You're listening to the affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by affivermedia.com. The chapter and verse of everything you need to know about running a successful affiliate program for your business. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers, publishers, networks, agencies, and ma tech providers who operate, support, or manage affiliate marketing programs around the globe. If you want to launch, scale, and grow a successful affiliate marketing program, you're in the right place. In this podcast, you'll learn how affiliate and partner marketing is constantly changing, and tune in to industry experts who are getting behind our mic to share tactical insights and practical knowledge to help your affiliate program grow. Here you'll discover what's new and trending in affiliate and performance marketing, how to run your affiliate program successfully, and gain industry insights from experts and practitioners from around the globe. The truth is, you simply won't find this information anywhere else. Now, here's your award-winning affiliate and performance marketing host, an industry veteran, your affiliate marketing guide and the founder of Affiverse, Leanne Johnston.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to this week's affiliate marketing podcast with me, your host, Leanne Johnston. And this week I'm really excited because I've got somebody who is incredibly knowledgeable about the affiliate space, uh working here in the UK alongside me. It's Alona Melanovska, the MD of WebGames UK, who's joining me this week on the podcast. Alona, it is fantastic to have you here with me. Thanks for joining.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Leanne, and thank you for such a generous introduction. I hope I will meet the expectations for sure.
SPEAKER_02All right, so let's kick off this week's episode with the short story about how you landed up in affiliate marketing and how you landed up working at WebGains, which is the smart AI affiliate network here in the UK, working across e-commerce and several other verticals, but we'll get into that in a little bit. Main thing for me is to understand how did you land up in affiliate marketing and how did you land up at WebGains?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think, you know, like like many others, I got into uh digital marketing by chance after university where I studied social psychology. A friend of mine introduced me to a company that was developing like live video chat solutions that was free Teams, free Zooms, even pre-Skypes. So I spent my first uh professional years learning all there is to know about uh paid search. That was uh back when Yahoo was probably the biggest uh search engine, yeah, and then SEO display um and in-house affiliate solutions. And so then um after some years I relocated to Spain. I'm originally from Latvia, um, and I've kind of continued my journey within the digital marketing, and then finally I moved to London over 10 years ago now, um, where I landed a job at WebGains as an account manager. And then throughout the years, uh the leadership team just kept offering the growth opportunities to me, and so I progressed to a head of client services team, and then after four years, yes, that was I think around four years in the company, and then I was offered a managing director position almost four years ago now as well.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's amazing. So I'm gonna pick into that a little bit because there's very few people that I've spoken to in the affiliate industry that started out at the beginning of a network and have worked all sides within a network. And I think it's important that we talk about what an affiliate network does, because sometimes that's a question that I get asked with clients. They're not sure why they need to be working with networks in their affiliate program. So tell us a little bit about all the different positions that you've had working network side and what those positions actually do to help clients to prosper.
SPEAKER_01Sure, yes. So generally, affiliate network is really all about making sure that all the different parts of the business, like agencies, advertisers, publishers, um, have a smooth journey within affiliate channel. So we um take care of um tracking, we take care of all the payments, uh, we consolidate the payments to publishers, so advertisers don't need to uh think about hundreds of different suppliers to pay for. It's just one bill which which is uh issued on a monthly basis. And then, of course, we have a massive layer of account management within um uh affiliate uh network and uh essentially a team of experts who are very well versed in affiliate channel, understanding the partnerships, understanding various categories and uh sectors of retail or or or whatever other um categories brands operate in. Yeah. And uh we make sure that we make those smarter connections and activate the publishers which brands who want to work with.
SPEAKER_02Um so there's a little bit of account management in there, and I know we use the term account management quite loosely, but on the network side, what does account management actually mean? Like for clients that are listening in, what's the value that they get with working with an account manager network side?
SPEAKER_01It's a um it's a difficult question because it really truly depends on the level of support which you are getting from uh your affiliate network. So, for example, uh at WebGains we have kind of three main support uh levels. One is self-managed nominally, but actually, of course, we hold our uh advertisers quite a lot, especially at the beginning of their journey when they are launching the program, when they are doing this initial introductions, and then we kind of just leave you to uh do the magic on your own. And then there is a supported service where uh much more strategy is introduced by our account managers, and so we look at the brand objectives, at their goals, at the uh audience profiles, at what it is they are trying to achieve through generally through digital channels, and then we provide them with recommendations of what we feel are the most relevant steps to take to maximize the opportunities for affiliate channels specifically. And then there is a third layer. Sorry, the third layer is the full service solution, and this is usually uh relevant to perhaps uh bigger companies who don't have um in-house teams for one reason or another, they don't work with agencies, and so then we um take over the responsibility of agency essentially, specifically for affiliate channel in this case.
SPEAKER_02But that's not to say that you don't work with agencies because you're obviously working with us, and um I think the magic happens when we leverage both, where a client comes in and they can leverage the benchmarking um activity that you can access as a network. And and really this is important for clients to understand the value that a network brings. It's not just the tracking and the payments, but it's that benchmarking of industry-wide data that can actually help find niches that clients aren't necessarily tapping into yet, but then also the strategic part which the agencies bring in, and that's the breadth and depth of all the clients that they're working with as well on a more intimate level that marries together and actually makes a program successful. So I think it's important that people listening to this podcast understand the value that a network can actually bring as part of an in-house program or as part of the actual main program that gets run. But one of the things that I wanted to kind of pick on was like WebGrains has grown significantly over the past few years. So tell us about that growth. Like, where have you guys positioned yourselves in the marketplace, especially here in the UK? And what are your top verticals that clients can actually tap into?
SPEAKER_01In terms of the growth, I would say that it was really a consolidated effort over the years. Uh there is not just one solution which drove that expansion. Generally, we've always just prioritized excellent customer care. And to achieve this, of course, we keep investing in our team and uh team's education and and well-being, uh, because happy uh employees mean also happy clients. And then uh it starts at the very beginning when hiring new members, we go through quite a strict, let's say, process of finding someone who is genuinely caring about the partners they get to work with. And then we look um at people who are extremely uh curious and eager to learn, and they have this commercial drive to grow their accounts and improve the product and make those connections with affiliates.
SPEAKER_02I think you've hit the nail on the head there because those are two very important traits of a good affiliate account manager is curiosity to want to grow, but also understanding the commercial drive and being curious about what's happening in the digital space around them because our industry doesn't stand still. And you know, you might be a great account manager, but you also need to be layering on like excellent customer service as well, because your affiliates are your customers and your clients your customer too. So I think it is quite hard to recruit into this industry. And I know that's something that you're very passionate about in terms of happy employees, and and I'm gonna get onto some of that stuff with you in a in a little bit as well, in terms of some of the things that WebGains does to support affiliate account managers, because I feel like in our industry this role is still grossly misunderstood in terms of the complexity that's required to run affiliate programs, and often the role is treated more like an administration position and kind of like lower level in terms of the areas of expertise. And I really want to showcase that on this on this podcast with you because I know we share that passion in terms of educating people.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, exactly. That's exactly it. And the thing is that with account managers, I guess, again, there isn't no no one method which fits all. At times, what client actually needs is that very manual admin heavy support, and that's all right, but of course, this is not where it ends at all. And generally, to truly I guess use and and understand the benefits of affiliate channel and their account managers, clients yes, need to be open to work with their account managers and their teams on a much more strategic level and trust their account managers in bringing those very tailored deep knowledge solutions and opportunities as well, because I think I mean working with clients myself, sometimes uh clients just get sideb into what could potentially be an opportunity because they're so used to working in their own brand.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's another kind of key point of working with a network and working with an agency and both combined or one or the other, is that you get to tap into this extra knowledge base that you don't necessarily have in-house. And I think we we devalue that as an additional cost, but actually the propensity to grow a lot quicker by tapping into that knowledge and experience skill set. I mean, you you've probably seen it in in some of the clients that you work with on the network that maybe started small, tapped into some of these services throughout their journey, and are now really big brands, right?
SPEAKER_01Exactly that. And it's also all layered with the technology beats which we are offering and which also account managers are very well versed in. So the network on its own is really just good as as good as its technology. Yeah. And um so yes, so as a network, we just need to make sure that we we are always on top of the track tracking capabilities and all the improvements that help both clients and publishers and also account managers to quicker and more effectively connect with each other and start making money together. Um, but of course, also going back to account managers, I think one of the core advantages of working with someone who understands the channel is their connections. Because uh we know very well affiliate channel is still very much of a manual channel and it's really about relationships. Um and very often the results uh of a specific program are dependent on how great is the account manager who's looking after that program because um it's about them uh meeting with publishers online or in person, educating publishers on behalf of the brand, being essentially an ambassador of the brand and uh ensuring that all those activations and all those campaigns are fully in line with what uh the brand is trying to achieve.
SPEAKER_02So let's delve a little bit into the technology because I recently saw a PR that you guys released in terms of some of the AI smart tech that you're implementing into the technology to help brands perform better. Talk us through some of those recent changes and upgrades that have happened on the technology stack.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the most recent ones we released uh PowerSuite around our smart tools, and it's really just to remove that guesswork from um from people, from uh account managers or from uh the agency teams or or publishers or advertisers. We uh wanted to create a solution that in a very smart uh way links the profiles and the audience profiles of uh uh advertisers of brands with the publishers, and then we create those suggestions around what are the next publishers for you to work with and how what is the best way to work with them. So on the advertiser side, what uh our clients would see or agencies would see is the essentially the list of the most relevant uh publishers to uh start working with and pressing various campaigns, and then on the publisher affiliate side, they would see the most relevant products to promote. So that it's not that um let's say a blogger thinks, well, what cream should I be featuring in my article tomorrow? It's about what is trending right now, what is selling very well, where is the best um earning possibility, and layered that with the audience profile of this particular publisher.
SPEAKER_02So that really takes a lot of time to do. I mean, that is still very much a manual task for account managers, certainly managing programs, but also for publishers who want to write content. So you're actually taking a big chunk of the kind of research phase and using automated tools and matching algorithms to bring those parties together quicker and faster, which is good because you know, with ChatGPT and some of the other AI tools that are coming in, content is going to start being created a lot faster. So that matching service is actually quite clever. It's it's going to help save a lot of time, which means that more time can be spent on creating the content, which means it drives more sales. So I love that. And I love the fact that you're already looking into that AI space and helping clients to develop better partnerships because that is kind of how our industry runs. Now, you recently held a webinar, and I want to kind of dig into the account manager role and the support that you do with your staff. You held a webinar recently about Jacking Career and family. And while working in affiliate marketing is great because you can work remotely, I want you to talk to me about your experience leading a global team and also managing your own family commitments. Because one thing I do see in our industry is that account managers are burning out. Like they're turning out of this industry, they come in, they learn that their skill set drains out with them, and it's because they're not supported in this very complex role. So, what are some of the things that you guys are doing to help support that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it's a it's a very difficult topic, and I think we are still at the beginning of the journey. I mean, uh generally, I feel at industry we are fortunate to be so flexible and so uh progressive to an extent with working from home, with flexible hours, with um uh part-time uh uh uh roles which are available across the industry. But at the same time, of course, it never feels like it's enough because because uh childcare, specifically in the UK, is very, very um challenging and expensive. And so very often the reality is that in order for, especially for mothers to go back to work after maternity leave, um, they need to make very hard choices, and often also uh they their families basically sponsor their careers because uh they end up having a net zero after all the costs associated with childcare. So and then on the other hand, of course, um companies also need to make sure that these are all the support systems are sustainable for them because ultimately we also need to make money. And so, really, it's just about trying to find this balance to make sure that we are as supportive as we can. Specifically at WebGains, we offer the um remote setups, we offer uh flexible hours, uh, we offer mentorship schemes, we offer we have an in-house um uh therapy um specialist who um anyone uh at WebGains is uh able to approach them anonymously. I I feel sometimes the reply is not necessarily in massive scalable systems, it's about taking one situation at a time and trying to make it work based on a specific person's scenario and their needs. Because the requirements also change um throughout the the parenting journey, right? But what's important for uh someone uh with one year old may be completely relevant for someone with a um child who goes to school, right? Yes. And so being not the biggest company out there, our solution is actually really just to listen to the people and try to find solutions which are perhaps not across the whole company, but something which is relevant to specific people.
SPEAKER_02Do you find that your employee tenure has increased because you are putting these mentorship programs in place for your account managers? Because they really do bear the brunt of they're kind of like account managers are like the workhorse behind an affiliate program. And you know, they they can very easily burn out if they're overloaded, if they're not seeing results and they're just working all the time. And, you know, there's many factors that can play into that, you know, tracking, recession, you know, so many things that can that can track a client's performance up or down. Uh, do you find that the tenure of your account management team has increased because you've put these measures in place and become a little bit more flexible? And do you think COVID had something to do with that?
SPEAKER_01Well, definitely. I mean, we we generally have, I'd say, quite a healthy tenure uh at WebGains, and this is something which we are in fact pretty proud of because, of course, it's uh it helps with then retention of the clients because they know that their account managers will not change every six months or something like that. It can be detrimental.
SPEAKER_02It's like ten years just as important to build relationships and trust, right?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Uh it's it's about account managers who know the history of the brand they work with and understand all the deep uh objectives and deep goals. So to reply to your question, yes, I think it uh plays a major role. The flexibility definitely is something which allows us to extend the uh tenure of people uh working at web gains. We have uh, for example, two of our client services directors, both of them uh came from being account managers and then progressed into those roles. They've been at web games for probably six, seven years now.
SPEAKER_02Um I mean that's kind of unheard of in the affiliate space because account managers do hop around, and that is also a problem for brands, especially when they're running programs in-house, is that they have turnover of staff and that impacts how you know relationships are managed and how changeovers happen. And as you said, the history of a program and what's worked and what hasn't in the past kind of drains off when when resources leave. So I think it's very important that companies that are going to invest in this channel are also gonna invest in their people because As you said, it's still a very manual channel compared to some of the others, like SEO and and you know, PPC and all of those kinds of things, which use intuitive platforms. How do you think brands should be looking to the future right now? Like where from your perspective at WebGains and all the clients that you work with, what do you think the future of affiliate marketing, like where do you think it's headed?
SPEAKER_01You know how um uh I think Alex Partners recently released their disruption uh index report with a subtitle of Normal is over, welcome to the age of disruption. And one of the key findings uh they've discovered is that um most exec members of the companies across the UK right now are finding it more and more difficult to actually predict the trends due to all the increasing complexity of the world and all the playing factors. And the other uh incredible stats around it is that 98% of the businesses are actually expecting to somewhat change their business models. So, saying all that, I do think that that generally affiliate marketing future is very bright, and given how many untapped opportunities we still have out there, um, it's just the beginning. I think all main uh publications, for example, are just yet to properly embed the channel and payment models into their business. Influencer and creator industry is also it kind of is working with affiliate channel, but just partly. And of course, all the tech solutions out there, um, we are still seeing them coming over and over to uh offer this uh various uh solutions through affiliate channel. So yeah, it's it's a perfect channel to test and trial and to uh innovate because of the very flexible payment models. So I think we have high chances of uh uh success generally.
SPEAKER_02I also think it's probably one of the most interesting channels to keep working in and on because it's changing constantly. So for somebody like me who's got you know slight attention deficit disorder where I need to be looking at new things and learning new things in my job in order to stay fulfilled, I think it's probably the one digital channel that has afforded that to me, which is why I've been in it for so long. I've never kind of bounced out. Um, and I do think you're right in terms of what you're saying about the future of commercial modeling. I think we're about to see as tracking becomes more transparent, more accurate in real time. Like, you know, we're getting a lot cleverer with the tech stacks that we're using in order to track everything and attribute sales in different channels. I think we are headed for a commercial change in terms of how we've always incentivized partners. And you you touched on that correctly with influencers coming into this space now, they're starting to understand the value of lifetime revenue share, subscription-based models, and you know, different ways to incentivize and collaborate based on what the performance outcome is gonna be. So 100% agree with you. I think you're you kind of hit the nail on the head there in terms of we're looking at a revolution in terms of how commercials are gonna happen. And now's the time to get smart and start working with partners who understand customer journeys, user journeys, and and can provide you with the data that you need in order to change and consider how else you work with partners in a more effective way. And this isn't about reducing a federal commission, like that has never ever been a solution to anybody's problems. It's more about providing payment at the point where that partner is providing um uplift or incrementality or whatever it is that you're trying to report. And and and the other thing as well is we're gonna start segmenting our programs differently because there's always been heavy reliance in the e-commerce space on voucher codes and you know, loyalty cashback sites and and content providers, SEO type bloggers. We're starting to see that segmentation change like phenomenally, and I'm sure you can speak to this better than me, you know, seeing the wider marketplace. But do you think that that's happening already slowly in the background?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. I mean, we we are we keep expanding the um affiliate types we work with. The other thing about the incentive sites and uh offers and cashback loyalty sites is that even there the opportunities are endless, but they are very often ignored perhaps by advertisers who feel that okay, this is a discount uh website, I don't really want to engage with this sort of an activity. But where actually these are very often publishers who are able to work tactically on your average order value, on your frequency of customer um comebacks, on all these very smart and strategic things which are scalable and uh are much easier to achieve with those partners rather than with, let's say, a particular influencer. Who, yes, it would be lovely to uh have a blog post from them, but truly the uh they won't be able to generate the demand of a scale necessary for it to matter.
SPEAKER_02And that's the thing, it's it's like the holy grail of affiliate marketing, right? We want to get our brand everywhere. Like I love it when a client comes to me and says, I want to be everywhere, and I'm like, yes, okay, how big is your budget? Or and then they go, No, I don't have a budget. And then, you know, I'm a miracle worker, but I'm not that good. So I think it's very important, like you said, there needs to be a strategic plan of what are you doing, what partners are gonna implement whatever touch point it is that you're trying to grow, whether it's repeat purchase or um brand awareness, or you know, like get really tactical with the partners that you're working with and talk to your account management team or your agency or whoever it is that's working on your program to make sure that those remits are being met. Because otherwise you're just literally throwing stuff at a wall and hoping stuff's gonna stick. And at some point you have to get tactical with your program. Like you can do that for the first six months, but after that, like you really do need to start getting tactical about where you spend your budget and how you benchmark yourself to your competitors. What are some of the myths that you hear? Because I'm pretty sure speaking to loads more clients than what I do on a daily basis. What are some of the myths that you want to kind of like, or misconceptions that you want to kind of oust for people that are tuning in, especially um some of our US audiences that are looking to expand their programs into Europe? Like, what do they need to really get done before they start looking at things like that to grow? And and can they actually grow exponentially by by taking their product from the US to the UK, for example?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I think it's definitely possible. Difficult question, misconceptions. I guess one of the misconceptions is that it's a plug and play uh type of a channel. It's not, completely not, and you do need to um dedicate some resources, uh, be it budget and the time as well. It's not it's very often it's it's not just the budget, it's also making sure that uh whomever you are working with have enough knowledge about the brand and about what it is you are trying to achieve. So giving the great promotional materials, uh spending time on uh uh creating a really rich um content around your program description, uh around what it is um publishers may promote, what are the most important product releases, what's your strategy uh when it comes to uh direct to consumer versus resellers? All this information, if brand is not prepared or perhaps doesn't have time to share it with their um agency or with their account manager, it means that we are playing in a in a kind of a very blind scenario where it's a lot of guesswork. And so the results, of course, will be rather average. But at the same time, if the brand is prepared to educate their partners around what brand stands for, they do have the budget to work with. It can't be, especially for a pass uh for a company coming from another territory and trying to uh tap into the new market. The understanding needs to be that uh we can't work with rigid CPA setup. It's just not gonna happen. Uh, or it will happen very, very in a very long time. If you want the results to be there quicker, there has to be a much more flexible approach to budgets. Yes, there may need to be some tenancy budgets associated with particular placements, there may be uh cost per click um uh budgets, cost per acquisition, or or hybrids. It's a more of a layered approach.
SPEAKER_02And the other thing, I mean, 100% agree with you. This is not a set and forget channel. Like this is a channel that you're picking at all the time like a scab. You're testing, you're picking, you're trying different things, you're looking at what's the incrementality that you can bring. And often the profit margins on programs sometimes get squeezed so hard that it's really like you have to be tactical. And and I think this is one thing that clients sometimes forget, especially at the start of their journey is they think, oh, I'm just gonna launch an affiliate program, I'll stick an account manager on it, I'll put some budget behind it, and in 12 months I'm gonna be a millionaire. Well, you know, to get to that point, I mean, some of the most robust affiliate programs that are like, you know, six, seven, ten years old, they're now suffering a different set of problems to the ones that are just launching as net new. And each program has a different life cycle that they need to go through. Um, and it has it has to have tactics associated to it, whether you're launching, scaling, or growing. Like each each stage of that journey needs to have a strategy behind it. Otherwise, you're just gonna be kind of playing in the sandbox looking for diamonds, and you could be digging forever unless you're one of those people that comes out on the beach with the electric, um, you know, the magnetized, I don't even know what they're called, but you know what I mean. They're walking around looking for the rings afterwards. Um, and that's probably how you should leverage your network is to bring that person out from the network and say, go find me those diamonds on the beach. So, what's the one piece of advice that you can give to younger people entering into this industry? Because you've been in this industry now, you know, solid more than a decade. Um, you've worked all sides, you know, from uh other digital channels and then come into the performance space. What's the kind of advice that you can give to your younger self if you were entering this industry earlier on in your career? What would you tell people to do now and set up now so they can be successful in the future?
SPEAKER_01My advice would be skewed towards my experience because I come from the client services background. I would say learn more from the sales team and notice how they build connections with the prospects and how they really uncover which problems to solve and how to address it with their clients or prospective clients. Because brilliant, great salespeople are so good at listening and defining the value product or service which which we can bring to the user. So once you have and once you combine this very niche, deep knowledge which we have about affiliate channel with the ability to sell, you become unstoppable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that. So to become unstoppable, learn how to sell. Because selling is a big part of this industry, and we're not talking about cold call selling because I hate that and I teach people not to do that, but it is important to listen. Like my dad, if you're watching this video, he always says you've got two of these and one of these, and you need to use them in the in the right ratio. So listen more before you speak and get out to events and things where you can learn from other industry professionals because unfortunately, this industry is still something that you learn on the job and you keep learning as you like, you have to be in it, living it, eating, sleeping, breathing because it moves at such a fast pace. So it has been a pleasure to have you on this podcast, Alona. You have been a fantastic podcast guest sharing some of the insights that WebGains is doing with their clients and their publishers alike. I hope that you've enjoyed it as much as what I have. And um it's been a pleasure to have you here and hear about the smart tools and intelligent tools that you guys are implementing to help your clients to grow.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much, Vianne. It's been a wonderful experience, and I absolutely enjoyed it. Thank you so much. You are a great interview as well.
SPEAKER_00Are you ready to take your business to new heights? The Elevate Summit is coming this July. Brought to you by AppleBush. Elevate is the virtual event to attend. Save the date for July 18th and 19th and get your early bird tickets now. This unmissable live streamed virtual summit will run for two days, bringing the best and brightest affiliate and performance marketing practitioners together to help you grow your affiliate marketing program and partnerships. Why is this right for you? This virtual event is for publishers, affiliates, affiliate managers, and staff suppliers who work within the partnership economy. EarlyWorld tickets are priced at just £49 for a limited time only, and your ticket gives you access to world-class speakers and industry experts who will share tips, strategies and learning. The Elevate Summit is for you if you want to learn with real industry experts. Learn new ideas and tips to grow your program and learn new skills in our masterclasses. Discover new business leads, showcase your tech and services, and network with industry peers. Let's elevate your affiliate marketing together. Visit alphiversemedia.com and click on the elevate button to register now at this very special early bird prize. 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 are driving consistency.