This is the affiliate marketing podcast. Podcast WhatsApp and affiliate and performance marketing. Whether you running an affiliate program, managing the total standards, working for an affiliate network, employees at a digital marketing agency, or fit starting your career working in the affiliate and performance marketing industry, this is the only hard task you'll need to stay updated with. To stay updated with expert insights, trends, and future predictions from a variety of digital experts helping you navigate and grow your affiliate affiliate. Now over to Lianne Johnson, the founder of the Affiliate Insider, a performance marketing agency, media and event and training business, an industry vector with over two decades of experience, and your guide helping you make affiliate marketing acceptable.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to the Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast. And in today's episode, we're going to be delving a little bit deeper into the world behind the partnership ecosystem, which PartnerStack's team covered in depth earlier this year at their ecosystem week summit in June. Now I managed to grab a little bit of Nikita Zitkovich, the director of channel partnerships at Partner Stacks Time this week, to talk about this event and the partnership ecosystem in more detail. Welcome, Nikita. It is great to have you on this podcast. I've been dying to have you on for ages. So very, very grateful that you could make the time this week to join me.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for thanks for having me, Leanne. I, you know, I love uh I love your podcast and uh I was excited to hop on.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. So before we get going and before we we have a lot to unpack in this session, because I know you and I have spoken about this before. I just wanted you to introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your history in the kind of partnership economy, and and just give us a little bit of a background on Partner Stack and what it is that you do for brands that work in this space.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit of an introduction to myself. I'm Nikita. I'm the director of channel partnerships and alliances here at Partnerstack. We're basically a company that helps other organizations launch, scale, and manage their own partner programs. So think referral affiliate reseller technology partners, we do the entire gambit, uh everything from the actual infrastructure to the growth and helping them, you know, drive business through, you know, the partnerships channel in any way that's there. But even further than that, you know, my background in partnerships is kind of interesting. I kind of fell into it, uh, which is probably what a lot of people say. The way that I got into Partnerstack was kind of interesting. I just kind of uh, you know, the CEOs was prospecting my LinkedIn. I added him, he responded back to me, and then somehow I've been here for the last six years, but genuinely uh started uh a Partner Stack as the business side hire uh to really kind of grow out our our our kind of direct sales motion. And then in April of 2020 moved over to the actual partnership side uh to focus on building out our own strategic partnerships, um, which is kind of interesting because you know we're a partner company uh with a partnerships division. So it's a very meta in a lot of cases.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I love what you said about how you kind of fell into affiliate marketing, partnership marketing by accident. Everybody I speak to on this podcast has got an interesting story. So that's why I always like to allow you to kind of set the tone and set the background of how you came into the industry, and then we can sort of get into the nuts and bolts of what we're gonna talk about today.
SPEAKER_03A hundred percent. Yeah, it was it was very strange, is what I'd say. I used to be a part of something called Next36 here in uh in Toronto, Canada. Uh it was basically like this incubator program. And the CEO had been like looking at my profile, and I just said, I thought he was just one of these people trying to get in. And so I added him. He messaged me and he said, Hey, I'd love to jump on a call. I was like, I'd you know, I'd love to, but I don't know who you are. You know, like what do you want to talk about? And I still remember he said, you know, we're we're we're bursting at the seams, we're looking to grow, we're looking to bring on new people. Then uh, you know, we jumped on a call, came in person, met with you know, the other co-founder and now a good friend uh Luke. And you know, here we are six years later, uh building Partners partner program, uh, which you know is uh it's just it's a bunch of different partners. So everything from referral to affiliate to you know reseller co-sell partners uh to helping other organizations scale theirs. So it's it's been a it's been a journey so far. It's just the start, uh, but very exciting nonetheless.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for sure. Okay, so I want to kind of round back to the summit that you ran in June because I managed to actually tune into that um uh not all of the sessions, but some of them. And I really started to understand what's happening in in that space as part of affiliate. Now, as far as I'm concerned, affiliate is an archaic term now. It doesn't really cover everything that happens in this channel, you know, partnership economy. We've got all of these words that we're using for this. But what I really wanted you to explain is what is this ecosystem and why should those of us who are kind of you know managing these types of partnerships and and referral programs start to take a really closer look at this?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's a really good question. So I feel like the word ecosystem's been around for a while, but I think the industry is really now starting to embrace it, including partner stack. But really, what ecosystem means is it's basically saying the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And what I mean by that is basically for a really long time in the partnership space, there were these isolated partner channels. So you had channel, which is traditionally referred to resellers, you had alliances, which traditionally referred to tech partnerships, you had you know partner marketing affiliate, which you know typically referred to top of funnel, and then you had customer referral advocacy, which kind of you know fell into a marketing bucket, but its own bucket effectively. The word ecosystem basically starts talking about it in the sense that hey, partnerships is all of these channels at once. You know, every single one of these channels, everything from customer advocacy to affiliate to uh reseller to technology partners, they're all a part a type of partner. And ultimately you want to be able to bring them all into the partnerships ecosystem versus siloing them into you know either the channel space, which traditionally would only focus on resellers and distributors, or just the affiliate marketing space. And so ecosystem is meant to really capture the fact that the partnerships ecosystem as a whole is much bigger than just channel or affiliate. It's actually all of these channels combined together and that the partnerships team now should really not just only focus on, you know, referral like reseller, maybe, right? But also, you know, how does affiliate come into that? And there are really interesting dynamics because channel has always had channels been always very closely aligned to the sales side of the house in organizations with resellers and affiliates, you know, has been really aligned to marketing. When you see this kind of this shift happen where they kind of come together under our partnerships organization, you actually start seeing affiliate leaders that might have been under resourced before start getting a significant amount of resource to actually power some of their partnerships and push their partnerships further. So ecosystems really is is it's the acknowledgement basically that you know all of these things in the partnerships ecosystem comprise partnerships and they're functionally an ecosystem.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's you know, you you're talking about in just one sort of vertical, which is the kind of SAS, which is your your core uh space, but it's actually happening across the board in lots of different programs and in lots of different verticals as well. Because I'm starting to see it in the iGaming industry more where they're trying to do B2B partner, brand-to-brand partnerships and also doing like business-to-business partnerships, which is now forming part of their affiliate program simply because of the way that it's it's commissioned. And we're seeing this movement as well with kind of influences that are coming in too, you know, and and their uh, you know, top of funnel, their content awareness. It's kind of all melding into one big part. And as you said, I think the the key thing now is for, you know, the acquisition or or the digital marketers at these brands to actually look at everything in one place and make sure that each of these different various, you know, partners and referers are sending the right types of customers at the right value and price point. And to do that, it means having a holistic view of everything that's coming in and not just looking at it on a channel by channel basis. Because even now we have media companies that are working on performance, we have huge influencers that are working on performance, uh, we've got ambassadors that are coming in and working on performance whereas before they used to work on different models and metrics. So I think that there's a big shift happening in our space where affiliate isn't is no longer the word. And even partners is a very broad term and it encompasses many different types of referral referrals, should I say? Yeah. And I think you discussed some of these key insights at your event. And we will share the link uh because I believe the replayers are still available, because I I really want affiliate managers listening to this podcast to go and explore how this is evolving outside of just their own industry and their own vertical. But why do you think that we need to look at these transformational advantages that are happening in the ecosystem getting bigger in terms of the types of referral partners that we can work with? And in your experience, kind of working with lots of different partners, what what insights can you share about using this ecosystem more effectively in your programs?
SPEAKER_03Both really good questions. I'll start by answering the first one. Thanks. I think it's really important to dive into the ecosystem space and in some of the breadth of partnerships that it opens up because it it doesn't constrain affiliate marketers or partner marketers as much anymore. Yeah. And what I mean by that is now the word ecosystem basically allows you to encompass a lot more partner types. For example, you might have, you know, you might as an affiliate manager only worked with, you know, maybe cashback coupon and loyalty sites on the B2C side or review sites and content syndication sites on the B2B side. But now you're looking at go-to-market motions with maybe integration partners or strategic partners, which are very much link-based that need, you know, very affiliate style attribution. Um, a good example might be two organizations promoting each other through a co-marketing campaign, but realistically they just need affiliate links on both sides to track where that traffic and demand is gonna is gonna go.
SPEAKER_02And where the results are. And I think um there was one uh panel that I did actually sit in where the guy had a really great sales uh presentation where we were talking about Salesforce and HubSpot actually working together. And even though they do similar things in terms of lead, you know, managing leads and whatever, the the customer overlap is is actually quite good. And and I think Salesforce has built quite a big partnership economy behind their business and all of the different plugins and and platforms that they align to. Um I don't know if if that's something that you wanted to touch on as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, that's it's it's a super interesting point. The Salesforce economy in the app ecosystem is definitely huge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'd say it's one of the biggest benefits of Salesforce's ecosystem, but it's also the thing that plagues it the most in a sense, is because Salesforce is almost like infinitely scalable and infinitely configurable depending on the tools that are there. But what you typically tend to see is most organizations tend to gravitate to Salesforce because of their extensibility with you know their app ecosystem platform. They have so many things that that integrate with Salesforce, they're the central node uh for basically their kind of like once you buy Salesforce and once you implement it, if you're looking to add things or customize it in an infinite amount of ways, you you can do that. And so their app ecosystem has really propelled them forward um to a place where I think a lot of organizations genuinely, you know, enjoy using Salesforce. I think you'll find a lot of people that you know still struggle with Salesforce, but basically, you know, they'll still invest have pretty significant resources into developing on Salesforce and it helps them Salesforce specifically win larger deals, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So how do affiliate managers working in this particular vertical where partnerships is becoming more and more prevalent to their day-to-day jobs? How do they activate their go-to-market strategies and step outside of the traditional kind of referral partners that you mentioned before and and start to build those referral relationships, you know, brand to brand or you know, business to business, however they're going to be doing it? What are some of the key pieces of advice that you can give to these guys who are listening in today?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I'd I'd actually say take a look at your organization more holistically. And if there's a business development, like partnerships person, and the reason I say this is most organizations are still a little siloed today, but we're starting to see that consolidation of affiliate and partnerships together. If there is a business development or partnerships team, work with them in tandem to see if there's anything that what you're currently doing on the affiliate side can help them move move the needle forward. There's a lot of things that actually both sides can can benefit from. And we actually see this pretty, pretty, pretty well where you know partnerships or business development teams that are traditionally focused on resellers, when they get introduced to the opportunity that you know affiliate has with links, they see that as a net benefit for some of their you know larger partners that don't want to necessarily resell software and want to go through that process. And vice versa, the affiliate managers can take a lot from the actual partnerships and business development people in terms of training and enablement and content for their partners to really get them to promote in a in a in a good way. But I'd say you know, the way to take that uh opportunity on is to just get aligned with your go-to-market motions. Is there a strategic partnerships team? Is there a partnership team at your organization? Reach out to them, see if there's an opportunity for you to collaborate together and you know bring some of that affiliate expertise to some of those strategic partnerships because I guarantee you they're struggling with problems that somebody on the affiliates has probably already solved in some capacity. And then uh vice versa, uh you know, leverage leverage some of those resources as well.
SPEAKER_02And I think you've hit the nail on the head there because for too long, affiliate teams have been working in isolation from all of these other business development teams and sales teams. And actually, if they get closer within the kind of operational standpoint of how these companies manage their marketing and sales, they'll find a lot more synergies very quickly and probably maximize their ROI in terms of advertising spend too across multiple different channels.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And I genuinely, Leanne, like I think both teams or both sides of the partnerships ecosystem have solved different problems throughout the years, but together they actually help solve some of the existing problems that they have too, which is you know really interesting to see as we see some of these programs scale.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So what type tips can you give to listeners? You might be trying to grow their partnerships and sales referrals right now, like okay, so one of the things that we've mentioned is get closer to your business development team and your partnership strategic partnerships teams and break down those silos internally. But what are some of the external things that they can do? Are there uh resources, events, um, you know, like where do they go to begin this journey? Obviously, you guys, because that's kind of what you specialize in. But outside of that, if people are just kind of looking at at where to start and how to begin, what are the simplest ways that they can do this?
SPEAKER_03Once you have a good feel of impulse on your go-to-market strategy and where, for example, let's assume all things are equal. You know, you know, how your organization goes to market, you know what kind of customers you need, you even know what I what an ideal partner profile looks like. I'd say the advice that I give to people that are just starting off is different than the advice I'd give to people that are, you know, well in it. But for those that are starting off, I'd say get to know your go-to-market strategy, get to know what other tools people are buying alongside your tool. Because hey, if you're in the B2B SaaS space, your tool doesn't do everything as much as you probably like to believe that it does, it definitely doesn't. On top of that, uh, figure out who your ideal partner profile is. So, you know, take a look at you know what are other tools that people are buying and that in conjunction with your tool, that'll give you a good sense of you know some of the integration partners that you might be able to tackle. And on the strategic side, how do you how you can go to market with them? But on top of that, you know, figure out the ideal partner profile. Um you know, is it content syndicators? Great. You know, outside of content syndicators, some who are some of those strategic partners on the integration side, and then start working with them to basically figure out how to go to market or where where there's a shared customer list, effectively.
SPEAKER_02And what sort of tools do you use? I mean, is it just you know general Google searches? Do you look on YouTube? Do you look on, you know, social media, like search engines? Like are there specific tools that are relevant to this industry? There's a lot of, you know, like publisher discovery, breezy, there's all these tools that are out there. You know, is there simple ways to kind of get that data or is it really internal that you need to kind of glean from your own company?
SPEAKER_03I'd say it's a mix. I'd say early on, I think, I think especially when a lot of partnership leaders or affiliate leaders are starting out their programs, I think it's hard to for for a lot of them, it's hard to justify technology in the sense that you know their businesses are just in most cases actually warming up to the idea of whatever partnerships is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so I'd say, you know, in terms of in terms of the early stages, I'd say it's pretty manual from what I see for a lot of individuals. But in terms of tools that I've personally found helpful as we've scaled our kind of our own partnership program, obviously partner stack, you know, there's a lot that we help do in terms of identifying partners, actually enabling, you know, getting you into the uh, you know, our marketplace of partners, Crossbeam and Reveal, basically helping figure out the overlaps between kind of integration partners are really good tools. To your point on the partner recruitment tools, partner discovery, for example, or Respona, those would be ones I'd probably say, you know, high level would help, you know, identify overlaps, uh, figure out, you know, where there's customer overlap, uh, or even just figure out which partners uh might be the best ones to start off with.
SPEAKER_02I think also like start having conversations, like get out there and start talking to people. You know, LinkedIn is a really great tool for B2B. It really is. I mean, I get so many people contacting me on LinkedIn that actually end up being fruitful conversations. In fact, I think you and I met via LinkedIn because I just co-called you and said, hey, I I like what you're talking about, and I I want you to come and speak at our event. And that's how relationships start. And, you know, it it is a little bit freaky because sometimes you do feel like you're being stalked on LinkedIn by weirdos, but actually, more often than not, people are serious about you know actually collaborating and getting business done and and being brave enough to have those conversations and see where they lead is part of your role as a partner manager. So really just using the tools that are available to you, and we'll link to the tools that you just mentioned now as well, so that guys can go check out those platforms too.
SPEAKER_03One last thing, but yeah, to your point, all the tools that I mentioned are great. But to your point, if you don't go out and start talking to partners and start figuring out where their synergies are, none of those tools make sense. Um so like start off with those conversations first, and then you know, once you've got the ball moving, then those tools can help accelerate that. But none of them, none of them will take you from zero to one.
SPEAKER_02No, absolutely. And and that's why I love this industry because it's still very much relationship led. It's people led, people by people and they connect with people. So be authentic about why you're reaching out, what you want to achieve, and you know, don't send out spammy emails, which is the bane of my life. Like I get so many spam messages on LinkedIn, it it makes me want to vomit. But actually, you know, nine times out of ten, one will be good. And something like this happens. We get on a podcast and start talking about really cool stuff. So we spoke about the kind of beginning bits and and what you need to do to kind of get started and some of the tools that you can use to get started. But overall, what do you think some of the main issues are that you've seen these B2B partnerships underperform? And you know, obviously you work with multiple different brands that are doing this, but what advice can you give to kind of smaller but businesses with limited budgets who maybe want to enter this space and see how they can leverage it for incremental growth?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Uh it's honestly it's not it's not much different than I guess the the conversation we just had, but it's basically focus in, focus in on what an ideal partner profile could look like. Really start talking to the individuals in the space on do people want to partner, figure out what adjacent tools you know integrate or you know, people purchase alongside you to see if there's an opportunity there. A lot of organizations also have partner directories where if there is a lot of synergy or you know, people are purchasing tools alongside yours and they have an open public their partner directories, there's an opportunity to talk to some of those partners to figure out, hey, is there you know mutual synergy here? Is this is like our product something that you'd continue to sell? And slowly kind of scale it up. Um that's what I'd I'd recommend for organizations that are really just kind of trying to figure out like, you know, budget's not there, you know, maybe maybe product market if it just got there, that's that's what I'd recommend is like for some of the early days, build some of that business case because then it's easier to move everything forward uh after the fact. But to your point, start just start talking to people, start talking to people in the partnership space. And if you can't dedicate uh all of your time and resource to the partnerships channel because it's net new, start incrementally. Maybe it's 20% of a person's time, and then maybe it grows to 40%, and then maybe it's 70%, and then it becomes an entire, you know, full-time employees' job to manage partnerships. But I know for myself, you know, when I started in partnerships uh at Partner Stack, I couldn't give a hundred percent of my time to partnerships. And so it was very much like a gradual transition to the point where in April 2020, then it became my full role. Um but it was still very much a gradual transition as even we you know figured out, you know, what kind of partners do we target? What does our structure look like? What is the beginning basis of this partnerships team uh look like here as well?
SPEAKER_02That's super important, actually, what you've just said there, because before you enter this space and start having these conversations and expending resource, which is also actually, you know, budget cost for smaller businesses and time, which is money, as we all know. Really understand what are your KPIs of doing this in the first place? Is it that you want to leverage databases? Is it that you want to leverage brand reach? Is it that you want to just be connected to a brand that's maybe, you know, gonna help elevate your own? Like what is the core reasons and the strategy behind why you want to do this in conjunction with the other marketing channels that you are perhaps already utilizing? So what about scale? So we've spoken about launch, we've spoken about what happened, you know, what to really get right so that things can move forward and scale. Um, but what about kind of moving on and and and and like scaling your partnerships program? What are some of the key things that you need to think about when you want to scale?
SPEAKER_03Uh yeah, scale is interesting because it's it's so different than the the early stages. Uh I think I experienced that personally here at PartnerStech too. I think with scale, you've already identified your ideal partner profile. You know, things are working. You just need to make it, you know, make it bigger, make it like make it larger. And so the in the scale part of the partnerships ecosystem, I think processes and technology play a really big role. I find a lot of organizations, once they hit that scale and that stride mark, wait too long to bring in new technology to really help them automate some of the administrative tasks of running a partner program. So whether that's partner stack or account mapping tools or account directories, whatever it is, um, you know, your partners are growing and things are working. So you should you should start thinking about like how do you automate a lot of those processes? So, you know, whether it's link creation or lead and deal registration or content and collateral sharing to partners, it's not something you want to be doing on a one-on-one basis. You now need to start thinking about process-wise, how do we, you know, how do we put structure in place to make that really easy for partners so that we can now focus on the next set of partners that we we help bring on and how do we manage effectively the current partners that we have today? So I think with scaling, I see a lot of organizations struggle to make the commitment on the tooling because for some reason, you know, we've accepted that, you know, with direct sales teams, you know, you can't really run a direct sales team of more than like maybe even three people without a Salesforce or a CRM of some sort. But for partnerships, that hasn't been the case. But it's very true, right? Once you get past, I'd even say as low as five partners, but maybe the benchmark is 10, it's very difficult to continue to scale without putting some infrastructure and technology in place. But those are the big things. You know, once you start scaling, put the right infrastructure, put the right processes in, make it super clear for people to know, you know, what kind of partner they are, where they fit in the journey, bring them along for the ride. Uh, but also once you have those processes, what are the bigger bets that you can now take, you know, with bigger channels, bigger partners, um, now that you've you've gotten the baseline down.
SPEAKER_02Well, the other thing as well, from a technical perspective, is is obviously if you're trying to target new geographic markets where you don't have a presence as a business, you can leverage some of your partnerships and you know, companies that are established in those areas to help promote your own. And and they're gonna want to ha work with companies that look and feel professional. You know, not they're not gonna be wanting to work with somebody with an Excel spreadsheet who they don't actually know. And you know, that so that also is like, you know, make sure that your partner program is representative of you as a business in terms of how professional you are, because that's the first touch point that this other business is gonna see of you. So I think that makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_03100%.
SPEAKER_02So looking forward, affinite marketing, we've got a whole bunch of stuff happening. We've got cookie deprecation coming soon, we've got walled gardens where it's difficult to kind of reach our customers, it's getting harder to scale things, things are getting more expensive, cost of you know, high cost of uh living pricing. It's not all roses right now, okay? But what do you think the big trends in 2023 will likely be? Can you give us a look in your kind of crystal ball as you see it from the the partnership side?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm happy to. I listen, I agree. Um, I think with inflation and everything that's going on, it's it's it's it's tough to be, you know, in tech and you know, for a lot of organizations for sure. My rose colored glasses on this, uh, in a sense, is what's good about the partnership space is we've always been a very efficient channel. Um, so we've been you know very largely pay for performance. We've always driven typically larger deals uh faster than normal traditional sales cycles. And when you look at you know technology organizations specifically, because that's just where I specialize, that's kind of what everyone's looking for right now. Everyone's looking around and just saying, hey, where is their opportunity for us to you know accelerate deal cycles, get into more accounts faster for less cost, really. And so I think partnerships, whether it's affiliate, whether it's referral, whether it's reseller, with technology partners, will underpin not just 2023, but probably the next decade as the cost of acquisition across most channels increases pretty dramatically. But the cost of you know developing really strong relationships with partners and trust, you know, that still is you know a fundamental currency. I know partner hacker who we hosted the ecosystem event with in June, he'd talk about, you know, trust being a fundamental currency for these partnerships. And I think that is gonna be, you know, for the organizations that really succeed and win out over the next, even the next year to two years as we go through this kind of weird period in the economy, that will be a really big thing that if they lean into really well with some of these partners, they will continue to win, succeed, bring customers in faster, more predictably, and uh at a cheaper cost to traditional channels.
SPEAKER_02But I think it's also going to force us to be more collaborative because in the past we could afford to be competitive, you know, we could un prices, we could do things. But as consumers become a little bit more conscious about where they're spending and how they're spending, I mean, I even foresee, and this is my little crystal ball, but I see competitive companies actually collaborating together. So if one company loses a client, another company they'll make a referral to another company who maybe has a cheaper product and get a commission back anyway. So actually really leveraging that customer journey and all the leads that we're building and all the kind of CRMs that are floating out there in the universe, and actually going, hey, well, why should I lose out on that customer that I've paid to acquire into my database? Why can't I sell them onto somebody else who has a better, you know, better suited platform or product for me? So I'm hoping that that's kind of where this partnership economy is gonna go to. And with better transparency as well in terms of how customers are spending, how they're converting, uh, you know, what what their shopping um you know journey is online and with the data that we can now get from platforms like yours, I think we're gonna see partnerships change the face of how we do marketing online and actually help us improve our cost margins.
SPEAKER_03No, I completely agree. And and to the whole point about ecosystems, I think in in some of these competitors, you know, working together. I think in if you look at certain ecosystems that that has happened before, right? So MailChimp and Shopify were a really good example where you know, MailChimp was in the Shopify app ecosystem and they were partners and worked really close together. But then at a certain point they, you know, they decided to to part ways and kind of focus on being competitive, which is totally okay. But I think, you know, especially as a lot of SAS companies, you know, work towards getting to initial product market fit and scale, they'll be a lot more receptive to working with competitors in the sense of like defining where do we win? This is where we win, this is where the competitor wins. So let's just let's you know focus on these specific markets and really dive in and and it's less of like a winner takes all and everyone just you know tries to get any customer under the sun and tries to service them any way that that's possible, but they really lit in lean into you know, what are they strong at and what are they really good at as an organization?
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think partnerships is really something that needs to come into play, especially for companies that are doing cross-border marketing. So, you know, somebody that may be strong in the US market but wants to get a foothold in the UK and vice versa, there's an opportunity to partner there too and and you know have similar products or products that are being used. For example, a CRM, a web builder, uh tracking technology, a reporting tool, whatever the case might be, all four of them could be in a like four-way symbiotic partnership and leveraging all four of their databases in order to increase sales without having to increase the cost of acquiring. So I really want to see people start to kind of work collaboratively and use the data sets that they have internally in their organizations to leverage and and grow their revenue using the, for want of a better word, affiliate model. Because I believe everything in the world revolves around affiliate marketing. So in some way, shape or form, everything, you know, there's always a kickback somewhere and a referral that can be had. So I think that's the interesting thing for me in in as I start to explore the the partnerships economy a little bit more and and get my head around how this is all working. But I want to thank you so much for coming in and sharing your insights. I definitely want our listeners to go and listen to the replays of the panels that you had at your summit because they were they were certainly interesting to me. And I think that's what this podcast is about. It's about helping affiliate managers to look outside of just their own patch and actually think about how other areas of the affiliate industry are working and how they can leverage that in their businesses.
SPEAKER_03No, absolutely. Thank you for having me on, Leanne, and uh happy to come back anytime.
SPEAKER_02Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a wrap for this week's affiliate marketing podcast. If you love what we're sharing, why not head over to Apple iTunes now and leave us a five-star review? Doing this helps us reach more people just like you. And we'd love to hear your feedback too. While you're there, make sure to hit subscribe, join our podcast channel so you never miss another insightful episode, and leave us a comment so we know what you're thinking. Want to amplify your affiliate program performance? The Amplify Virtual Summit is brought to you by Affiliate Insider. Save these dates, 17th to 18th of January 2023, for your calendar now, and book your free ticket. To come and join us as we explore all the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends. This is not a sales pitch virtual event. So you'll get nothing but great advice and a chance to network with agencies, networks, stats, and Martech to provide what we call an insider scoop on how to amplify your affiliate program and partner performance. Plus, you'll get exclusive access to expert-led in-depth masterclasses, group coaching and ask me anything sessions with expert tools show and tell you how to implement tools and tactics helping you save time and money to get consistent results. Get your free ticket to join us at Amplify now. Visit www.affiliateinsider.com and click on events to register.
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