if you trade referrals. Like I was just talking to one of my buyers and they have one vertical cracked and they're not in others and vice versa. So we're just, we've just been trading intros and it's been really good, it's a value exchange at the end of the day right Now.
Speaker 3:We say one thing money is a derivative of creating value. So you create value and I think that's what makes it a big, happy circus, family, whatever, because we're all looking for each other to win. If I know that you win and you find something good, like, hey, I got this and we'll try it out, yeah, it increases the probability of chance of the shit working out right, definitely yeah and the whole thing runs on fomo.
Speaker 2:so yeah, it does, whether it's FOMO for running a vertical, fomo for hanging out, fomo for a bar that everybody's at or a club that everybody's at.
Speaker 3:You just dropped some gems. It's a simple stuff about the interest rates, the FOMO. It's so true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because you want to ask like okay, why is everybody diving into this vertical? And from there you want to look at an ad spy tool and see what's being run, what angles are being run, and then you want to decide whether that angle is risky or not, whether the buyers appreciate that angle or whether they want something cleaner, and then you just go from there, basically, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:The other thing I want to talk about. You're a member of Link Unite, oh yeah, A great organization. My company's going to start doing more stuff with Link Unite.
Speaker 1:Amazing, love it.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about how that organization, the principles, how it's benefited you and the industry.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's benefited me tremendously. There's not that many. It's a very male-dominated space. I think it has something to do with the risk tolerance. Just, women just have a different like skill set most of the time with connecting people and making stuff happen and executing.
Speaker 2:But yeah, sarah and Amanda, I remember meeting Amanda through the guys at Optismo and she was telling me the idea and I'm like that's a, that's a fantastic idea, you know, like I'm in. So first one was in Scottsdale um, basically just meeting like all the top, all the top females in our space, um, and and collaborating. And the first one we had there was no actual content. We literally sat around a pool and talked and we climbed campbell back mountain together and, uh, it was just such a great bonding experience. Um, we were all you know. We didn't have the pressure of being at a show like this where you have all of your agenda on meetings and networking. It was more just like connecting on a deeper level and then same value exchanges going on there, like you're getting all the insight you know from the various women in the space and trading intros. And yeah, I mean from there. Like I'm also involved in Queens of digital marketing, which is a, it's a 501c3 that basically we provide career opportunities for human trafficking survivors.
Speaker 3:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like there's been a lot of crossover between the two groups and they've helped us and you know a lot of cross promotion going on. Another thing that we started last year is a charity golf tournament at Legion World. It's going to be even bigger and better this year. I think we played Tina Dixon and I planned the last one in like six weeks last year and this year we had the whole year. So yeah, Sodi Rivera from Palo has gotten really involved and she's in Link. I met her through.
Speaker 3:Link Unite. I met her through Link Unite and she's in Link. I met her through Link Unite.
Speaker 2:I was interviewing her yesterday. Yeah, yeah, I met her through Link Unite and she's amazing.
Speaker 3:You can tell we're in New York. You know those. Yeah, I remember when they first started talking about it, which I thought was a great idea, but I was just really amazed at how quick it caught on. It was like a big snowball, like going down and getting bigger and oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then one thing that's cool that they do is they share a lookbook, basically with everybody's info, so it's not like you're chasing around Skype's and email addresses, it's literally like here's my info, contact me, here's a little bit about me, and that just makes it so easy to connect with everyone. And also it's been major for if people want a career change or want to like you know where they're currently at. Is it working out? You know like we all talk about that too, so it's kind of like the cream rises to the top, as they say, or like, if you want to, if you need a new position or job opportunity, like Link Unite is fantastic for that.
Speaker 3:That's great. Yeah, it comes down to value right Value, knowledge sharing and all and I think the better the value is, it's going to resonate and people are going to be attracted to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah. Yeah, nashville was really fun. Bottle service is cheap in Nashville, just saying.
Speaker 3:I know it's not like New York I got killed but the bottle service in Dubai.
Speaker 2:That was a nightmare. I bought it the other night.
Speaker 3:I don't know what happened. It started off it was going to be like just six of us. It wasn't bad. Then more abuse. I kept coming down.
Speaker 2:I said come come, come come. And they're like oh man, here we go. It was so great because Amber, paul and I mean we like we're reminiscing about when our bosses would buy bottles back then, and then we're like you want to go in on it. And then we asked and they're like oh, it's a thousand dollar minimum. And we're like done.
Speaker 3:Where do we sign? Here's our card. Yeah, we got when you travel, which is so funny where you take advantage of that. Oh yeah, or give me, like you know, excel you find more than you do in New York or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I pretty much turn every trip into a little mini vacay because I don't really take vacays. I tried to take one this summer and I guess my body rejected it because I got so sick. I was with my family, of course, and my mom got to go into mom mode real quick.
Speaker 3:I hear you we're running up against time. Last question Hot verticals. What's the hot verticals and where do you see things going?
Speaker 2:Oh, auto insurance is making a comeback, finally. They went through a rough patch but that's making a comeback, like I said, like new vsls are getting popular again, having a renaissance, if you will. Um, a lot of people are getting into final expense, but I'm seeing some of the ads running and I'm a little concerned and I think they'll probably kill it in six months okay debt, that's good, uh. Home services, yeah, yeah yeah windows and roofing, you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So, uh, because people can't really move, so they're fixing up their houses, so it makes sense again being ahead of economic trends.
Speaker 3:Again it's interest rates. Yeah, such a big driver yeah, that I think the decision is today they might, they're, they're probably going to drop rates today. I I think let's get some refi campaigns up.
Speaker 2:I mean I can't wait for that to come back, because I love Prime Data.
Speaker 3:Yeah, prime Data is the best. So well is it? Well good stuff. I'm sorry this was short, but I'm glad we did again. We'll do more of it. You'll see us gambling the Circus Circus. We'll do that again in Vegas next time. We'll have some better results next time, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Maybe we're going to switch up casinos, I don't know. Maybe we're going to try something else. If that don't work, we're done with that.
Speaker 2:We're going to have to go down to old Vegas. Let's go down the Golden Nugget. Yeah, the Golden Nugget, that. Carrie love you. You're the best hit her up.
Speaker 3:We're gonna put her information. Hit her up, good person. Follow her too on social media. You have great content it's funny content.
Speaker 2:I try to keep it light. It's funny, it's intellectual.
Speaker 3:It's all sorts of stuff it's very well balanced oh good, I like it, thank you. Carrie Hartman policy jar. Good people, let's fucking let's fucking go.
Speaker 2:Let's fucking go.