Speaker A: The last industry review from last year, it actually says that Australian brands that have an affiliate and partnership channel, they can see that 20% or more of the new customer base comes to the partnership channel. Wow, that's a huge number.
Speaker B: The customers that we see crushing it, they're the ones who are using technology to do the heavy lifting.
Zoe Lo: It's a win, win situation on both, actually. Win, win, win situation on all three sides. It's a win for them, win for you, and it's a win for the customer. And I think that's just fundamen basics. Welcome to Add to Cart Upskill. We have partnered with one of our industry friends to teach you a new set of skills. At the end of the Upskill series, we want you to walk away feeling smarter and ready to take on a new area of e commerce. Here's your host, Nathan Bush.
Nathan Bush: Hello, everyone. Bushy here. This is the very first Upskill episode. How exciting. Now, you might remember way back in episode 81 of Add to Cart and that feels like a lifetime ago, we started a partnership with partnership experts impact.com and today they're helping us bring you this series, the very first Upskill series that we've had. And can you guess what it's about? Yep, pretty obvious, isn't it? It's all about partnerships in E commerce and we're going to cover it all. How to prepare for partnerships, how to set them up, how to manage them, and then how to grow and scale them. I'm really passionate about sharing knowledge and so the idea of this series is that you will leave with everything that you need to know about partnerships. Today we are starting right at the beginning and looking at how to develop a partnership strategy as part of your marketing mix. And you are not going to be stuck with me alone. We are extremely lucky and to be joined by a friend of the show, maybe the second time, third time, maybe. And an all round e commerce legend, Zoe Lo, global general manager at July. Hello, Zoe.
Zoe Lo: Great to be back. Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: I thought, I thought you'd know how a podcast works. Now you can't work if you're drinking out of a water bottle. But anyway. Oh my gosh, Zoe, you've obviously been in marketing and digital marketing for a long time. Partnerships are a key part of and today we're going to look at it from an upskilling perspective for people who may be new to partnerships or looking to take it to the next level. And I'm really excited what the next three series will bring us because I'm going To learn a lot along the way. You probably know it all already. But I'm really keen to know from you, why are you so passionate about partnership marketing?
Zoe Lo: I will just say that I don't know it all. We're still figuring it out, so massive disclosure for us, I guess. Okay. If we speak about. In terms of my career, I've always seen the value of it, despite it being so incredibly challenging to measure the return on. And the reason why I found it really valuable is because it is what I classify as earned media. So it is.
Speaker A: You can't.
Zoe Lo: You can't really buy it. The other brand, like the person you're partnering with has to say yes.
Speaker A: Right.
Zoe Lo: And there's a lot of brand equity that the transfer that happens, how the valuable it is. So when I was at CoinJar, which is a cryptocurrency company, we couldn't buy ads.
Speaker A: Right.
Zoe Lo: You can't advertise for crypto services on Facebook, Meta or Google. So partnerships is kind of like the only way that you can market. And basically we partnered with Boost Juice to give away a bitcoin.
Speaker A: Right.
Zoe Lo: Using the app makes sense.
Speaker A: Genius.
Zoe Lo: So great. Right? So if I can say so myself. So that was like things like that. It's not just transactional, it's not just a pure customer acquisition. It's actually so many different elements. And so I think despite it being very hard to measure partnership marketing, the value you get from it is not just like you can't just unit economics your way out of it. There's actually a lot of equity and a lot of value that you don't measure. And I can't measure.
Speaker A: Sorry.
Nathan Bush: You know, you're not allowed to use words like unit economics in part one of an intro series around partnerships. You've already scared to hell the people who are listening to this hoping to learn about partnerships. Do you remember going back, you mentioned that partnerships has always just been part of what you've done. Do you remember, you know, when you were first learning how to do partnerships really well, what were the main or the questions that you had when you were starting to explore partnerships for the first time?
Zoe Lo: Yes, it depends on which stage of the business that you're in. The guiding principle is that it's a win, win situation on both, actually. Win, win, win situation on all three sides. It's a win for them, win for you, and it's a win for the customer. And I think that's just fundamental basics. When you're smaller, the barrier is that you're smaller and you often want to go for a bigger brand, a bigger influencer, Bigger like a partnership where you're the smaller person, you could be coming to the table with less. So you just have to understand what value you're bringing.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Do you think there's any common misconceptions about partnership marketing that still exists today? 100% that we might smash through in this series?
Nagin Farhangma: Yes.
Zoe Lo: I think that a lot of smaller brands think that bigger brands won't want to hear from them or won't see the value in partnering with them, but it is completely not true. A lot of bigger brands find it a little harder to move as quickly as smaller brands. A lot of bigger brands may not have the agility and innovation to target more niche consumer segments that they're trying to target. And by leaning on partnerships with smaller brands, they can do that. So you offer a lot more than you think.
Nathan Bush: Well, that sounds very exciting. So I think we should get straight into it. Let's kick this series off. Episode one of our three part series on partnerships. We are very lucky to be joined by Nagin Farhangma from Growth Ops to talk all things about getting started with your partnership program. So let's kick over to her. Nagin, welcome to ADD to cart.
Nagin Farhangma: Thank you, Nathan.
Speaker A: Thank you for having me today.
Nathan Bush: Well, thank you for being our very first guest on this special series. I'm super excited to jump into the world of partnerships with you, specifically how to develop a partnership strategy in your marketing mix. But first I'd love to dive into more about you. Tell me about what you do and why you're so passionate about partnerships.
Nagin Farhangma: Yeah. So I am the head of affiliate and partnerships at Growth Ops Digital Agency and I've been in the industry for now what is over 14 years. And I'm passionate about this industry because for the reason how I ended up here, I actually accidentally ended up doing affiliate and partnership. That was not the beginning of my plan. A lot of people go to uni can say that, but when I was looking for an internship, I kind of came across this company who did affiliate partnership marketing. I had no clue what that meant. I just wanted to show up, get my credit to uni and move on with to the next thing to my actual plan. Little did I know that I entered an entire world that I was going to be so passionate about. I work for a technology affiliate network back in Europe and they taught me everything, like most of what I know today. And I remember thinking, oh my God, is this the future of marketing? What it looks like you can be creative and design campaigns for brands have that kind of build those relationships of trust, but everything is backed up with numbers and analytics like it blew my mind. So, yeah, I entered that company 14 years ago and I decided to branch out throughout my career, go to the brand side, technology side, agency side. I've done omnichannel as well for several years, but somehow I always end up coming back to partnership marketing because I always found that my narrative defends this channel more than anything else.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. I couldn't think of a better way to hype up partnerships than your career journey so far and all the different areas that you get to play in. And I can't wait to dive into it with you. So let's kick off with I'd love your definition of what is partnership marketing. I know that you mentioned affiliates before as part of your journey. I'd love to know today, in 2020, 2023, what is your definition of partnership marketing?
Nagin Farhangma: The main definition is collaboration. Collaboration that comes with trust. And in this context, partnership marketing is a collaboration between brands or between brands and individual to ultimately achieve the same goals. So whenever we talk about today's definition, you are talking about basically relationships between brands with transparency, with communication and engagement backed up through that kind of collaboration.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. It sounds like this beautiful world to dive into where everyone gets along and it's all lovey and everyone like mutual wins everywhere. Is it always that way?
Speaker A: Of course it is. That's why.
Nagin Farhangma: That's why we're here for why would it be 14 years in this industry? I didn't join a job to pick a fight.
Nathan Bush: All right, and how have you seen it change? You mentioned that you've had 14 years in the partner ownership industry. Are you seeing that it is more prevalent and easier to sell in as part of the overall marketing mix?
Nagin Farhangma: Well, interesting question. I've been several years in the industry, but I've also been in several markets. So in each market I've worked in partnership marketing or affiliate marketing was sitting in a different era like stage of its growth. So I have worked in really mature markets like the UK can be considered when it comes to this industry and the norm generally was like affiliate marketing, it is part of the mix. There's a incredible amount of investment put into it, resources and a thought process about how the strategy is going to look like. Not all the time, but it is kind of known for having brands that use partnership channel and affiliate channel as a huge part of the strategy of growth. But I also work in markets in Southeast Asia and Also in Australia, where affiliate and partnership marketing are still in the growing period, they are entering that golden era which they recently did thanks to the result of all jumping into online during the pandemic.
Nathan Bush: So Nagin, the benefits and challenges of partnerships versus other types of marketing channels. I'd love to dive into this because a lot of our listeners will no doubt have a marketing plan in front of them. Partnerships may or may not be on there. What are the differences between this channel versus other channels in terms of the benefits and the challenges?
Speaker A: Let's divide first around the benefits because there's many. So first of all, it's definitely going to be a channel that is going to help the brand increase traffic and with that traffic you will notice that the channel will bring higher conversion rates, higher than many other channels as I've
Nagin Farhangma: seen through my career.
Speaker A: It also, as we know, is a collaborative partnership channel. So you are tapping into new audiences. And the last industry review from last year, it actually says that Australian brands that have an affiliate and partnership channel, they can see that 20% or more of the new customer base comes to the partnership channel. Wow, that's a huge number. And it all comes at an ROI cost effective model.
Nathan Bush: That's a really impressive stat around performance and the impact that it can have. How do you find that partnership channels work in conjunction with the other marketing channels? Do they work in their own silo? Or do you find that marketing teams generally try and take the learnings from what you have in partnerships when you have those results like you've just said and apply them into the other marketing channels as well?
Speaker A: I don't think channels should be working in silos. At the end of the day, those channels are servicing the goal of a brand and the multiple goals of a brand. The concept here is how you leverage each channel for each of your KPIs and there are channels that are completely dedicated for lead generation or new customer base and that needs to keep going? I just think that partnership marketing, it gives you not only high conversion rates that are low cost, but on top of that there's an add on benefit which is seeing new customer base coming into your brand and database in a way that you didn't anticipate before. But now we know the stats are there, we know it's happening. So it's just leveraging the channel on top of the other ones that you're using. One shouldn't be canceling the other one, you're just adding on. As long as you are monitoring the channels, as long as you can control the budgets, and you can see if it's meeting your KPIs. I think it's absolutely fine. There's a data point that I consider really interesting in the partnership channel, and it's how many brands are now dedicating exclusive offers only to affiliates. That stat just three years ago used to be around 58%. So 58% of brands would say dedicated exclusive offers that only the partner channel will have. And you will not find it in their website, you will not find it in social media and anywhere else. Now, in 2022, just last year, that number became 72%.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
Speaker A: I think that really shows the value that it comes when you dedicate something just specific to this channel, such as an exclusive offer that can only be found through one channel. And that's a way of measuring and comparing with other channels. Rotate that exclusive offer between the other channels and see what metrics you get from each.
Nathan Bush: Love it. And on the other side of that, have you seen anything with your clients around the incrementality of adding partnerships into the mix and the uplift or the impact that having that awareness in other channels can give to their more traditional marketing channels?
Speaker A: Absolutely. So when you get involved in partnership marketing, you are exercising a branding awareness as well. So it definitely has an impact, direct impact. So where, for example, there's a partnership between Qantas Airlines and Airbnb, both very powerful on their own, but when you see them together, what is that saying about the brand? What is that saying about trust? And what is that saying about your strength in collaborating? For me, that's already meeting, like checking boxes and all, so many other channels.
Nathan Bush: So in your day to day, are you working across a range of different brands with a different challenge that you use partnerships to address?
Nagin Farhangma: Absolutely. That's my favorite part of the job. And that's probably explains why I am right now in an agency. So I work with over 70 brands at the moment, and they're all sitting in different verticals. So we work with technology, we work with fashion, retail, we work with beauty and cosmetics, financial services, insurance. Completely different verticals across the market.
Nathan Bush: And what are the main goals or challenges that those brands are trying to solve with partnerships that might be slightly different to other marketing channels?
Nagin Farhangma: Well, I cannot answer that question without saying the obvious first. Obviously, revenue growth is always going to be the main priority, but they do share that with other channels as well.
Speaker A: But
Nagin Farhangma: one of the things that distinguishes this channel and the reason why brands want to start looking into it, it's working in a channel that operates Complete differently. You are collaborating with other brands, you are being more creative in your digital approach and it helps really to tap into new audiences and create alliances. That helps towards your reputation, it helps towards creating customer base. And my favorite one, it just creates an added service to your offering because the moment that you are collaborating with another brand and you're creating a partnership, you are adding on to the customer's experience by matching them with other brands at the same time.
Nathan Bush: Great. And are there any particular parts in the customer journey that you find that you use partnerships to address more than others? So if we're talking about top of the funnel, like acquisition, all the way through to the bottom, like conversion and retention, do partnerships seem to fit at any stage of the journey or do they go across the whole remit?
Nagin Farhangma: If you had to pinpoint what is the most known for KPI, I would always say conversion, affiliate and partnership marketing channel definitely works incredibly well towards driving higher conversions at an effective roi. Effective and really positive, actually.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. And we're going to get more into the measurement later. And especially in episode two. I was keen to understand that when you are first talking to your clients, and I can imagine you're talking to a bunch of clients every day about who are considering taking on partnerships as part of their marketing mix, what goes through your head in terms of, yes, this client would be great for partnerships versus I don't think this client's ready quite yet for it.
Nagin Farhangma: Well, I always start a conversation with what are your marketing goals?
Speaker A: Right.
Nagin Farhangma: You need to understand the brand's goals, objectives, but also what are the challenges? This is my favorite part of the conversation. Talk to me about the restrictions. What is stopping you from achieving certain things? What are the challenges? Where do you sit also with your competitors? How do you feel that that's affecting your business at the moment? I like to get into the hard questions and the hard conversations because that's where you're gonna find the way to benefit from partnership marketing. I always tell my clients that if you want to set yourself apart from your clients, from your competitors, sorry. Partnership marketing is your place. If you're already strong as a brand, but you want to explore other ways of growth and thrive from it, partnership marketing is it. It's the channel for you. I always see partnership marketing as the above and beyond channel, because in the day to day, there's the traditional channels. You know what they're for and they're very effective. Don't take me wrong. You know how to use paid media and social media and other digital channels. In the way that they need to be used to. Partnership marketing just opens a new door to becoming creative to test in an environment. And I would say one of the few, or if not the only environment where you can hide is a low risk and high game environment. So I would always open that question like, what are your challenges? Is it brand awareness? If it's sticking up compared to your competitors, Is it conversion? You find people going into your website, they have the customer journey looks really healthy, but then conversion is not happening. Let's jump into this channel and test ways in changing that.
Nathan Bush: Is there one question that you ask in that discovery process that usually gives you the light bulb moment to go, ah yes, this is a good one.
Nagin Farhangma: The main question when people come to us is how can I grow more and spend less?
Speaker A: Right.
Nagin Farhangma: Everybody wants that. How can I grow revenue by spending less? When you use those two concepts, if partnership marketing is not the answer, I don't know what is.
Nathan Bush: And good thing it's called the business growth ops because then that makes sense, right?
Nagin Farhangma: Very well thought out name subliminal messaging there. Not that subliminal really, but it also sets high expectations. If we don't deliver, we're not honoring the name. So we always make sure we do that. So while other brands, they want to strengthen their positioning in the industry, they want to grow revenue and most importantly, they want to acquire new customers. This is a huge one, especially in Australia. I think I had more that conversation in this market than in any other. And when you bring those three challenges into play, but then you said, I don't want to go into a negative roi. We cannot afford right now losing that budget whenever there's times that other brands were willing to do that, you know, going to that of kind into a losing game just to gain other KPIs. But we are at a time that challenging economical times are now happening. And that challenge is the one that most of our clients are talking about. We need to reduce marketing budget. So where should we invest in that? So this is where I actually love that because that light bulb moment. Well, let me tell you about the benefits of partnership marketing and how we can cater those needs and also remove those fears and help towards those challenges.
Nathan Bush: Great. Are there any red flags that you look out for when you're talking to new clients that you go, oh, I don't think you're ready for partnerships yet?
Nagin Farhangma: Well, you know me very well, Nathan, because that's another a huge part of my conversation. I consider myself quite blunt when it comes to that conversation. I Like to say that I work for the industry more than anything else because I don't want to onboard a brand or a client into the industry if they're not ready. I think it's the long term game, helping a brand understand and manage their expectations rather than, you know, create a disappointment just for the sake of a new business. So yes, there are red flags and I like to have the conversation because of that. The first of all is, okay, how new is your brand? And you can be a very new brand, but then be very confident that the strengthening and branding around it is going to be strong enough to sustain affiliates. But normally this is very generally speaking and obviously there's going to be exceptions to this rule. Normally for brands, I do ask them to first strengthen the branding, to work around that, their brand, what they represent, what are the objectives. Because as we said in the beginning of this podcast, at the end of the day, partnership marketing is collaboration. You want to be collaborating with a brand that also feels as confident in working with you as you will be working with them. So that's a very important part of the strategy.
Nathan Bush: And when you say get your brand right first before opening up to partners, what do you mean by that?
Nagin Farhangma: Well, brand recognition is one and also you have to jump into the stat. So how much traffic are you driving to your website? Is it enough to sustain a partnership marketing channel at this point? Because if the traffic is not enough to your website, it means that there's
Speaker A: other homework you need to do.
Nagin Farhangma: It means that you have to focus on other sides of your business before you onboard partnership marketing. There's a right time for every channel. And partnership marketing is not really in the beginning, you first get your housing order and when you ready, you jump into this wild, amazing world that pharmacy marketing is now. There are exceptions to this rule. I've seen brands taking on all channels, amazingly, but because they had a robust strategy, they knew exactly what they wanted and they tackled all the channels at the same time. No limits to budgets, no fear in terms of what's going to happen if something fails. They just put everything in every channel they committed long term and they made something from it. But that requires a certain kind of mentality that you don't find often in businesses. So if someone comes up with that mentality, I'm like, oh for it. Let's how can I help? Let's let me help you to create this strategy. But normally I want to help brands to be more cautious. We don't want to, you know, managing expectations, very important. So I've turned down brands. And I said, listen, right now is not the right time for you, but let's catch up again in six months. Months. Let's touch base again next year or next summer or next winter. And I always commit to that. I put a note in my calendar, reach out. And we always try again because there
Nathan Bush: will be a right time in the future. So tell me if you mentioned competitors there before, because we might have brands listening to this and going, oh, have I got enough traffic? Am I big enough? I wonder what my competitors are doing. Is there a way to see if competitors have partnership programs or channels set up?
Nagin Farhangma: Yes, this is where stalking skills come into play. I think stalking is not only something you do in your personal life, it's something you do in the professional one as well. So yes, there is a way. And I think competitive analysis is fundamental. When you're considering building a strategy, you first have to find out are your competitors running affiliate partnership program. So first of all, you go the straightforward way, which is like you go into the website of the brand and sometimes in the footer you can find join us as a partner, become a partner, become an affiliate. So easy way of finding out. But another way is through affiliate networks out there or agency websites. You will be able to see if they're offering affiliate or partnership programs for certain brands. And then if you want to get a bit more granular and just deep dive into the secret world of what's happening behind the screen. There are tools out there that are traffic analytic tools. They're probably paid for. We use them. And when you use traffic analytic tools, you will see websites are referring traffic to what brand. This is perfect for benchmarking, for analytics, for competitor analysis. And also it helps you paint a picture of what the vertical is looking like. Is it really necessary to affiliate marketing or partnership collaboration right now or should we leave it for later or any other question you may have through stalking, you can also find it.
Nathan Bush: Do you have any favorite go to stalking tools?
Nagin Farhangma: Well, we use a few in our agency. So we do use similar web and SEMrush. Both are very efficient for traffic analytics in our agency. We also have other options at paid media, so also we share those tools with other departments.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Great. Okay, cool. And obviously we're going to talk about the setup of partnership models, whether that be with an agency or doing it yourself in house. Obviously with an agency you get access to that intelligence and those tools because some of them can be pretty costly, right?
Nagin Farhangma: Very. You can ask me about that. I had to fight big Fights internally to finance that. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Okay, cool. So let's go back. So if we don't want to make partnerships a vague concept for people, and people might know the typical affiliate model where you drop a link into a blog post that's tagged and it comes back and the sales gets tracked. And I've explained that really badly as someone outside of partnerships. But tell me about the main channels that you're using, whether that be influencers, media, social that you're seeing that brands are really engaging on now as a key part of their partnership strategy.
Nagin Farhangma: So a good partnership strategy will have a mix of all the above. Just segment and categorize what that looks like. We have to start with the traditional group of affiliates. So they will be the cornerstone of your affiliate program. And normally that's based on cashback, website, site, loyalty, coupon, sub networks and the traditional partners, they've been in the game from the beginning. They know exactly how to cater brands, needs and how to effectively bring the results. And most notoriously, they're known because of the large, incredible data and engaged databases. So definitely those are going to be your first allies and your first players in the, in the program.
Nathan Bush: What are, what are some common examples that you come across in that space?
Nagin Farhangma: So in Australia there are several players
Speaker A: that we know all know about.
Nagin Farhangma: So that's definitely going to be the cashback websites like Shopback and Cash Rewards. We also have Tedi in this space. We recently launched as well loyalty. We've got Qantas, Frequent Flyer, Velocity and there's always new emerging websites we want
Speaker A: to
Nagin Farhangma: in terms of coupons. We also have Global Savings Group, which are fantastic and really know the bread and they really know what they're doing. So we are talking about companies and websites where affiliate marketing is truly the bread and butter. So, you know you're going to come out of that conversation quite quickly with a very thorough strategy already.
Nathan Bush: Okay, cool, that's really great to set the scene there. So what are the other channels that you're seeing come through?
Nagin Farhangma: Yeah, so affiliate marketing has been there for a long time and it evolves like any other industry does. And with the evolution of the industry from also the offering out there in the world, we have new groups emerging, like what we call the growth partners. They are the new players who join the game a bit later, but they are adapting very fast. And you can find the influencer, you can find content and blog creators. So they offer an incredible value to the industry because when you talk about content bloggers and influencers, they're notoriously known because they reach to engage customers who trust the source. So here you. That's why we call them the growth partners. You know that you are tapping into a partner side that they know who they're talking to. So that campaign is going to be in good hands as well.
Nathan Bush: And is that reaching out on a one to one basis or do most have agents or managers or centralized points that you work with to reach multiple people?
Nagin Farhangma: Good question. There's a bit of itch. So the main approach in affiliate marketing is working through sub networks. Sub networks provide the access so they will manage their influencer database and and you just deal with the sub networking itself or the media group that you're dealing with in that moment. So normally you do have like one platform, one brand, one partner brand that you have the relationship with and then they will like segment and manage the relationship with their list of content creators and influencers that they work with. So that's the most generic and also very effective way of working and best use of that time for everyone involved. But also there is one to one cases and that's something that in our work we do a lot. I work with a lot of beauty and cosmetic and fashion brands. So we do reach out to influencers, we tell them what we need from them and we introduce them to the affiliate and partnership world as a new way for them to generate revenue different from what their traditional style.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Great. So I can go both ways. I love that. So you mentioned traditional partners and growth affiliates and you mentioned there was a third group. What's that group?
Nagin Farhangma: There is another group which are emerging models with more innovative solutions coming ahead with all the creativeness that this industry requires. New models are also coming up like B2B partnerships or technology partners who offer technology solutions but they want to leverage the partnership channel to test something to test the channel and see how it works for them. Now these kind of emerging partners is not the common day to day partners you go to but it's more of an ad hoc basis and it requires a lot of commitment and also like a creative mindset and yeah, just like a curious kind of approach. It is definitely one of my favorite sides of the business because it allows you to just think, go above and beyond and pick up something.
Nathan Bush: I was about to say it sounds like you got a favorite there.
Nagin Farhangma: Not really. Nathan, you are gonna put me try. It's not favorite. I actually this is really favorite for me is when you can do the combination of all the groups and to reach the end goals. There's not really Favorite. In a sense, this is my favorite vertical. This is my favorite group. This is my favorite partner. That. That really cannot exist because it's like a mother having to choose between all their kids is not really the way to go here. But what I do like about emerging models is just it comes outside the traditional way of working. It really puts you in a situation that you have to challenge yourself, your knowledge and you have to really go and do research, investigate. So for me, in a personal level, it challenges me as a professional. And also you have to go into another convincing mindset when you want to get the brands involved. Personally, I just like the challenge there, but that's me. I'm a bit of a masochist, maybe because I like that, but that obviously when coming to working with all partners, I love them all.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Fantastic. You've given a really brilliant overview of the different types of channels and ways partnerships work alongside all the other channels that we use in marketing. And you can start to see a little bit of crossover there, just with a slightly different approach. If we've got marketing managers or e commerce managers thinking, okay, this is all sounding pretty good. What are the typical costs that you prepare your clients for when looking to set up a partnership program for the first time?
Nagin Farhangma: So there are several costs. So the first one is if you want a partnership marketing campaign and program, you definitely have to start considering technology first thing. If there's no technology, I don't think that's partnership marketing anymore.
Nathan Bush: So is that to automate the process?
Nagin Farhangma: Absolutely. It's not. It's for automating is the start of point when you look for technology. But technology is also for to creating like a centralized environment for all the stakeholders involved here, which are your partners, yourself, the brand. And you want a place where you can automate all the process, have a robust reporting in place where you can follow the performance, follow the campaign, most importantly, analyze the campaign that it's running without visibility in that how can you really move forward? Also a platform where you can have a seamless relationship with the partners and then it can provide the communication tools, also the payment tools and anything else needed like a support system, operational environment as well.
Nathan Bush: Correct.
Nagin Farhangma: So there are going to be costs to that. Technology is a thing, is a requirement. But this is the digital environment as well. So that's going to be the first point of cost. It's going to be technology setup, license fees. Now other costs that you have to consider is what are the resources that you're going to need to manage the affiliate program. This is not a channel that can go on autopilot. It's a channel that is based on relationships, interpersonal skills and also knowledge and constant upskilling. So the first thing is considering where do you want to get the resource from. And that's going to be either in house. You can hire a person or a team, depending on your needs, or you can also go through a specialized agency that's specialize in affiliate marketing or an affiliate network that they can offer you that service as well. So that's going to be the second side of the cost which is going to be the resource management and strategy and then the third one and most importantly the cost of working with the partners that you're working with. So what are you going to be paying for them? And you have to be ready and prepare the margins for that.
Nathan Bush: Great. I want to come back to especially the second one around the team or the agency to actually make it work. But if we focus in on on that cost to partners to pay essentially the media cost, what are the common formats of the commercial models with partners?
Nagin Farhangma: So there are several commercial models. The most general and traditional one is the cost per sale, also known cost per acquisition. And this is the model that you only pay the partner after the transaction has been made. So we consider this the most risk free model because you obviously have the opportunity to calculate the margins and understand that for every sale you can allow yourself to split the revenue with a partner and this amount. So obviously this is the most traditional, the one that we feel we love and we can play with really in that sense there are also other models because not always the needs are a transaction or a sale per set. So that's why partner marketing also adapts to other models like cost per click. So a lot of like stakeholders and partners out there, they do require to because it's their environment and it's the way their business model works. Cost per click is also an option and depending on the brand's needs, lead generation as well. If you want to incentivize partners to acquire crowd customers, sign up to a newsletter or just like sign up to your loyalty program or brand. You can also create strategies around cpo, cost per lead and some brands they're looking for other kind of goals like getting their app installed. So we have the cost per install as well as a model which also shows very effective. Yeah, now I always say like cost per sale, it's more easy to monitor what the ROIs look like. But when it comes to cost per lead, cost per click or cost per Install. I do always recommend all my brands I work with to ensure there's a follow up of that funnel and understand what the revenue for them really looks like at the end of that stage.
Nathan Bush: Great. So that leads me to the next question. I bet you get asked this a hell of a lot. How do you determine how much percent of sale or what you value, a
Nagin Farhangma: cost per click at click or anything else or any other models cost per
Nathan Bush: lead, whatever it is. Yeah, how do you put evaluation, like determine what you'd be prepared to pay for that?
Nagin Farhangma: Well, first of all, I like to show what the industry looks like in that vertical. So if you're a tech company, if you have a beauty and cosmetic company, or if you're fashion, we have plenty of examples of what is happening in the industry across different markets. So I always like to present that to brands and see what they think and if that makes sense for them. And if it does, we can then strategize. Should we go higher than that to just like increase the market share and be more competitive? And if it doesn't, I really like to ask about why and understand the process because once they do that, it's so much easier to offer a solution.
Nathan Bush: So then with this being variable costs and results, obviously, especially if you're paying a percentage of sales, how do you set budgets for the partnership marketing part of the marketing budget?
Nagin Farhangma: The best model to budget for your channel is to understand what allowance your margin enables so you can split the cost worry free and risk free. Once you know that and you implement that, then growth will be limitless. But also that also should mean budget should be limitless. So when you take the limitations of budget off your mind because you know that it's going to be covered because margins have been calculated thoroughly, then you have to let the partnership program to run in its own course to grow and thrive naturally, seeking all the opportunities that there are out there. So that's what a mature and really effective partnership program really does. But having said that, not every brand can afford that for many reasons. And also they need to strategize differently. They need to report on budgets also differently. So obviously not one solution applies to everyone. That's the ideal scenario, the one that makes people like us really happy. But some brands, they do have like to have a limited budget and they say, well, this is the capital, the maximum we can afford every month, so we can cater to those needs as well. And you can adjust again, there's no right and wrong, there's better and worse, but there's Better and worse. But there's not right and wrong really. If a brand needs to cap their budget, then obviously you need to do whatever you can with that.
Nathan Bush: Do you find that you have to almost rewire some thinking around budgeting and how budgets are put together not only for the people you speak to, but obviously everyone's got bosses and owners and all that sort of thing that they have to educate around. You know, the upside of this is that if we unlock this, the growth is so much, you know, the potential is so much bigger.
Speaker A: Yes.
Nagin Farhangma: And I think that's the basis of my full time job. And I think that's really. And it's natural, it makes sense. It's because there is. Partnership marketing came from one part of the business model in marketing and it's just evolving so fast and it's finding its own place. But during that time, during the evolution of partnership marketing, it got really stuck in, in the world's mind that it's just another digital marketing channel. It's just similar. And everybody throws it under paid media, social media, and we all know how those channels operate. You set a budget, you pause it whenever it's not working. You can go active and pause and back and forth and. Well, that has created a misconception of partnership marketing. And this channel unfortunately has been treated like that often. And so, yeah, there's a lot of conversations happening about this daily. And I think it's not so much about conversation at the end of the day. Numbers speak louder than words in this scenario. So at first you can have the conversation just to put that question in someone's mind, just to reflect on it. But then thankfully we always have an opportunity to present the data and say this is what are the results when you treat partnership marketing like an ongoing channel, like a standalone channel. And I always feel very confident just because of that.
Nathan Bush: And are there any benchmarks that you can share? And obviously this is key information for you, but is there any benchmarks you can share around what a good click through or conversion looks like in partnerships?
Nagin Farhangma: That's actually a very tricky question because it changes depending on the vertical and it changes depending on the group of partners that you work with. So if I'm working with traditional affiliates, expectation is high there. You want them to bring a high conversion rate and I'm going to say a number that in this industry, in E commerce in general is crazy. But you want to talk about conversion rates that are higher than 30, 50% when you work with really big traditional affiliates. You want to talk about really fast Conversions there. That also means that there are other verticals that we look for at least 4%, which is like a general benchmark in E commerce. And also sometimes when you get a 0.5 conversion rate from certain other verticals, that's something you celebrate with champagne as well. You cannot really say this is what good looks like. But you can say, hey, considering what the campaign looked like, how much you invested, what kind of coverage you decide to go for, and what kind of publisher you wanted to invest in, I was expecting more or less conversion rate. And part of our daily conversations are about that.
Nathan Bush: So you mentioned there in the second consideration in terms of costs when setting up a partnership program around whether you take partnership management in house or whether you take on an agency such as Growth Ops to manage that on your behalf, what do you think should be the key considerations when making that decision?
Nagin Farhangma: Now, I know the commercial and business answer would be budget. I know that. But I'm gonna put my heart in this one. And I'm gonna tell you what I think because I'm obsessed with this channel. For me, the key consideration is how much are you willing to invest in upskilling and keeping the person responsible for your channel up to date? That's the key. If you want to go in house and you need a team of one person, make sure they keep up skilled, make sure they're up to date. Because technology advances so fast and this environment and this channel is also adapting so fast. Okay, if you go for an agency, they have an obligation to keep up to date so you can get that reassurance. So make sure you keep them on their toes and they're doing their due diligence.
Nathan Bush: Your account managers are hating you right now,
Nagin Farhangma: maybe, but it's gonna be no. The account managers in our team. Well, also it's my responsibility to make sure that they are also up to date. They know they have to, but also I want to make sure that I'm providing that for them and that we're bringing up the revelant conversations. Please don't hate me, guys.
Speaker A: I love you.
Nagin Farhangma: And yes, and affiliate networks, obviously, same expectations. It is their bread and butter. And also partnership technology providers like Impact, it's also their bread and butter. So you can expect that they will be keeping brands up to date. But as you can see here, the bottom line is just make sure the skills are there at all times.
Nathan Bush: So if you are say you're managing partnerships for one brand, you're in house for a day and you're managing partnerships for one brand. Rolling out a partnership program. Can you give me an idea of what a day in the life of a partnership manager might look like? What are all the different tasks and activities that you might be juggling to make sure that you pull together a really strong partnership program?
Nagin Farhangma: Is this in the in house scenario? Yeah, yeah, I've done that for seven years. So it looks, first of all, it looks crazy, which is why I like it. It's going to be a very dynamic day to day. The first thing is checking in, in the reporting, seeing that traffic conversion is looking and making sense. So the operational side of things has to be in your day to day. The admin operation, which means reporting, analytics, comparing day to day, comparing with to week. So that's the part of it that is fundamental. And then you go a step ahead forward and it's going to be the planning. So what's coming ahead? Is there any events coming up? Marketing events, also your brand events. Is your brand celebrating something that is worth starting, planning, making a marketing campaign for it? So when you start the planning, that's where everything starts. You pick up the phone, send the emails and you, you start dealing with all the stakeholders. Now this is, don't take this part of the job lightly. It accumulates. It's a lot of follow up. So it requires a lot of organization skills but also it requires a lot of negotiation skills and clear communication. Also what do you need to put together for those campaigns? Do you have to liaise with other departments in your company? Like the creative side of things? Do you need a new landing page? Do you have to talk to the other channels? In all the roles I had my role as, I always had to run around the office with different departments and I loved it because I love meeting people and also know what they're working on. So I always. In this kind of role, you end up working with the wider marketing team, also with the sales team. The sales team is always out there talking to other brands, which is exactly the nature of your job as well. So everything everybody's working on is going to be relevant to your day to day job. And most importantly, reviews always keep business reviews up to date. That takes time as well because if you are in house, definitely the channel is going to be up for questioning every day because it's new, right? So you have to be ready to go to senior and upper management and explain what this channel really is and build the case studies as well.
Nathan Bush: And in the brands that you've worked with or that you've seen have these kind of skills in house, typically. Is it one person? Is it a couple of people? Is it a big team?
Speaker A: Good question.
Nagin Farhangma: So it can be as small as a person who already does other channels and then you're going to invest maybe $5 per week to this channel or it can be as big as a team of 10 to 20 just for the partnership marketing channel.
Nathan Bush: And then I'm assuming usually this team or this person sits within the marketing team.
Nagin Farhangma: Traditionally, yes. It's normally under the marketing team or E commerce team. But that doesn't mean that this channel also wouldn't or shouldn't stand in a standalone environment. So a lot of brands already have affiliates as its own standalone channel because it sits somewhere between marketing and sales. But it has its own value and it own like revenue share in their company. But traditionally speaking, it will be marketing. Yes.
Nathan Bush: Okay. And then if we flip it to the other side, agency world, is it as chaotic there? Is it a little bit more structured?
Nagin Farhangma: Well, if you're working in with me, it's going to be structured.
Nathan Bush: Of course it is. I wouldn't have thought.
Nagin Farhangma: No, I'm kidding. It's a bit of both. I think you have to. Structure is the fundamental part of it. You have to create structure, you have to create processes. So that's the baseline for your team to run from. But chaos has to be expected. And that's everything. It's something I say every day. I think in affiliate marketing, every day something new will come up, a new issue that you were not expecting. A lot of hiccups happen and you have to know how to embrace that and take that as an incentive to make your day more interesting. So I would say that it's a mix of both.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nagin Farhangma: So what we do in our team is we have very fixed processes that they've been audited over and over again, whatever. If that's going to be around booking campaigns, creating links or auditing invoices, anything that has been really well looked into. And then we also manage a lot of expectations with account managers and we say, well, find out what your client wants and when you know they want A, B, C and D, what does proactive looks like for you? So a lot of our conversations, a lot of our training and upskilling goes around that question. Now that you know that your client, you know them better than anybody else, better than I will, better than anyone you know them, so how are you going to help them but also how are you going to challenge them so they can thrive?
Nathan Bush: Now you mentioned as a key consideration around costs is choosing A tech platform that will help you through this. Obviously. This series is brought to us by impact.com, great partners of the show, but we'll just pretend they're not here for a second. When you are selecting a tech platform to help you manage partnerships, what are the key things that you're looking for for different brands to make sure that it hits the objectives that they need?
Nagin Farhangma: Yeah. So first of all, the software you mentioned, it has to be all about automation, but also I want to find the value from those software tech providers and discovering and recruiting partners is a huge part of that. So obviously partnership marketing cannot have happen without the partners. So they do have a huge role in this entire equation. So what is the software company doing for you to help you with that part? Are they linking you, providing access to partners? Are they helping you create those relationship, communicate with them and also pay them in a seamless environment which most of the networks do? So that for me is like basics to me. Does the platform provide unification? Can you centralize everything you need to see in one place? A big one for me is transparency. Can you follow up on the data in a regular way, up to date? But also can the partner that you're working with access to the same data as well so you can work in that collaboration?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense.
Nagin Farhangma: Does the reporting and tracking system look good and easy to use for you only or also for the other side the spectrum? So that for me, user experience is also a big one because it's a
Nathan Bush: two sided trust piece, right?
Nagin Farhangma: Absolutely. You are working at the end of the day with another party and you are working towards the same goal. So you should have access to the same information.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nagin Farhangma: So you can take database led decisions.
Nathan Bush: Makes total sense. And does cost come into it much or is it secondary? Are they kind of on par?
Nagin Farhangma: But obviously cost for every business is important. First of all, you have to know what you want from a software company. Like there's a lot of offering out there because it's costly to host a very sophisticated kind of software. And I believe in sophistication when it comes to. Well, I've been in the industry for a long time, so I want more from it. I have higher standards, I want to go into the detail, I want to create more strategies that haven't been seen before. So when I look at software, I want to see about what are the options and capabilities that you're offering. How granular can we go? How can we protect our brands and their margins even further? I want to know if we can have dynamic payouts if we can report on any specific category and SKU level when it comes to the brands, the more granular you can go and the more functionality there is. Better marketeer you're going to be and the better you're going to service your brands. So that for me is always going to be important. But again, there's a price tag for everything. If you do not need all those requirements, if you're in a different stage of your affiliate program and partnership management, if you require less kind of like tools, then there's cheaper options as well. So price is not what has to stop you. What you have to determine is what do you want and then pay for whatever you need.
Nathan Bush: So if we've got brands or marketing managers listening to everything that you've shared today, which has been fantastic around working out, if partnerships fit in your marketing mix and they decide, yes, it does fit in our marketing mix, we need to get started. What would be the three tips that you give them to start this journey straight away?
Speaker A: Well, first of all, if a marketing manager or business decides to jump into this channel, congratulations, you made a really good choice. The three tips would be, first, get in touch with someone who's gonna give you a review of where you stand or what it's gonna look like and plan and set up a strategy for
Nagin Farhangma: your first six months.
Speaker A: I think that's the first step you have to take until you cannot envision what the first six months look like. I don't think it's wise to just get going with it. So either talk to someone, get in touch with an agency or a consultant or someone in house, but definitely try to get that planning first in place. Now the second tip, and this is a hard one to follow because you want results immediately, but it's very important to allow time, allow time because partner channel needs to brew in its environment. It's not an immediate channel that results just flowing from day one, not even from week one. You are working with other partners. They're also testing the field with you. So you have to allow enough time, typically we do say industry six months minimum to start seeing like a trend, but I would argue that one year should be at least what you should allow. Just because you can see the trend lines across different seasonalities in the marketing calendar. And also for you to have enough time to test out and fail. Like test, see if it fails or if it succeeds. And then you can have several examples. Building case studies. Case studies are going to be good and also case studies that are going to be about a failed case. If that doesn't happen, well, lucky you. But I do recommend that it should happen because you should learn about what is the alternative to those kind of cases. So the first one was we said it's going to be get a six month plan in place first. For someone who knows about the industry, allow time and we have discussed about this throughout our podcast. But allow budget, be flexible with budget. Allow, especially if you're just starting, if you're still trying to get an understanding of where the value comes from, you have to be able to have the openness in allowing the budget to be invested in partnership campaigns.
Nathan Bush: Great.
Speaker A: And enough time to see how they turn out.
Nathan Bush: And if brands are looking for examples of other brands that are doing partnerships really well to hold up as a case study to go, hey, look what we could do. Are there any brands that you hold for high regard that you'd say, go check them out?
Speaker A: Many, many, many. One of my favorite brands and how they do partnership marketing is has to be Dell. Dell Technologies, they've been a client of us for 10 years. So that can give you an understanding of how good they know this industry and how good they know this channel. They are so confident about it and they know it so well that they're definitely one of my favorites because of the mentality they have about it. Dell is a brand that will give you a brief of the requirements. We need this KPIs, we need these margins, this profit, and it's not going to be as simple as that. It's going to be very granular. We need this kind of KPIs for this kind of product. There's going to be a completely different story for the other kind of product. And they do that because they know how to leverage the channel. I enjoy working with that because they're presenting you a channel and you have to present a solution. And what Dell does best is being super open to any solution and to testing and to experimenting with new verticals. There's this new partner, there's this new technology coming up, there's this new kind of trend coming up. They're like, let's go all for it. That kind of attitude, that concept that they have about the channel is what makes them grow year on year exponentially.
Nathan Bush: And it sounds like it's the summation of a lot of the themes that you've talked about today around making sure that you give it plenty of time, allowing the room and the budget for growth and being open and having great relationships with the experts around you to make it happen.
Speaker A: All the ingredients to the successful campaign.
Nathan Bush: Nagin, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it and love diving into the world of partnerships and setting a strategy for your partnership for your brand. And I think you've enlightened a lot of our listeners as well.
Speaker A: Well, I have you to thank, Nathan. It's been an honor to be here. It's incredible to be asked about this industry. Normally I'm the one left out in the group of friends or in the family. No one really understands what I do and I don't get asked these kind of questions every day. So I really enjoy it. As you can see, it is one of my biggest passions. So thank you for giving me the
Nagin Farhangma: platform and opportunity to talk about what I love most.
Nathan Bush: Thanks, Negain. I loved talking to such a passionate partnership pro like Negeen and I hope our chat gave you the real world perspective on how to get started in this space. Now we're going to hear from our partner rep Peter Bray, who you will know impact.com's APAC sales director. He's actually going to be joining us throughout the series to offer us some specifics on how the impact.com tech can help with the concepts that we're exploring. Pete, welcome back. Fan favorite of the show.
Speaker B: That's a stretch, but I'm your biggest fan, Nathan. That's the most important thing.
Nathan Bush: Well, I'm your biggest fan, so we're in a safe space. Okay.
Speaker B: Happy to be here, Pete.
Nathan Bush: We had a really great chat with Negeen there around how to develop your partnership strategy in the marketing mix. So step one, for a lot of people who might be stepping into the partnership space, and she did mention impact.com in there, which is great because as we know, this series is brought to us by impact.com and you head up the sales team@impact.com so you're speaking with a lot of customers and potential customers around partnerships, especially in those early stages. What is the primary pain point or opportunity that you most commonly see or talk about that you think impact.com can solve?
Speaker B: It's an interesting one because the problem that we solve really depends on where the customer is in their partnership, their affiliate or their performance marketing maturity, because it's not one size fits all and really it shouldn't be. Now, if a brand has a really established affiliate program that they might be running through, say, an affiliate network, the impact.com technology provides greater control, transparency and access to data and also the ability to automate and optimize their activity which, which ultimately results in a more efficient channel. Now that's both in terms of cost efficiency and also operational efficiencies. Then you might think, okay, what if you're a new brand coming onto the channel and thinking how can it work? Well then the value we add there is the ability to accelerate and scale the partnership opportunity. But the idea of opportunity, when I think about that, what we offer is the ability for a brand to stand up and scale a profit oriented growth channel. And really like, who doesn't want that?
Nathan Bush: I like that profit oriented growth channel. So Nagin referenced a strong technology platform and we didn't tell her to reference this, that a strong technology platform is critical when establishing the partnership program. One of those initial steps that you should be doing to automate and centralize the program, which I guess comes back to your point around creating a profitable channel. Nagin called out reporting, payment, communication. These kind of functionalities are critical, but also making sure that you've got automation, value, connections, transparency, some of the more, less kind of feature, but more relationship based attributes being part of that decision when selecting your partnership technology partners, what are the top criteria that you see your customers coming to you for and going, hey Pete, these are the things that are really important to us when we're deciding which technology platform we want to use for our partnerships program.
Speaker B: Of course. And really the things that Nagin mentioned that you've just summarized, part of what we call the partnership lifecycle. Every brand goes through this. They need to find partners, need to find ways to work with them. They need to find ways to track and then attribute and then pay them, then also continue to engage and manage them along with optimize how they work together. So regardless of, of whether you're new to the channel or old hat, that life cycle continues. But to best frame this, we need to look at where the channel and the marketing industry as a whole has been and also where we are now. The affiliate marketing channel was born out of the early days of the Internet where a website would drive traffic to a brand site and based on last click methodology, that website would get paid a commission for delivering that converted customer. We then had the rise of affiliate networks who would effectively act as an aggregator and intermediary, where the the brand would have affiliate kind of sit off to the side just ticking along. But the biggest challenge that the channel has faced is being able to prove the true value of the channel, the incremental value. What we see is that brands want the ability to take control of their own destiny in this space where they can turn any third party, any website, even another business or their own customers into an affiliate. By that we mean turn them into someone who hey, you give me an outcome I care about, I'll pay you something, I'll give you a commission. So it's a pay upon outcome engagement. And we see brands wanting to bring affiliate into the attribution side of their whole marketing mix. We see brands want to be able to pay different commissions based on things like profit margin or whether a partner plays a role just outside of last click. But most importantly, brands want the ability to be able to report on the incremental value of the channel and the partners they work with. Now these are the core things brands are looking for from a partnership platform and luckily all the things that we provide.
Nathan Bush: I love that because it goes back to what you were saying earlier around being a profitable channel and you can't do that without being able to measure all of that and have visibility over those attribution and additional channels. So that all makes perfect sense. And some of those things that you've touched upon there around different commissions and things like that we talk about in next week's episode number two around how to manage partnerships, which I think is really exciting to dive into. Last question I have for you, Pete. When getting started you speak to a lot of people who might be partnership curious. What do you think from what you've seen throughout the industry, what differentiates your great clients when establishing an e commerce partnership from just your good ones?
Speaker B: Yes, simply put, what you put into the partnership channel is what you get out the customers that we see crushing it. They're the ones who are using technology to do the heavy lifting and automate a lot of the more standard affiliate activity. But then they dedicate the time to think about growing the channel through diversification of who they work with so that they can continually generate growth. Now, in light of the the changing advertising landscape, you've got rising ad costs, you've got cookies, crumbling data and identification scrutiny along with the pressures that marketers are faced with largely being focused more on outcomes or the expectations from their board, from their managers, from the business. The expectations are rising, but the budgets are staying the same or they're shrinking. Now what we provide is the opportunity for delivering roas that is far greater than other channels and it shifts towards outcomes that could be sales, it could be lead generated, could be actual customers that have converted versus those more media metrics of clicks or likes or any other bits and pieces. Forrester Big Research firm released a study that showed that when brands were operating via a traditional affiliate network approach would say 8 to 12% of their revenue being delivered from that part of the channel. But when you move to a partnership strategy enabled through technology, they see, and we see in this market, they get up to three times that. Around 30% of their revenue starts to come from the partnership channel. And these are the things that we see that our customers who fully embrace the partnership opportunity, they're the ones who see those benefits.
Nathan Bush: I love that, Pete. And I think that was one of Nagin's key insights, is that it's not just an affiliate network. Sure, there are some great affiliate sites, the Cash, Cashbacks and the Rewards, but this is truly partnership. There are so many more opportunities to go wider and broader and to really be creative with what you're producing here to get that additional return.
Speaker B: Yeah, indeed. And look, there's the traditional affiliate approach, which is you coupon, cash back, loyalty comparison. You know what, what we provide is ways to work with them in bigger, better ways for marketers. But then it's about looking outside of that, diversifying for growth and doing it in a systematic and automated way. And you know what, it's working, which is great.
Nathan Bush: Now, Pete, the people are demanding that you come back and give us your insights next week. Episode two. You going to join me?
Speaker B: Look, I'll check the schedule.
Nathan Bush: All right, hopefully see you next week when we talk about how to manage your partnerships.
Speaker B: Thanks, mate.
Nathan Bush: Welcome back, Zoe. All right, so we heard from Negeen that partnership benchmarks and performance, they work differently in team, different markets. And I love that perspective from her because she has worked around the world in that partnership sense. I saw that July are expanding into new markets beyond Australia, which is very exciting. Have you come across this difference in how partnerships work in different territories yet or is it too early?
Zoe Lo: Not to this extent. I will say we definitely have. We definitely have benchmarks and clear outcomes that we want in different markets. But that is not guided by the partnerships, is generally guided by our current strategy in that market. So for example, in Australia we are becoming more of an established brand. So for us, we want to grow market share. It's always brand awareness, perhaps more focus. I mean, it's always a focus. So depending on what is the number one priority for the partnership, the benchmark could differ. Yes.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, makes sense. And I really like Nagin's three types of partners where she broke them up for us because I think this is part of the mystery. But she put them into like three different groups around traditional channels. Like the coupons and your cashbacks. Growth partners, influencers, content creators, those kind of partners and then innovative solutions which kind of is a catch all for the rest. But you know the emerging types of partnerships which are often driven by tech. Do you have a favorite out of any of those three groups?
Zoe Lo: Yes, I do. I will say I do really like working with. We call them KOL's key opinion leaders, which is pretty much like influencers, but it's more holistic where it might not be someone who's very public. It might be a CEO of a company who goes to a lot of conferences. So definitely you can't measure it. But we like working with people like that because they have a of lot, lot of social influence. And I found like, you know, in the early days of July, the guys did a lot of this kind of KOL gifting with no obligations on the KOL's part. And even to this day, because the product is so good, we still get a lot of value out of it. Referrals that we hear through by mouth. So from these KOLs. So that's one of my favorites. The other is actually not on here, which is brand to brand partnerships. I guess that kind of fits in under KOLs, but it's more like other brands. So for example, we are the official luggage supplier of the Olympics and Commonwealth Games teams for Australia. That is an incredible partnership and it is like I touched on before at the start of this episode. There is so many different ways that we're seeing the return from a partnership like that. That is my top and most favorite partnerships.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. So just everyone, if everyone can just go out and get partnership with the Olympic themes, that would be fantastic. Actually, I've got a question for you. Am I a Kol? Because you gifted me an add to cart July bag. Am I Kol?
Nagin Farhangma: Yeah, 100%.
Zoe Lo: You literally run a, you know, you run an ecom podcast and you speak to a lot of good E Com talent.
Nathan Bush: I have sold so many July bags that you would not know. I hope you're tracking it actually. All right, Zoe, that has been a great wrap up for episode one around how to establish and understand the opportunity for partnerships in your marketing mix. Next week we are diving into how to manage your partnership program. So once you know where partnerships fit in the mix and you've gone, yep, that's a good idea for us. What are the realities of managing that in the day to day? So that's going to be a great episode. Is there anything that you are looking forward to next week?
Zoe Lo: No, I love it. Sounds like a lot of negotiation and win, win, win situations.
Nathan Bush: Your eyes lit up a little bit there, Zoe. We'll see you next week.
Zoe Lo: Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: Now the learning doesn't have to end here. For more learning resources and access to the Partnership Experience Academy where you can get a free online partnerships accreditation or just to have a chat with the impact.com team, head on over to get.impact.com add to CartSeries. We will make sure that that link is in the show notes as well if you want to go check it out later.
