You're listening to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast brought to you by affiversemedia.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 Martech 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 everybody back to this week's episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast. And today I'm incredibly excited to have an industry OG, a growth developer, and the founder of the AI Optimus Podcast joining me today. It is the one, the only, the legend, Declan Dunn. Declan, it's a pleasure to have you here with me. I'm super excited to have you on this podcast. And thank you very much for being here today.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having me. Uh let's let's have some fun exploring this uh new world we're always entering in affiliate marketing, right? It never stays the same.
SPEAKER_02Well, this is why I wanted to get you on this podcast, because although we've never met, and both of us have been in the industry for a very long time, which I find hilarious, and I spent uh a very nice time at PI Live Europe, you know, this week with some of your friends, actually. So I'm really thrilled to have you here. But there's so much that we're gonna break down in this episode. But I want to start with you, with you telling our audience who you are, how you got into affiliate marketing way back when, and what's changed from then till now as well. Such a simple question. Yes.
SPEAKER_01What's changed?
SPEAKER_02It might take a while to answer that. Right, a long road.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, I'm I'm from like the early cave person days of the internet, and I began uh forming my founded my first project, and I needed to connect with people, I needed to get traffic, all this normal stuff that we do. So I started calling people, making user-generated content partnerships, and I started realizing that the only way that we could grow, especially in the early days, and it's so applicable now, because back then it was brutally hard to get traffic. Now it is brutally hard to get traffic again because of social media. Different circumstances, but oddly the same. So the only way that it could work is to do partnerships. And I'm just a guy with a site, basically, with nothing at the start, but I started doing user-generated content. And then I started making partnerships with, I just would reach out to big partners. I mean, what can they say? No, and I managed to close ABC and PBS, which was wild. I was like, do you know I'm working in my home when this wasn't cool? You know, like doing it. And I said, you know, what was really cool is that site went crazy. We ended up getting our first million visitors in 1997, which was huge.
SPEAKER_02Okay, some people haven't even been born at this stage that are listening to this podcast. So we are going way back to the beginning of the internet, guys. So tune in because it was a wild place back then, and we're gonna we're gonna get you to talk about that. So rewind back to 1997, winning your first couple of clients. Take us forward from there.
SPEAKER_01Even though I'm obviously from the way back days, I really want to share how much the the beauty of the internet is building partnerships. And in 1997, I started realizing I should do this for a business because companies need to sell products. It's really hard to get out there. I'm a publisher, I understand that, I know how to work with them. And so I wrote a book to sort of intro me to the affiliate industry, which became one of the early Bibles at that time. And by putting that out there, I managed to go out in 1998 to this conference. And there's these companies all competing. This little company called Linkshare, which you all know as Rankington, was sort of the king. And this little upstart called CJ was just angering everybody with the wonderful Todd Crawford and Perry Peterson, and everybody's like so threatened by them because they had such a unique angle and obviously such cool people. And it was in that that I began forming partnerships and helping larger companies work. And I again partnered with a couple of the platforms and ended up being one of the really early OPMs. Um, put American Express online, which is one of our biggest, you know, our little company putting them on, worked with Network Solutions, about 30 big companies, and basically do what we do today, which, even though we all have systems and we're all like way smarter, like we were clueless, we were all making it up and improving. There was nothing. Like, but what was great about it was that inventiveness and innovation really helped, and it helped us grow these companies tremendously, but it also brought sort of the foundational elements that we call affiliate marketing today, which is odd. Because when you say it, it is funny how so many things have changed, but so many things remain the same. The core, you gotta know data, you have to be able to build relationships, that weird, you gotta be a tech, you gotta know what your numbers are, and you've got to be able to talk to people, which sounds so obvious, but a lot of us that's a challenge. Like to really communicate and to think of your partner. What can you do for them instead of this? Has always been my approach, rather than, oh, here I am, let me blah, blah, blah about my offer. Let me listen to you. Let me talk to me about what you're doing. And I applied the same thing today because what's funny is so many of us are pushing and we're not listening. And everybody's being pitched and you don't close deals in seconds. It's hard, especially bigger companies. You gotta be like, go, they say no, they don't respond. But I know that if you go out there and you continue and not be annoying and don't like one of my pet peeves is like over-reliance and automation. Like, here's a four to seven email sequence. They don't live in your funnel, they don't live in your sequence, they live in their own sequence. And what's funny is when you let that go, people think you're really cool because you're actually like listening to them, and you might see that deals stink, which often they do. It's hard. Our business is hard. And but when you do that and say we're not gonna work together, I've gotten referrals by saying, wait, this just isn't a fit. Thank you. Let me save you some time.
SPEAKER_02All right, guys. So I want to break it down here because this is like affiliate gold. You know, they say liquid gold, but this what Declan has just said is affiliate gold. And the reason why it's affiliate gold is because way back then in 1997, when the internet was just starting, none of us really knew what was going on. And so, in order to learn what we know today, we had to fail. And you mentioned that. And I think a lot of affiliate managers that are joining this industry, there's a huge amount of pressure on them to succeed and to get deals done and to build relationships. And I mean, there in itself is a juxtaposition. This job is not easy, and I hope that there's some CMOs out there listening to us because you have to combine somebody who's really data-driven and you know, technology savvy with somebody whose natural aptitude is to relationship build. And guess what? Those two things are completely personality disorder differences. Like a techie person doesn't necessarily want to engage with people, and a people person doesn't necessarily want to engage with tech or with numbers. And unfortunately, this job, you do need to have a skill set of both. So I always say looking for affiliate managers is like looking for hens teeth because they're very few and far between, and they have to either adapt or or um, you know, invest in building the skill set that they're weakest in, because they'll either be a strong relationship builder and have to really invest hard and learn the tech and the data and become savvy with commercialization, or they're tech savvy and really deep in the numbers, and they have to almost make themselves into an extrovert in order to actually go and build relationships in this industry. So two things there that I wanted to highlight from everything that you said is one, we were all making mistakes. You can't come into this role and not make mistakes, but you sure as eggs have to learn from them. And two, you need to be honing your skills. So therefore, you always need to be learning. And, you know, Declan, you and I can agree on this because you spoke about it before we even got on this podcast. You and I are still learning. We're 20 years in, you know, you're more than me, you know, 20 or two decades into this industry, and we are still learning because there are new technologies, new data sources, new, you know, uh campaign, you know, ways of running and and targeting people that are happening around us all the time. So I guess my question was a bit loaded. What's changed from then till now? And you said some things have, and some things are still very much the same. So let's talk a little bit about the difficulties of affiliate managers learning to craft the perfect pitch, because that was something that you touched on that you learned early on in terms of how to use content and communication to actually build partnerships. And I know you're extremely passionate about it. I mean, you have a whole course about it that I actually had a look at, which is awesome, and we will link that to this podcast. But let's delve a little bit deeper into that relationship building metrics and and talk a little bit about what your top tips are for affiliate managers who are having to do that cult call outreach, that partnership, relationship building, and who may not actually have that as a skill set. Like, I really want you to spend a little bit of time giving us the like 20-minute download on creating the perfect pitch and actually positioning yourself in order to build content that sells you authentically.
SPEAKER_01No, and it's that's so key. And really, when I started, I came from being much more geek number web developer driven than sales. So my big thing was learning sales. And I've also worked with a lot of salespeople who have to learn the numbers without just just hoping that you're not that necessarily interested or great at one aspect, but having that balance really helps. Like you don't have to be perfect. And as I always taught people I've worked with, especially affiliate managers, get into the attitude of not expecting things to work. Expectations are poison. Be amazed when it works. We are a low percentage game. So when you're doing outreach, a lot of times people will go in, and just a little aside, a lot of this comes from weird pressure from management, unreasonable sales goals. If I could say one thing, it's nice to say do it fast. But what's funny is if you're building longer-term relationships, you have to be able to spend time. And to those affiliate managers out there, I get pushback all the time. I've had a CEO buddy of mine always thinking, you're not doing anything. I said, they're not responding yet. They're a big company. Now you sort of have to hold your ground, but the other end is it's a reality. So when you're actually doing your pitch, I like to say, for one, I come from a world which is called persuasion marketing, which most of you probably rely on. Persuasion marketing makes emotional appeals, highlights features and benefits, and uses fear or scarcity tactics to create urgency. Now, what's really funny is this is all we had. And I want to tell you, Leanne, I spent a year listening to I am an old dude. I was like, it's a new generation. I need to know how you all communicate. I had to change my entire style because I was like, here you go. And I see affiliate managers doing this. Here's my program. And you're writing it like they even I'm gonna be really blunt. They don't care. They're busy, you're getting this much attention. And what's weird is that's gonna free you because when you actually pull all that back and stop telling everybody what you're doing and actually see if this is a fit, instead of cold calling, I talk about cold listening. My goal is not to sell them on my program because the odds of you getting a quick sale, I mean somebody signing up, often if you do, they have way too much time and may not be a great performer. I it's hard because what it's an indicator of time. So when you're going out, what and what a whole different generation that I had to learn from, because it's your world, what they taught me was to be briefer and to use what's called curiosity. And curiosity, this is a very good thing, and this is big in sales right now because they're the old ways, we're all savvy, we're all been pitched to death, especially with the, I always say when the lockdown happened, people started, they know the psychology, they know, they know stuff that they understand they're at a subconscious level, they're being pitched. So rip the pitch out. My friend used to say, Oh, you're playing hard to get. I said, I'm not playing. It's hard to get a good partnership. Recognize that. And all of a sudden, people are like, wow, and and remember, this is not people who know me. This is not like my brethren of the many years in the affiliate world, which I love. I'm going to people who don't know who I am, who could not even understand the business I'm working with. It made no sense. It wasn't coupon rewards, it was like a mystery. So what I had to do was, how can I put that, and I call it three seconds to three hours. You get three seconds of attention. It's actually from a book called Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman, a behavioral economist. I'll get off the geeky stuff. But what he basically says is people are scanning, and if you get them to stop and pay a little attention, that's goal number one. So when you're doing your pitch, what you want to see is if it's a fit for them first. So I'd work on my subject lines, I do a lot in email. What's funny is my generation lived on email, and it drives us nuts sometimes because we're so used to it. But what, and a lot of people say in the, you know, in current generations are like, oh, email's not that important. Email is the text message you can get to people. And people don't ignore you. They ignore your boring pitch that is just like all about you. That's what persuasion is. It's sort of like, Leanne, let me put it this way: it's like being a fake Jedi, like, you will come to my program. You will look at these benefits, look at the commission, blah, blah, blah. And um and just pray you don't start your first sentence with, I hope you're doing well.
SPEAKER_02I know this is your pet peeve. Now give us some alternatives because it's fine to say what you shouldn't be doing, but what we want is what you should be doing.
SPEAKER_01Let me give you an example of a company. I won't I won't name-drop the company, but it was a big company we're trying to make a deal with. And they're very busy corporates, you know, all that sort of stuff. So we're having trouble getting through. So I know that we have a big Gen Z audience, and I know their target is Gen Z, which is not an easy audience to reach, especially currently. Anytime it's in college and younger, um, just brutally hard and expensive usually. So I said their brand name as the subject line and Gen Z, and I put a heart emoji instead of love. Leanne, I'm clueless about emojis, okay? Like I hated them. I'm such an old dude with them. But what was funny was it helped communicate, plus it put color in the subject line. And I didn't want to overuse the heart, but we're talking about Gen Z love. And I said, hey, I I I was uh we were asking, I started the set first sentence. And by the way, your first sentence, the reason it's so important not to say hope you're doing well, because a lot of the pushback was like, we want to be nice. I know you do. So do I. Okay, I'm not a jerk. But if you say, I hope you're doing well, that is actually a spam line that Google will put you in the spam box because every spammer uses that line because it's fake, not from you, but from the million other emails. And when somebody looks at your email, there's two sentences that they get. That's all you have. That long email is a joke. You have two sentences, it's brutal. They scan and go from those two sentences. So back to it, I said we were asking our users what who are big, huge Gen Z audience, what they loved. Second paragraph. Your name came up. We can I share what we found with them? What I'm looking for is a response. I said, and that third sentence was I don't do a call to action. I want them to respond to the email. I don't want to get to pitch, I don't want to get to call. I said, if you'd like to know, you know, just just let me know. And I would love to share with you what we found. And your name came up. And by the way, this is all real. I don't do fake stuff. I look at my data. That's how I pick my partners. I look at what my data tells me. I don't just pick, and I know some affiliate managers have to pitch anybody who breathes. Okay, I understand that. I love that. That's hard. That's so true. But that's a management thing. You know, that's weird. Bad me. I'm a I'm a CEO, man. I would not send my people out there to do dumb stuff like that. Data driven means you're driven by what your audience likes as a publisher. You should not be pitching everybody.
SPEAKER_02100% want to back you up on that because some of the most successful affiliate programs that I've ever had the privilege to manage had the least amount of affiliates, but the ones that were absolutely nailing it every single month. So if you are a head of affiliates, if you are a CMO, please don't give your affiliate managers quotas on how many affiliates did you recruit this month, because it is an absolutely irrelevant metric to the bottom line performance of your program. And you haven't heard it just from me. You've heard it from an industry legend who's been there since 1997.
SPEAKER_01And you know, it's like brand love is brand love. And a lot of people, what I mean by that is, and you notice, let's just deconstruct what I wrote in that sentence. Notice it's not about me. I don't talk about me. That makes them curious. It's actually in, it's called epistemic curiosity. It's an information gap. You didn't tell me who you are. Everyone else is like, here's why, here's my feature of benefits. Hey, excuse me, let me talk a little bit about more of my myself. Think if you were in the real world, you would totally delete them. And the thing I say about brand love is the company I sent it to has competitors who are like-minded products, but those competitors weren't loved by my audience for whatever reason. And I tell people this, it's like crazy. They think that because they sell this brand, that all the other brands will make sense. And what it actually does is it dilutes yourself. And for whatever reason, I've had it where they will send them to that site, they don't buy. Same product, same kind of thing for me, logically, would make sense. But the brand, for whatever reason, when people love a brand, there's a lot of like emotional appeals, connections. I'm I tell people to study brand marketing because it's not a lot of affiliates think it's fake, great, because it doesn't convert. You get a conversion because you got brand love. Brand love converts high. So I want to see, when I when I research my competitive publishers, I want to see what offers are working with their people, but it doesn't mean they'll work with mine, but at least it gives me a guideline into different sort of niches and markets I can go. So I use curiosity to open the door, and everybody else is using persuasion, and it's a copycat industry, okay? I know you need to copy when you begin. I'm so humble. It's like so easy to say, oh, just do this. But copy, then find your voice. You are the only thing that's missing. And if you come out as a unique, you are unique. You just, if you haven't realized that, especially when you're younger, believe me, way humble, okay? Totally was scared to death to do a call. But when you actually start realizing that, people will identify you and they're like, that was really cool to work with you. Like, and get comfortable in your skin, be nervous, but they will start connecting with you because it's not just you're the affiliate manager for this company, but you're recommending something that if it works, together you're going to make a lot of money. And but with the humility to know that things rarely work the way we plan. Be amazed when it works. And this is the science, the data that people go, oh, you're not filling me full of hot air. You're actually telling me something that let's get our feet wet, let's let's do a little dance before we date. Let's maybe date before we get married, is my joke, you know. Everybody tries to jump right into the quick like a lope. Give it time, communicate to your boss, not to not to waste time, but to put a little patience in there because I can tell you that's where you'll pe I get referrals to other companies from simply taking this approach. And just being a really good partner means if it doesn't work, cut the rope, stop the wasting of time, recognize your s if I save you time, I might not make you money, but if I save you time, you're gonna be like, Oh, yeah. You're not a time waster. And that's what a lot of affiliate managers think they get to do, create meetings and just fill time. Time is the precious commodity you can never get back. And recognize that for your partner, too.
SPEAKER_02So what I loved about that is that it's it's kind of going against the grain of what most affiliate managers get taught, which is transactional selling. So all about me, all about my numbers, all about what the promo is that I'm offering you. And you're basically telling us all to throw that out the window, go back to basics, think about the person that you're speaking to and what's relevant to them, and make that first two lines of your email pitch stick and use color, use emojis, use the things that are going to resonate with the person that you're speaking to. And finding out who that person is is sometimes half the battle that affiliate managers have. So crafting the perfect pitches is one thing, but making sure that that pitch actually resonates with the person who's receiving it. So co-calling, you can't do the same email to 50 different partners because each partner is going to want a different thing from you, and each partner's gonna need a different thing from you in order to actually buy into that trust to then take on the responsibility of promoting your program. So I think that's amazing advice, and I think you've laid that out pretty clear. But tell me from all of the years of experience that you've had in this industry, what are some of the pet peeves that you see affiliate program managers still making today, even though we've had years and years and years to learn from this?
SPEAKER_01One of the biggest pet peeves is not realizing that this channel is about communication. And so it's really easy to sit down, write a quick sequence, put it into your CRM, what have you, and let it go. That's just I'm saying that's what we used to do because we didn't have anything you have today. And so we used to have to use persuasion because we used to try to like control you. And I want to say this is where I surrender to it because what I hate with managers is that a lot of them, and they come out, it it's and it I just totally feel this. You really, it is really a hard job, okay? My gosh, you've got to perform, and then you perform, and that performance becomes the standard metric. It's like just this grind. So instead of making it a grind, don't pound people. Start realizing that you can have a couple of pre-written messages at the beginning, but your goal is to get a response. So remember that your goal is to open a channel of communication, not to close the affiliate deal right away.
SPEAKER_02You know, we always talk about call to action. We do, we talk a lot about call to action and having that relevant. But the call to action is actually the connection. And that's what I want you guys to listen to, what Declan's saying is it's not about that six, you know, and I've seen some great funnels. I mean, I've seen some awesome onboarding funnels when I join Affiliate Programs and you know, when we sketch out what's happening in the industry compared to our competitors and etc. etc. And there's a place for funnels. We're not saying don't do it, but what we are saying is don't get into the trap of set and forget and expecting somebody to you know fall out the bottom of that funnel and be your new best friend because they haven't had that human interaction with you yet, and they haven't had that opportunity to have a conversation. Some of the best deals that you and I have probably ever made in this industry are the ones that happen at two o'clock in the morning at the top of, you know, a skybar somewhere after you've had a long day at a conference and you're the last people to remain. Like those are when connections happen and when you actually make the best business deals. And it sounds great. I mean, it sounds like life's a party in the affiliate industry, but it is also very, very hard work.
SPEAKER_01No, you made a great point though. Funnels are great once they know you and you're onboarding them. That's the other thing. Managers will close the deal, and then it's like, okay, good luck, go to work. That's when you got to get the affiliate to actually do something. And giving them a sequence there is brilliant. See, they know you though. Okay, so now you're not trying to open the door, the door is open. Guide me how to do it and to actually get them to take action because that is part two of getting them to take the next step. So I don't say that you don't automate. I think that automation is really brilliant. But it's that up front, opening the door, being able to get in there. And my pet peeve is for me, I'm a media buyer as well as a performance marketer. And I always looked at affiliate marketing as an ad buy. And this sounds really weird, but I am literally buying somebody's time for a specific performance. And if that doesn't go, that's why I look at my numbers and say, okay, if I was to spend this money, which would probably cost a lot more and it's a different audience, here's what I would expect. Here's my conversion when I know them. But when I do that, then I look at their numbers. If I watch the conversion going, I might prompt them and say, hey, could we um do something? Could we do a special piece of content, a coupon, a discount, you know, if they're into that kind of deals. Is there something I can do for you? Reaching out proactively because I want your conversion to go up. And to do that, I need to be in front of your traffic in a way that might be better. Can I do this in a very supportive way? So what happens is you become the intelligence. And if we leave it up to the affiliate, and by the way, there's some who are so freaking brilliant that I don't need to do this too, right? I listen to it and go, okay, I'll leave you alone, right? That's cool. That's what, but some of them really need a not only a push, but if their numbers aren't right, if you're not getting impressions, how can I get you to do this? And I've had some great programs actually do this with me and work with me on this, going, hey, could we we got a new product coming out? Can we give you a special promotion, not necessarily even a coupon, but a special angle, content, something that we can do together. What that shows is not only that you care, but you got to consider an affiliate. Once they sign up, you just planted the seed in the garden. And you need a little water, you need a little sunlight, and hopefully your soil's got some rich stuff and compost and things in it that's gonna help it grow. But that thing will often take time to get scale to be able to reach it.
SPEAKER_02Wow. This episode was so good, we had to break it into a two-parter. So tune in next week as Declan and I continue the conversation about perfecting your affiliate outreach, affiliate account management, and what he thinks the future of affiliate marketing looks like with the advent of AI in 2024. Get ready for another impactful episode next week, Thursday, coming straight to your ears. And thanks for listening and tuning in as we turn time all the way back to 1997.
SPEAKER_00This 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. You'll learn proven tactics, tested strategies, and access decades of experience with industry veterans who have launched, scaled, and grown multi-million dollar affiliate programs around the world. Book your seat on our next cohort by visiting our website, affiversemedia.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 iTunes and give us a five-star review? Make sure to subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel so you never miss another insightful episode or one of our free webinars ever again. Tune in next week for more digital affiliate marketing insights, trends, tips, and content to keep your affiliate and performance marketing fresh and your partners driving consistent sales.