Profitable Performance Marketing

We have a special guest for you today, a client of JEBCommerce! Josh Reed, Director Consumer Demand Generation for Evenflo is on the podcast and you don't want to miss it! As always, we go through Josh's journey to digital marketing and affiliate marketing, and I can guarantee you it's not a path you have heard on this podcast before.

Josh gives an MBA-level discussion on marketing that I'm super proud to have on our podcast. We discuss:

• The differences with high consideration products

• Digital transformation

• The diversity affiliate publishers bring to a DTC manufacturer

• Why he chose to bring in SMEs to run his affiliate program instead of an in-house team

We also discuss some key things in career development and why this period's crop of college grads seem different than when we got out of school.

It's a great episode that you'll want to share.

And if you'd like to connect with Josh, you can do so on LinkedIn.

On this episode Jamie chats with JEBCommerce's own Director of Affiliate Marketing, Blagica Bottigliero, about the convergence of Affiliate Marketing and Public Relations (PR).

We noticed a trend occurring over a year ago with more PR professionals and agencies entering the affiliate marketing space. It's one of the reasons we set out to find someone with significant affiliate marketing AND PR chops to lead our Affiliate Marketing team. And Blagica fits the bill perfectly being a pioneer in the affiliate space (managing the Orbitz affiliate program back in the day) and having significant experience and success in the PR world with her time at Edelman. She also has significant experience in social marketing as well.

Oh, did we mention she won an Emmy for her marketing? It's true.

On today's episode we discuss the following topics:

• The general merging ofAffiliate Marketing and PR, and how that impacts affiliates, PR professionals, and advertisers

• How Affiliate Marketing and Public Relations are very similar in relationship building and pitching/recruiting publishers

• How the advancing technology of the affiliate channel can help PR firms and professionals track way more than they have before and protect the top-of-funnel publishers and track outside of pixels

• How affiliate marketing can increase the speed and reach of PR campaigns

• How we need to change our KPIs to measure in this new world

You can reach out and follow Blagica on LinkedIn.

And don't forget to read our blog posts on the subject:

Welcoming Public Relations to the Affiliate Marketing Party

Affiliate Marketing Can Boost the Speed of Public Relations

KPIs Need to Change With the Merging of PR and Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Recruitment and PR Pitching Have a Ton in Common

Technology Available to PR Teams Through Affiliate Marketing

It is with great pleasure that we showcase one of our very own on our podcast today: Samantha Morris. Samantha leads one of our affiliate management teams as a Sr. Affiliate Manager and comes to us with over 20 years of experience working for brands like Gap, Priceline, and more. She has also worked for affiliate networks, agencies, and ran her own agency for a time.

This conversation dives deep into the day-to-day of affiliate management. Some of what we cover includes:

• How important it is to truly understand your client

• How vital her in-house experience with some major retailers has been to managing clients now

• Interesting and useful network technology that is available

• Last click vs. first click

• Preferred publisher technologies

• Attribution

• Media and Commerce Affiliates

• Card-linked offers

• Commission Splitting

• And more!

Today our CEO, Jamie Birch, talks about the problem of coupon proliferation, the problem that occurs when everyone and their cousin gets your coupons and promotes them on their affiliate site. He talks about the steps you can take to ensure this doesn't happen and what you can do when it does.

Psst, here's a hint: it starts and ends with your affiliate terms and conditions.

Today's conversation is with Richard Denny's, CEO of Webgains. I learned that Richard and I share a ton. From our first computers (both Commodores) to hours spent coding very simple programs in basic, to our desire to lift people up through education and training.

I think Richard's bio on LinkedIn says it all "Still a proud owner of a Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum, used to copy out pages of BASIC code for RPGs from magazines into my Commodore 64 in the 1980s, went to University, taught myself HTML and started one of the world's largest websites in the 1990s, founded then folded an online travel start-up (before that was a word) in the 2000s, helped to accelerate other start-ups and teach start-up founders in the 2010s and now in the 2020s proudly run Webgains.

Work Hard; Be Kind; Have Fun. That's it really."

We discussed a broad range of topics, including:

• His origin story into affiliate marketing

• Nerding out on data

• The impact of investment in affiliate marketing

• Changes in the affiliate channel

• The change he saw that led him to embrace the channel after previously rejecting it

• Big Media and Affiliate Marketing

• Leading through turbulence and the 3 Horizons

I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and there really is something for everyone here.

If you'd like to find more about Webgains, check out their website. To contact Richard, follow him on LinkedIn.

Thank you Richard!

Leilani Han is the Executive Director, Commerce of Wirecutter, a division of the New York Times. Her career path is rather unique: she started out working for several start-ups where she was exposed to affiliate marketing, then found herself at a top tier network, Commission Junction, and then went on to work at Wirecutter. She's seen the industry from multiple vantage points including affiliate/publisher, advertiser, and network. That perspective brings a lot of enlightening learnings that I think you'll find super helpful no matter what side of the ball you play on.

In our conversation we cover:

• Commerce Content

• Leadership principles

• Changes to leadership during and after the pandemic

• Employee development, what it is and how she does it

• The importance of intentionality in managing people

• Being a woman and how that has impacted her career and how she coaches women on her team

• How important it is to focus on the audience being served, whether you are an advertiser or a publisher

• How advertisers need to focus on the publishers' audience when pitching them

• Who and what is Wirecutter

• And how to work with them

And so much more! Leilani thank you so much for your time on this episode!

If you'd like to connect, check her out on LinkedIn.

Are you testing your affiliate program tracking? Today our CEO, Jamie Birch, talks about the importance of testing your affiliate program to ensure all areas are tracking correctly, his exact tracking protocol and procedure, and how to make sure your channel has 100% integrity in tracking all affiliate orders.

Should I be paying for placements on affiliate sites? Do I even know what that is? Today I talk about the concept of purchasing real estate on affiliate publishers' sites and how it all works. From finding them, to pitfalls to avoid, to setting each one up for success and even what to do when they don't work. We talk about it all on today's episode.

Today I got the chance to sit down and have a conversation with Jared LaMantia. Jared and I met when the team at JEBCommerce managed the Bodybuilding.com affiliate program and at subsequent organizations he has run during his career.

Jared started his career as an affiliate manager and through hard work, curiosity, and a dash of self awareness grew himself into a C-Level executive at one of the most vibrant and impactful fitness companies that I know of. Today's conversation is one of those that got me thinking of how I could spend more time and learn more about his story and how he achieves so much success. It really was my favorite hour and change this week.

We dive into his career and exactly how he made the transformation from affiliate manager to C-Level exec. Not a typical path! We talk about data and how important it is, but also how sometimes you just have to use your gut in decision making, and then round things out with one of the biggest mistakes marketers make when it comes to data. Sorry, no spoilers here!

We wrap up the conversation with a discussion on project management, a topic that Jared has found to be one of the most impactful in his career and his company's successes. It's something that is all too often left out of the marketing discussion.

Jared, thank you so much for a really intriguing and enlightening discussion today! If you'd like to continue the conversation with Jared, find him on Linkedin.

And, here is the link to our article "The Rise of the Affluencer", written by our Director of Affiliate Marketing, Blagica Bottigliero.

This is our second host rant, you read that right. I am ranting today! Ok, not really so much, but today I'm talking about something that can truly drive me crazy. The idea that we should be removing or stop working with affiliates in our affiliate programs because of their type or our self imposed categorization. What we really should be talking about is their performance markers (KPIs), the audience we get access to, and the customers we are actually receiving from them.

Let's focus on the performance, the hard data, and not our feelings. We make better affiliate management decisions.

I talk about an affiliate marketing study we put together at jebcommerce.com/value, that aggregates hard core data from all the major networks and publishers. It addresses consumer behavior and the types of customers coupon sites are actually driving. You have some amazing data at your fingertips to make great decisions. Don't miss out on this one!

And hey, we are always looking for more guests. Email [email protected] if you or someone you know should be on our show!