Okay, welcome to the Three Questions Podcast with Neil Ann Johnston, the founder of Affiliate Insider. And today I'm joined by Neil Walker from Engage, who is the Business Operations Manager there. Hi Neil, thanks very much for joining us.
SPEAKER_01Hi, Leanne. Yeah, nice to be here.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely great to have you. I've been trying to get you on the show for a while because I've been wanting to talk about this new tool that has been launched and just really get down underneath it and figure out what all it can do and how it can help us here in the affiliate management space. So I wanted to kick off with our first question today, which is why is affiliate recruitment such a chore? And you obviously having worked in this industry for many, many years, I think this is one of the best questions to start with. So give us a little rundown about some of the pain points that happened and what actually led to engage being created.
SPEAKER_01Okay, great. Okay, a great first question. Why is it such a chore? Because it takes so long to recruit the right affiliates. Finding affiliates is just part of the job, but then finding out who an affiliate is that represents an affiliate site that is that's been returned in the Google results is quite a challenge sometimes. And then once you've you've done that, once you make that initial contact with the affiliate, it's actually having the discussion with the affiliate to try and get your brand promoted on that affiliate site. And that is not an easy process. And really, um, you know, an affiliate manager's job is really, really difficult because they're juggling about 30 balls a day. Um, and affiliate recruitment is just one of the balls, and quite honestly, that's the one that gets dropped most often. So, you know, they're dealing with you know affiliate queries, creating landing pages, banners, um, you know, chasing up um CPAs and rev shit, all that sort of stuff. So to actually spend time finding an affiliate is is really quite difficult, even just fitting that in. Um, so I was uh had been chatting to some friends of mine that have been working in um in the space of data, really, uh, to seeing how we could use data that we'd that are being collected about in the affiliate space and how we could use that to help affiliate managers find the best affiliates to work with. And that's basically what our tool does. We we do all the I don't want to say heavy lifting, but we do all the work for the affiliate manager so they've not got to spend time doing it. And then what we do is we deliver to the affiliate manager uh opportunities, um good opportunities of affiliates that are in high-ranking positions within Google for any range of sort of keywords with details about the affiliate site, how their pages rank, where they rank, for what keywords, and more importantly, the contact details for those affiliates. So we're going to provide with this tool, we're going to cut down that time so the affiliate manager can spend his time on the really important part of entering into discussion with that affiliate and converting them into a you know someone, a partner that they work with.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and in terms of what the tool actually does, can you just talk us through, because um you know a lot of people on this call wouldn't have seen the tool or the demo yet, just talk a little bit about exactly how the tool find this information and and what kind of information can an affiliate manager expect? Like does it you know, set it in a spreadsheet or just talk a little bit about how the tool physically works.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so we're with the the tool is sort of sold as software as a service. You come to our website to to log into the into the tool, and it's effectively um the best way I could describe it, it's not a plug-in, but it's sort of plug into Google. So it works alongside Google. So when you're doing for any particular keywords, like let's say best online casinos, Google will return you know thousands of results of you know of sites that it finds for that keyword. We then identify which of those results belong to affiliates, which are affiliate sites, and then we look at those affiliate sites for the brand that's done that search, and we map uh the information about that brand to see if they're being represented firstly on the page that's being returned in Google. So am I on that page? And then, secondly, if I'm not on that page, am I already on this affiliate site? i.e., do I have an existing relationship with that affiliate? So those are two questions that we answer immediately. As soon as the results are returned by Google, that information is there. Then we provide the affiliate manager with the opportunity to then go into that search result and have a look at um all the pages for that affiliate site to see which pages are ranking in Google, what their position is in Google, and what keywords they they rank for. So you get a very good feeling as to the strength of the affiliate sites from that. Um, because we've got a register of almost every affiliate site uh in our database, we're also able to see whether that affiliate also owns any other affiliate sites.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow, okay, so that's quite useful.
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, so if the affiliate site is part of a larger network, then we'll give you the list of all of those other websites that that affiliate owns. So when you open your discussion with that affiliate, you can have a much broader discussion about you know being part of you know the relationship. Um and then we provide information about the contact details. So we go through the whole site and we pull out email addresses, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, all those sort of things, and we provide those in an easy-to-read interface for the affiliate manager. And that's all provided in an easy-to-use console. So if you can use Google, you can use engage. You need no training to use our tool because it provides all the answers for you.
SPEAKER_00You haven't got a way through data, you know, which is quite difficult because obviously, you know, it's all fine and roll getting the data, but then you need to be able to analyze it and use it and purpose it.
SPEAKER_01So absolutely. So we've we've put ourselves in the position of the affiliate manager. What do I need most? What do I need quickly? What do I need to understand? Rather than give you the data to work that out, we do that for you. So, you know, instantly you get that information. So for every search, um, we're finding that you know the brands aren't being resented. Let's say it's a top hundred results, a probably brand a brand isn't being represented on at least 60 to 70 percent of the sites that come back in Google's results. So there's loads of opportunities.
SPEAKER_00Um and also just the the part about, you know, which I think is something that active affiliate management sometimes lacks, is you might already be working with that affiliate, but you might not be ranking very well compared to your competitors on that affiliate site. So I think that piece of information is pretty vital and it's it's stuff that you'd manually have to go and look for in order to kind of improve your results. So there's a recruitment aspect of this, but it's also a kind of retention and and um expansion aspect because it's all fun and well working on getting the affiliate in your program. But once they're in your program, you want to make sure that every month you're doing the best that you can with that affiliate in order to increase your numbers. So I think that's really, really a cool part or a cool feature of your of your platform.
SPEAKER_01I mean, absolutely. I mean, you know, just being on an affiliate site is not good enough, you know. If you know what the top 10 ranking pages are on that affiliate site, that's where you need to be, not on you know, some page that's been archived off, you know, months and months ago or whatever. You want to be the on the pages where the traffic's coming. So, and that might not necessarily be the home page, but that's a favorite place that affiliate programs ask to be to be listed. It might be a long tail keyword page that you know nothing about, but gets all the traffic. So this is where our tool really helps you, and then you can go into a discussion with an affiliate and say, Hey, you know, I'd really love to be on this page because you rank really well for this term, and we've got a great promotion which we really convert well on this page because it's specific to that keyword that we're looking for. So, yeah, it the opportunities are endless, and we can provide that information so quickly. The other really cool thing that this tool does is that once you've done the searches uh and you can select which key phrases that you search for regularly, you can save those. Once you save those, those then um trigger our auto search facility. So once you've saved it, then every day our automatic search engine is running those searches for you in the background. And then if any new affiliates appear in those search results that you haven't seen before, you'll get an email.
SPEAKER_00So even when you're away doing other stuff, yeah, it'll be doing kind of the brand work for you, and then adding all those opportunities.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so once you've sort of configured the the tool and you've been using it regularly, it will start to do the work for you, and then you'll just get the odd email once a week or once a day, or however often you want to receive them, and it'll give you a list of saying these are the latest affiliates that these are the latest opportunities that have just been found for this keyword, best online casinos. This there's this new affiliate that's been, and here's all the details, and you get that. So it sort of helps you it so it will continually drip feed you opportunities. So depending on how you work, um, it it does a lot of that stuff for you. So you're getting value out of the product all the time, even when you're not using it.
SPEAKER_00Well, the thing is, a lot of I mean, you know, having worked at multiple companies myself and run you know different types of um affiliate management groups and teams, I would estimate that something like this would probably save you know between 10 and 15 percent, maybe even 20% of an affiliate manager's time in a week. And if you that's quite a huge chunk of time that can be used, you know, either repurposing or getting more strategic or you know, looking at where opportunities are missing, which I think is what a lot of affiliate managers tell me they never have time to do because they are so busy and they jump in so many plates. So, really, this tool isn't just you know useful in terms of the fact that it does the work, you know, some of the hard lifting for you, but it's also going to help you to get more strategic and to get more competitive in terms of where you need to be with your brand. Um, so let's just talk a little bit about why it's important, because you you touched on this a little bit before about you know how affiliate managers can use this data and this information to get more strategic about how they approach affiliates and and you know what parts of the websites they want to work on. And that really leads me to this whole point of which which is something I'm really passionate about, is teaching people or teaching affiliate managers to sell authentically, you know, not to kind of reach out with you know templated outreach emails that everybody's heard of and seen of before without really making a really good first impression. I mean, what are some of the things that your tool can help affiliate managers to do to make that whole outreach and sales process a little bit more authentic?
SPEAKER_01Well, it shows it will it will demonstrate to you know, assuming that the affiliate manager uses the information correctly, it will demonstrate to the affiliate that the affiliate manager has done their research properly. So, you know, receiving, and I know how I hate this as an affiliate. If I receive a templated email that says, hi Neil, or not even Neil, hi, um, you know, just found your website www.wah blah blah blah blah um in Google. It's a great fit for our brand, you know. We'd love to work with you, we've got a great converting this and that, and you know doesn't strike a chord, does it? It doesn't strike a chord, especially when my website is a niche website, and what they've sent me has got nothing to do with the with my website. So if they'd even looked at my website, they'd know that the email that they were sending me was inappropriate. So that for me, that level of just lack of attention to detail tells me huge amounts about that affiliate program. One, they're not bothered about acquiring good affiliates, two, they're not bothered about the affiliate themselves, three, they're not bothered about you know establishing a good relationship. And four, it's just telling me that all they're interested in is volume. That's all they're interested in, and they're interested in money. And you know, and it and for me, that's not a business partner that I want to work with as an affiliate, so I just delete that immediately.
SPEAKER_00And that's really with the relationship management side and the sales side of being an affiliate manager, which is a complex job, as you mentioned earlier on, is so vitally important. And it's a lot of the stuff that we teach in our affiliate training programs. Um, you know, to sell authentically, to do your research. We actually have a mini program that's been created for affiliate managers now called the ACES method, which is basically teaching affiliate managers how to recruit and onboard affiliates authentically using you know this type of information instead of going the route of just doing kind of blanketed outreach, which is what most programs still do, um, because you know, obviously it's mass, it's you know untargeted, and they they're just kind of using a spray grinded approach, which has always been the way that affiliate managers have recruited. So I think we're getting to the point now with tools like this where we can get a little bit more sophisticated in terms of our lead generation and our onboarding with affiliates, and we can actually make that first impression count more, which is a big part of the relationship management side of affiliate marketing. So I 100% agree with you there. I think this is an you know, it's A, it's saving time, B, it's giving you that strategic piece to actually go do you know more thorough research and see it's gonna help you to sell a little bit authentically, um, which is very, very important for affiliate programs to grow. On the point of the future of affiliate marketing, because I know everybody's gonna want to know what are your thoughts on, you know, you're in a very unique position because you are an affiliate, but you also now are a software as a service provider. What do you think affiliate marketing is gonna look like if regulation gets stronger? And how do you think engage is gonna be able to help affiliate managers with all of these rules and regulations?
SPEAKER_01I think regulation in its own way will um will provide its own challenges for affiliates in a in a few ways, really. So it will drive some affiliates away from those markets and uh it will stop some affiliates working in in highly regulated markets where it becomes difficult to operate in because the overheads of maintaining your site in a very compliant way can outweigh the benefits that you get working in a market. So I think we'll see some affiliates drop off from working in those markets. But on the flip side, I think what we'll then find is affiliates will still target players in those regulated markets, but they'll be offering unregulated um you know casinos and offers and things, which I I think causes a problem in its own right. So I you know it depends on what side of the fence you you sit on as an affiliate, really. Um I think there's room for both, but I think the regulation has to be done um correctly. Um and I think not so much that it uh should stifle affiliation, but it should help the quality of what affiliates are doing, really. I mean, that's ultimately what I mean, we're all in it to to make money, um, you know, and to provide the best user experience. Uh if reg regulation helps that, then I'm all I'm all for it. You know, yeah. It's when it when it becomes um becomes more difficult and starts creating problems in its own right, I think that there's an issue. So I so I think on the affiliate side, I think um yeah, I think there's going to be opportunities. Um there'll be opportunities that open up um for affiliates working in those regulated markets because there'll be less competition. Um, but I also think it will um it will make affiliates you know perhaps look at you know widening the scope of where they're they're advertising and what they're doing. For the affiliate programs, where engage can help them is just identify the affiliates that are working in those regulated markets. So our tool can work pretty much in any any geography around the world. Um, the unique thing is when you're sort of signed up to a specific country, um, the results that you run on our dashboard are run from within countries, so you get localized results.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, so one of the limitations that we have at the moment is just our ability to be able to add countries very quickly to the tool because it it takes us a while to enter a new new territory. So at the moment we're able to offer Canada, India, New Zealand, the UK, and uh the US. And by the US I mean New Jersey, um, and at the moment we've just added Colorado. Um, and for somewhere like Canada, we we can offer that in two languages. So you can search in English, um, you'll get one set of results, and then you can search in French and you'll get a different set of results you know for sites that are written in French. So um we can offer new territories, but it takes us a little while just to add those. So it's not something that um that we don't want to do, it's something that we very much do and we're doing on a you know a daily basis, but it takes us a while to add those new new countries.
SPEAKER_00And just quickly, it's the tool works across all verticals, right? It's you know you can you could be a lottery client using it, you could be a casino client using it, or do you have vertical restrictions at this point?
SPEAKER_01Um no, it's all gaming at the moment, it's all i gaming. So um, I mean the plan is that we will we'll look at other verticals, but they'll be outside of gaming. So at the moment, if you're sports, lottery, casino, then yes, poker, very much. If you're an affiliate site that's operating in that that area, then we've probably got you in our database some. Yeah, we've probably got you in our database somewhere, and we've got you know the information that that you hold about brands.
SPEAKER_00So brilliant. All right, so we're gonna we're gonna end it off there. Thank you so much for joining us on this three questions, which always ends up being more than three questions. I don't know why I ever chose that name, but um it's always good to keep it short and sweet and to the point. So thank you very much for being here with us and for um you know giving us a little bit of an insider view on what's happening with Engage and how it can help affiliate managers. Um I'm very excited to see um you know much better outreach emails coming into my inbox because I get I get them all the time too. Um and hopefully, you know, a little bit more um strategic in terms of how affiliate managers are going to use this tool to improve their program performance. So thanks very much for joining us today, and it was an absolute pleasure to speak to you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much, Lianne. Cheers, bye. Bye.