Personal finance platforms (like Credit Karma) are now at scale, with the ability to recommend products at the 1:1 user level. Further, they’re incentivized to recommend niche products that are highly customized to each user. Lending products, however, are designed for mass audiences. This disconnect presents a huge opportunity for lenders.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Why personalization matters

Where to find Carlos:

References:

The case for building hyper-niche lending products

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

Today we chat with Tim Hong, the Chief Product Officer at MoneyLion. He walks us through a partnership they’ve built with Plaid and other data providers to offer cash flow data at the marketing stage to lenders in the Engine marketplace.

Timestamps:

Where to find Carlos:

References:

Plaid & MoneyLion’s announcement: “The power of cash flow underwriting with instant onboarding: Introducing Layer and Consumer Report”

https://plaid.com/blog/layer-consumer-report-instant-onboarding/

Carlos’ piece: “Where's The Consumer Demand For Cash Flow Underwriting (CFU)?”

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

I’m starting to worry that we don’t have an economically viable way to distribute cash flow underwriting (CFU) products to consumers. In today’s episode, we discuss the opportunity and challenges CFU lenders will have in distributing their products through direct mail, paid search, and of course affiliates.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction to Fintech and Cashflow Underwriting

(01:21) The Article and Its Insights

(02:38) AI-Generated Overview of The Petal Case Study

(09:21) End of AI-Generated Overview

(09:26) Analyzing Cashflow Underwriting

(11:36) Challenges in Cashflow Underwriting

(15:54) Marketing Cashflow Products

(20:03) Potential Solutions and Future Outlook

(25:26) Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Where to find Carlos:

References:

Carlos’ piece: “Where's The Consumer Demand For Cash Flow Underwriting (CFU)?”

Alex Johnson’s piece on Cash Flow Underwriting:

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

Today, we discuss the backstory behind my marketing agency, New Market Growth. I’ll share my background working in affiliate marketing at a connected home startup, my experience working on credit cards at Capital One, my 4 years at Credit Karma, and how my experiences came together to form a services business for lenders.

Timestamps:

(00:00) What is New Market Growth

Where to find Carlos:

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

Today, we discuss high-level principles for your affiliate measurement (analytics) strategy. We’ll cover the 2 big questions your dashboards should be answering, we dig into 9 metrics you might not be watching, and we hit on the importance of connecting marketing stage and performance stage data.

Timestamps:

Where to find Carlos:

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

Today, we discuss the most common reasons that lenders don’t hit their volume, account quality, and growth goals in the affiliate channel. Based on Carlos’ experience talking to lenders in his affiliate marketing agency, New Market Growth.

Common struggles:

Timestamps:

Where to find Carlos:

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

Today, we continue to discuss the 4 levels of Operational Maturity in affiliate marketing for lenders. We’ll go deep on 301 and 401 levels and wrap up with some tactical things you can do to land at the 401 level.

Summary of the 4 levels:

𝟭𝟬𝟭 - 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 

We're focused on the volume of leads and the cost of acquisition. The rest of the operation looks a lot like affiliate programs in other industries. There's not much attention placed on the quality of accounts that we acquire.

𝟮𝟬𝟭 - 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲

We learn that not all leads are created equal and not all lead sources are created equal. We pay more attention to what happens to a customer post-booking. 

How much revenue are they driving? 

What are the delinquency rates? 

What are the loss rates? 

We start to think about the relationship between LTV and cost of acquisition.

𝟯𝟬𝟭 - 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗽 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲

We learn that when we make a change to our business, the affiliate reacts in a certain way, and that in turn has a knock-on effect on our business. We also start to overanalyze why volumes dropped and why applicant quality is changing. We often get distracted by a lot of these questions as there are often no actions we can take as a result of our curiosity.

𝟰𝟬𝟭 - 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁

We learn that our success relies on delivering exceptional products and exceptional buying experiences for our affiliates' customers. Under this frame, we recognize that each affiliate's a little different. They all have different buying experiences, data assets, customer types, and integration capabilities. We try to reverse engineer our business to best fit each partner. We notice that we were overanalyzing the volatility in our programs, and conclude that our investigations were often unproductive.

Timestamps:

(00:00) 301 Intro

(04:20) 301 Strategy

(15:55) 301 Challenges and realities

(18:43) Recap of 101-301

(21:48) 401 Deep dive - becoming leaders

(30:48) Model alignment

(41:48) Wrap up

Where to find Carlos:

References:

A written summary of the 4 levels of Operational Maturity:

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

Today, we introduce the 4 levels of Operational Maturity in affiliate marketing for lenders. We’ll go deep on 101 and 201 levels. The 301 and 401 levels will be covered in our next episode.

Summary of the 4 levels:

𝟭𝟬𝟭 - 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 

We're focused on the volume of leads and the cost of acquisition. The rest of the operation looks a lot like affiliate programs in other industries. There's not much attention placed on the quality of accounts that we acquire.

𝟮𝟬𝟭 - 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲

We learn that not all leads are created equal and not all lead sources are created equal. We pay more attention to what happens to a customer post-booking. 

How much revenue are they driving? 

What are the delinquency rates? 

What are the loss rates? 

We start to think about the relationship between LTV and cost of acquisition.

𝟯𝟬𝟭 - 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗽 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲

We learn that when we make a change to our business, the affiliate reacts in a certain way, and that in turn has a knock-on effect on our business. We also start to overanalyze why volumes dropped and why applicant quality is changing. We often get distracted by a lot of these questions as there are often no actions we can take as a result of our curiosity.

𝟰𝟬𝟭 - 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁

We learn that our success relies on delivering exceptional products and exceptional buying experiences for our affiliates' customers. Under this frame, we recognize that each affiliate's a little different. They all have different buying experiences, data assets, customer types, and integration capabilities. We try to reverse engineer our business to best fit each partner. We notice that we were overanalyzing the volatility in our programs, and conclude that our investigations were often unproductive.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Why maturity matters

(04:36) The 4 levels

(10:18) 101 deep dive

(17:56) 201 deep dive

(26:15) Wrap up and next steps

Where to find Carlos:

References:

A written summary of the 4 levels of Operational Maturity:

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

Episode 005: Today, we discuss the marketing levers lenders have at their disposal to improve the performance of their affiliate marketing campaigns.

We’ll discuss levers in the following categories:

Timestamps:

(00:54) Recapping previous episodes

Where to find Carlos:

References:

Click-through rates by ad rank/placement on Google:

Outline of levers discussed in the show

https://medium.com/@newmarketgrowth/your-affiliate-marketing-levers-9f98092ab37b

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].

Episode 004: Today, we tackle two simple, but important questions. The first: “What affiliates should I partner with?” And the second, “Where should I host my targeting model?”

We cover:

Timestamps:

(00:43) Outline of today's episode

(04:25) Building a list of potential partners

(09:25) Why getting into publishers isn't easy

(14:15) Crafting your pitch 18:18 Hosting your targeting model

(18:18) Hosting Your Targeting Model

(22:20) Targeting model platforms

(36:56) Guiding principles

(41:45) Wrap up / final thoughts

Where to find Carlos:

References:

Credit Karma Lightbox

https://www.creditkarma.com/about/commentary/credit-karma-welcomes-team-bitmatica

Monevo

https://www.monevo.com/us

Eagle Data

https://www.eagledata.biz/

https://medium.com/@carlos.ny/a-chat-with-travis-broad-ceo-at-eagle-data-a6409c6683a7

MoneyLion

https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/moneylion-inc-nyseml-q1-2024-earnings-call-transcript-1299056/

Find Us:

Don't forget to subscribe to Affiliate Marketing for Lenders. If you’re interested in being a guest on the show (or if you have questions for a future episode), send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or at [email protected].