Introducing Willis Nelson

Willis Nelson began his digital marketing career at the same company where he currently acts as Senior Director of Revenue, Mobile Apps: Fluent. Since starting out as Fluent’s first sales intern in 2014, Willis has continued to learn and hone his marketing skill set through years of developing partnerships with leading advertiser brands. Today, he focuses on growing Fluent’s mobile user acquisition business by building lasting relationships with new and current customers.

Take it away, Willis!

Rockstar Q&A with Willis

What are your day-to-day duties?
I’m focused on strategic partnerships and business development across Fluent’s mobile user acquisition business. This includes onboarding new advertiser partners and growing current brand relationships.

What’s the best thing you learned at the last conference you were at? What conference was it?
When I was at MAU in Las Vegas, I learned that marketers are focused on leveraging ChatGPT for producing and scaling mobile ads. Given the bandwidth constraints with the user acquisition space, this helps provide suggestions and optimize solutions for campaigns.

What do you think is undervalued in marketing in general?
Right pricing campaigns per source. Being able to bid efficiently by the affiliates sources allow brands to acquire more customers while still backing into their performance metrics.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve come across in affiliate marketing?
It can be difficult to secure enough test budget from brands to allow publishers to build big enough audience cohorts. Generating a large sample size and letting the data mature leads to more efficient optimizations towards performance.

How is your team structured?
Our team is currently structured by business units — we have four primary business units we offer to the market within targeted and scalable customer acquisition solutions. Each BU consists of its own account management and ad operations for efficiency.

What 2-3 trends are you seeing within the industry?
We’re seeing more and more brands become hyper-focused on ROAS as the economy shifts and every dollar needs to be accounted for. We’re also seeing partners more comfortable and excited to work with rewarded loyalty and incentivized traffic partners.

What is your biggest challenge today?
Our biggest challenge is navigating our partners’ internal team structures. We have many growth and acquisition solutions we offer to the market; however, our advertiser partners utilize different teams to manage those campaigns and hold separate budgets, which can make things disparate and inefficient. We’re getting better with solution positioning and pricing to be able to expand our partnerships across our various channels.

What’s your top tip to negotiating affiliate deals with partners?
It’s key for brands to be open to sharing as much data as possible with affiliates as long as they can leverage it for optimization purposes. Some brands can hoard this data, which makes it less incentivizing for the affiliate partner to be confident about the success of the campaign.

How important is it to follow the journey of the user after your advertisers first acquire them or after their first purchase?
Critical! This comes back to data sharing. The more performance and conversion data shared back to media partners leads to better optimizations towards users who are making purchases and achieving proxy events within their funnel.

How have you seen brands’ affiliate strategies change over time?
There’s been a great shift of large mobile brands adopting the use of affiliate tracking platforms. Many brands who rely heavily on mobile didn’t have integrations for tracking, which made it difficult for affiliates to build long-term partnerships with efficient campaigns. We hope the trend continues!

Do you have any advice for a smaller or lesser known brand to get noticed by a quality publisher?
Customize! If you’re able to customize your landing page, promotion, call to action, etc. to fit the affiliate’s inventory, it’s a win-win for everybody.

Introducing Elias Saad

Elias Saad is the Senior Manager of Global Affiliates & Partnerships at General Assembly, an education platform that focuses on providing courses for students interested in switching to in-demand tech careers. Before General Assembly, Elias managed strategic partnerships at Guideline, VRBO, and Acceleration Partners. Listen to his full set in the Q&A below!

Rockstar Q&A with Elias

What are your day-to-day duties?
They fall into four main buckets: activating new campaigns; reporting on insights and performance; compliance checks to make sure red flags are solved while small; and operations, including reviewing updates on all fronts (product, brand, tech, people, etc.).

How did you get into the affiliate industry?
By luck, 10 years ago I changed careers from investment funds analysis to marketing and found a similarity with affiliate marketing on measuring incrementality.

What was the best thing you learned at the last conference you went to? What conference was it?
The last conference I went to was PI Live. As far as what I learned there, it reiterated my belief that in time each brand/organization will train their own version of AI.

What are your most important KPIs?
ROAS and leads, and then from there:

• CAC, LTV
• Reviews/NPS
• Speed to sale
• % of cancellations
• AOV

What do you think is undervalued in marketing in general?
The results of a complete brainstorm session, with one day/week of prep, one to three rounds of brainstorming, one round of discussion, and one round of prioritization. Versus the usual one hour zoom call, which is much less productive.

“Affiliate” or “partner”? Why?
I actually use both terms:

• Affiliate: when a brand promotes with someone who already has a built channel. Therefore there is only an association or affiliation.
• Partner: when a brand and the advertiser build a new channel, each adding their own part, therefore “partnership.”

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve come across in affiliate marketing?
Convincing content-focused partners, influencers in particular, to work on revenue share campaigns. This is challenging when the attribution model is last touch and content partners are generating traffic at the top of the funnel.

To solve for this, we build a unique funnel with the partner, from the top-of-funnel awareness content like free webinars all the way to the lead generation moment where someone schedules a call with sales. In between, we bring in the necessary resources, depending on the audience: workshops, guides, articles, videos, stories, testimonials, rankings, etc. To make sure this is working, we track the percentage of leads that the partners are generating net new (meaning they were the last touch), and the ones where they contributed but were not the last touch. We want to keep this percentage as high as possible so that the partners’ revenue share is close or more than their target ROAS.

What’s the next big thing in affiliate marketing?
Growth without using discounts. We don’t need another discount site. Publishers that are working on business models that find the right user at the right time in the right place won’t need a discount to get the sale. Matching the right place, time, and person means the value of the product is worth it.

For example, if I’m planning a road trip and thanks to a car maintenance app I see that it is convenient to replace my car’s tires based on my current mileage, that same app can link to the best recommended tires for my car.

How important is following the journey of a user after you first acquire them or after their first purchase?
Post-purchase customer data can inform marketing strategy on the reasons why that specific persona group is interested in the brand. They can also become a great source for reviews, testimonials, and referrals. Going further, if there’s possibility for repeat purchases, we can reach out to the customer by a certain date to present a special price for repeat customers. As long as the tracking post-purchase fits the business model goals, there shouldn’t be any waste on data gathering and marketing efforts.

Introducing Mike Demopoulos

Mike Demopoulos is the Head of Partnerships at Codeable, the only platform purpose-built to connect WordPress freelancers with the customers who need their expertise. With years of agency experience in the digital realm and a passion for helping online businesses succeed, Mike has already left a mark at Codeable since joining in 2021. Drumroll, please …

Rockstar Q&A with Mike

What are your day-to-day duties?
As part of my role, I collaborate closely with our partners to provide them with all the necessary resources to promote Codeable. Additionally, I assist them in developing and integrating applications that prove advantageous for their business. Furthermore, I schedule trips to attend diverse events throughout the year to connect with our clients and partners.

How did you get into the affiliate industry?
For years, I volunteered in Open Source and worked at different web agencies. Later on, I transitioned to the hosting and product sector, where I took on an evangelist role. Eventually, my role evolved into Business Development and M&A. The rest, as they say, is history.

What are your most important KPIs?
The two most important metrics for us are the number of users who post projects on Codeable and the percentage of them who become paying clients. Additionally, we keep track of the percentage of our partners who have sent traffic over the past 28 days. We aim to maintain good communication with all of our partners.

What is your biggest pet peeve about the affiliate industry?
We require an onboarding phone call with each partner to build relationships. The number of no-shows is alarming. Collaborative efforts are preferred over just traffic.

What do you think is undervalued in marketing in general?
In this modern era of digital dominance, it’s easy to overlook the power of physical marketing materials. Direct mail, packaging, and promotional items offer a tangible connection with the brand that can leave a lasting impression. IKEA’s iconic printed catalogs are a prime example of this. As someone who’s passionate about helping digital businesses succeed, I’ve gained a reputation for sending unique physical items – from pitch decks on View-Masters to massive shipments of pasta. I firmly believe in the power of “lumpy mail” and its ability to capture attention and make a meaningful impact.

What have you done in your last 6–12 months to improve your affiliate efforts?
Over the past year, we have been conducting audits on our current partners to engage in more meaningful discussions about how to better promote Codeable. Additionally, we have developed new integrations through hosting control panels to enable our hosting partners to increase revenue and better serve their clients.

“Affiliate” or “partner?” Why?
On our website, we distinguish between affiliates and partnerships to avoid confusion, although I personally prefer the term “partner”. For us, partners are services that complement our own, and want to offer Codeable to enhance their value to customers. Affiliates, on the other hand, are more like traditional publishers. Our goal with partnerships is to provide additional benefits beyond simply sharing revenue.

What’s the next big thing in affiliate marketing?
The emergence of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) providers is transforming affiliate marketing by providing a new payment model that can enhance conversion rates. This alignment between affiliate marketing and BNPL services is revolutionizing traditional marketing approaches, especially for high-priced items and services that require recurring payments. To succeed, affiliates should tailor their strategies to the financial preferences of their target audience, particularly younger demographics and those who avoid credit cards.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in affiliate marketing?
I should have avoided trying to include anyone and everyone in my program. This approach is not advantageous and can only harm your brand if you end up on irrelevant sites that don’t cater to your target audience or niche.

How do you think your strategy differs than other verticals?
We focus on providing our partners with tools that enable them to give personalized referrals for their projects. We have dedicated much time to integrating forms and plugins that allow our partners to refer their users to Codeable while providing relevant context about their needs.

Introducing Tye DeGrange

Tye has been in performance marketing for nearly 20 years in-house at Fortune 500 brands and running his agency, Round Barn Labs. He has worked on brands like eBay, StubHub, ModCloth, Amazon, MetaQuest, Hatch, Future Fit, Atlassian, and Grammarly. When he is not helping his clients grow more efficiently, he loves helping his talented growing team and sharing learnings and insights on the Flywheel newsletter and the Always Be Testing podcast.

Rockstar Q&A with Tye

What are your day-to-day duties?
Dropping knowledge. I love education — both learning and teaching, and so much of our industry requires that. When I am not speaking to a client, at an event, or to a prospect to help them assess and navigate affiliate partner and influencer marketing, I am supporting our growing team ensuring they have the resources they need. I am setting the vision and plan for how we become the next great affiliate agency.

How did you get into the affiliate industry?
After working in direct response marketing in print and digital, then at one of the first VC-backed ad networks (display programmatic marketing), I was part of a great batch of talented performance marketers in the early days at Commission Junction managing advertiser clients like Bowflex and StubHub.

What’s the best thing you learned at the last conference you attended?
Deep dives with Levanta, Moonpull, and TrafficGuard. We are using all of them and find them to be great players to help move the industry forward in supporting improved affiliate marketing on Amazon, link tracking and auditing, and improving fraud protection.

Bringing smart people that are building world-class teams and products in once place is the core value.

What are your most important KPIs?

• 13-week cash flow
• Top-line revenue
• Net profit
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• % to plan for each client (based on their North Star metric)

What do you think is most undervalued in marketing in general?

1. Brands are not running enough tests. They are not setting tests up correctly with appropriate documentation, and tracking and not memorializing the results and learnings to continue to improve their growth.
2. YouTube and TikTok for some brands are being slept on.
3. I also think that affiliate marketing (I say this a lot) is the most undervalued and misunderstood “channel” in performance marketing. If managed well, it can be your highest-performance CAC lever and can contribute 20% of revenue to your brand’s bottom line.
4. Defining goals and terms like attribution and incrementality — too many people call this something that it is not, or do not define it clearly as a team. If they do define it, they are not setting up cost-appropriate tests to measure it effectively and make the hard decisions that come with attribution and incrementality testing.

“Affiliate” or “partner”? Why?
Affiliate, ’cause I put the “old” in old-school

But I will say that some audiences (know your audience) have such a misguided or uninformed view of “affiliate” (after all, it is the most misunderstood lever in performance marketing) that I will use “partner” in some cases.

I have compared affiliate marketing to partner marketing light, in the way brands have partner teams internally that are working on large brand-to-brand partnerships.

These brand-to-brand partnerships have grown and become more important, and as affiliate tech has improved, more true brand partnerships can be run on strong SaaS tracking tools.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in affiliate marketing?
Not investing in enough tracking rigor and resources upfront, and ensuring reporting is accurate and published in a timely way — while this was years ago and when I was an individual contributor, it is one of many lessons that informs helping great people perform and win to give clients what they need and when.

What are 2-3 (or more) trends you’re seeing in the affiliate industry?

• Increased scrutiny and requests to test and measure incrementality.
• Increased demand for data-driven attribution and insights.
• The decline of ease in tracking due to privacy changes increasing the need to improved tech and more reliance on first-party cookies and email rather than third-party cookies that are being deprecated.
• Cost increases in Google and Meta.
• Platforms like Amazon regarding brands to send traffic into their ecosystem and TikTok following suit.
• Continued growth in commerce content and influencers and brands chasing that with varying degrees of success.

What’s your top tip when it comes to negotiating affiliate deals with partners?
Put yourself in their shoes, genuinely think about what they want, don’t be afraid to be clear, and make the ask. Having some friendship rapport and trust with the partner helps and encourages you to invest in those friendships and relationships. Sometimes what is being said is not the whole story, so being willing and able to go a bit deeper or ask questions can uncover the true issue/need/challenge. Quid pro quo — if you are asking for something, be willing to give something in return.

How have your advertisers’ affiliate strategies changed over time? 
We are seeing more and more requests for commerce content and influencers as part of a diversified approach to partner marketing.

What’s your ideal partner mix?

• Commerce content
• Influencer
• Loyalty with emphasis on discovery and conquesting — toolbar is monitored carefully
• BNPL
• Media buyers on a CPA (Google, Meta, TikTok)
• Connected TV
• Deal and coupon
• Amazon — Levanta
• Technology partners

Introducing Jonathan Goodwin

Jonathan has been in the affiliate marketing industry for almost 15 years. He got his start on the OPM/agency side, helping manage affiliate programs like Bodybuilding.com, Zulily, and others. Jonathan has most recently moved into the publisher side of the industry, working for tech partner UpSellit as a Partnership Executive, bringing on new brands and merchants to their platform.

Rockstar Q&A with Jonathan

What are your day-to-day duties?
My role at UpSellit is to focus on the acquisition of new business. Connecting with brands, and learning about their e-commerce goals and how we can assist prospective clients achieve their goals.

How did you get into the affiliate industry?
I started long ago, on the OPM side (affiliate agency). I used to manage affiliate programs. I started off assisting affiliate managers, and learning how to manage an effective affiliate program.

But I got into the industry by chance. I saw someone looking to hire for an affiliate marketing position, and I was intrigued and went for it.

What’s the best thing you learned at the last conference you were at?
The best thing I learned from the last conference I attended was the fact that you cannot network enough. You just never know when your paths will cross when you meet someone at an industry event. Networking is key in the affiliate industry and learning new opportunities. The affiliate industry has evolved, over the years.

When brands are working with you, typically what are their most important KPIs?
When brands are partnered with UpSellit, we typically look at conversions, CTR, CR, and our new customer acquisition percentage, as new to file is important in our industry.

What characteristics of a partnership determine if you will get “creative” with a campaign (custom offers, landing pages, commission terms, custom content or content that goes above and beyond, etc.)?
One of the characteristics is if the client is curious enough, to explore new opportunities. Especially if the client has several goals. That’s when it gets fun, to optimize, and custom tailor a roadmap based on their goals and curiosity.

What are 2-3 trends you are seeing in the industry?
One of the trends I see is the rise of technology in the affiliate space. Understanding the clickstream, having more transparency within the path to purchase, and how publishers can create customized dynamic engagements, that yield significant amounts of incremental contribution. Another trend is the diversity in the affiliate segments. The publisher landscape is a lot different today than it was 10 years ago.

What is your biggest challenge today?
The biggest challenge I currently deal with today is assumptions and lack of curiosity. I work with many partners and clients that create false assumptions, which can hamper the performance of our campaign. If my partners and clients were more open and curious, that will allow us to explore other avenues within our campaigns, optimize, and help grow their affiliate channel.

What’s your top tip when it comes to negotiating affiliate deals with partners?
My top tip, in negotiating affiliate deals is to be transparent and honest. What does your client need? What are the goals of the partnership? It has to be a win-win for both parties. Be open and honest in having a conversation to ensure it’s not a combative negotiation. That way both parties understand it is a business, and we all want it to work for both parties, and find some common ground.

How do you think your strategy differs compared to other publishers?
Our strategy is much different compared to other publishers in the space. We simply don’t drive traffic. We focus on pinpointing areas of missed opportunities throughout the path to purchase for over 1,000 brands we currently partner with. We identify these missed opportunities, learn what’s our advertisers goals are and provide optimization tactics and techniques to drive incremental conversions.

Do you have any general advice for a smaller or lesser known brand to get noticed by a quality publisher?
Absolutely. Network with everyone, and tell your story. What are your goals? How are you achieving them? What do you project your business/e-commerce will be in two to three years? And ultimately stay in touch with everyone you meeting in the affiliate space.

What is the most popular subject brands want to talk to you about?
The most popular subject brands want to talk about is incremental revenue, increasing average order value (AOV), reducing bounce and exiting rates, and our coupon management system.

Introducing Austin Green

Austin started his path toward a career in partnerships as a digital marketer with a broad set of skills and an interest in business development. After studying a mix of channels, Austin turned his focus to partnerships and affiliate marketing, where he’s been working ever since.

Rockstar Q&A with Austin

What are your day-to-day duties?
I run the affiliate programs for Roamly and Outdoorsy in addition to other distribution channels such as external agency partnerships for Roamly (insurance), and integrated strategic partnerships (through our API products) for both brands.

How did you get into the affiliate industry?
I started as a digital marketer with a broad focus, including channels such as content marketing, lifecycle, Google Ads and basic SEO. Once I had spent some time working on and learning about each of those channels, I wanted to incorporate those skills into a marketing channel that had more face-to-face interaction and social interaction. Affiliate marketing was a great place to do that, and that ultimately kick-started my career into partnerships.

What’s the best thing you learned at the last conference you attended? What conference was it?
While there are a lot of great workshops and presentations on specific processes, tactics and general industry know-how, I think the most impactful thing you can do at a conference is network. I’ve met several partners, many of which are now friends, at conferences that have kicked off large partnership opportunities and have really opened up big distribution opportunities. The last conference I attended along these lines was FinCon.

What are your most important KPIs?
Quotes (leads), bound policies (acquired customers), net written premium (revenue), spend/cost, and LTV/CAC.

What do you think is undervalued in marketing in general?
The ability to drive performance-based traffic at volume. Although I think that’s changing as tech changes shifts from a growth-at-all-costs model to a grow with efficiency model.

What have you done in the last 6-12 months to improve your affiliate efforts?
I’ve worked hard on diversifying our partner sources to not get overly dependent on a handful of partners, or a specific type of partner.

How do you interact with other marketers outside the affiliate/partner team at your company?
I work with them closely as part of the larger performance-focused marketing org. I also work with them to create assets for our partners and to leverage our existing marketing with partners.

What are some things that you might do differently during the holiday season?
We run holiday-specific communications and discounts when possible and try to roll that in with co-marketing partnerships with other like-minded brands.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve come across in affiliate marketing?
I think leadership and marketers who have never dipped their toe into affiliates/partnerships don’t really understand the day-to-day of an affiliate marketing manager or partnerships manager. I don’t think most marketing leaders understand the time and effort that goes into running an effective program, and can sometimes (incorrectly) see it as a channel similar to paid search or social, where you can drive quality traffic with essentially the flip of a switch.

What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in affiliate marketing?
Devaluing long-standing partnerships because they may not be driving the volume or efficiency in that specific moment in time. Once a bridge is burned, it’s sometimes impossible to go back, so think seriously about ending long-standing relationships.

How does seasonality play into your strategy, if at all?

The RV space is a hugely seasonal, and we have to make sure we’re efficient during the off-season if we’re going to hit our goals in peak season where most of our volume takes place and efficiency can take a back seat to volume.

Do you have a specific strategy in place for influencers?
Not at this time — that’s been a tougher nut to crack for us, given that from my experience audiences from influencers aren’t necessarily as sticky or qualified to make a purchase.

Introducing Kay Wolfson

Kay started her marketing career in the direct mail and lead generation industry, including developing the first affiliate channel for Tax Defense Network. Kay has since been providing marketing consulting and services, currently focusing on direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands as the Director of Performance Marketing at Cart.com.

Rockstar Q&A with Kay

What are you day-to-day duties?
Every day is different, but there are some core responsibilities in the day-to-day at Cart.com Performance Marketing: daily reporting requirements across multiple brands, QA of links/offers/publisher pages, client meetings, new publisher onboarding, new publisher vetting, contracting, general channel administration, employee training, and various technical troubleshooting and technical integrations.

How did you get into the affiliate industry?
I got into the affiliate industry by accident! I never intended to pursue marketing as a career, I thought I was going the legal analyst route in life, and boy was I wrong!

I started out in the direct mail space (seminar mailings for financial advisors) and the direct mail space was struggling. I was introduced through a few of my financial advisors to some internet marketing tactics that they were testing and it was love at first sight.

I learned on the fly while in a tax debt lead generation space due to a stellar leader who really pushed me to just “try” something.

From there it was a lot of self-taught learning (read as trial and error), asking questions (constantly), reading everything I could find, and continuing to strive for overall world domination. I have chosen to stay in the affiliate industry because it’s simply fascinating, and there is always something new to learn, to try, and to test.

What is your biggest pet peeve about the affiliate industry?
The lack of data transparency and the overall over-pitching and under-delivering across the board. I would rather publishers/partners/vendors be upfront and honest about how they approach their affiliate practice than deal with backpedaling. The affiliate industry is not going to improve its reputation if there is a continued thought process of getting brands onboarded at any cost. My best relationships are with publishers and partners who have said, “This isn’t a good fit for us, and here is why.”

What do you think is undervalued in marketing in general?
The value of strong creative to curated landing pages and customized nurturing communications post transactions. Brands do not think about the pre-click to post-click communications as thoroughly as they should nor do they put the same amount of attention into the post-click, post-transactional experience.

“Affiliate” or “partner”?
Both! While affiliate may have a negative connotation, it’s still the right name for what we do and who we are! I consider a partner to be a “tried-and-true” relationship with vendors who have consistently performed or strived to drive our business relationship forward.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve come across in affiliate marketing?
Getting brands to drop their preconceived notions of affiliate marketing has been one of the toughest to overcome. “Affiliate is dirty,” or my favorite, “Affiliate didn’t work for me in 2008,” are common comments that have been made. Getting brands to recognize that affiliate traffic is not like paid media traffic is also a challenge.

I believe that brand/client education is essential, so we spend a lot of time learning, listening, and talking to our brands before we make recommendations around affiliate marketing and which part of affiliate we feel will help drive that brand forward toward its goals.

What’s the next big thing in affiliate marketing?
In e-commerce affiliates: BNPL publishers are the next big thing. IYKYK!

BNPL has a lot of the same hallmarks and growth trends that are reminiscent of the early days of loyalty and cashback publishers.

We are also seeing a rise in affiliate content, which is great and really helps legitimize affiliate publishers. While earned media has its place, paid content has continued to be a developing trend that we are seeing significant success with for the right brand.

Lead generation, lead nurturing, and consumer monetization are also coming back around for a lot more industries, especially as iOS 14.5 has made first-party data collection more challenging. Finding quality consumers at a better CAC can be done through a well-thought-out lead generation and monetization plan.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in affiliate marketing?
I was hesitant to call BS when I heard BS. As a young affiliate marketer, I made a ton of bad calls and worked with publishers who were the epitome of shady. I ignored my gut and didn’t pressure myself to get the right answers or to get a straight answer, and it caused me a lot of headaches in the long run. As an older affiliate marketer, I call it like I see it or hear it and I am not afraid to do so.

What are 2-3 trends you are seeing in the industry?

1. Lead generation is definitely making a comeback (not that it ever really went away) with a higher focus on driving leads to a brand’s CRM for email nurturing, audience building, etc. at a lower cost than before.

2. Affiliate content! The content side of the e-commerce business has definitely made some strategic changes that are making content a useful strategy for most brands and verticals.

How important is following the journey of a user after you (or your advertisers) first acquire them or after their first purchase?
Crucial. You spend time, money, and effort to acquire a consumer — shouldn’t the same (or ideally more) effort be put into continuing to engage and nurture that consumer into a brand loyalist?

Introducing Mike Currey

Mike started his career in marketing in the music and entertainment industry before working in media sales and then on the agency side at Razorfish. He’s since been working with affiliates on the brand side at companies like T-Mobile and Blue Nile, along with his current role at Quince, where he leads their affiliate and display efforts. Mike was also recently a speaker at PI Live 2023 in Miami.

Rockstar Q&A with Mike

What are your day-to-day duties?
Oversee program strategy, finance, operational build-out, a team of three, and ideate product build-outs internal and external. Collaborate with other internal partners to build strategy and attribution. Manage a subset of publishers outside of content commerce.

How did you get into affiliate marketing?
I joined T-Mobile on contract to help launch their display retargeting and manage a dormant affiliate program. After three months, I came on full-time for an affiliate and passed on the display to another new hire. That gig lasted almost six years before moving into other consulting/brands.

What are your most important KPIs?
Focusing on retail — margin and then return rate. I can drive traffic and revenue all day long but at the end of the day, if the brand is not making money after media spend/commissions, then is the tactic working? Also, not all publishers are equal. Some have an audience that likes to return products but commissions have been paid out.

What is your biggest pet peeve about the affiliate industry?
Lack of upper leadership support. The affiliate strategy has been around since the early ’90s and helped launch Amazon; Amazon seems to have worked out okay. There is value in the effort but a lot of leadership only sees it as a lower-funnel discount channel. It does come down to affiliate managers and agencies, too. Many load up programs with last-click partners, so that is what leadership sees. We as an industry need to be more responsible and diversify programs that show the value of the channel. So much collaboration with other internal media and payment models can be done for the full funnel. We just have to incorporate it into our programs and have seen many moving into this with the adoption of PR into the publisher mix.

What’s your ideal partner mix?
The Quince brand is young, so getting the name out through product reviews is our current mix. I would say 80% of the partners are content and 20% are a mix of gated relationships through offers/rewards.

What have you done in the last 6-12 months to improve your affiliate marketing efforts?
The program I walked into was previously managed by an agency that loaded the program up with coupons, sub-networks, and toolbars. Leadership took notice and had the data scientists do a deep dive. The results showed most of it was not incremental and started to move away into a content-based program. I came on a couple of months later. Immediately I started to remove all of the toolbars lingering, cleaned up our promo code structure for the company, shifted away from multi-use codes, and cleaned up publishers that were hijacking links, codes, and content. That was the first three months, so now I’m focused on building service discounts and offline strategies.

“Affiliate” or “partner”?
I would lean towards “partner.” Affiliate has a bit of taboo these days and a Wild West meaning. “Partner” brings in the notion two people are working together to build a strategy together. Wild West versus one-to-one.

What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in affiliate marketing?
Probably not going to as many affiliate conferences over the years. So many relationships have been forged there and I know a lot of people over email, but this industry is so personable. In-person does make a difference.

How important is following the journey of a user after you (or your advertisers) first acquire them or after their first purchase?
The journey before and during checkout is important to me. I want to know the media mix and which flows offline drive the greatest conversion rate. Even onsite, understanding what funnel by the publisher by publisher type drives the best conversion rate. This really depends a lot on the affiliate platform used, though.

Do you have a specific strategy for influencers?
The Quince influencer team builds brand awareness through partnered campaigns and UGC for other teams to whitelist. The affiliate team focuses on the organic side through long-tail reviews. I wouldn’t say it is not much than other retail brands.

Introducing the Affiliate Rockstars

Welcome to Affiliate Rockstars!

This series was born out of a simple idea: Let’s highlight all the rockstars of affiliate marketing — including those who may not be found in the usual speaking engagements, podcasts, and award lists. With each profile, we hope to give the industry a broader awareness of the awesome individuals, unique perspectives, and savvy insights that make our ecosystem tick.

Every month on the TUNE Blog, you’ll get a front-row seat to hear from rockstars representing all different corners of the affiliate and partnerships industry. Sit back and enjoy the show!

Introducing Thomas Hung

Thomas has spent more than a decade in the marketing industry on the brand side. He has worked with affiliates at companies like eHarmony and TechStyle Fashion Group (Fabletics, ShoeDazzle, JustFab, FabKids), along with his current role at Hulu. Thomas also co-founded Helt Studio in 2020 to provide comfortable and fashionable chef uniforms to the cooking industry.

Rockstar Q&A with Thomas

What are your day-to-day-duties?
Build and nurture strategic partnerships through the affiliate channel. Recruit/optimize partnerships accordingly to annual budget.

How did you get into the affiliate industry?
I studied Psychology as a major at UCLA and I’ve always loved to study human behavior. Went to eHarmony as a marketing specialist and have decided to dedicate my time into affiliate marketing.

What do you think is undervalued in marketing in general?
What’s undervalued in marketing is that the effort to nurture a partnership/relationship sometimes can go a long way, for decades. Partnerships are truly a two-way street, it shouldn’t be a cold vendor/client relationship. What goes around comes around.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in affiliate marketing?
In my earlier years of affiliate marketing, I was leaning more towards the introvert side. I could’ve done a better job building all the amazing genuine relationships within the affiliate industry. (Well, it’s never too late!)

What are 2-3 trends you are seeing in the industry?
There are more tools to help scout/recruit publishers. People are figuring out affiliate x influencer marketing mix.

Do you have any side hustles or passion projects?
I am co-founder of an up-and-coming chef-wear uniform company named Helt Studio.

Helt in Norwegian means “hero.” We believe that all the chefs, baristas, and kitchen workers behind the kitchen were heroes to their family and to their community, and our passion is to be able to provide them with the best looking tech-functional gear. We want to be the Alfred Pennyworth for Batman!

How have you seen any marketing strategies change from Hulu to what you’re doing with Helt?
As Hulu is turning into a more seasoned stage as a company, we are focusing more on seeking incremental opportunity versus Helt is a baby with the greatest potential for growth. The focus for Helt is scaling and bringing up the revenue. We know our product kicks ass! Just need to world to know. LOL.

What have you done in the last 6-12 months to improve your affiliate efforts?
For Hulu, in the last 6-12 months, I’ve been focusing on optimizing the channel by looking at retention value and viewership.

For Helt, in the last 6-12 months, I’ve been recruiting publishers, educating them about the brand, and boosting up the revenue.

What are some of the things you might do differently during the holiday season?
We would dynamically shift budget to take advantage of the high shopping intention. For the last few years, we also sweetened the deal (promotion) during the holiday season for a limited time.

What’s the next big thing in affiliate marketing?
I believe the next big thing in affiliate marketing would be to marry performance base structure with influencer marketing. There is still hesitation from brands on spending more dollars in influencer marketing because the bottom line numbers are not there. Testing and optimizing would be key to success.