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SPEAKER_01The 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 matec 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_02Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast with me, your host, Leanne Johnston. And today I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome David Picard, the CEO of Phonexa UK, on the pod to talk about lead generation and how Phinexo is helping clients and affiliates get more value from the marketing campaigns that they're running. Welcome, David. Let's kick off by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and what Phonexa does.
SPEAKER_00Hey Leanne, thank you for having me first of all. Yeah, sure, I'll kick off with a little about Phonexo, I guess. So Phonexa is an enterprise grade tracking platform for performance and partner marketing specifically. The suite is responsible for delivering true end-to-end tracking and attribution for the consumer lead and whole life cycle. It's used by marketing teams to drive ROI for brands across affiliate and partner and pay channels, both sort of big buzzword industries that everyone loves to talk about. So we launched in 2016 out of our HQ in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00A much sunnier place than where I am right now. You'll see I am in the not so sunny Bournemouth where we opened our office in 2017. I joined the company at the back end of 2017. So I guess a little about me. I've been in the affiliate space for since 2012. I just worked it out. The first few years were what I guess they call these days a side hustle, which wasn't really a term then, but it was just something I was I was dabbling in, I suppose. I was in a a life insurance call center at the time. Famous salesman blaming the leads all the time. Things aren't converting. I don't like this stuff. So I just rather than moan about it, decided to try and generate some of my own leads. And they ended up being pretty good, performed better than the stuff that we were we were buying in. And the call center manager said, Hey, do you want to be our lead generator? And the easy option would have been, yes, I would like to be your lead generator, but I thought, hey, no, if I can do this for you, I can probably do it for other people as well. And so that's kind of how I went freelance and started in the media buying space, generating leads in the financial services sector. And then in 2014, so I did that for about two years. 2014 I joined and subsequently partnered with uh the founder of a group of companies consisting of an affiliate network, uh a list management firm, and an FCA-regulated lead generation arm specializing in credit and insurance. And the rest is kind of history. That was then, you know, what it kind of had that click in the brain where you go, I get this, the numbers make sense to me, the methodologies make sense, this is this is kind of what I should be doing, and and went when down that road.
SPEAKER_02It's kind of weird that you say that because everybody that I speak to and bring on this podcast has segued into affiliate marketing in some way or another, and everybody's story is completely different.
SPEAKER_00So a happy accident sometimes, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And from that happy accident, we get into this multi-billion dollar business industry, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that. But really, why I wanted to bring you on the podcast this week is we are going through a bit of a revolution in terms of affiliate marketing, where traditional affiliates are not the only kinds of partners that we are bringing into our programs. And this is one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about. But before we get started on that story, I want to go down the most common question that that affiliate managers sort of talk about and get asked about, which is lead generation. Why has it been given such a bad rep under the affiliate umbrella? And what has changed from then to now? And why is it that brands should actually be investing more in non-traditional affiliate partner types like lead generators?
SPEAKER_00Sure, yes, that is the the common question. It's kind of a negative connotation on the word, I suppose. And and the battle that a lot of us are trying to have often is kind of an education process, right? When when you're talking to whether it be advertisers, brands, uh, about the space as to why it's something to look at. And and I guess the the tool that we have that that helps us is data, right? And numbers that that kind of let that's my methodology. You'll probably hear me say a lot in in the rest of this conversation is you know, let the numbers do the talking. You know, if you're if you're trying to attach personal feelings and emotions to things, you've got to be prepared to be wrong at some point because the numbers are gonna catch up with you and tell you to do something different. So put your ego out of the way, put your put your you know, whatever you think is right or wrong out of the way, and just build a methodology based on numbers and tracking and performance, and and then you can only end up in a good place, in my opinion. So, in terms of, I guess, why it's it's got a bad rep, whether you want to call it misrepresentation and that kind of thing, I suppose is a lot of people think of affiliates as people that you know the the get-rich quick kind of people. They want to make a quick buck, um, they don't want to put effort in, they they just want to dangle the carrot, incentivize people to carry out and go down funnels that ultimately don't necessarily end in the consumer behavior that you want, you know, the positive outcomes that you're looking for. You know, what corners can I cut in order to deliver the numbers that they're looking for, or or not even deliver the numbers that they're looking for, but but how many corners can I cut to kind of get there as quickly as I can? And absolutely right, that methodology should have a bad connotation about it. And you know, if that's how people are going to approach it, absolutely, it's right to look at it in that way. But uh ultimately, like I said earlier, if you're if you're truly attributing things based on numbers and statistics and performance, those behaviors should be able to be kicked out of the industry. And I guess to that's the old way, I suppose, to speak about how the old way was you know, paying for partner and performance marketing outcomes without clear understanding of sources that drives the quality that you're looking for, and you know, a disconnect between various types of customer interactions and all those kinds of things. When you come to now to talk about you know what's changed and what tools people have available to them in terms of, you know, I can speak of the advancements of technology, particularly to help protect the brand, the advertiser, and ultimately also the consumer, because ultimately, as long as we're putting the consumer at the center of this, which they always should be, then in theory you're you're going to be able to build something that has some longevity to it as well. So, you know, being able to automate validation, distribution of your consumers to deliver a truly personalized experience along the way, you know, reporting on every step of the journey can only possibly have positive outcomes here. The consumer's happier because they've received what they're looking for quickly. Uh, and everyone else in the journey is happy because they've got the tools they need to optimize performance at every stage of the lead cycle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so the the bad rep is kind of hereditary, but where we are now is that lead generation can actually play a very important part of your affiliate program if you embrace it, because we have better data segments and because it's easier to track things in real time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's easier to evidence that that actually the the rep the reputation is is correct if the numbers tell you it's correct. You know, if if the outcomes are carry on being negative and consumer experience carries on being negative, yeah, absolutely it should have a bad rep. But if if you can actually prove the opposite, which is what you need tracking and data for, then then who can argue with that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. The numbers never lie, right? So if a brand is is starting out and looking at kind of skipping over outside of traditional affiliate partners, which are like your SEO affiliate, your PPC affiliate, your paid advertisers, and now even influencers, what are some of the things that they should look at in order to incorporate, you know, paper call tracking, which is absolutely huge in the US? And I know we've got a lot of US listeners that are tuning into this as well. But what do you actually need to advise the affiliate program manager to do to build their momentum and to watch out for fraud? So, what what is the best piece of advice that you can give them if they want to step outside of that traditional affiliate funnel and start to look at wider lead generation on a performance basis?
SPEAKER_00Sure. So I guess you would you would break that in. So you you'd want to, I guess, start start at the start, I guess, as it sounds obvious. But you know, look at look at what the problem is, which is typically, you know, acquisition is is is not transparent, attribution is complex and difficult, and not all sources along the funnel generate the same quality, you know, performance differs. And then you come to your your why, which will be paying for outcomes, whether that's paper, call or lead, is risky because it again it lacks that transparency across those across those sources. Uh and then the the you know the immediate issue is the fact that navigating through multiple marketing channels creates internal inefficiencies, disturbances to workflow, hampers company, the company's ability to maximize the RRI. And there's a compound, compounding effect throughout that process, which is everyone ends up with lack of confidence, you know, in in publishers and partners, which can be crippling, you know, if if if ultimately budgets need to be spent somewhere, and that tends to come from confidence in something. You've got to be able to hang your hat on something and put your stake in the ground somewhere, and that comes from having confidence in being able to evidence that that you're achieving what you're what you're trying to achieve. So, in terms of advice, I guess what I would say is first of all, you have to have a good idea of what success will look like for you prior to launch, and most importantly, and I say this from experience, be ready to be wrong. So, so have an idea of on paper this is this is what this is what I think will be a good outcome. But also when it's when it differs from that and the numbers are telling you that the performance is different, swallow your pride a little bit and say, cool, now where do we go? You know, if you're using true end-to-end tracking, which is another no-brainer, by the way, that's a piece of advice, make sure you are, you'll likely have an idea of what conversions need to look like along the way in order to achieve what you need. But if and when they don't, be ready to make changes and adapt things to ensure that you're not just plowing on hoping that things will change when you've done nothing to help that change happen.
SPEAKER_02And that's a very important point because when I speak to affiliate managers, and obviously we train affiliate managers from multiple companies, from agencies, from networks, from brands, they give up too quickly. It's almost like they try something because somebody else tells them, hey, this is what you should try. And then because it doesn't work immediately, they don't actually like retest again or change the parameters or change the outcomes. And that's exactly what you're saying here is that this isn't a once and done type thing. If you're gonna step outside of the box of what you've always done before, you're entering into the unknown. And with that, means you need to be a little bit brave. You need to be a little bit brave, but you also need to be cautious about how you're testing and make sure that all of your tracking is in place first so that you do have something that you can hang your hat on in terms of the numbers that get spit out at the end, and then you can reiterate and test again. And I think that's the bit that sometimes gets missed is that oh, we tried lead generation, it didn't work for us. But did you take that learning and re-reapply? Because my motto in affiliate marketing is always be learning. Like everything that you do is always a learning test. And you even find some affiliate managers, because they're conditioned in their first job to do things in a certain way for a certain brand, and then they move on to another company or another brand, and they do the same things that they did from the previous brand in that brand, they end up just doing like what I call cookie-cutter affiliate management because they're only sticking to the parameters of the bits that they know, and they don't step out of that to go and have a look at all of these other channels that exist in performance that they might never have tried before.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_00And and it does boil down to that thing that you mentioned earlier, you know, they've heard that someone else tried it, and so I think I'm gonna get well, that's not good enough. You know, just just hearing that someone else tried it and so you're gonna try it, so it is not enough. You know, the first point I said there was have an idea of what success looks like for you first. And that has to be based on your internal requirements, not just what someone else has done and they've had positive effects. Because you will never understand someone else's campaign as well as them. You know, they're only gonna tell you the good points, they're only gonna tell you, oh, there's nothing but great. I'm amazing at my job. I'm the world's best media buyer. It's just so good. Look at these numbers. I'm gonna screenshot it and put it on LinkedIn and get lots of response. You know, that that's the shiny space. But no, they haven't told you the optimization processes that they've been through to to get there. And you haven't seen so you need to be prepared and and and have this kind of more realistic approach to understand, okay, well, why why am I gonna try this? What do I think this can do for me, my brand, my my advertiser, whoever, whoever it might be. Do I think it's realistic? And actually, even if it's not realistic, doesn't really matter. You know, shoot shoot for the shoot for the stars, and if you get to the moon, you know, that's still a pretty good result. It's it's kind of having that fearlessness approach to to give it a go initially, but also don't be surprised if it doesn't work first time because I mean neither of us would you you probably wouldn't be where you are. I wouldn't be where I am if everything we tried worked first time, it almost definitely does. I've failed more than I've succeeded, and that's that's performance marketing. You know, you want those failures realistically.
SPEAKER_02100%. So, how big is the lead generation industry? Because people tuning in now, we've kind of demystified the negativity that has been around lead generation. But how big is the lead gen industry right now? And what are some of the success segments that you're seeing with some of the customers that you're working with?
SPEAKER_00Yep, it's a hard industry to get a grasp of size, I think, because you know, even in my time, you know, 10, 11 years, it's it's totally different now than it was 10 years ago. So any any statistics, generally speaking, are pretty outdated as soon as they're published. But I read something recently that said the US ad industry alone is reported to have grown by around 5% this year, reaching $360 billion.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00That's a lot across 20 forms of media, which is which is unbelievable, you know, and and and it it all it does really is justify what we're trying to do here, which is the fact that this isn't going anywhere. It's it's only it's only progressing and moving forward and scaling and growing at a rate that almost no one can keep up with. And and so realistically, you just need to make sure that you are giving yourself the best chance, giving yourself the the armory and the tools in place to actually um stay ahead of that curve or at least be part of that curve and not be left behind. Um, in terms of you know verticals that we're seeing growth in, we we you know we we uh we we cut our teeth in financial services, or I cut my teeth in financial services. So I've I've still got a pretty good soft spot for that space. So I enjoy seeing advancements in that space. But in terms of spaces outside of that, you know, we're seeing good growth in you know the home services space. So home improvement, domestic solar, those kinds of things, whereby those were very antiquated industries. And that's really where we're seeing advances, where where the you know the antiquated industries that are still very much prominent but were left behind that curve are in the process of catching up and putting themselves in the mix, really. And that's where the advancement is is coming. And a lot of it, I I attribute a lot of that to things like the financial services space. You know, that those are the industries realistically that pioneered the tracking and attribution journey and the optimization of performance marketing, particularly in the you know, speaking to the UK, some of the technology available, be it APIs and and marketplaces in place to deliver these financial services products, you know, a lot a lot of the services outside of that space are now looking to that space to to inspire it and say, well, hold on, how come they can have a database that can deliver all of these real-time um quotes and offers and services to consumers? Why can't we build the same thing?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. Now, interestingly, when we spoke, you actually told me that a lot of affiliates are coming to you to help you with their tracking because affiliates are actually becoming brands in their own right. They've got so much volume of customer data that they need to be able to actually figure out how to like pass these leads on and actually get monetized for it. So, what are some of the issues or challenges that you're hearing from the from the publisher space, not just from the brand space, that Finex is doing to help with assisting with campaigns?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sure. So I mean it's it's we we've seen it happen not just with affiliates, you know, affiliates and agencies, you know, where where agencies, particularly in the past, would would partner with with you know an exclusive brand to deliver then traffic and ultimately uh get to a place where unfortunately as an agency you you you end up owning nothing. So so you know you are you are feeding feeding someone over here who is getting the data, owning the data, and then at the end of the campaign saying, Thank you very much, Mr. Agency. You spent my money and now I'm on my way, and and and and the agencies are the place where they've they've achieved nothing fundamentally. So we're seeing a lot of agencies diversify into lead generation, into building brands, owning brands, owning data, and building a panel of service providers previously, which would have been those exclusive advertisers at the end of those offers to deliver the services that the agency is is marketing. So that agency is now effectively a brand and its own affiliate, and and they're kind of almost swallowing up the the affiliate uh journey, the funnel to take over more elements of the journey, which I personally have got mixed feelings towards. You know, I love I love the affiliate space where you know it's big enough for everyone to eat ultimately, and actually you're you're relying on letting everyone do what they're best at, which really truly is the affiliate model. Let everyone do what they're best at. Let the media buyer buy the media because he's good at it, let the affiliate uh manager run the affiliate offer because he's good at it, and let the advertiser run the deliver the service because that's that's their job ultimately. However, agencies, end-to-end agencies, full stack agencies are capable of delivering a lot more of this journey, and they're able to speak to a lot more of that customer funnel to deliver more of it and actually end up at the end of the day owning something, which which can only be be good to them. I mean, in terms of I guess the the new way of operating within that, in terms of from Fenex's perspective, you know, we've seen a lot of people come to us and say, you know, finally I've got a trusted, transparent, virtuous process for running performance and partner marketing in one place. You know, that's kind of the thing that we're hearing people say is, you know, either they didn't know it existed or they knew it existed, but in very bite-sized chunks. You know, we've got eight elements of the platform, which I hate the term all-in-one. It's the biggest cliche term in the industry. You know, you go to a conference and you see all-in-one market, you know, all in one tech stack, all in one, whatever. But I'm gonna use it because we've got eight, eight services within the system and it and it kind of says what it needs to say. And so that's what they're saying to us, you know, finally we've got this virtuous process to be able to track everything in in one place, paying only for vetted outcomes, outcome-based marketing, you know, that that relies on that feeds revenue back to every single source in your marketing mix to create a more transparent attribution network. You know, one platform to consolidate all types of interactions, whether that's clicks, calls, form submissions, website behavior, all of those, all of those good things. And then also, you know, built-in compliance, fraud detection. Yeah. You know, make sure that you're not just casting your net far and wide and trusting everyone implicitly, you know, you're actually treating all traffic equally, letting the the numbers do the talking, but subsequently also letting the numbers do the talking in the way of things like protecting your business against fraud and and making sure that you are you're not working in a in a in a false economy where you think you're growing and you're scaling, but actually you're you're you're generating business on on false promises and and and and fraudulent behavior and things like that. So yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02I think you told me in in our chat it was like the FedEx is like the Frankenstein on steroids, because it kind of does everything and see clarity. And I think that's one of the things that most performance marketers don't have because everything currently exists in silos, as you said. We've got the affiliate network, we've got the you know media buying platform that's kind of sitting alongside the affiliate network, and then you might have other platforms that you're using for lead generation and email marketing, and you can't connect the dots very clearly about where that customer journey is. And then you've got your Google Analytics, which is also doing crazy things with attribution right now, which I recently read in a report by CJ.com, which was Little bit scary, you know, like there's all of these technical things that need to be seen to and managed and integrated, and it it does become very difficult to then show the value. And you know, as you said, you want to hang your hat on the numbers and go where the numbers lead you, but sometimes the numbers aren't accurate because you've got all of these different processes in the in the ecosystem and in the pipeline.
SPEAKER_00So exactly that you have to be comparing the same things, right? And ensuring that that you're all looking and on the same page in that journey. So, you know, that the the consumer journey could start with you know a publisher twice removed, running an offer on on email, you know, and in the end it comes all the way through to a call or web funnel that ultimately is, you know, that customer has changed hands three times, four times in in that journey before they end at the end destination. And then they may not even buy in in that instance. You know, they they I think I read something recently that that 45% of consumers don't buy first time rounds, you know. So how how are you making sure that the the attribution and and the the remuneration that you're delivering through your marketing channels is feeding back to the right place? And and ultimately, you know, whilst for Nexa as a platform, we are, I guess, we're fairly agnostic as we like to see, we we will partner with third-party services and platforms to to help our clients work however they like realistically. We've seen best results when when clients are using end-to-end tracking and and we've helped bring as much of that in-house as possible to ensure that the numbers that we're comparing and talking about are the same numbers, you know, here, and actually we we can hang our hat on that.
SPEAKER_02So, what I'm hearing is that you're not just a platform that helps with you know different channel tracking, but you're also almost like a BI dashboard because you can pull data in from other platforms as well and then look at it across the spectrum, which is quite interesting. And I think depending on different industries, I think it's quite handy to have that all in one place, you know, for all of your marketing team to kind of look at everything all together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, and and you know, we we are an automation suite, you know. I I like to think the performance marketing space is the best space for a lazy person to work in because you you can you can really do what the numbers tell you to do and automate a lot of it, you know, if you're working smartly. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of not lazy people in the space, and and obviously the best rise to the top, but but it but realistically, if you if you are putting the right things in place and and the right tools in your memory and and allowing your system to do its thing, don't get me wrong, like I said earlier, uh always get back to what I mentioned earlier. On paper, it needs to make sense first. Make sure that you've got a good understanding of how you want it to operate, don't just let the system go and uh do it. You know, it's it we we're not a managed service, it's not a managed service solution. You know, you need to you need to press the buttons. But but there's a series of protection in there to make sure that you're optimizing and automating the things to make sure that the human element in your business is the value add part. That's something that I'll I'll speak to a lot. You know, make sure that the team that you've got there aren't spending hours and hours and hours, weeks upon weeks, analysing reports that you could have automated and could have taken you 10 seconds to pull. You know, you walk into a meeting and no one's done any, no one's done any prep work for that meeting. Doesn't matter, the system's got the report there, search done, here it is right now. We can actually crack on with the meeting. You know, uh you haven't spent seven hours preparing for that meeting to then ultimately get nowhere at the at the end of it. You know, we've all been in those in those spaces where it's it's it's quite soul destroying, you know, where you you you've got a 30-minute meeting in the diary, but it takes seven hours to analyze the data to actually allow that meeting to take place.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean, I come from that background. 20 years ago that's how we did it. So, you know, everybody listening to this, they got it easy. All right, so let's let's move ahead to the future now a little bit, because we know that the affiliate marketing industry is growing. I think I read recently something in the region of about $32 billion. Uh, and and that just blows my mind because I remember back when it was like $10 million. And now 20 years later, here we are. And it doesn't show signs of of slowing. So, how do you and your team envisage the future of affiliate marketing versus how it's currently kind of looking today? Do you see major growth? Do you see changes in the way that we may be commercialized? Due to the fact that we now have more data, what are what are the areas that you're seeing the future look like?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I mean, I I can't help but see growth, like like we alluded to earlier. You know, it's it's truly the industry that is that is letting the numbers do the talking as as we kind of keep keeping as a theme to this conversation. And whilst the numbers are evidently proving themselves, the the money will keep getting spent in that space. That's that's all I can naturally see happening. And and naturally see as more brands adopt that space, and as we mentioned earlier, understand that actually the the previous maybe negative connotations in that space that are actually somewhat things of the past. Obviously, there are still things that you need to do to protect yourself in that space to make sure you're spending your money wisely. But as more brands will adopt it, which they naturally will, then that will only grow. In in terms of I guess the changes that I can see happening, it truly is that that that data-led armory that I think people are going to be uh adding to their moment in the sense of how much more can we bring in-house, how much more can we stop relying on third-party data suppliers and sources and and actually just just bring it under one hood, make sure that we're analyzing the right things and then go and make go and make more right decisions essentially. And secondly, get better at making those decisions. You know, some some people it's very easy to say, well, we've got all the data here, all we need all we need to do is make the right decisions. Well, what practices are you gonna put in place to make sure you're making those right decisions? Are you open-minded enough to make sure that you're split testing and and let again coming up with the the going off the basis of of the right results? You know, a lot of people will just assume that that, okay, I've got the data, so therefore this can only go well. Well, ultimately you can still use the data poorly. You know, you've you've got to make sure you're you're you're putting things in place to to understand the data properly. Uh, and when the data changes, change change what you're doing about it. You know, a lot uh I guess that that will be a big change is is more of the industry becoming real-time. You know, a lot a lot of things that offline conversions, and obviously we're in a cookie less world now where realistically we need to make sure that we're using attribution systems that that are that are not reliant on that tool, and also then bringing everything into a real-time space whereby we can you know roll with the punches essentially and and and adapt and optimize things on the fly and in real time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So to round up this conversation about embracing lead generation, about stepping outside of the traditional affiliate box, looking outs outward to actually grow and scale. Because I think some brands or some affiliate managers that I speak to, they go, Oh, I work with all the affiliates already. So how am I going to grow my program? Well, this is how. You kind of look at other channels and you look at bringing that into the performance program. What's the one piece of advice that you can give to affiliate managers listening in on this podcast today about operating their programs more efficiently and engaging with non-traditional forms of affiliate partnerships? Like, what's the one piece of advice that they need to take away from this conversation?
SPEAKER_00I guess it kind of goes back to what we said earlier where we kind of need to stop thinking of it as traditional versus non-traditional. If if you're letting the numbers do the talking, like we keep saying, what difference does it make if it's traditional or non-traditional? You know, ultimately you've gotta you've got to do what works. Carry out the due diligence on your partners to make sure that you're starting with a level playing field and then track the journey from start to finish. Get used to putting yourself in those advertisers and most importantly, the consumers' shoes in the funnel uh and use the analytics tools to deliver an experience that will encourage the outcomes you're looking for. Um for too long, we've kind of seen a hope for the best approach to performance marketing. Like we said earlier, I saw someone else try it, so I'm gonna give it a go. Fingers crossed, you know, it'll it'll work. They did it, so I'm sure it will. But but nowadays, you know, with with all the tools that we've got, we've got no excuse to not be optimizing every single cog in in that affiliate journey. So that's that's my piece of advice. Don't think of it as traditional versus non-traditional. Think of it as what am I looking to achieve here? Put something in place whereby you're you're you're getting an idea of what success will look like for you. Track everything. And if you didn't get to where you wanted to, don't give up. Because ultimately it's definitely possible to still get there. You just might need to tweak a few things along the way. So make sure that you've got the the processes and the tools in place to know whether you should be doing that or not.
SPEAKER_02I love that. You you make it sound so simple, David.
SPEAKER_00But it's definitely not, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Thank you so much for being on this podcast. I think you've really opened up my eyes to look a little bit more wider at where that customer journey is and figure out where we can get involved with other publishers or lead generators or influencers, whoever it is that you need to be working with in order to bring in your customer. But I think also understanding the data. I think affiliate managers have long been told that they need to be relationship builders, that they need to be commercially savvy. But I think they also need to really understand the tech and the attribution and that customer journey as well, so that they can learn where to spend money in the right places. So it's been absolutely great to have you on this podcast. Thank you so much for bringing your perspective into the affiliate marketing and performance marketing channel. And I'm looking forward to seeing what Venexa does next.
SPEAKER_00Likewise, thank you very much.
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SPEAKER_01That'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 ITS 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, friends, tips, and content to keep your affiliate and performance marketing fresh and your partner's driving consistent skills.