Welcome to the Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast with Neele Ann Johnston. And today I'm absolutely thrilled to have somebody very special with me who is going to be talking through affiliate marketing for small businesses and what that looks like as we face the future. Welcome, Niels Stuffrott, Head of Global Partnerships from AWin Access. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here with me today.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, thanks, Leanne. It was nice seeing you last time in Amsterdam. And I guess we had such a pleasant conversation together that we said, hey, let's jump on the podcast together.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. So before we begin, Niels, tell us a little bit about your history in affiliate marketing and what led you to the global partnerships role at AWin Access.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's been an interesting journey with AWIN for already more than eight years. So I'll try and keep it concise. Just after Julia, I worked for a Swedish startup in call tracking basically. And they they used to be a partner of Xanox, which is now Avon, of course. I started in Berlin in the global publisher team where me and the team we helped publishers basically internationalize quickly and scale up to new markets. Then moved to Amsterdam actually, as I'm of Dutch origin, and in the Amsterdam office, they were looking for a team leader with affiliate marketing experience. So it was a very nice internal move for me. And then about a year ago, I joined Michelle Sullivan and the team to further build out the A1X proposition, actually. Something I have started in the Banelux at the time. And yeah, personally I'm really passionate about SME. So it was a very natural fit for me actually to join the team.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. So quite a lot of experience to go through and a lot of years of helping businesses launch, scale, and grow affiliate programs, which is awesome because that's exactly why people are listening to this podcast. So I want to just start a little bit on our conversation that we were having in Amsterdam and we had lunch. And that is why did AWIN develop AWINA Access and who is this platform specifically targeted for? And why should small businesses consider launching their affiliate programs right now?
SPEAKER_04So yeah, that's a few questions in one. So let's start at the beginning. Why did AWIN launch AWin Access? I think was your first question. So actually, it's already been known actually for a few years that there's an increasing influx of small businesses, digital online businesses, basically entering the ecosystem, if you will. And interestingly enough, so at the time, the IAB's powering up research basically found that 40% of the SMEs do not use digital marketing tactics, and they basically lack the knowledge and confidence to do so. Simultaneously, they've basically been underserved by any affiliate industry. And we started speaking to a lot of them in what they needed to run a successful affiliate program because we did have the applications already for many years, but it wasn't maybe always, yeah, they were also looking for where to start and how to start. What we learned from these conversations basically is that the solution with whatever would work for SMEs, the solution had to be as basically automated as possible and easy to use and low risk. And I think especially to use and low risk is very important because typically lack the technical capabilities in terms of resource or know-how to integrate the tracking code and to test these to make these work and in terms of load and not basically. So we combined these two actually and launched the A1 Access quite a number of years ago with an initial pilot in the UK. This was very successful, and then we rolled out through the rest of Europe. And yeah, I think today we've launched more than 3200 programs across Europe. We are also live in the US and Brazil, actually, so it's really one global offering we have now. So let's see. Sorry, what was the second part of the question?
SPEAKER_03Second part of the question. So first part was obviously to service the need for smaller businesses coming in who didn't have a clue how to start, which is great. But then why should small businesses consider launching affiliate programs now? Because you know, that stat of 40% of businesses when actually even utilizing the channel is pretty big.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I exactly it is. So why they should start it now is because on the one hand, it's becoming increasingly simple with you know a number of integrations to quickly integrate tracking, the sign-up process. I would say, in general, in the industry has really simplified. But at the same time, if you look at the ecosystem, the more classical channels such as Google and maybe social media channels, they've become increasingly expensive. So that we hear quite a lot from SMEs that they are looking for alternatives for the high-click prices in Google as well as the high CPM prices in some of the other channels. Yeah, and the thing is with affiliate marketing, bottom line, you pay for sales that you validate. It's a very ROI healthy channel, or it can be if you make it work for you. I think those are some of the most important reasons why you should start it because you it's a great channel to get additional exposure to in new places that you otherwise wouldn't reach these consumers. So you can really build out your brand and generate new sales in a very cost-effective manner, basically.
SPEAKER_03No, I think that's great. But also it's another thing you kind of touched the nail on the head there, but when you said if you expand your brand, and that really is the thing, is that this is a channel that you can learn and test and not have high risk in because you are paying only for the sales that happen. So you can run campaigns, you can try different, you know, creative, you can try different types of offers, and you can try different types of partners with very low risk versus trying to push immediate advertising budget into Facebook, for example, and look-alike audiences, which may or may not actually be seen or even accurate because, you know, the kind of audience segments are so wide. So there really is an opportunity for small businesses to, you know, grab the bull by the horns, get a little bit of market share, and really get their brands pushed into niche audiences. And as you said, another key point from why A-Win Access launched was to actually give small businesses platforms to launch in other target regions as well, where they maybe don't have people on the ground and where they actually want to reach audiences in other countries outside of where their business is domiciled. You spoke a little bit about the tracking, and I want to get really down and deep into that because I know that you've got a really cool tag which integrates with a lot of other things. So talk to us a little bit now about some of the cool tools that AWN Access has in place that helps brands to increase referrals and sales.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, of course. Yeah. So something we started doing a few years ago as a network is we saw a lot of really interesting technologies out in the ecosystem, basically, that offered on-site solutions to increase conversion rates. It offered new ways of driving traffic, basically, that could convert and all on a performance basis. And as a small business, it is really difficult to I it already is difficult enough, I think, for anyone to stay up to date with all the latest developments in terms of AI, VR, what is good for me, what may not work for me, and really sourcing all that. So we've basically done all that, and we found more than 25 solutions that are currently already plugged in into our tags, which basically means a very simple language, you can activate these technologies as you would activate any other publisher just through a platform. No separate contracting, no separate tracking. That's all fixed, that's all done for you. And the cool thing is this basically allows you to test out if these technologies to increase your overall site conversion rate, uh, if that works for you, and basically get further insights about the consumer behavior on your website through these AI technologies that they use and enable. So, yeah, again, we have basically found and activated the best partners out there.
SPEAKER_03Can you list some of the partners, some of the more recent partners that you've added that really help increase that incremental sales value?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sure. So two examples of in terms of what they do. So the one is an AI chatbot functionality, which basically helps your website visitors to get answers they have answered quickly through the chatbot. So the chatbot is basically fed through an FAQ that you fill in. And the cool thing is that tool actually uses or makes a channel that is typically there for customer servers, which is not conversion-driven, and almost change it into a conversion-driven channel because people may ask, like, well, where can I find you know the swimwear? Where can I find sale? Where do I find the wedding dress, or where do I find organic soaps, for example? And if you can direct people quicker to to the best place to be on your website and increase the conversion rates as such, that's of course uh yeah, a massive impact. And another really cool one I wanted to mention was one that offers AI-based overlays. Uh so what I'm when I say AI-based, I mean it's analyzes the behavior that these consumers have on the website, and it then prompts on different parts of the journey or basically relevant to the journey that you have in mind. It prompts a message with a relevant offer, which has basically given a significant impact on the conversion rate for a lot of workshops. So, yeah, those are some of the two really cool ones that are active that anyone exercise can activate, basically.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that's great because it means they don't have to contract with anybody else. Everything's contained in the one tag. They can just simply turn it on and turn it off from within the platform, and it really makes life easy. There's no web development, there's no additional you know, tools and things that you need to plug in.
SPEAKER_04No integration card, no monthly cost, you know, it's just you use these tools as you go. And if they work for you and increase your overall conversion rate, web shop owner wouldn't want that, right?
SPEAKER_03So let's get back to talking about small web shop owners and small businesses, either in retail or commerce or whatever you know channel it is that you're operating in. Most small business owners that I speak to about launching and starting affiliate programs from the agency perspective, they always think that affiliate marketing is unsuitable for them. Why would you dispel this myth? And what advice would you give to those small business owners that are listening to this podcast today?
SPEAKER_04So for me, again, I would say it's a combination of the developments in the ecosystem.
SPEAKER_03So talk about what that ecosystem is, because I think a lot of people are still getting used to this term partnership economy, affiliate ecosystem. You know, we use that in our industry. Talk about it a little bit more.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so a few minutes ago in the podcast, we really talked about how the ecosystem has changed and how SMEs can now participate very successfully within affiliate marketing and run a program. That has to do with, I think, a few trends. So on the one hand, is the consumer behavior where people increasingly over the past years are looking to shop more locals for small businesses. There's a few really cool trends going on in shopping ethical, shopping more sustainable, and all these trends combined are also being picked up by publishers, of course, because they also want to serve their consumers in the best way possible. At the same time, of course, we just I don't know, I'm not sure if I can say we've come out of COVID, but I think we've come out of the most heavy years of COVID with full lockdowns. And this has also basically created a lot of new opportunity because the shops had to be closed, the physical ones that is, and the web shops were thriving as ever. And a lot of people that maybe had a typical more than rich store, they pivoted into online shops. They may already have had the ideas, but COVID have definitely accelerated a few of these developments. So the overall growth of the offerings out there, as well as the change of the consumer behavior and the different needs there are, have all come together. And then if we speak about the ecosystem and the different partner types they're out there, this is also increasing. So I already spoke about a few on-site technological partners that you can use, but something else that we see is that we actually facilitate more and more brand-to-brand partnerships within AWIN. Is that brands basically become ambassadors for each other, brands, other brands that they feel have similar values to theirs, feel where they can add value to each other. And it can be something like, hey, dear consumer, you thank you for completing the purchase. You may also enjoy purchasing from these webshops, or here's a little gift from us with a voucher code for X and Y web shop that you maybe are closely acquainted with. And yeah, so there's a lot happening in the space basically where people are looking for additional ways to partner up and basically generate value for one another.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's cool because that whole premise is what affiliate marketing is it's partnerships, right? So whether it's direct to consumer with a third party in between adding an extra value model or service model or whatever it is that the affiliate is doing, or whether it's business to business. So we need we need to expand our horizons as small businesses and think about how we can partner with people and how can we enable those partnerships to happen with simplistic tracking happening between us for both the ROI value in terms of the numbers that are being sent between two different parties, but also in terms of the payment. So another really important reason why for a small business, it's actually quite a good idea to look at working with a network instead of trying to build everything in-house direct.
SPEAKER_04Definitely. And you also mentioned why. I think for me, another really big why is the organic element of it because you do pay for sales that you validate. And we already mentioned the fairly low risk part, but it really does allow you to manage your commissions and your margins in such a way that it remains very profitable for you and you actually can facilitate this organic growth for reaching these new audiences.
SPEAKER_03And I think the biggest myth you already touched on is the fact that consumers want it. Consumers want the ease of purchasing online, and I think COVID helped push us in that respect. So, as a small business, why are you cutting off a channel to you that is direct to your consumer? I mean, we're seeing I I don't know if you've had a look at TikTok lately, but I'm seeing so many shops coming online selling other people's products through TikTok just because they're simply good content curators and they're really, you know, good presenters, or the way that they show the clothing is really good. And these guys are earning a commission off of everything that they sell, and yet they don't own a platform. They're actually working through a third-party platform. So even that whole influencer and ambassador space is something that small businesses shouldn't actually ignore. And, you know, it obviously depends on the kind of business that you have. Like I've seen local bakeries really grow their Instagram channel and start offering referral fees for friends that refer friends to purchase from. And it can really be that simple. It doesn't have to be very complex for a small business to benefit from this channel. But let's talk about some of the things that smaller brands who may be listening to this actually need to think about before they do step into the affiliate marketing channel. And maybe we can touch on things like resource tech, budget, timing from your experience, obviously launching three and a half thousand programs, as you said before. What are some of the key things that you would want to tell brands to think about before they actually put their tiny toe into this channel?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I would say I think those four that you mentioned are really good. I would add one which it goes for almost anything alive, but I think it's a really important one. I would say it's enthusiasm as well as perseverance, maybe patience as well, if you will. Because the thing is, for many brands, it is a new channel. And with anything that's new and that you maybe don't fully understand yet and maybe haven't completely understood the platform yet, you know you're burning, right? And that goes with ups and downs. I think that's really important to realize that there's a lot of organic growth and potential to be realized within just a matter of a few months, really. But it is important that people maintain enthusiasm about their own brands and products and also spread that to the partners you're trying to work with. So I would say those are really important. In terms of budget, I think that's more of a timing perspective. So I would say they spend at least four hours a week on your affiliate program. And for the first three to six months, I would really focus on building up and building out on the followership or affiliate relationships that you are having. Make sure that you're top of line with them, make sure that they are sending through the traffic and really checking on if the traffic is also converting. And from that, you can build followership by publisher and making them more active for you. Yeah, and just on budget, I personally wouldn't, because it's a because it's a channel where you pay for sales, I personally wouldn't limit myself to a budget. Because if you find publishers that, you know, are really happy to generate traffic and sales for you, why would you want to limit them in any way?
SPEAKER_03But there are some startup costs, I think, that small businesses don't think about. There is a startup cost to actually launch the technology. There's a startup cost to create campaigns or graphics, maybe. So yes, it is pay on performance in terms of the budget. And I think we need to align that to, you know, you would pay X amount on a paid media campaign and you would optimize it. And sometimes you'd need to spend at least a thousand pounds before you actually started to see returns and build that metric of the right audiences. And yet it seems to be okay to spend money on paid media that way and maybe lose money, but yet everybody wants to make ROI on day one in the affiliate channel. And actually, it's a little bit harder to get ROI out of the affiliate channel because you're dealing with humans. It's not a systemated process. It's dealing with people and relationships really matter and keeping those partners front of mind. And I think timing as well is very important. Is your business actually ready for an affiliate program? And do you have enough resources in place to fully manage that? Or do you need to hire an agency or a consultant or somebody to come in to actually help you in that first six months to fast track some of the mistakes that you might make as you're learning? It really does depend on where your business is in its maturity level, too.
SPEAKER_04Definitely, definitely. Yeah, just quickly on the cost involved. So, in terms of initial costs and launching your program, that can actually be done fairly easy. I mean, it even offers a self-setup and we have many plugins activated, right? So it's really easy and there's no setup cost involved there. And you know, we also offer first month free with a three-month minimum commitment. So effectively, you would only pay for the two months if it really doesn't work for you, which is a great way, I think, to test it. And yeah, in terms of time, I think if you decide to go to affiliate, make sure you are committed. And if you are in retail, which I believe most online shops, let's say nowadays are retail. I think having a good data fee is really important. And yeah, in terms of creatives and banner creation, my personal advice is always to have yeah, one, you know, with this top six standard sizes, have one banner set with your deep old branding, and uh if you will, and maybe another one for seasonality, but I wouldn't spend yeah a crazy amount of budget in banner creations, let's say you just make sure you have your two very nice top six IAB size sets ready for lunch and then start yeah, start building your relationship from there.
SPEAKER_03That's a good point because my next question to you is what are some of the things that typically go wrong when small brands start an affiliate program? And maybe I'll throw one in, and that is expectation and timing.
SPEAKER_04That is what I was gonna say. My I mean the first thing that came to mind actually is expectations and as well timing. I mean, realistically, for any brand, large or small, it really doesn't matter if you are, you know, a big, big national or maybe even international brand, building a network of partners to promote your brand and products. It takes time. And even this goes with all types of partners, you don't know yet which partners work really well for you, which maybe don't work for you yet. And that's why I also say make sure you spend at least four hours a week for the first three to six months to really build these relationships and build these out as well, as well as doing the most important housekeeping tasks, validating publishers that are keen to promote you and validating your sales, those are really important and making sure that the offers that you have are in the platform for publishers to promote. And we as a network do give you guidance and uh with that through tutorials and webinars and all these kinds of things that we help you with. But you do need to execute on these tasks if you are enthusiastic about the channel and you want to make it work for you because I think once it does work for you, a lot of shops actually found the channel to be very effective for them or something yeah, they actually start spending more resources in rather than less. But again, you do need to, in terms of expectations and maybe pay shows, yeah, be realistic that it takes a bit of time to ramp up your program and really see those sales coming in.
SPEAKER_03I thought I like to liken it. If anybody's ever read storybooks as a kid, The Tortoise and the Hair. Paid advertising is like the hair. You just drops your money and off you go. And affiliate marketing is really like the tortoise. It does win out in the end, but it takes a lot longer to get there because you're working with people. What are some of the other things that can maybe go wrong? Like expectations not being set properly at the beginning, maybe trying to do too many things to try and engage and get responses, maybe trying to onboard too many without actually looking after the ones that are coming in. So sometimes putting more of your time on outreach and less of your time on relationship management. Those are some of the common things that we see sometimes impact affiliate uh programs from growing and scaling.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and maybe commissioned. So, you know, some advertisers, uh, you know, setting the right commission level for your for the competitiveness of your program because you are competing with other brands trying to get the attention. Your commission can be too low, but your commission can definitely also be too high. Your risk is if you if your commissions are too high, but your margins are at risk of force. Uh, but if they're too low, it's going to be really difficult for you to basically gain your spot in between the other brands that are also uh after a similar audiences. So, yeah, your commission management and understanding the right levels of commission is very important as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, good point. So let's talk about ROI because we now hopefully have convinced small businesses to really take the plunge and start investing in this channel. What are some of the typical ROIs that you can see from brands that launch an affiliate program and what metrics should affiliate managers at these smaller brands be looking at in their first few months of launch? What are the key things that you would advise them to look at in terms of making sure that their program is growing at the pace that it should be as a new program?
SPEAKER_04So overall across the network, we see an ROI of 1 to 90, which uh which I think is very healthy and very good.
SPEAKER_03Is that different in verticals? Is it higher in retail and lower in insurance, for example, or travel or yeah, this really does depend from vertical to vertical, definitely.
SPEAKER_04And it also has to do, of course, with with average order values and these kind of things. But I would say because it is an average, it's a very safe number, basically, to aim for. However, bear in mind, again, we mentioned patience earlier, really building up a program. So in the first few, let's say three to six months, I would really say most of the time should go into initiating these new partnerships and building those that start generating traffic and sales for you. For the first six months, the core KVI for me should be click active and sale active partners. Yeah, maybe to explain a little bit more, I don't know what the knowledge level is of the people watching and people being interested. So the click active partners that will tell you that people are actually sending you consumers that are interested in your rent and products. Yeah. And the sale active, that actually is an indicator of what the buy intent is of the people visiting your website and that are being referred by these publishers. But you're gonna need the visitor before you can convert them into a customer, right? So that's why these are two really important KPIs, I think, for the first three to six months. So the number of click active and sale active partners. And I think from there you can start looking to, you know, your publisher split and see if there are publishers similar to the ones already performing well for you. And what can you learn from those partners that are performing well for you and duplicate those learnings perhaps to publishers that don't work well for you yet? So there might be partners that uh are sending you traffic, but it might not be converting so well. So I would really recommend to engage in conversation and understand better if there's anything you can do better as a web shop for that publisher so they can send better traffic or if there's other learnings you can take from that. Yeah, and if we speak to some KPIs there, I think down the line, some metrics that are really important, obviously, are the conversion rate from the different publishers and the different publisher types to really keep an eye out that the traffic they sent is relevant and it basically has a buy-intent. Uh, but I would also say the quality of sales, also have a look out on that, yeah, again, that the quality of sales that you see coming in that are good, i.e., that not too many sales are being returned, for example. And um, yeah, I would say for the first yeah, six months, those four I think are really important.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree. And the other thing as well is to make sure that the partners that are actively sending customers are sending you the right kinds of customers from the channels that you're not already targeting. So make sure that your affiliate program is actually complementing, you know, customers coming in from channels that you're not targeting directly. And that goes to the publisher segmentation, as you said. So we've spoken about tech, we've spoken about the ease of use, we've spoken about budget, we've spoken about expectations, which is one of the biggest things that we need to outline in this particular episode. And we've spoken about some of the ROI and the timelines and metrics that people need to be looking at if they do want to launch an affiliate program. Let's talk about some success stories that you might have had recently that you can talk about, what they did that other people can learn from.
SPEAKER_04So, in general, I would say out of all the ones that grew really quickly and started generating sales in their first weeks after going live, all of them really show the commitment and the enthusiasm. And they had a clear idea of the types of publishers they wanted to attract, as well as a commitment to really reaching out with a good offer that fits the consumers. So, a really cool recent example I would say is the Spanish Padel Show. Um, I'm sure you've heard about Padel, it's really trending all across Europe for a few years. You know, it's a combination of squash and tennis, and what they managed to achieve actually through the platform is to also grow internationally. Basically, started working with a number of publishers in their key markets where they wanted to expand that is. And and what's really interesting, what we saw in their figures. I have to double-check quickly on the figures here, but in the first six months, basically, they managed to drive more than 54,000 visitors and generated hundreds of sales. And interestingly enough, 94% of their customers through AWIN are new customers.
SPEAKER_03They're really targeted to actually service the niches that they weren't already touching.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and really get the organic growth going as well, because this now allows them to even think more seriously about some of the markets that they learned work really well for them and start building, yeah, from there.
SPEAKER_03Okay, that's great. So another big reason why you need to be launching an affiliate program right now if you're a small business, is the data and the insight that you get in terms of where and how to plan your strategy to move forward and grow. Okay, one last question that I want to ask, which is quite important because I know a lot of businesses ask us this. Should new pro programs be heavily selective about who they're working with when they get started, or should there be a little bit more of a free reign at the start of their program lifecycle? Because, you know, sometimes we do over focus on I need more, I need more affiliates, and that's how I'm gonna grow the program, but that's not actually necessarily true. So talk to us a little bit about what your thoughts are on that question.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so I think you need to be selective in the way that you really have a look at who wants to work with you and who do you want to work with, you know, maybe engage in a conversation if you're not sure if it's a good fit for you instead of just declining a potential partnership. I would, however, say when you're building a partnership program from the ground up and you're trying to build a brand, and currently you're still a small or medium-sized brand that you know is focused on growth and doing better, I would really not be too selective. And the reason for that is that the channel is, as mentioned, a performance channel. So you pay for sales that you validate and sales that are actually happening. And if you're going to be very restrictive from the get-go, it's going to be more difficult for you to find partners that drive traffic and drive sales, which allow you to facilitate that growth.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, so I would really start engaging with as many different publisher verticals as possible and trying to find the best ones there because a lot of these publishers are of such uh you know that there's really interesting ones. There's niche ones out there with niche audiences you can reach. There's a really big ones out there that have millions of visitors, and you know, you could ask yourself why would you not want to be featured on these different sides and also really understand what works for you and what works for your brands? So yeah, I yeah, I wouldn't be too restrictive, let's say, but I would say make sure that you have a look at what works for you and yeah, engage in conversation and new partnerships. Do you agree or what is your stance on that?
SPEAKER_03I think yes, I think sometimes brands do get a little bit too selective and they end up missing out on opportunities. They're either declining affiliates because they don't have a lot of traffic yet. But the point is remember that an affiliate is gonna apply to a program first and then they're gonna go drive traffic. So don't dismiss an affiliate because they don't have traffic yet. Get in touch with them and ask them what is their marketing plan for your brand. How are they going to be promoting you? What channels are they gonna be using? Because it might be that they've just jumped the gun and thought, oh, I need to go get my links because my site's gonna launch next week, but I'm not live yet. So you could miss out opportunities that way. The second thing is by being too restrictive and not working with certain types of affiliates, you are actually missing out on different reasons for working for different types of affiliates. So a common thing is I don't want to work with cashback and loyalty. If why not? And if not, you're not gonna target quite a large portion of the e-commerce population that goes out and looks for bargains right now. So you don't have to necessarily be offering big discounts, but you can still work with those partners in different ways via email, maybe not on the home page, but through selected promotions during seasonality times when you're trying to push different products, for example, or even limit to like stuff that you're trying to get rid of and only do deals with those types of campaigns. So really don't discount anybody in your program because the whole point of running a program is to actually go and reach your target consumer in multiple different places. And if you start restricting who can be there, you're actually cutting your nose off to spite your face and ruining your overall strategy of what a partnership program should be doing for your brand.
SPEAKER_04And maybe that is another point to add to the things we to the key things that SME should keep in mind. I think they should have an openness to testing and learning. And I think you just summarize it quite well there, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. So my last question for you, which is I ask everybody this question because I'm interested in actually learning what everybody else knows. I'm a big believer that nobody's ever an expert in affiliate marketing. Where do you see the future of affiliate marketing headed as we face Web 3.0?
SPEAKER_04Great question. Yeah, so personally, what we see happening over recent years, and we touched upon it a few times today. I expect the partner ecosystem to get bigger and bigger with more potential partners and opportunities that you can activate through different platforms. You know, we already mentioned earlier, I think back in the day, affiliate marketing was really classical of affiliates driving sales and then being rewarded. But I think the way you can reward partners and that the different partner types, that's gonna be a bit more fluid, I think. We already spoke earlier about on-site. Um, something else we see happening, you know, as I mentioned, the brand-to-brand partnerships, where basically brands are starting to help each other to facilitate growth and really add value. It's also, of course, a different way of income for SMEs. We're gonna see many more different types of partners coming through as Mansion. I think we already in recent years we've seen influx of, for example, influencers coming to the affiliate channel, and that is mostly because a lot of them just want to test it. But I think a lot of them also realize that the potential earnings of the high relevant posts and collaborations that they do on an affiliate commission basis could potentially out-earn if they were to work only for a fixed amount. So, you know, I think we're also gonna see more different types of influencers from we mentioned TikTok earlier, but I think Instagram is still very relevant. There's a lot of streamers going on platforms where people stream and they have a lot of visitors, and these people become ambassadors of all types. I just expect that to just get bigger and bigger, to be honest, with uh even more possibility to reach audio that you possibly wouldn't otherwise reach, I think.
SPEAKER_03And I think it's a channel that can't be ignored because we're seeing the numbers grow year on year. Your own annual report shows those numbers growing in double digits year on year. And I think the last piece of content and data analysis of the industry that I read was the PMA report where they said that the industry's estimated to go to 9.6 billion. So you, as a small business, you can't actually ignore this channel anymore. You do need to get in and get on with it and go test some stuff and see if it's working for you. And I've seen a lot more, because obviously we we work across multiple different networks in our agency, and I've seen a lot more differential small business types from plumbers and electricians, okay, to e-web shops, which is obviously the kind of main industry that we've been talking about today. But there's lots of different businesses coming into this channel now and looking to actually build partnerships and connections and connectivity. And I think that's exciting for our industry. That's what I want to see happening and in this new Web 3.0 that we're moving to that everybody's talking about, which none of us really knows what looks like yet. But I think that's what keeps me excited about working in this industry too.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I think another one that we briefly touched upon as well, is technological enhancements and developments. So I think it will only become easier and easier for shops of all sizes, basically, to activate new partners, get tracking integrated, you know. I mean, there's a lot of plugins that we're already activating. And the less time you have to focus on your technical integration, the more time you can focus on building partnerships. Getting those done, like you mentioned, getting that growth, it's just gonna be maybe not necessarily an easier, isn't necessarily the right word, but it will be easier to start exploring the channel, I think. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast, hoping that lots of new businesses are gonna be coming into the channel. And it's always lovely to have you on as a guest in our community. So thank you very much for sharing this hour with me. And hopefully, we will see you at some event soon.
SPEAKER_04Thanks for having me and very chatting to you. Keen to see if there's any questions or responses.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, follow us on social media and post your questions in the comments, and I'm sure Niels will answer them if if you have anything specific.
SPEAKER_04Thanks.
SPEAKER_02And that's a wrap for this week's Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down in this series, head on over to Apple iTunes and give us a five-star rating and subscribe to our podcast channel so you never miss another insightful episode. Tune in next week for more digital marketing insights and traffic driving tips, tricks, and strategies to keep your digital marketing fresh and your affiliate program driving consistent sales.
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