Michael Mironovic: With partnerships, anyone and everyone can essentially be a partner. And so trying to build models around that to get consistency and scale and understand exactly what's happening with these partners, when and how is the challenge.
[Voiceover]: The standout ones are the ones that feel very organic, that feel quite natural and make a lot of sense when you first hear about it.
Zoe: And we really focus on ensuring that the right value is provided to the right partners and of course, rewarding them in the right way.
[Voiceover]: 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 and welcome to Episode Episode two of our three part partnership series. Last week we talked all about how to work out where partnerships fit in your marketing mix. Today we are getting into the detail of managing partnerships with Michael Mironovic. He is the partnerships and affiliates manager with the Big Red Group. They have some very cool brands that you will know such as Red Balloon Experience, Oz and Adrenaline. Very big in the travel space, but also everything driven by online. We will be talking today about onboarding processes, communication, metrics, tracking, commission and lots more. Everything to do with managing partnerships once they are in your marketing mix. But first let's touch base with our regular co host on this series, Zoe. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us on episode two. I'm glad you came back.
[Voiceover]: Thanks for having me. I did come back.
Nathan Bush: We are here today to take that next level of partnership. So in episode one we covered how to know the opportunity for partnerships in the marketing mix and to work out where it does fit and how to set it up for success. Today we're going to dive into how to manage your partnership program so you've committed to it. But then what does that look like in terms of day to day? From everything about onboarding partners to setting up contracting, payment tracking, everything else that goes along with it. And we're going to get the lowdown and the practical tips on that.
Zoe: What about you?
Nathan Bush: What's been your favorite partnership that you've set up so far?
[Voiceover]: We have done quite a few and the standout ones are the ones that feel very organic, that feel quite natural and make a lot of sense when you first hear about it. Often we will start a relationship with like a key opinion leader, an influencer by just gifting no obligations. We just want them to test the product and then they'll use it. Then we Enter kind of of a more formal partnership, depending on how much they want to amplify it. And, you know, there are so many examples of this, but we've seen great results from, you know, one particular influencer in the US who runs a very popular cleaning and organization kind of TikTok. It's so. It's crazy, right? Because it's a bit left to feel for us like we. We wouldn't have typically come up with it, but then you think about it, you know, we are all about making the journey just as exciting as a destination, and that includes packing. So people who love organization and cleaning are really into keeping things in order and pack. So it just felt like such a good fit. So that's probably one of my favorite partnerships. And she did send a lot of sales our way, so clearly the audience loved it as well.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. And when you come across those opportunities like that, how do you know whether. Whether it's right? Is it just on a feeling or do you go deep into the analytics?
[Voiceover]: I would like to say that I go really deep into the analytics. We do enough until we're pretty sure. But generally speaking, you can kind of vibe it. I guess it's a little bit like placing a bet. If it goes wrong, you've covered yourself that you're not going to lose a lot of money. So you always start a little small, especially if you are working towards a tight budget.
Nathan Bush: So today we're going to dive into how to manage a partnership program day to day. What does that look like at July? How do you structure that? Is it part of the marketing team or is it its own specialization or outsource?
[Voiceover]: The way that we started with affiliate marketing, especially in terms of partnerships, was when we decided it was already kind of part of the marketing stack. But we wanted to kind of monetize, like, you know, offer the affiliate part of it. When we entered the US market and we were a bit smaller then, so it was a little harder to do, so what we did was we brought a consultant in who was working with Impact and kind of they helped us to scale this channel and worked really closely with us to figure out especially the tech aspect of everything and to teach us the best practice from then. As it grew, as the channel grew and we expanded to more regions and we started to work with more partners, we have eventually brought it in house. So three months ago I hired a PR and partnerships manager in house. So we started to actually fully like, change the. Org structure to support this channel. And next month we have also kind of added A new role which is the social, commerce and influencer manager. So, yes, now eventually scaled and bringing in house.
Nathan Bush: What a journey. And no doubt we're going to hear more about those different stages from our expert guests today that you've already lived through. So let's get into how to manage your partnership program with Michael Mironovic from Big Red Group. Michael, thank you so much for joining us on ADD to cart.
Michael Mironovic: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: You are our second guest. We've had Negeen on talking about how to develop a partnership strategy as part of your marketing mix. And today I'm really excited because we're going to dive into actually, how do you make this happen? The practicalities of partnerships. But before we do, let's hear a
Michael Mironovic: little bit about you.
Nathan Bush: Tell us about what your role at the Big Red Group is.
Michael Mironovic: Yeah, so, I mean, I was brought in to the Big Red Group to help scale out their partnerships and enable teams with their business outcomes as well. And yeah, I've been there for just over two and a half years now, and it's been an amazing ride. We had different brands on different platforms, but now we have all three of our core brands on the one platform. Just really kicking some big goals that I'm excited to talk about.
Nathan Bush: Tell us about those three brands.
Michael Mironovic: Yeah, so we have Red Balloon, which is the primarily the gifting brands, but they do a wide variety of experiences, everything from fine wine dining to different types of glamping and adventures as well. But the adventures really sit within the Adrenaline brands, which is focused on a younger demographic looking to just get out there on the weekend and find something to do that excites them. And finally, we have experienceoz who you might be familiar with up in Queensland, who focus heavily on tourism and travel. So all three brands speak to different segments, whether that's gifting or adventures or tourism. And we're working on how we can help use those brands to drive more memorable experiences for people in Australia and New Zealand.
Nathan Bush: Do you have a favorite child out of the three?
Michael Mironovic: Look, I think I have an adventurous spirit, so I would. I do love what's happening at Adrenaline, but all three brands do speak to me, funnily enough, and on different occasions and at different times, which is great.
Nathan Bush: That's a pretty fun category to be a part of.
Michael Mironovic: It absolutely is I. One of the reasons why I joined was I wanted to make full use of the product. And I've been canyoning and about three weeks from now, I'll go F1, Formula One, racing, driving no.
Nathan Bush: Why? Where are you doing that?
Michael Mironovic: At Eastern Creek at the Motorsport park, which is. Which will be exciting. So I've definitely used the platform to its. To its fullest.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. And tell me about partnerships. Have you always been in the partnership space?
Michael Mironovic: I have. Early on I focused more broadly across all digital marketing channels. But as time progressed, I just found the most success within partnerships and have somewhat begun a specialization journey towards that seven years ago. And it's been great because it's really allowed me to hone in on a channel and an opportunity that may be overlooked at times or deprioritized or just misunderstood. And then thought, how can I go about this to educate more people, to drive more value, to show people exactly how things work in the space.
Nathan Bush: Do you feel it's a channel that's misunderstood?
Michael Mironovic: I think it has, because if you look at other channels, whether that's social or search or whatever it may be, there's only a handful of players in that space. With partnerships, anyone and everyone can essentially be a partner. And so. So trying to build models around that to get consistency and scale and understand exactly what's happening with these partners, when and how is the challenge. But through great technology, it's a lot easier to understand that value prop and to build around it. And that's what's always had me excited about the space.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Great. And so Nagin's done a brilliant job of setting the scene for us in the first of our three episodes here around partnerships. So she set the scene around where it fits in the marketing and we're going to dive into how it happens today. But just so we understand where you're coming from for the Big Red Group, where do you see the biggest value proposition for partnerships for the Big Red Group?
Michael Mironovic: I think for us it's in the sense that. And it's quite specific, funnily enough, at Big Red Group, relative to other brands or retailers that I've worked with, is that at the Big Red Group, there's no shortage of partners that want to work with the brands. There's no issue in terms of the amount of partners or the interest of partners in working with us. And so it's really a matter of prioritization and as I mentioned earlier, determining what are the metrics that matter and what are the business outcomes that are important and then looking at which of those partners can help facilitate that. And so we work with tourism bodies, we work with travel agencies, we work with influencers, we work with loyalty and finance partners, we work with so many different partners on the business and have access to them and have interest from them. And so the value prop from the business perspective is we have so much addressable market here in terms of who we can work with that will open us to wider audiences. How do we hone in on that? How do we find the most value and then how do we potentially scale that? If we see a partner that's or a vertical that's just really resonating with our customers, how can we do more with them?
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Amazing. And I can imagine with such a broad variety of partners out there, having really clear processes and ways of working is key to optimizing that.
Michael Mironovic: Absolutely.
Nathan Bush: So we're going to dive into that today and we're going to go through everything from how you find and onboard your partners, through how you do contracting and payment, and all the way through to what you just mentioned around tracking and metrics, which will be really interesting. But we might start right up the top. When you are reaching out to potential partners and whether that be tourism bodies, all the way through to influencers, what is the starting point? What do people need to have ready when first going out to go, hey, do you want to partner with us?
Michael Mironovic: I think the key first point that needs to be covered when you're at that level is to understand whether the relevancy is there and whether the appropriate commitment is there. Everyone. I mean, as I mentioned, there's so many different partnership opportunities available within the business. But whether the other side of the partner or even on our side of the partnership can commit the appropriate amount of resources, the appropriate amount of time, the appropriate amount of funding, whatever it may be, if that what and the why hasn't been covered in terms of what are we trying to achieve here, why is it making sure both parties are privy to it and understand it and can execute on it, it's going to be a real challenge to make that a successful partnership and drive those outcomes that the business wants. So first and foremost, it's about getting that parity between the two parties and making sure that that's all in place. But then beyond that, it's then once that's established, looking at, well, how can we execute on that? What's the software that we need, what's the contracts that we'll need in place, how will we track things, how will we provide you with content, all of those different aspects that come into play. But first and foremost, it really is establishing the protocols, the rules in place that that will drive that partnership.
Nathan Bush: And is that largely getting to that? Why for the other party. Is that largely a manual process, you know, conversations on the phone, you know, trying to work through things?
Zoe: It is, it is.
Michael Mironovic: But to be honest, as amazing as technology is in terms of automating activity, optimizing off activity, giving insights into things, there is that human touch that's most relevant right at the start of that partnership that you can't necessarily automate. That happens when you meet face to face with that person, when you talk through each other's businesses and get an understanding for each other's customers and ways of working. So it is the most key aspect and the aspect that needs to be covered with that human touch initially.
Nathan Bush: Have you got any secret questions or ways of probing potential partners in a conversation to get to that? Why really quickly is there any like dead giveaways to know whether they're in it for the right reason?
Michael Mironovic: It really is just about being truthful and honest. I mean, sometimes in business we want to pursue something just for the sake of pursuing it, because it might sound right or it might be someone else said that it made sense or whatever it may be. And we don't necessarily get to the core of what's wanting to be achieved. And so I'd say it's really coming down to transparency and honesty and being truthful with yourself and the partner as to what's happening here. Why have we come to the table? What are we wanting to deliver? And that will be the case throughout the entire partnership journey is sticking to those initial principles. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: So be prepared to get face to face with potential partners. Be honest, be truthful, be open.
Michael Mironovic: Absolutely.
Nathan Bush: And then the right whys will come to the surface and you'll be able to flush out whether it's a great, good partnership from the get go.
Michael Mironovic: Definitely.
Nathan Bush: So if you're doing a team planning day and I don't know if you're working, if you work this way, so I'm going to put myself in your shoes and I don't know your shoes particularly well, but if you're doing a bit of a planning day around upcoming partnerships and potentials to grow this partnership network and you're thinking about potential partners that you could reach out to and have those conversations with, are there any tools that you use or any ways to, to identify new partner opportunities based on, you know, who has the right audience, a larger audience, a well aligned
Michael Mironovic: audience, we rely on several different mediums for those inputs. So we have our brand teams that are regularly doing qualitative and quantitative research in terms of better understanding our customer. But then what are aligning brands that our customer is also purchasing from. So whether it's, for instance, say GoPro that aligns heavily with the adrenaline brand and we've run partnerships and activity campaign with them, whatever it may be, we do a lot of qual and quant research on the brand side that helps determine a lot of those decisions. We also have great tools like the discovery tool and Impact, which is the software that we use that has probably more than a dozen levels of filtration where we can see audience size, audience segments, engagement metrics, and a whole variety of details relevant to potential audiences that we can, that we can target through that system. And then it also comes down to network. So we have a commercial partnerships manager and a corporate partnerships manager and a brand team that just has to work with X, Y or Z. And so we use all of those different mediums to then, to your point, come together and workshop and think who are the most relevant partners, when should we be working with them, how should we approach them, and how are we going to manage this going forward?
Nathan Bush: Really interested on that qualitative and quantitative data that you share with your partners. The GoPro is a fantastic example. Is that a case of, you know, you think about it logically, you go, yep, great. People who are into adventure sports or adrenaline sports, GoPro seemed a natural fit. But how do you actually quantitate the data? Is that surveys with customers? Yeah. How do you get that data to take to them?
Michael Mironovic: Yeah, it absolutely is surveys. It will be whatever the research team determine will be the best way to obtain that. And to your point, it really is interesting because we have amazing brand managers that are super passionate and believe that this is exactly what the customer wants and this is how we should position ourselves and this is where we should go. But then making sure that they're regularly going in and looking at all of those insights and knowing exactly how the market is responding to us and what are driving purchase decisions and different behavioral aspects in the wider market is so key because then it helps them tweak their overall strategy and how they position themselves and how they speak to the market and what the tone of voice is and all these different factors.
Nathan Bush: Do you sometimes find by doing that and forcing yourself into trying to quantify that data, you find some partnerships that you go, oh, that was a bit odd. I would never have thought of that one.
Michael Mironovic: Naturally, yeah, it is. I mean, you have to take an open mind to any of these activities, really. And you always make assumptions best off best judgment and historically, what you've seen in market. But Nothing works as well in terms of correlating that back to real insights from key players in market that specialize in that type of data that really understands consumer spending and behavioral aspects of the market.
Nathan Bush: Okay, so assume you've gone down this process and you've gone great. Here's our list of partners that we want to go after. Have those conversations. Open, honest, we're all on the same page. Go. All right, let's put something in place. What is the onboarding and kind of recruiting process for new partners? Do you have a process?
Michael Mironovic: Yeah, so we absolutely do. And going back to the brand team because we've really opened the window in terms of who we see as valuable partners and content creators plays a substantial role in that. They've put together some amazing material that we share with those partners. To some extent it's tailored. So whether it's a content partner or whether it's an enterprise partner, we will provide specific messaging and collateral to those partners. But we don't want to assume that everyone knows who we are. I mean, brands like Red Balloon and Adrenaline have been in market for close to 20 years, but the market changes and you have new consumers coming into the market. And so we always need to engage, sure that we have the most relevant materials out there for people to know who we are and how they can work with us. And the brand team have been great at doing that. And then in terms of the more executional side and tracking that activity, we onboard them to a platform called Impact where we manage all of our partners. And again, that's a relatively easy process. It's really probably a 10 minute process in signing up to the platform. It's, it's as a partner, it's free to sign up to that platform. And within that platform there's so many different reference tools. There's, there's guidance on how exactly everything works. So it's, it's a really smooth process for our partners in terms of understanding who we are, getting live in the system and getting up and running.
Nathan Bush: So from your side it's, we've got the collateral which is about us as Big Red Group. Here's who we are, what we do, how we talk, how we act. Does it go into all that kind of this is how we want, you know, brand tone, all that sort of stuff?
Michael Mironovic: Yes, yes. And we have that loaded into the system as well. It really is important. And my background has always been more heavily on the analytical side, drilling into numbers. But I think the benefit of working at Big Red Group is my function actually Sits within the consumer marketing team. So I work really closely with, with the performance marketing team in terms of search and other performance channels. But really, day to day, I'm spending a lot of my time with the content and social teams so that we ensure however we're messaging and communicating to market is then reflected through our partners as well. I think it was a pretty genius move on big Red groups and to set that up because I absolutely will sit with the performance team and we'll crunch on roas and all these different metrics. But at the same time, it also keeps me honest and makes sure that where we're doing a service to the brand that it deserves in promoting it the way it should so that we generate higher lifetime value and awareness for that brand.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. You can't let partners just go off rogue if you spend all this time and money building these beautiful brands.
Michael Mironovic: Yeah, absolutely. On the converse side, they're probably working with not just the one brand partner or the one retail or the one brand themselves. And so they will have different partners and workloads that they have to work to. So making it as easy for them as possible and having that all up front and in a system where they can access is crucial.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. So we've given them the collateral, everything that they need to get started in terms of creating content. And then Impact takes care of kind of the rest in terms of the onboarding and the, you know, registering. So assume, assume we've got a signed agreement, we're away, and then you go, great. One of our brands has got this big promotion or something that we really want your help in getting out there. How do you brief your partners on certain activations or certain messages that you want to get out and market?
Michael Mironovic: That's a great question. So we, we will run a monthly newsletter which we send out to all our partners through that system. In that system, we can set up groups. So we're going to start tailoring the messaging and the promotions and the offers to the relevant partners. So we don't want to be pushing the same promotion to a content creator that we do to a financial institution, for instance. And so we're focusing on tailoring all of the messaging, all of the content and all of the comms to each of those specific segments within the system. And in all honesty, we'd love to build out what we have in Impact to be more of a content hub where we're putting in their dynamic rich media, where we're putting static banners, where we're putting email templates. I mean, we have product catalogs in there now, which partners can access, but we really want it to be a content hub so that rather than our partners having to go out and chase all that content, it's all in the one convenient location for them to access.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, gotcha. And in terms of getting partners excited about marketing messages or campaigns in market, is there much effort to do that? Do you really have to sell it to them?
Michael Mironovic: To be honest, we spend a lot of time focusing on brand. I mean, we have individual brand teams, quite sizable for each of the brands and the campaigns that they work with. They not only do they get everyone internally excited about, but then they're thinking about how can we generate buzz within market. And I'll be honest, it's. We are at somewhat of an advantage. It is quite easy to get people excited about experiences. If it was another industry.
Nathan Bush: I mean, you've got a brand called Adrenaline.
Michael Mironovic: Exactly. So, yeah, it's.
Zoe: It's.
Michael Mironovic: We. We are lucky in that sense. But I can see for a budding entrepreneur or even an enterprise that's quite sizable, but selling a product that's quite niche, it might be more of a challenge. And so the ability to be a bit more creative and think, how do we actually go to market? How do we get cut through is really important.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Well, you've given us some really great tips there in terms of the onboarding process that you do at the Big Red Group. Talked about the collateral pack at the start with all the branding information, how we talk, talk what we're about, talked about the impact platform, being able to register your details and have all the documentation in there, as well as brand assets and media. And then I love the idea of the monthly newsletters to partners as well. Is there anything else that you spend a lot of time or your team spend a lot of time providing to partners to make sure they get the best message out in market.
Michael Mironovic: On a marketing upside, we have great internal ways of working that we establish with our partners to ensure that we understand what their campaigns are that are most relevant, because it's not always necessarily just about us. Our partners will also have a great travel campaign that they're going out with, or they'll have a campaign specific to their members, or they'll have some kind of promotional campaign. So it really is about having alignment between us and them and having, whether it's, you know, a fortnightly cadence or a quarterly business review or whatever it may be with those key partners to kind of get them across everything that we're doing. And for us to better understand what they're doing as well. That really is the key, is that having that ways of working where it is a smooth flow of information and it is ideally as templated as possible. So we can kind of go, all right, what's this new upcoming campaign we want to tie into an EDM or a carousel placement or whatever it may be. And we'd love to get that as programmatically set up as some of the other marketing channels out there. But as you know, every partner has a different system and so we have to just look at each partner on a case by case basis and then try and establish as smoother rhythm as possible in interacting with them.
Nathan Bush: That's a great tip, isn't it? It's not just about what you want to push out to them, it's what's going on in their world that you can help them with and fit into what they're doing.
Michael Mironovic: Yeah, it's important.
Nathan Bush: And when you talk about meeting up, whether it's those regular meetings, how often do you find that your partners want to catch up with you and talk about what's going on in both worlds?
Michael Mironovic: It's quite often, again, I think where we're quite fortunate. It is quite a a recognized brand and I'm sure if it was a startup, the startup would have to be a lot more savvier in terms of how they get that interest from some of the sizable partners and whether it's a mobile app or whether it's a content creator, how they get that interest. But for us, it's quite an easy conversation to have and we try and approach it as open minded as possible. So we'll run sometimes crazy brainstorming sessions where we go, how can we throw the CEO of this partner out of an airplane and make some news out of it? And hopefully it all goes to plan. And so we keep an open mind and we say, look, the sky's the limit. Let's talk through whatever's available to us and have a think about how we can generate some real interest in Buzz.
Nathan Bush: Great. All right, so let's move on to the contracting and the financial side of a partnership arrangement. What are the typical ways that you reimburse or incentivize your partners for Big Red Group?
Michael Mironovic: Yeah, so we the benefit of using a platform like Impact is it's a very heavily rules based system. So whatever rules or logic we're interested in, we can set that up in the system. And we've set up so many different sets of logic in terms of incentivizing on hitting certain spend amounts or focusing on specific categories, or we capture right down to a product level within that system. So if there's specific products that we want to drive, we can do that as well. Probably an interesting point which might get looked over at times is we have rules set up to help optimize partnerships, but we also have rules set up to protect us. So through that system, if for instance, we don't want to incentivize partners to where their members would, for instance, use a gift card to make a payment, we can set that up in the system like we're happy to commission someone if the purchase was a gift card, but where a gift card was used as payment, we'll set up a rule against that. Or even for instance, we could set up a rule that we're not going to incentivize when a non partnership code was used. So for instance, if a customer lifecycle code was used, we can set up those rules as well. So we get quite intricate in the level of commissioning and incentivization that we do through that system. And I encourage anyone that's using one of these platforms to really have a think about, well, how can we set up interesting and different ways of driving those certain metrics with partners rather than just offering like a flat fee or whatever it may be and kind of not really gaining interest or losing interest from partners just because it's quite a stale offering that you have there.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And regardless of the rules or the fluctuations you put in, there are most of the reimbursements a percentage of the basket that goes through from those partners.
Michael Mironovic: Correct. So the majority of the actions that we're commissioning are on sales, on transactions, on conversions, and they are a percentage. But we do have a number of click based campaigns that we're running through that system for more upper funnel partners. And the system is quite sophisticated. So in time, if we want to commission on the action of the download of an app or the download of a form or any of these other varying actions that are important to a business, we can and absolutely will set up those events.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. What are the most popular click based
Michael Mironovic: rewards that you see in terms of the partners? Yeah, yeah. So I mean we, we have a partner who essentially has a network of online publishers that promote through their emails. And so through those emails we supply templated or briefed emails that can go out to that network of partners. But they've just found that their pricing model works best off a qlik model. And we've looked into the data on our end. And we've kind of seen where this particular partner plays within a consumer's journey and we've said, yes, we're happy to work on a cost per click basis because we can always create, correlate that back to an equivalent cost per action, if that makes sense. So we understand the value of that relative to all the other activity that's happening in there. But there's, I mean there's quite a few intricate and interesting business models there around clicks. And if you think about it like there's an entire online publishing industry there that's worked off impressions and clicks and that's great. But why not run some of that activity through a platform where you can streamline that in and amongst all your other activity and have full transparency into the value of that upper funnel activity alongside some of your more middle and bottom funnel activity.
Nathan Bush: When you think about the massive search and performance marketing still based on clicks, like you've just gone the next level with performance as well.
Michael Mironovic: Yes, yeah, absolutely. Funnily enough, that activity is managed by the performance team. But this goes back to what I was saying where I largely focus on the tech and how to use that tech to enable different teams. And that team is also managing our search and search works off clicks. And so we're just looking at how we can, some of these other partners that are also working off a qlik model or an impression model, we can track through the system because then we can kind of aggregate and streamline all that activity in the one place. Google, you know, they have one of the biggest companies in the world, great tracking, great systems. Let's leave that. There's. But for some of the other players out there in market, it really is a great value prop for them to be able to allow us to standardize and aggregate that activity with them in amongst all our other partner initiatives.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And I can imagine when you get into the commission side with all the rules that you can implement, you could go down a rabbit hole pretty quickly.
Michael Mironovic: Yes, yes, yeah. And it look, we, we, we capture so much within the data layer. We look at everything, we focus on the metrics that matter, but those metrics can change over time. And so it's really important to track as much as possible so that you have that historical reference. And then when the time comes to focus on that particular metric, you have everything there that's needed and can kind of optimize right off the bat.
Nathan Bush: So if we've got people listening who are just setting up their partnership offerings and they're looking at the commission base. Are you able to give an indication of what you see in the partnership world? Not necessarily for Big Red group of where you see commission percentages range from.
Michael Mironovic: Yes, I mean historically it largely has worked off profit margins. So in an industry like say fashion, where the profit margins are substantial, they will be able to offer a higher commission. If you're talking about for instance Apple products which have a much lower profit margin, at least with the retailers that sell them, it's going to be a lot more challenging to offer commissions on on some of those products and electrical products in general as well. So it can vary anywhere from 2% upwards to probably as high as about 30% in terms of what commission a retailer can largely offer based off their profit margins. But then the other thing to note is to your point, there's all these amazing campaign activities that are running, you can go on promotion and for instance offer higher points, especially if those points are being passed on to members of a partner that you're working with, for instance say in the insurance category or in the finance category and it's being passed on to their members in the form of points or some kind of reward. We often do look at increases in. In commissions based on specific activity.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and I just wanted to get your thoughts on that too because you mentioned a couple of things in there which around rules which will change the commission structure. Imagine that there's more commission for new customers versus existing customers, full priced items versus promotional items. If we've got people setting this up for the first time, are there any other triggers that you think they should have front of mind when setting those different rules are Absolutely.
Michael Mironovic: Where you see the greater value you should be rewarding more. Where you see the less value you should be rewarding less. You know, great points there. Whether it's new subscribers, new members, always look at those individual metrics and determine where it sits for you within. Within the business. The only other thing that I would add as well is have a think about what are some of the key drivers to that business. Sorry. If you're an alcohol business, let's say, and you've seen you've lost market share in wine and you really want to drive that wine category and that's a top business priority. Absolutely. Go after that. And that's the benefit of a system like this. If there's specific categories, if there's specific customer groups, to your point, if there's specific products or even supplies, if for instance you're having, if you have a supplier that's saying, you know, we we'd love to reevaluate the relationship. How can we do more? How can we potentially even help fund more activity? Then if you're tracking that through the system, you can work with partners and say, look, if, if you're promoting this particular supplier, we'll give a higher incentive. So it really goes back to what we said right at the start of the session, which is, what are those key business outcomes and then setting up the rewards and the incentives based off of those that you want, really want to drive.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great tip, great tip. And I'm assuming if you've got a platform like Impact, that the calculation of all the commissions and the clicks is done automatically, what is the typical payment terms that you see? A partner's usually paid out monthly or how does it work from that perspective?
Michael Mironovic: Yes, I mean, operationally, we on our end will approve transactions anywhere from 45 to 60 days after they occur and then payment is made 30 days after that in terms of our trading terms. So partners will typically get paid with within say, 60 to 75 days. And that just is to factor in if there's any cancellations. And it would vary from retailer to retailers. So someone who offers 90 day return periods would likely have a longer period before they pay out their partner so that they can factor in those cancellations. But to be honest, ours is probably indicative of the wider market. If you looked at all of the different retailers, it's probably going to be a typical 60 days from the time of trans, 60 to 75 days from time of transaction before the payment's made to the partner.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, brilliant. I love that tip. I think really critical for a lot of our retailers to think about is that what happens post purchases you don't want to reward straight away is obviously we've got fulfillment to get through still, we've got returns, we've got everything else that comes after this. You only want to pay for customers that, that have a, you know, the experience that, that they should correct. All right. So I feel that you're going to be really passionate about this next part of the journey, which is the tracking and the data piece. You've mentioned it a few times and I love that you opened one with. When you're talking to partners around, making sure the partnership is open, transparent from the get go. Can I assume then that that goes into the data that it's really important that you both see and share the same data?
Michael Mironovic: Yes. So with Impact, you're able to, to a certain extent, determine what gets shared. I are on the side of sharing as much as possible. Because it's one thing for us, us to know that our partners, members are purchasing these products in these categories, in these locations. It's a lot easier if they have that access, access to that data in real time and can see what their members are purchasing from Red Balloon or Adrenaline or experience odds on any given day in which category, what product, and then be able to adjust how they're promoting that to their member base through their EDMs, through their media opportunities. So we, we find, share as much of that as possible and it just makes optimizations so much easier. Think of it even at the most granular of level, if you have a content creator or an influencer and they're promoting this set of shoes, right. But then everyone goes and buys this particular sweater or whatever it may be, it gives them a better understanding of. Even though this is really important to me and I want to promote this, this is what my customer, what my audience is really interested in. So maybe I should promote more of that. And so from that perspective, we, we, it makes our optimization easier if they have access to that data and can make the optimization on their end.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. And so they're viewing all of your data via the Impact platform.
Michael Mironovic: Correct.
Nathan Bush: You're not generating new reports or anything else outside of that?
Michael Mironovic: No. And they, they can access that via API, so they can pull that straight into their data warehouse and drill into that really quickly. Impact is probably best in market. When I look at the amount of platforms that they integrate with and the amount of features that they have in terms of how information is accessed.
Nathan Bush: Great. And then on your side of Impact, what systems are you pulling information in from and feeding into Impact.
Michael Mironovic: Yeah, so we use platform called Segment as our events tracking. I mean they typically run as a customer data platform. We, we run our event tracking through them and that, that runs through Impact. So it was, again, it was, it was great with Impact because they have all these, they're integrated with so many different solutions out there. And I think historically how retailers would have set this type of activity up is they would use GTM or they would have JavaScript on all of their pages, which could slow their website down quite clunky. So being able to do everything through Segment has been phenomenal. And as we build more smarts into segment, say Personas, whatever it may be, we can then see which partners are driving what Personas optimize off that. So from information flowing in, we use Segment and then we also look at how we can get that information out into our data warehouse. We Use, we use Snowflake and we use Tableau as our data visualization tool. So then ensuring a lot of that information is already there because it's the transaction data, but for instance the spend data. So on any given day, week or month, our senior leadership team, anyone on the business, if we have that information flowing through to our data warehouse, knows exactly which partners are driving how much roas and volume and whatnot. So that's been really important as well. Gotcha.
Nathan Bush: And then when you are logging into the Impact platform to check how the partnerships are going, what are some of the key metrics that you're looking at?
Michael Mironovic: There's a lot of the top line metrics in terms of conversions, in terms of revenue, in terms of clicks and whatnot. That's all great, especially if things are going up and up, up, but really how you optimize is looking at some of those downstream metrics. So the average order value, Right. Is, is everyone increasing the average spend that they're doing? Are they buying more within their basket, which we refer to as average order size, Some people refer to it as basket size. And so we look at some of those averages and some of those more downstream metrics to kind of determine how can we potentially shift spend cycles to drive those more top line metrics. To your point, we look at new subscribers, we look at so many different variables within the system relative to what we're trying to achieve at the time. But look, you could go into the, I mean impact has probably 105 different pre built reports, so they make it a lot easier for any given individual. But we have a good understanding of what we want to achieve and when. So we will often just set up those trackers in their system to confirm we're on target.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love what you've set up there because I think a lot of people, when they're thinking about partnerships and especially commissions, you know, you think, oh, I just need a report which tells me all the partners, how many they've sold, you know, what money I owe them. But you're saying actually that's fine, that's kind of the business of it. But you really need to go back through the customer cycle and understand each customer.
Michael Mironovic: Yes.
Nathan Bush: For each partner and the different journeys and the different motivations.
Michael Mironovic: Absolutely. And the benefit again of Impact is you can have the wider marketing data that you have flowing into that system. So if you're working off a multi touch attribution model and you're saying, look, we're going to kind of commission, we believe this particular channel or this particular partner drives this amount of value. Whatever logic you've set up internally around that, you can then have that replicated in the system, which is great. And to your point, you can look at it right down to that individual level where you click on a particular transaction. You see that they started with this partner, then they interacted with this channel and then the conversion finally happened here. All within that one system, within which is a great feature to have. And we take that into consideration. Whenever we're doing our planning, we regularly work with the data team to determine what value each of our partners gives where within customer journeys at a single line item level, but then on aggregate as well.
Nathan Bush: You mentioned the A word, the attribution word. How does that play out in the world of partnerships? In is there. Do you reward partners who may have had, you know, a path into the final sale, even if the sale doesn't happen on their web or from their last click?
Michael Mironovic: Yes. I mean we, in the system as well, we can see whether the partner was the first click, whether they were the last click or had some click in between in terms of initiating, influencing and converting. So we use some logic around that in terms of how we structure our commitment. And as mentioned, we, we can essentially run a de duping process externally. If we found that search or social or a particular channel was really the key contributor in that particular sale, we can then filter that straight into the system to say, well, we're not going to attribute that sale to that particular partner. It does get a bit interesting when you're looking at loyalty partners who have a member base, because if someone has purchased from say, let's say a Qantas Mall or something like that from us, we can't really go back to that customer and say we're not going to reward you those points because we're giving them to Google because Google doesn't have enough money already. So we set up all these different rules and we look at all of the different consumer journeys and determine what's in the best interest of the customer, what's in the best interest of the business. And then whatever logic we come to on our end, we can then reflect that within impact.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. And then does this data all come together and I've got a feeling I know where this is heading because you talked about all the different teams that are involved into the overall marketing output of performance and reaching goals together. How does it fit with the rest of the marketing plan?
Michael Mironovic: Yes, I mean we're regularly doing post campaign analysis, deep dives into performance data and we'll regularly go back and look at all of those different variables that we've captured within the system and how they're impacting across other channels. So we found for instance late last year that Partners through Impact was our second biggest refer of new subscribers to the business, which is great. Again, it really is challenging to pinpoint this partner drove value Y. And so we're going to do reward them with X or whatever it may be. We try and get to as granular level where we can do that and automate that as possible. But we always have to go back and look at cross marketing data across all the different teams, across all the media that we spend, across all the performance channels that we work through, and then see where the value is across each of those journeys. How often is that happening? Looking at it at an individual line item basis and then on aggregate as well. And again, you get some great insights there when you're working close within with the data and insights team in terms of how you can optimize some of that activity.
Nathan Bush: Michael, you've given us some great insights, very practical insights from that stage of finding and onboarding partners through to contracting a payment all the way through to tracking it. If someone came to you with a magic wand and said there's one part of this process that I can fix for you to make partnerships really easy, where would you love it fixed?
Michael Mironovic: I think that there are some great tools out there, such as Impact, that help you do amazing things. The biggest challenge is for the individual person that's managing this channel to get the sufficient buy in internally. At Big Red Group, I'm quite fortunate because the leadership team sees value in partnerships. There's partnership, there's corporate partner managers and commercial partner managers. And so my job, even though I have had to do a lot of education in terms of how can we use this tool, how will it benefit your team, all these different things. I'd say that's the greatest challenge for any given individual is getting the buy in from the right people internally. But it is the most important because if you want to be successful in achieving those outcomes through a program of work like partnerships, if you don't have that vested interest, if you don't have that social capital from the highest level, you'll be spending most of your time just trying to explain yourself rather than actually going in there and doing the work. So I would highly recommend to anyone that that is looking to pursue this channel seriously is to make sure that everyone within the company knows that it's a journey, knows that this is what they have access to, what they can do and work to educate them on how they can utilize it to its fullest capability.
Nathan Bush: Has there been any narrative or argument that you've used throughout your career to help people who might not believe in partnerships go, oh, yeah, I can think about this a bit, a little bit differently.
Michael Mironovic: So look, at the end of the day, numbers don't lie. I mean, how you interpret them can, can vary, but the way you get the buy in is by going in there and drilling into the data and kind of going regularly and whether it's at the start or whether it's towards the middle of your journey within the company or towards the end is really going into the data and going kind of, if there was an existing partnerships program, how did it work? If we have existing partners but we're tracking it through ga, how is that going? How, how is this all working? And then looking at the data and then setting up those different targets and kind of going, can we achieve Y from X? Can we increase our roas? Can we increase our new subscribers? Is that even relevant to us? So in terms of how to get that vested interest, you really have to break down into the data and kind of go, look, you can achieve this if we do this and it's visible through what we've seen historically in GA and now what we can optimize through something like impact. But I would love to say you can give some kind of spiel or some kind of savvy sales message. Really, at the end of the day, they just want to make sure that it's all accurate and that it will deliver on what it set out to deliver.
Nathan Bush: Michael, that was brilliant. Thank you so much. So many practical tips in there. And I think anyone who's listening to this, who, you know, heard before from Nagin around, yeah, cool. This does fit into our strategy. Now we'll feel like a certain sense of calm and almost motivation of I just want to get in there and use it now and get started. So thank you so much for that.
Michael Mironovic: Thank you for having me. It's been fun.
Nathan Bush: I really enjoyed getting into the. The nitty gritty of what it takes to manage partnerships. It just brings it to life and shows how we actually do it in a real world scenario. Michael talked a little bit about how impact.com's tech supports the management side of partnerships. So to expand on that, I'm going to have a quick chat with our regular partner, rep Peter Bray. Impact.com's APAC sales director. Pete the people spoke you responded. You're back for episode two. Great to see you.
Zoe: Oh, you know, it was a heavy lift, but I'm here, man, and happy to be here.
Nathan Bush: Fantastic. I love that chat with Michael around diving into the detail around how to manage a partnership program. As someone who's never actually been in the weeds on a partnership program, it was great to get that from Michael and the role that impact.com plays in that. One of the things that Michael referenced was impact.com's discovery tool. Can you share more detail around how that works and what retailers can expect from using it? Of course.
Zoe: And look, Mike, what an experienced cat in this space. And yeah, he's great to listen to and he does love a bit of partner discovery. But ultimately this is the impact.com opt in global marketplace. Now, brands can search for and filter through a range of different partner types and then easily shortlist them, contact them, and then onboard them into their program. It's a very, very clean and easy way to find new partners to work with. And why this is interesting, for most brands who work through like an affiliate network, for example, it's very much Pareto's principle. 80% of revenue, if not more, comes from 20%, if not less of total partners. And those are your more traditional affiliates. So your coupon, cashback, loyalty, etc. Now, for brands who want to diversify who they work with, if they want to diversify their partner base so they aren't overly reliant on that small 10 or 20%, they can use this discovery capability in impact.com to expand their partner mix, which translates to overall program coverage and growth. Alongside that, we don't want to restrict brands from working with just who's in the marketplace. We also give brands the ability to work with any type of third party who aren't even in our discovery platform. Like for example, you could go to canva.com affiliates right now and then you'll see that you can apply to be part of their ambassador program.
Nathan Bush: That's pretty cool.
Zoe: This whole idea is that anyone can become an outcome driving partner and that growth comes from diversification of who you work with. And there's also a really cool release and I'm not even sure if Mike's seen it, which is where a brand can input keywords and then our tool will generate a list of websites where that keyword is appearing. So if the keyword is lipstick review or sneaker drops, we will crawl the web and curate a list of sites that are publishing content related to those keywords. Now this is Helpful because a brand can review and triage this list and potentially bring these publishers on affiliate partners to again help support growth through diversification.
Nathan Bush: I love that. I love the options there. When you mentioned the Canva example, I hadn't heard of that either, but you can see where it's going and the borderless version of it is just amazing compared to some of the other walled gardens that you come across in marketing channels. One of the things that Michael talked about was tailoring rewards for different partners in the technology platform. He gave some examples, but can you share with us how that works? Specifically, you know, the different commission structures and how you set those rules?
Zoe: Of course. Now impact.com gives a brand the ability to reward any type of partner based on the value they deliver. The legacy affiliate network model is based on paying the same commission being paid to the same type of affiliate, regardless of the product being sold or what happened in that path to conversion. But look, that's not how businesses work. Not every product has the same profit margin. If a marketer has invested in acquiring a customer over the years, they may want to pay less commission for that customer coming through this channel compared to a new customer who is worth more to that brand. So therefore they're likely to pay a higher commission. The big one that a brand really struggles with from what we hear, is the ability to identify if other channels have played a role to get a customer to site and then an affiliate comes in on a last click and takes the attribution and commission. Now all of this stuff brands have typically had no control over, they've been blind to a lot of it. And what we do, we offer brands the ability to build a contract or an agreement they'll have with a partner that is based on that value that the partners are delivering. They can customize commissions based on for example, SKU level profit margin. They can change commissions based on whether a customer is new versus existing versus a frequently recurring customer. Different commissions if it's a cashback site versus a high end fashion publication. And we can even provide the ability to alter commissions based on whether another paid marketing channel has played a role in the customer journey. These things are unique to what we offer and, and we really focus on ensuring that the right value is provided to the right partners and of course rewarding them in the right way.
Nathan Bush: It's brilliant and like you said right in the episode one around it being a profit driven channel, those rules are made for that. So I think that's really important and a great point to make. One of the things that keeps coming through all our conversations over the first two episodes is that metrics and measurement are key in making successful partnerships work because not only for the retailer, the partners need to see it as well so that they can truly make this a partnership. Metrics and measurement need to be seen on both sides. What are the key reports that you see your clients use the most in Impact's platform?
Zoe: Look, undoubtedly the reporting capability of what we offer has changed the entire complexion of what the partnership and affiliate channel can deliver. And the biggest thing is being able to measure, and I've mentioned this previously, is the idea of incremental value that an individual partner or the channel as a whole is delivering. Now this is a game changer. If you can report on that, it shifts perceptions within the entire organization. Now being able to report on new customers acquired through which partners and things like their average basket sizes, repeat purchase value customers, our customers love seeing that type of data and again, they've been blind to this before. And I've also got to say that probably one of the, one of the biggest things that we also see more and more of when it comes to access to data to be able to better report on the real value of this channel is not just having it in our platform, but being able to take it, export that into their own internal bi or data viz tool or then customize and curate their own reports in platform via a data lab. So we're just the custodians of the data in the sense that we give you the ability to do what you want with it. But providing this level of access to that information is essential in a marketer's world these days for them to realize the true potential of this channel.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and it's one of the things, the key themes that's coming through for me is that you need these measurements as your baseline before you even get started so that you know it's clear, it's transparent, it's measurable all the way
Zoe: through and it comes from a place of maturity. Not every brand is at the same stage. And so if you've got the information there when you want it, you can get it at the right time.
Nathan Bush: Pete, the people have spoken. You've delivered. Thank you for joining us on episode two. We're going to make it a trifecta.
Michael Mironovic: Episode three, mate.
Zoe: Already in the calendar. Let's do it.
Nathan Bush: God, we're getting good at this. Welcome back, Zoe. Michael talked a lot in there around common metrics that are tracked in partnership marketing. Some really great examples all throughout that what's your approach at July and even before that around setting metrics that work for you in partnership marketing.
[Voiceover]: In the first episode, we talked about ensuring that a good partnership is set on the foundation of a win, win, win, win, win, win situation. Win for the customer, win for the other brands that you're partnering or the other people that you're partnering with, and win for yourself. It is so important for us when we start the partnership or we're in like, it's getting quite serious to really, really discuss what we want from it, what they want from it, and what the customer gets out of it. So we have my. I guess my top tip would be the metrics. Definitely understand the why as early as you can and then have that honest discussion with the person you're partnering with or the business that you're partnering with really early and set some clear goals or make it very, very clear. So what are the metrics? What are your hopes? How are you going to measure that? When are you going to check in with them and how is that information going to be shared? So if it's something as simple as we're doing like a joint bundle product and you get this cut from it and I get this cut from it, I guess you could be like, okay, let's check in after a week. Or like, I'll give you access to this dashboard so you can see how the sales are going. So be very, very clear. That's essentially how we track things.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Transparency was one of the key themes that Michael talked about and how important that is for trust between the two parties. So I like that you brought it up again, one of the other things that Michael talked about and you alluded to it there, but how important it is to get stakeholder buy in around partnerships and how there is a generally, you know, there is some difficulty sometimes in getting stakeholder buy in, especially when there's not an understanding of how partnerships work. Have you had that experience before?
[Voiceover]: Not really, but I can totally understand it. I think I have, yes, I have, actually. With people who are from different teams, perhaps they don't understand how it works. It depends on why you need the buy in from them. So, for example, I'll give you like, you know, if it's like someone from the finance team, you could definitely come to the table with a few examples of other brands that have done it before. There are loads of case studies online and you can, you can kind of walk them through your measurement plan for it and approach it as in, you know, on their perspective being asking them if they have any advice on how to better measure as well. So I find like that's a really good approach. I also find that if partnerships is a new thing for your business, I guess the first one is always really hard. First one's always really hard and it's really, really quite scary, especially if you're putting a lot in. So start small and then work your way up as well.
Nathan Bush: That's exactly what you said in the opener, isn't it? Start small with your little bits and then work your way up.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. And don't say no, say okay, you don't like that. How about this always offer, don't accept the no, just try and get something else instead. Right. So if they're like no, that's too much. Okay, cool. How about if we lower the amount?
Nathan Bush: We're learning a lot about your love of negotiating through this series.
[Voiceover]: No comment.
Nathan Bush: No comment. Fair. Next week we are going to take a step forward and assume that we've now got a partnership program in place and that it's operating and we've got a great guest to come in and share and how to grow and optimize your partnership program. Is there anything that you are hoping to hear about around taking those partnership programs to the next level?
[Voiceover]: Yes, I think there is so much that anyone can do to promote the partnership program. Honestly, it's like if you're marketing your product to your customers, this is marketing a marketing channel to marketers who will market for you. It gets really meta. So it is quite exciting. Yeah, a lot of marketing.
Nathan Bush: Well, let's explore a lot of marketing next week. Zoe, I can't wait to speak to you then.
[Voiceover]: 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 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.
