In this episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast, you'll learn how brands can elevate their program performance by taking on new innovation, looking at new opportunities, and using data segments to increase their performance.
SPEAKER_06You're listening to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast brought to you by affivertsmedia.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.
SPEAKER_03I'm not successful in affiliate management at AM Leaders. Join us on October 23rd in London for an exclusive affiliate manager training event. Learn from industry products master program management and stay ahead of cutting edge affiliate marketing strategies. This event is bought team and property at HelloPartner and Attravers. And after this interactive workshop, that are your tickets to affiliate programs. Tickets at the 399 pounds or 350 pounds button if you already appear alive ticket holder. Visit AttivistMedia.com, click on the AM Leaders panel and secure your spot at AM Leaders Training Today. After Active Telemon. Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast with me, your host, Lianne Johnstone. Now this week we're giving you another opportunity to listen in close to one of Affiver's Elevate Summit panels. This time we wanted to give you a look into our publisher perspectives. On this panel, we welcome Shrish Namba from Increasingly, George Graves from Cheddar.ai, Francis McAnglas from Skinlinks, and Ben Hellier from NetRev to come along and discuss their perspectives on where the future of affiliate marketing is heading. Coming out of the recession has been a much talked-about topic. However, it has been shown that the affiliate marketing industry has risen and made it through because it's constantly innovating and using technology together with data to remain focused on customer personalization and matching. Listen into this excerpt from our publishers' perspective panel to understand a little bit more.
SPEAKER_01So I think, first off, as a channel, just following on what Francis just said, was I think the channel benefits because of our commercial model, right? So CPA, it makes it more attractive in this kind of climate. You've seen businesses grow in recessionary climates in the affiliate space, and you see the affiliate channel grow in this kind of market. So I think that's a real positive. I think in our space, the job we have to do, because we're an on-site technology, we're also in marketing. But the job we have to do is try and connect the right customers with the right brands. So what do I mean by that? In this kind of market, if I um if I'm a if I'm a potential customer and I visit a site, uh, I'm going to be more cognizant of what is essential, what is extendable, and what is expendable, right? And so it's my job as an on-site technology to actually, through the features we have of personalization, to try and connect the right customer to the right product. And then what you can have is a scenario where you're actually meeting a customer's needs. And when you're meeting a customer's needs, you get a better conversion rate. And that's the whole play of increasingly. So we're seeing customers who are selling products that you know traverse um essential and extendable, that you're kind of seeing them be successful because you're trying to collect the right customer with the right products. And where you're seeing retailers who are selling um expendable, so things that they just don't need, that's where the challenge comes, right? So it's also about your merchandising mix and connecting to the right customer. And that's the job that we're doing, and we're doing well because the customers that we work with, and we have 100 plus brands, they're seeing uh AOV climbing by using our technology rather than declining.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, totally love that. Ben, I want to come to you because from the publisher perspective, and this is really your bag, like what do you think the brand should be doing to assist you during these you know more trying times?
SPEAKER_05I think one of the main things that that we see and that we do is conversation and understanding that brand. And like Shrey just pointed out that for us, we've had true success in looking at who the customer actually is. Who do you want your customer to be? I think remember as well that's really important. But for some of us, a lot of us in the three.
SPEAKER_03A common theme that soon became evident was that matching the right customer to the right brand is something that all affiliate marketers need to be working with. George Graves gave us the lowdown on what Cheddar does using their shared banking data and spending history to provide you with benefits and rewards, essentially targeting the right customer to the right brand. Fellow panelists also agreed that this was indeed in the post-recession era an indication that brands need not to spend less but to do more strategically by looking at the past history of what customers are doing and educating their affiliates to help with what works by providing proper case studies. In this next clip, Sri lays out where performance innovation is headed, and I pose a question on how the role of the affiliate manager has developed in this industry since then. So, as we look to the future, I mean everybody's gonna want to know like what are the trends that they can hop on now for the next six months to get to the end of the year to make their targets. But as we look to the future, where is performance innovation heading in the realm of affiliate marketing? What new strategies or technologies are you seeing shaping the industry and creating opportunities for growth? And Shri, I'm gonna probably start with you there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so look, I I think one that I just want to touch on is um there's this multifaceted uh question, but I think a couple of thoughts. One is something that we're replaying to is that affiliate a lot of times can be synonymous with giving a discount. And affiliate marketing is a great conduit for offering a commercial model. This is the way we see it, commercial model that's you know, win-win. And that's how we see it with the tracking behind it. And in our case, we actually 97% of our work is with no discounting. And what we're trying to do is help the help the retailer surface the right products to a customer so that the customer achieves their mission, right? So nobody just buys mascara, they buy a B2 regime. Nobody just buys a plank of wood, they buy a decking project. And if you can do that, you can actually sell more, boost AOV without actually offering, without having to offer any sort of discount, which is a knee jerk reaction. So one of the themes of the future is going to be we're struggling, right? As a retailer, we're struggling, or it's tougher out there. What can we do to eke out performance? And that's when people have to really push, and that's where innovation comes in. So, where does that innovation come in? It comes in using the right partners and saying, well, in this market climate, I want to be careful. So CPA model becomes very attractive. Um, tightening budgets, but then focusing very hard on the right customer segment, and we've talked about that already. And then I think, for example, it says, well, what new innovations are there out there that we're not even playing with? So, you know, I was recently on a panel um elsewhere around generative AI, and that's all been big news, and now it's gone a bit quiet again. Um, but there'll be aspects of that being used in how you automate within the affiliate space, and I know you've got panels on that, how you use imagery better to make a higher conversion rate when customers see products. So, something we're doing with generative AI is how we can bring images together to then sell that overall look or that overall experience, because then you get a better conversion rate. So I think what's going to happen is, and this is the way innovation works, when you're faced with a challenge or just wider challenges, you end up saying, okay, well, what are the specific problems I'm facing? Conversion rate, AOV, uh, difficulty penetrating a market, etc. And then you try and find point solutions that can solve them. And that's where the affiliate channel becomes very, very successful. So I see more and more of what's the problem, what's the solution? Where, you know, when you're not in this market climate, you can be lazy and go, okay, yeah, we'll just do a bit of that, we'll do a bit of this, and we'll see how it goes. Now you have to be very on point, and that's what we're going to see in the next six months.
SPEAKER_03So, do you think that, and this is a question for all of you guys, because you you deal with multiple brands and operators and networks across all sides of you know many industries. Do you think that the role of the affiliate marketer or the publisher manager or, you know, whatever your job title is, is actually becoming more complex because they need to be more of a marketing practitioner and less so of an account manager? They need to understand all the different channels and how they're working together and they need to be leveraging lots of different data sources and not just within the network, like the reporting that they get in the network, but also dealing with their publishers one-to-one because, like Ben, you said, you've got so many case studies and use um, you know, uh data points that you can share of what's working and what isn't. So, how do you guys feel about that? And anybody can take this question.
SPEAKER_02I definitely see the role of affiliate marketer becoming a bit broader, specific to where we're at. We're seeing typically always been online and the way we work means there is a kind of in-store element as well to on the channel, following the customer doing both. We're seeing the responsibilities for that side of the business actually moving towards affiliate as well. Um, I think that just on the sort of innovation side, that there's so much data at play that managing the uh data insights, making them actionable, uh, identifying sort of lifetime value of your customers and wider insights for that can be used by the rest of the company as well. Uh, but definitely broadening your horizons specifically past last click. Um it's an interesting area that's that's opening up. I think that if you're gonna remove, I mean, the one thing that we're noticing is that attention spans are in decline amongst the people. Yes, they don't want FAF, they want things quick, easy, relevant. And if you can remove the steps uh and essentially potentially remove the last click from the process, you can sort of cut through the noise and reach far, far wider with your marketing programs.
SPEAKER_03With innovation comes a wide range of technology tools along with the customer journey that can saturate the market. They all serve a purpose as they provide an immense amount of data. However, it becomes difficult to decipher and put to good use if the knowledge of what to do is not present. In this clip, we talk a little bit about some of the trends and innovations that are happening, and hopefully you'll pick up some good ideas too. What are some of the trends and innovations that you're seeing from your side?
SPEAKER_00Um, it's it's quite interesting because we see um so a lot of the conversations that we have are obviously publisher-based, right? And when we talk publisher, it's mainly editorial rather than anything else, right? And innovation is always a word that they come come out with, particularly as we all know, the recent connects the discriminants to Boole Link. You know, there's a lot of expectation around the innovation that's going to come out of that. Um I think what's interesting is I still find that there are a lot of very basic challenges that publishers are actually facing. Um, so you know, as we all know in the industry, data has always been talked about for decades. And there still hasn't been a one single point solution which can combine publisher first-party data with other assets of third party. And obviously, there are lots of innovative solutions that bring this together. But when we talk to some of the big brands, these are the real challenges they're facing. They're saying, how can I increase that relevance by bringing alive the maybe the subscriber first-party data that I already have with some of the other signals that I can see in the ecosystem. Um, so I think the innovation at a higher level, so a board or CMO level, tends to be more of that long-view strategic. Whereas I think the affiliate manager, very much to what the rest of the panel are here, are saying, I feel they're facing a conundrum that maybe digital markets were facing in the late 90s, where suddenly there's so much different ways of looking at affiliate marketing and performance marketing, so many different tools, so many different KPIs, that I think it's becoming overwhelming. And a lot of these affiliate managers are having to learn how to talk these KPIs. How does the advertising merchant think about the APIs, the role as the ROI? And therefore, I think there will come a period that happened with the rest of digital marketing, where you're going to start seeing specialisms with that within affiliate. So now you have your SEO on your social media. I think in affiliate, you're going to start having, you know, your potential CPA, your CPL, your CPC specialists all come in within one single department, because the importance of performance marketing is clearly increasing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a valid point.
SPEAKER_01I I've got a point uh add. You were saying that, Francis, I was just thinking about in page search back in the day, it all used to be, you know, buying a keyword. And then it got more complex. And then suddenly there was, you know, um Facebook, and then there was Bing platforms, and there was, you know, all the other ones that uh came along the way. And then they had to, then you've ended up focusing, and then obviously there's Google Shop, and then you end up being a specialist in one area, right? And I was thinking, as you said, I was thinking exactly the same thing. If you know, if it continues this trend and people uh have the appetite to keep learning, and then things start working, which they already are, then there's gonna be like, whoa, we're doing even more revenue through affiliate, right? We need these super specialized guys and girls who are gonna be working in these different areas. And I and I think that's quite cool, really, because that will be testament to actually the industry growing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and this one, if if I can add this one niche that's really come out in the editorial world, which is a specialist that can connect the editors, even though they're commercial editors, to the to the affiliate teams. So, how do you bridge that gap? Because I think the two find it very difficult to obviously keep to the ethos of being commercially editorial whilst being commercial. So I I see a lot of publishers bringing in this uh one individual generally who's going to be that specialist for the communication channel.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. I think the the media of the access is well, it's beginning to change, right? Like look at the TV details, you're trying to see QR codes on a TV advertising. Every single day I get something from my door that's directed to me and it's super specific. And guess what? I always pick it up and I always look at it. So it's about the only good thing code you did for us. It brought back ways of tracking what our customers are doing in other media, we're becoming more central to the hallmarking ecosystem. I think it's really important that we're at the table with the discussion there.
SPEAKER_03In general terms, brands want to grow and see incrementality. However, attribution is a big part of the customer journey that often gets ignored. Tactical thinking spurs innovation, which in turn spurs your program growth. In this next segment, I was keen to find out what our panelists thought were the key innovations that they have seen work in their partnerships, that they have yielded positive results. What are some of the kind of trends that you guys are seeing in terms of brands that you may have had experiences with? And I want you to get really tactical now, so I'm putting you on the spot and anybody can can grab this question. But what are some of the things that you're doing with brands that are innovative right now that other people here can learn from?
SPEAKER_01Can I can I jump in on that one? Touching on the last question, because I think um on the I will come back to it just on the last question um, you know, why work with other partners? In our case, it is for that incrementality that you talked about. We are regularly a top five affiliate as soon as you add us to a program. And when we run through split tests, we regularly add um eight to eleven percent incremental revenue, and that lifts all revenue, not just our revenue, it afflies it influences affiliate revenue, site-wide revenue. And we've got videos of five customers saying that teen decks showing it in split tests. So I think the reason from our perspective is to get incremental revenue and to get meaningful lift in revenue from the affiliate channel. And then two, you know, what what tactically we would say you should be doing to give you real examples of some really, really cool stuff that we're doing that I'm genuinely uh like I think it's so really, really cool. We uh we won an award for this. So um increasingly core algorithms are around the ability to uh enable co-purchase. So think about Amazon's frequently bought together, right? On their website, they'll show you why don't you buy these three things together? That's done using neural nets. Uh, we took that approach and then we built out our capability on-site, but then we diverted that and pushed it to Google Shopping. And so now people like Pets at Home, um, Denby, Samsung, HP are pushing not just singular products, but actually pushing bundles in Google shopping. And um, so what does that do? Well, it basically means that you can earn more real estate, you can block out competitors, you can get um more revenue at your target ROAS. And to quote for Pets at home, they're actually getting 39.6% higher ROAS and 15% more um Google shopping revenue. So incremental, completely incremental. And the cool thing is they're doing things like selling multi-packs, which is like four of an item, all automated, um, all selling, you know, a uh dog food with a certain dog treat. Things that are appealing to customers and helpful, right? And there's no discounting at all. So I think this is a kind of thing where when you put under pressure in a tough market climate, these are the kind of things that brands want to test because they're like, well, holy moly, even in a recession, I can actually find a way to grow. And then they become the winners post-recession, too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's one example.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for sharing that. Anybody else want to add on to that one? Please do.
SPEAKER_02So we did some pretty cool stuff at the moment with obviously with the spending data. We know who your customers are, how often they spend with you, how recently, how much. We also know it for your competitors. So we're working with one uh food takeaway app who are obviously targeting their competitors, uh, but also um we're identified, they've just partnered with grocers. We're going after people who spend already with them, but also spend offline with the grocer, personalized message delivered to their phone. You usually buy your groceries here. Why not just get it delivered to home via us with a cashback offer to really hammer it home? We've got an online grocer just come on who one of their competitors is in a bit of financial difficulty and they want to pick up those customers, they're ready to do that. Uh, and a travel booking app that essentially no can see or we can see where sort of where customers or users are spending specifically directly with the brands and they want to book through them so they're targeting them, and we can be a bit more specific with well, they typically book at this time of the year, let's preempt that, let's get in and let's do a boosted notifications, book in the next three weeks. Weeks in order to take that spend to you as well. So there's a lot of really, really cool stuff. And I think all the innovations in data and targeting is leading to quite an incredible environment.
SPEAKER_03It became apparent in this panel the idea that discounting is not necessarily going to get you better sales results. Brands need to think about what the customer is looking for, past the search results, and find ways to bundle it in. I want to come to you, Angus, and you, Ben, on this as well, because you guys deal with a lot of content-based and email marketing as well. And I think what Tri said is we need to think away from selling just one product and actually selling the entire um event. So if you're going to build, you know, if you're buying wood, you're going to build a deck. What else do you need to build that deck? And actually get very tactical about how you're positioning brands and positioning their offers, not to discount, but to actually upsell. So how do you guys feel about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's um that's a very good point. So I what we're noticing a lot is first of all, in terms of the merchant diversification, from the merchant point of view, that come to work with the editorial publishers.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00There are a lot of merchants nowadays who do not wish to discount or to be seen as discounting because they're focusing more on the mission, right? And I think mission is a new narrative around this, but even if we look back, I don't know how many years, but let's say 10, 15 years of the Simon Cynic Y and all that kind of stuff, it's something the marketing's been trying to instill in our everyday, right? Which I strongly believe in. So we've seen this with a lot of the very specific merchants, which helps them also to differentiate, not just against the discounting, but in the world of affiliate, it helps them to differentiate against the very large marketplaces. What we're seeing with the editorial publishers is sometimes as a response of this, but also as a brand differentiator, they're taking the high ground of they do not want to be seen as portraying discounting within their own sites. So, you know, without specifically going into the brands, but we we can only imagine the high fashion publishers that are led by editorial that take a very high stance on we are going to go with the true brand rather than the one that wants to discount on it. I think I'm going to be a little controversial in that even though that might be the position they take, I think at the editorial core, they still look very tactical into I need to sell three or four products, not necessarily, you know, is someone buying a dress because they're really on a very happy day at the wedding. So I think when you start reading around the content and the activity that the publisher puts behind the merchant mission, the publisher tends to be very end product and service focused rather than mission focused, but they are very much focused on what do I stand for, and therefore how can I stay relevant with my audience.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Ben. So I've got a slightly diversifying opinion than a few different people here. Um I want to really lean into the fact that I think discounts do have a big space for them. And if they are editorials or closed user groups like Amazon, every brand wants the discount out there, right? I think all brands need to just slow down a little bit, understand who their customer is first, and then find where they can find that customer. There's tons of resources out there, you know, there's experience that the companies, we can find more customers. We have a lot of hard as our actually. A lot of users, a lot of us. We don't need to look into this. What's happening with that user after purchase? Because the transactions are that user then can become a lifetime advocate for educate and communicate with them in the right way. And I think all the world is very much changing in the when you use find an email send off the transaction. That's where it's got. Whereas now everyone wants to become the same business. Which means I need you to put that email again and again and again. And the only way you're gonna do that is if you think the API is that customer has to be. So it's just about it's about communication, open book. And I think the one thing that this industry is really put on was relationships, and we just need to see more of that coming back.
SPEAKER_03And lastly, I wanted to leave you with a quick summary of what this panel had highlighted, as well as listening in to our panel of experts that leave you sharing their one piece of golden advice. Take it to heart and use it in your affiliate programs, and hopefully, you will see your programs elevate and grow. So, this has been the publisher panel, the publisher perspectives panel, and I want to just summarize what you guys have shared with us quickly before we go for a rapid fire one piece of nugget advice to leave with our audience today. So slow down and understand the customer. Get mission selling tactical. So don't just think about one product, think about you know, upselling more products. Ask your publishers what it is that they need from you in order to better perform. Look at innovative tools that can help you increase incrementality. And Sri mentioned a whole bunch of numbers there between eight and I think 15%. And think about incrementality and not just attribution. So those are five really good pieces of advice that you guys have dropped down for us today. And then obviously use the data as well. But what's the one thing that you want to leave all of the affiliate managers tuning in today who work with publishers like you on a daily basis? Give them one piece of advice to take away that's tactical that they can implement in their programs tomorrow. So I'm going to start at the top of the screen, Shri.
SPEAKER_01I think if you're looking for um significant more revenue, um, look at your short list of potential publishers that you're not working with and get some evidence from them as to why and how they will boost your advertiser's revenue and by what percentage or in what amount. And if it's significant, really push it with your advertiser because now's the time that your advertiser needs to succeed.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, love it. Francis, what about you?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think I would say just build a relationship with the other individuals in the ecosystem that you're trying to influence. I think that's the biggest thing for me. Don't just lock yourself in your room and think you can figure it all out. Go meet the others, talk to them openly, um, and have a very frank conversation. That's the best outcome.
SPEAKER_03Perfect. Ben, what about you?
SPEAKER_05I'm old school like Francis. Cannot replace a relationship. Go have lunch, go have a beer. That 30 minutes that you'll have together will be so incredibly valuable compared to all that emails going back and does.
SPEAKER_03Love it. And George, last but not least, what's your advice for everybody today?
SPEAKER_02Um, I'd say read the environment, know where we are. These are tricky times. You can really help people, and that will win them over to you to win new customers and retain them. And the second piece is cut through the noise. There's a lot of new tech out there. Don't need to fall back on sort of the easy methods. Just, you know, cut through the noise, meet your customers where they are and with what they want.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's a wrap for this week's affiliate marketing podcast with me, Leanne Johnston. I hope that you have found these insights from our publishers perspective panel incredibly insightful and useful for your programs. Don't forget to check out our newsletter on our website and also take a look at our AM Leaders event that's taking place on the 23rd of October. Till next time, always be learning.
SPEAKER_06This podcast is brought to you by AMP. The Affiliate Manager Performance Program is designed for ambitious affiliate program managers working at brands, agencies, or affiliate networks that are looking to grow and scale their affiliate programs and partner performances. We've already helped hundreds of affiliate program managers from a range of industries get the best out of their affiliate partnerships and build consistent sales within their affiliate programs. With just one hour per week over a 12-week period, this program is unlike any other. Book your seats on our next cohort by visiting our website at diversemedia.com and hit the training menu. From there, you can register your interest for our next cohort launch or simply contact our sales team to find out more. 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 three 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 sales.