Access out of it and trying to test. Learn what's new and trending affiliate marketing and much more. You simply won't find that inside anywhere else. Now get your host award within affiliate programmarketer, op.com, op leader, growth digital top 50 UK HTON, affiliate marketer, industry motivator, and your affiliate marketing guide, Leanne Johnston.
SPEAKER_04Welcome to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast with me, your host and guide to affiliate marketing, Leanne Johnston. Now, as you know, a few weeks back we held our annual Amplify Summit, which was absolutely awesome. It's a jam-packed two-day virtual event offering delegates 10 hours plus of expert panellist insight, loads of masterclasses and tactical and practical advice. Now, if you missed it, you missed out. But there's still time to get access to the on-demand recordings if you want it for just £99 by heading on over to affiliateinsider.com forward slash amplify-action day. Or simply click on the pink button on our homepage, affiliateinsider.com, to access all the on-demand recordings in our vault directly. Now, on to business. This week I'll be sharing some of the key excerpts from the first panel that we delivered at this event, because there was tons to take away from it, and because I know that it's going to be useful for your affiliate program growth. So settle in now for the next 30 minutes as I share some of the most pressing questions we've had to start us off in 2023. What the big trends are going to be for the coming year, and how we will see performance marketing change as we move forward. So let's kick off this session by asking the biggest question of the year. And thank you very much for being in the hot seat with me here today to try and answer this. But what do you think the biggest trends for affiliates and performance marketing will be in 2023? What do you think is going to be changing and happening in the current marketing climate? And I'm going to start with ladies first because I just think that's a polite thing to do. Erin, I'm going to let you start and kick that question off.
SPEAKER_01I think the number one thing on everyone's mind is budget. As you are seeing some of the turmoil in the overall economy, of course, people are thinking about where are budgets going. I am a big, big believer that budgets are going to shift into what I call outcome-based marketing. So to me, outcome-based marketing encompasses affiliate partnerships, influencer ambassadors. It's just the practice of actually paying for a real customer. So I think that's wonderful for all of us. The budget should be shifting to outcome-based marketing for sure.
SPEAKER_04I love that. And you know, the thing is this we're struggling with a lot of jargon in our industry, but I'm actually going to keep that for the next two days as one of the pertinent points. Is that I'm not going to talk about affiliates and performance anymore. I'm actually going to talk about outcomes. Because you are right. That is actually what we're here for, is to actually bring customers and pay on the outcome of what that customer delivers, whether they purchase or not. Stephen, what about you? I mean, from a UK perspective, what do you think are some of the big challenges that we're facing this year?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think, and certainly from a financial website uh perspective, the cost of living uh and inflation is sort of having a real impact on consumer behaviour. Um I think I I sort of put in my notes around um people switching from large luxuries down to sort of smaller luxuries, being really mindful uh what they do with their money and making sure they're sort of having fun in life, but sort of being mindful about what they spend and why. Um and that's sort of from the consumer, and then sort of maybe from the industry perspective. Um we talked a lot about sort of tracking and the tracking um the idea of tracking a hundred traffic being sort of a bit of a fallacy now and being super hard. And Apple changing the landscape and and Google coming in in 2024. Um I think this is sort of a preparation year for almost like the Dunes Day of cookie tracking. Um but it's sort of yeah, it's gonna, I think it's a theme already in January of what we're talking to our partners about, and I can only see that sort of remaining for the whole of that 2023.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so we've got budgets and we've got tracking. Mike, what do you think the biggest thing is?
SPEAKER_00I don't even I honestly don't know where to start. There's so many, there's so many things that are exciting about this year, and I think we're seeing like some of the like incredible investments that some like cool companies and the companies that are listed here, Stephen and Aaron, you guys working on some really cool things here too. I'll give you kind of like maybe three or four tactical things that I'd been seeing just like come through with the data, less of like probably industry-wide things, but you could probably extrapolate those into industry-wide things. I think like 2022, 2023 is like the year of gifting. Like, gifting is one of this just incredible mechanics for affiliate marketing, especially in the creator landscape. And you're seeing and this is like not necessarily something that's new for kind of like traditional publishers, like people have been sending samples for years and years and years, but gifting is just like this trend that we see so so pronounced in the data. Like, I mean, we Shopify, we see so many like macro trends, even micro trends, just before they're about to start. Um, and even when I was running Uptail before, like we had a gifting function that was native to the application, and we've just seen it pick up quite considerably. I mean, it just makes sense though, right? Like, if you want someone to promote your products, if you want you know an individual publisher, creator, um, influencer to start talking about you, you kind of have to send them what you're making, you know, before you end up, you know, getting them to promote your products. Of course, there's like some of those non-authentic type relationships out there, but the way I sort of think about gifting is like customer acquisition costs, like that you would spend maybe 50 bucks, 100 bucks on on Facebook or Google. Now you're replacing that customer acquisition cost literally directly with the cost of your product. So gifting is super cool. I think it be it it's it's very like nice to start off your relationship with a with a creator or an influencer in that capacity. And you know, similarly for a publisher, I can imagine at a publishing agency when you get like a palette of free yogurt or free products and stuff like that. You know, I just talked to a yogurt agency that was you know very, very specific in niche, that's what's on the top of my mind. But gifting is super cool. I think it's like one of those really interesting trends. Um, I would say that the next one I'm thinking about is like niche to win, like it's all about sort of like the quality of your audience and how how willing they are to purchase from you. So really not about followers. I've seen no correlation between like creators and influencers, number of followers. I've really just seen like, to be honest, like the people that just like hustle are the people that just like make it in the creator industry. Um, talk to like creators that have millions of followers down to folks that are like personal shoppers that maybe have like a hundred followers on Instagram and they're just like hustling in DMs constantly. Um, those folks are crushing it. They're they're doing really, really well with a lot of those things. So I'd say like it's the year where finally people kind of realize where they read an article online, it's like, I'm not sure if I really want to look at like micro influencer or macro influencer anymore. I just want to look at like the relationship I have with this person. Um I would also say like the last one I'll leave kind of the audience with, like maybe more of a prediction, is like this is the year of like SMB and enterprise like really coming together. Shopify's made a huge stance at NRF this year, just like kind of taking Shopify components, bringing them into the enterprise. And I think like creators is a huge channel for the enterprise. Like people are looking at customer acquisition budgets across the board, and they're saying creators is like a viable and scalable option for us now. And I think like we've we've brought something unique to the table when it comes to that, and publishers will also be a big piece of that too. So hopefully those are kind of like three tactical pieces that we're seeing in the data. But yeah, we're cut, we're we're really excited about many more things.
SPEAKER_04There's no doubt 2023 and the coming year ahead looks to be hard financially. And we're seeing now companies are cutting expenses and a lot of layoffs are happening too, as we all adjust to the economic changes that we're facing ahead. Now, focusing on the topic of budgets and what the tactical and practical things you should do, this next clip leans in closer to uncover what your best moves could be. What are some of the things that affiliate managers tactically have to do now facing this global recession and cost of living crisis and everything else that we've got going on to really like protect their ROI and their return on investment in this channel?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think the first and foremost, you want to be really clear with your client of what their goals are. A lot of big enterprises and even small companies will reset their goals as we flip the calendar pages. And so we had this conversation with one of our largest clients, and they said, Hey, last year for us it was all about volume. We wanted as much volume as possible. We needed to gain market share. This year, we are focused on ROAS return on ad spend. And so that's a different way that you might manage a program depending on the client's goals. And so you always, I mean, that's best practice is always to understand the client goals, but I think you'll see more and more people shifting to ROAS efficiency and trying to shorten the payback period on their customer acquisition costs. And I want to touch on something, you know, that Steven shared too. And when we're thinking about uh the overall, you know, spend in the space and the fact that you really want to be data driven. So depending on what the size of the publisher or the influencer who or whoever might be, I almost think that doesn't matter. What is the data telling you? It's not about the number of site visitors, it's not about the look of the website. It is what is the data telling you about the value of that customer? And it could be does this, you know, super niche site or niche influencer drive great AOV? Well, awesome. Then we need to be figuring out ways to really partner closer with that person. Um, and I'm really excited that I think more and more big brands, because I all I think that the SMBs have almost been leaders because they don't have the money to spend. They have to know that it works. But I'm excited that more and more big brands are really digging into the data and making fewer assumptions about what's going to work and really letting us test. Um, and that was the question is testing, no matter what, I think that you want to reserve 10 to 15% of your budget to test emerging things because you don't want to be, you know, caught behind and outside of a trend. Um, when I started in this industry 15 years ago, email marketing was the bread and butter. Now there's 24 different partner channels that we track and more launching every day. And so you don't want to miss out on what the next big trend is for sure.
SPEAKER_04100%. And Stephen, what about you? You've got some other ideas about how advertisers should be spending their budget with publishers. Do you want to talk about some of those things that you've been exploring recently?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm always coming at it from a publisher perspective, and our our sort of objectives are to grow our presence and our revenues and sort of reinvest that into the into the growth of the business. And so it was really interesting to what Erin said there. We're always trying to get people to add the value of brand awareness and visibility into um spend, especially around sort of tenancy and enhanced um placements, etc. So yeah, we talk a lot about brand and and to try and attribute brand value is is really, really hard with performance managers. And like there'll be a lot of affiliate managers on this um talk thinking, well, great, cheers Steve, but that doesn't actually help. And that's sort of sometimes one of the big challenges about affiliate being siloed. It really uh diminishes the contribution the affiliate channel adds to adds to the brand. And I just think about like always think about the decisions I make. Like I look at something and I um this might be just me, but I decide later, I go the next day, or I leave it to the last minute, which is typically what I do, which is why I end up shopping at Amazon. But yeah, like I don't make that decision on that spot, but that interaction adds value and and that's not being tracked. So on top of that, with uh mix in the tracking issues, more people are working um and behaving across device, tracking is is really um diminished as a whole, and that's sort of the theme of the conversations we're having with providers is actually you're only tracking, we estimate, 60% of the traffic. You need to be really strong with how you talk to your marketing director about the value this affiliate channel adds, and that's that's tough. So we we are sort of that we've put that as one of our big goals for the year is creating sort of really good comms and material to give to affiliate managers to go and give to their marketing director, to give to their CEO about, you know, actually, there's more value to this than the click.
SPEAKER_04Um I think that's very important because we also have seen in the past, and I've been lucky enough to live through two recessions in the online space because I've been around so long, that brands that spend continuously through times when budgets are being cut are the brands that actually went out at the end. And you've you've touched on a point there, which is perhaps now is the time to relook how we work with these partners and not only on a pay and performance, but on an outcomes basis, and think about what is the compensation model for that brand awareness that all of these partners are actually bringing to the table. Um, and I know that's gonna be quite controversial for people, you know, tuning in here and listening who only ever want to pay CPA when a sale is done, but it is something that I think is is muddying the water and and and making us think differently.
SPEAKER_00I think that's like a oh good.
SPEAKER_03Sorry, you carol, Mike.
SPEAKER_00I was just gonna say, like doubling on that point, people really understate how important it is to invest in like these channels when things are not going so well in the economy, because like creators and influencers particularly remember when you've supported them, and it's like less of a transaction, like a publisher ecosystem. I think in this situation, like I think about like I'm not like a big economics guy, but like when the recession hit, I just saw like a bunch of big banks buy up real estate and then make you know lots of lots and lots of money. I think if you're you know a modern brand, speaking on behalf of like Aaron, you you touched on this as well, but like SMBs have been sort of the leader in the space because they've had to be. They've like they they've done more performance-based stuff before you know ATT kind of hit, Apple Tracking made a mess of everything. Um, but I think like the smartest brands in the world right now, they're like doubling down on these, on these directions, and they're saying, well, can I build up good rapport with my creators, with my influencers, with my publishers? And then can I, you know, kind of will these trees bear fruit in, you know, a year from now? That's that's kind of like what I've been seeing as well. But not to say that there's not any, there's not a return today, like there's exceptional returns today. I just think that you know, you're gonna be a much more savvy marketing team if you look like, you know, this is a this is more of like an investment area. And then in a year from now, you're really, you're really starting to pick up pace.
SPEAKER_04One thing I loved about Amplify this year was we got a lot of audience participation. And the questions which I love are in this clip. And we go off pieced a little bit from the original panel discussion to dig a little bit deeper on the idea behind gifting, how it helps create a great performance-based relationship, and how you can use gifting to get your partners to perform a little bit better. So when it comes to gifting, what customer acquisition cost could you expect to see as an ROI? Um, and that's quite a good question because I think a lot of affiliates or partners, they do, especially content-based partners, they want to get the product first. But how does that how does that translate into a cost of running the affiliate program or the performance program or ambassador program, whatever you want to call it? Um, how does that um benefit the ROI in the long term? Because they could just take the product and not write anything. How do you manage that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, certainly I think that in this situation, it's like it's very contextual and it very it very much changes based on the type of merchant. I'm just gonna talk about merchant in general because that's generally our customer. Um so I'll give you a couple of examples. One is like on the high end and one is on the low end. So um e-bikes are super expensive. They're two to five thousand dollars. And if you were to ask for a gift from one of those merchants, it would be quite a considerable investment, right? Like the margin is affected. The um like there's many Shopify stores that have that sell these types of like high value products. Even like there's some you know, luxury watch brands, they these types of things that you know make it kind of difficult to send a gift. And then there's like sort of on the lower end, so I would probably say like beauty fashion, those types of things where it's like kind of easy to give like a sample or a gift, that that type of thing. That's why you see basically like if you go to Shopify Collabs today, you'll see like all the categories in which we're starting with are like kind of those, those, like those tier of customer where it's like I'm focused on beauty, fashion, home goods, apparel, like those, that that vertical. Like that's definitely where we have scaled the most because it's easiest to get like that organic, authentic relationship started. So before you know, even get into sort of like the acquisition cost profile, it's like who are you? What are you selling? What does your supply chain look like? All that kind of stuff. The good stuff you have to answer before you end up sort of like selling products through creators, influencers, publishers. Um reason why that's so important is because like if you if you find the right community of creator, if you start building a relationship, I call it like the you know, Dunbar's number of your of your of your brand profile, like how many, like the 150 creators that really, really love your brand, if you start to give them a good incentive to start promoting your products, you could actually run out of supply, right? Like if you do this really, really well, you could start running out of supply. And we've seen this several times of like merchants having this type of profile. Um, so regarding customer acquisition costs, you kind of have to like do a little bit of projection to figure out like, all right, if I send out, like I've seen um marketing managers, um, and most of the times these are just founders, right? Like founders that are just running their own marketing. Um I think that I've seen several times where they've carved out, say, like, I'm gonna give a thousand dollars of gifts every month. Like that's gonna be the carved out budget that I that I do for a particular brand. Some like some are way more than that, but I'm just starting with a thousand dollars. Um, they start giving out their products to to creators, and certainly there are gonna be people that just sort of take the gift and never talk about you on online. But if you start appending sort of the instructions with the gift, it starts to feel like this is a pay per per acquisition play, where it's like, here's the here's the gift, here's what I expect you to do based on that gift.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, I haven't seen one sales relationship ever, like even selling dovetail or selling collabs to the community where it's like, if I scratch your back, you scratch my back, kind of thing. Like it never really works like that. So I would say, you know, it's all about that relationship that you're building out over that over that period of time. And if someone doesn't like your product, you probably don't want them to post on Instagram or YouTube or do an unboxing, that type of thing. Like you just don't want them to do it. And that's okay. Like, I think that's like just a part of the life cycle. The best thing that people can do in that situation is send you feedback. So the question is, is like, what is your acquisition cost? What is your feedback cost in that situation, too? Because like if you're breaking down like all of the different pieces of gifting, um one is just literally user testing, you know, from people that actually will give you, you know, pretty solid feedback. So you're carving out like even more segments. Maybe you're also just trying to like justify this to yourself. You're trying to say, like, oh, I sent out yikes like $500 of gifts and I didn't get anyone to post about me. But like I'm chalking this up as a win because someone gave me great feedback. At the end of the day, though, merchants need to make money. So let's talk about just like the latter half. The thing that I care about the most every single day is that gifting plus affiliate plus content equals money for merchants. That's the thing that Shopify really cares about for our customers. Because, like, look, this is life or death for some people, right? If they can't make money, they their business goes under. So that's bad for Shopify, that's bad for our merchants, that's bad for our ecosystem. So when I look at sort of that profile, I've seen like a very repeatable process of like committing to sending out gifts, committing to sending out like good offers to creators and influencers, not just like a couple percent on clicks or a couple percent here and there, like juicy deals where you're still making a margin as a merchant and the creators are incentivized to sell your products as like a scaled out sales team, but someone that feels like they're partnered with you. So for those, like for that acquisition cost profile, I would say like it's different for every single merchant, but just like taking into account like how much time it takes you to build the relationship, like there's definitely a cost associated associated to time. There's a bucket to the gifting, and then there's a bucket to that return. And then that's not even to mention if you have a subscription product, which I think are like sort of the you know dark horses of you know this affiliate world in general, is if you sell subscription, my gosh, you can make it so much more sweeter for creators, influencers, and and and and publishers because you can give them recurring affiliates on their sales, right? Of have recurring, if if I'm selling, you know, some confectionery or if I'm selling like something on subscription, like workout gear or that type of thing, it's so amazing for creators and influencers to earn recurring affiliate. And that's like one of the uniquenesses that we've kind of built into the product is that like those merchants that get really savvy about this thing can actually spend into their margin. So they can say, like, look, I'm gonna actually go negative into my margin. Say my my product costs $100, I make $50, but I give away 60% to the creator on the first sale, and then it scales back as the as the subscription goes. Well, that actually kind of looks like the profile for Facebook advertising. Um, so you're kind of simulating the two things. I think it's super, super fascinating what's happening. So lots of things to consider in that world, but um, hopefully that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04In this excerpt, we take another audience question. Taking the idea of gifting and the ever-changing nature of budgets, the main idea here is to be able to be flexible and change according to the circumstances that you're working in. Listen in as we go a little bit deeper with Stephen and Erin as well. Is it fair to say that with incoming recession budgets should be realigned to channels that convert better, such as video, retail partners, cashback, and royalty, or should we wait and see what happens first? I think that's probably a really good question because a lot of people don't know how to realign their budgets during a recession and they might cut back on things prematurely. So, what do you guys think about that?
SPEAKER_03I suppose it's all about the uh required outcomes for the business. So we're seeing sort of a macro trend, a lot of unprofitable businesses with a real focus on becoming profitable. And that's such huge business, I think, like Salesforce, you know, Amazon, Microsoft, lots of people making big cuts to become more profitable, to react to what the investment markets are are looking for. So yeah, I think the shift will, and as I think Erin said a couple of times earlier, it will shift to ROI, ROAS, and those will be the key metrics. And I think unfortunately that's when like the brand investment suffers a little bit because it's about immediate um outcomes and making sure that there's a big positive number at the end of the day rather than sort of less tangible investment that adds value, sort of invisible value over a longer period of time.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I think we should keep in mind that most of the folks on this call and us in our space, right? We are working with companies' performance budgets. There's still a separate bucket of budget called branding. I want to go get that branding budget and shift it over to performance. So in a perfect world, right, nothing like we're not actually seeing a reduction. We're actually seeing a shift from brand to performance. And I think that's a big theme of what we're talking about here today. In almost every instance, it's the halo effect of what the influencers are doing, what the publishers are doing, what the partners are doing. We need to, as an industry, get a lot smarter about talking about those things because I guarantee you the folks that are selling brand budgets do. I mean, they talk about how strategic it is that they changed the color of a button and that they got this awareness and all of these pieces because they've been forced to do it because they can't say, I got you this many customers. We've always been able to say, I got you this many customers. And so we, I think, are behind on telling the story of the customer journey and that halo effect and the impressions and all of the awesome things that we did in addition to it, because we can show up and say, I got you these customers. Um, whereas, you know, the other side of the house, the brand folks have always had to say, Well, we did this A-B testing and a lot of song and dance to make it sound like something's happening, because they can't defensively say this is our true outcome, this is our true impact. So I think that right now we've got to get really wise about telling the Halo effect or what other effects this uh performance outcome affiliate, what other effects were driving for companies.
SPEAKER_04A topic that did not go amiss at this event was the prominence of AI, with chat GPT being in particular of interest. We look at the effects on how affiliate managers can be using AI to create better content. And in this snippet, we talk about AI and how these tools are being used in networks and agencies already. I mean, I'm glad you talked on funnel funnel alignment because that is one of the points that we wanted to cover, which is we know that affiliate traffic converts generally 10% higher than other channels, but how should brands adapt attribution and funnel management in order to improve conversion? And that was also part of what we wanted to discuss in terms of how we're observing, you know, chat GP and AI now fast becoming adaptive and clever to automate content and service functions. So, what do you guys think about the automation that's happening in our space this year and the level of um detail that it's now going into? How do you think that's going to affect the way that publishers manage their content and the way that affiliate managers manage their publishers? Have you seen any effects of that coming through to the floor?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, from a publisher's perspective, it's sort of opened up a whole massive world of um opportunity. So I think we're sort of at the 1% stage, or maybe even less than that. Um I got my first sort of email internally earlier of uh that was written by Chat GPT, you know, and actually our our editor who's pretty strict, they're very, very proud of our editorial standards. She was like, Yeah, that's actually that's actually not bad. So yeah, look, it's gonna change everything. The scale of quality content um can happen really fast. So yeah, it's I don't know, like there's so much opportunity, it's it's kind of frightening. Um, and the impact that's gonna have on our lives is gonna be huge. Um, and I I saw that Google posted the other day that sort of their comments around the SEO perspective, yeah. Google said like content has to be written for humans. So Google were quite clear that they don't really mind if it's written by AI or um whatever, as long as it's written with the human first and adding value to the to the human searching life. So they've made their sort of position pretty clear where where's sort of maybe my old brain goes, Oh, yeah, are people gonna be flagging this or trying to stop AI content? Um I think yeah, I think it's happening already. And Leanne, you shared your story with me before this cool, it's already happening. Sort of people are engaging with chat GBT and with we probably aren't aware because it's so it's so slick.
SPEAKER_04Cool. Erin, from your perspective, you were talking about how you're using it to help train staff. Yeah, so it's a problem in our industry.
SPEAKER_01So we've started playing with it, and I would say we're still early days as well, but how do you use it to kind of codify processes within the business and get it to write out training? So uh for us is where we sit, you know, we don't produce any original content because we do sit in the middle of marketers and partners. But as a business, we've been thinking about how do we use this to really write out processes and that way have kind of best practices codified, which hopefully allows us to continue to you know up our level of service for our brands and for our affiliates. So that's how we've thought about it. I do think that from an um a creating original content basis, it could be really interesting, right? Because you have so many um publishers that ultimately need revenue streams in order to succeed. We want the awesome original editorial content that's well researched and well thought out. Well, can we use Chat GPT to augment that and maybe create some of these content articles that then we can put affiliate links in that then ultimately support that revenue stream of the originally reported, you know, robust content. Um, that would be really exciting to me because I do think there's an important spot for original content and journalists that I think ChatGPT will never take over, but maybe you can use it to kind of help fund the other.
SPEAKER_04Now for the big finale, as we close out our discussion and the key things that affiliate managers need to do to get a head start on growing their affiliate programs in 2023. Take a listen and see if you're already doing some of them. So, what is the one thing that you think brands should take away and implement after listening to this panel to amplify and maximize their program performance in the year ahead? So each of you give your one key nugget of advice to close us off for the next five minutes.
SPEAKER_01Um I I can kick us off. I really want brands to look at their budgets holistically. So, not this is my performance budget and this is my brand budget. This is my customer acquisition strategy, and how is that working all together? And and really kind of bring those two sides of the house together. Outcome spend should fund branding spend and experimental stuff.
SPEAKER_04Love that. Stephen, what about from you? What's your wish list for this year?
SPEAKER_03Uh probably it's not super exciting or sexy, but yeah, looking at tracking and understanding, you know, how much as a percentage of your um audience and affiliate is being tracked, and how close to sort of 100% is that. And I think that should be um at the heart of a lot of what we do and how we do it, because we know that we get we get audited on that number at the end of the end of the day. So real, real focus on um the tracking behind what we do, which I said's not super exciting, but yeah, it's it's really fundamental.
SPEAKER_04Thank you for sharing. And Mike, last but not least, we've also got a question when is Shopify CoLabs going live? Yeah, this year.
SPEAKER_00The answer, the answer is this year. Like um, the quick TLDR on that is that like there's a reason why collabs is taken off really quickly, is because we've taken a lot of we've given a lot of TLC to the categories and trying to make sure that there's enough, you know, inventory for creators to partner with enough brands there. So like give us a little bit of time and we'll get to the other categories. We'll juice up the system and make sure that you know there's a really positive experience on both sides, the creators and the merchant side. So um just give us a little bit of time. The thing I'll leave you with um being Canadian and seeing this just like come to life so many, so many different times is I think that it's understated how brands and creators can just be nice to each other. Like if you're just nice and you build like a really strong relationship with you know a creator or an influencer, the dividends that that alone pays in affiliate marketing alone is worth it. I would say if you're like looking at just being very transactional, or if you're looking at kind of like being more aggressive on the terms and stuff like that, I would say just like take a step back and realize that people are human and then you know, look at like sort of what that relationship looks like over the long term. I would say that many, many influencer creator affiliate deals have fallen apart just because there have been just like not so nice interactions on both sides. And the chat GPT thing is also interesting too, because you can automate a lot of those relationships in a nice tone and be like, hey, can you speak to them on behalf of you know me if I were a Canadian?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I love it. So I'm gonna sum up this panel. It's get close to your data, manage your budget according to what it is that your outcome needs to be. Explore gifting because there's a lot of interesting stuff happening there, which Mike shared. Focus on outcomes and look at the compensation models that you're doing with your partners in terms of brand and uh conversion, and ultimately be nice. This is going to be a challenging year. Let's build great relationships with all of our publishers and partners and let's hopefully amplify our performance by working together. And that's a wrap for this week's episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast, where I've shared what the future looks like for affiliate marketing in 2023. I hope you found this week's episode useful. And I hope that you'd like to get access to the full on-demand event because there were plenty more learnings to be shared, as well as incredible masterclasses that our experts put forward. So remember to head on over to our website if you want to access the vault. Just click on the pink button and you can go and re-watch all of these fascinating sessions, masterclasses, and download all of the free assets, webinars, and workbooks that were shared. I look forward to seeing you all at future events. And thanks so much for tuning in this week to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast. See you soon.
SPEAKER_02This podcast is brought to you by Apple. The Affiliate Management Performance Program is designed for affiliate managers running programs in affiliate networks or with in-health staff supported platforms. We've helped hundreds of affiliate managers across a range of industries get the best out of their affiliate partnerships and build consistent sales. With just one hour per week for over 12 weeks, you'll learn proven tactics and tested strategies, gained from decades of experience running million-dollar affiliate programs. To put your seats on our Apple code, visit our website and hit the training menu now. That's a wrap for this week's Affiliate Marketing Podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down, why not head over to Apple IT and give us a five-star review? Make sure to subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel so you never miss another insightful episode or one of our free webinars ever again. Tune in next week for more digital affiliate marketing insights, trends, tips, and content to keep your affiliate and performance marketing fresh and your partners driving consistent skills.