B (2:33)

I love that. What's something that you find and this is just totally near and dear to my heart too. And spot on. I feel like there's so much devil in the details in terms of these audits and it's insane what we observed and how often things are not set up correctly. To your point, what's something that you see as a mistake that often people fall victim to in affiliate marketing?

A (2:54)

I man, it probably depends on their level of experience with affiliate. Like new, new marketers might really make the mistake of like I would say almost like hyper focusing on an affiliate and maybe like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole being like this, this partner says they're like a medium sized affiliate, we're going to make it work for our brand. That might be a mistake that I see like a lot of young affiliate marketers handle. But sometimes I see like the most successful affiliate marketers have really figured out how to speak the language internally to their brand or their company. They know how to talk finance to get budget approval. They know how to storytell to the C suite and that really helps the like the channel get understood internally. It helps them have success and support where they need it. And I would say like not taking that extra effort to like learn those departmental languages inside a company can be a massive mistake down the road.

B (3:56)

Yeah, I think that's where folks like us on the agency side and having been internal quite often it's so critical to have that executive buy in, to have internal buy in. And then to your point, for the internal stakeholder leading affiliate or other aspects of the business, it's just so critical for them to be able to paint the picture to executives and leadership within the organization so that they understand what is being done, what needs to be done, what's happening. And so I really like that call out. I think it's super important because you could be doing all the right things to a table. But if that message isn't getting heard throughout the organization then really doesn't matter.

A (4:39)

Yeah, totally. Or if other departments really just perceive affiliate. A lot of times I come across departments perceiving affiliate as like kind of like the low, like I don't know, like last click grabber of attribution. Like not, not seen as a team player channel, not seen as something that brings incremental value. And it's almost like a weird competitive thing. So yeah, learning how to play nicely with other departments is pretty key.

B (5:09)

Yeah, it's fascinating to me. You've probably heard me share it. But I have to agree with you. It's, it's by far the most misunderstood marketing lever and it's just such an underrated one. And so I've been blown away. I've even talked to like a very seasoned head of marketing who, who was, had had affiliate underneath them multiple times that thought as of like four, four years ago. Oh, it's like mostly coupon and deal. Right. And it was like, oh my gosh, like crazy, crazy level of education required for, for our space. And just to like now it's, it's kind of feels like we've maybe come full circle where I feel like with the AI changes, with some of the measurement improvements, I think some of the better practitioner improvements in some of the things I've shared recently, it feels like now it's becoming such a necessity, such a needed obvious win for brands that I feel like we've kind of come back to a world where you really need it, but the nuance is doing it the right way. Which it's so nice to hear you validate.

A (6:16)

Yeah, yeah.

B (6:17)

We've talked about measurement. We've had a lot of experience with measurement. Things like media mix modeling, incrementality. It's been a hot topic on the podcast. We've talked to a lot of vendors, practitioners that are outside of the affiliate world in growth, those that provide solutions and measurement solutions, something I'm passionate about personally. I'm involved in it in the PMA Council as well. What do you think people get wrong about measurement in the affiliate world and in measurement in general?

A (6:48)

I mean, that's a great question. I think like right off the bat it's got to be that people don't understand the difference between MMM, MTA incrementality as a whole, but they're really different measurement tools and like not even just affiliate marketers not understanding it. Like people at heads of data teams or like heads of marketing channels as a whole don't understand the difference and they'll just think, oh, I've heard mmm, that's exactly what I need. But really what they're trying to find is like a more something that looks more like an MTA where it's like a little bit more granular, it's a little bit more like real time data, it's a little bit more of like showing how the different channels play together versus an mmm, which is more just like budget allocation. At a higher level. You. It's probably better like monthly or quarterly for data. And, and then incrementality is like something completely separate. And I don't think a lot of people understand that affiliate is like a really hard channel when you're stacking them next to like paid search and paid social and you're trying to do like AB testing or geo targeting and really like doing that micro level tweaking of a program to get the max efficiency. Affiliate doesn't necessarily play well with that depending on what partners you have in your program. So like at Zenny our program's very content heavy. We can't ask Hearst or Forbes to start doing geotargeting and like releasing articles with Zenny in only certain regions to see how they perform. That's not necessarily something that you can like ask of a partner that, that just generates content like that. So when we were, when we were interviewing a lot of like SaaS, MTA MMM type solutions, they would say they could absolutely involve affiliate and test for affiliate. And then when I started like poking around and asking well how are you doing that? Like how are you actually a B testing for affiliate? They're like oh yeah. And it just, their whole like pitch kind of fell apart. So it's been, it was like a really interesting eye opening experience for me to like realize not a lot of people truly understand like how to test for incrementality within the like whole as marketing channel.

B (9:00)

Yeah. I found that the holdout test piece I've seen be available through email, some of the more sophisticated high volume loyalty players and a few others in the space. And I think that MMM has been something where if structured in a way that is compatible with affiliate on the exposure side you can get some really interesting learnings over time from it. But you obviously require channels, volume exposure and impression data to support it. I appreciate your perspective on it makes a lot of sense. It's funny how sometimes as you poke through those conversations you realize that maybe that it's not as readily available as you'd like it to be. What are some other things that you've found that have worked well when you're you in your experiences now and in the past to set up conversations for success and tests for success and measurement for measurement the right way when it comes to affiliate as it is obviously very unique.

A (10:06)

Yeah. So what we ended up doing because we went through a whole deep dive into like MMM type solutions last year as a company and we ended up just building our own with our data team because I don't think there was one that really fit what we were looking for. And what was really helpful for us is like I just spent time building relationship with the data team and just doing webinars with them, helping them understand the channel going deep into research and reporting and figuring out okay, what are we pulling, we're on impact, what are we pulling from impact that's going to like actually be helpful information for you when you're putting together this mmm every month or whatever. However often they're pulling the data. So that actually like was a huge investment of time and energy. But those relationships now are so much smoother and I'm not hitting friction. They're understanding that affiliate actually is a great builder channel for the marketing mix. Like it's, we do only pay out when there's an order ID attached to it. Like we're not, we're not paying per clicks or per impressions. We're not looking at UVMs. And I understand that like every business is built differently. Not everybody has a channel that's built the way that ours is. But having an actual like another three people on the data team that I really was just like we're gonna have weekly calls. I will take the time and do affiliate 101 with you and we will. They were really open to it as well, which definitely was helpful.

B (11:29)

That's amazing how much you know in business and life where those relationships and conversations help and willingness to like lay cards on the table and have a good conversation about how do we sort this out together. And it's fascinating how much that can help and be willing to dive into the data objectively to educate people on what the channel is capable of and how do you more effectively measure it. That's we have clients that are definitely investing there in terms of cross channel understanding, bringing data, expertise from our side, from client side. I love that you were able to do that. And we're seeing clients have success with building out some things on their own in some cases. I think there's a lot of interesting options in this space. Absolutely. But I like that sometimes you have to kind of create it from the ground up. Especially with certain teams. Sometimes they. I don't know how you you felt but I think that being able to control the inputs and outputs sometimes can be a very big validator for some internal teams. Depending on where you're at.

A (12:34)

Yeah. I mean especially because being where affiliate sits we don't, we don't always get to have like a seat at that table when, when you have a big mmm solution that you're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the people who are looking at that and like having the conversations about where to, where to allocate budget or where to allocate like support internally. Affiliate's not always like A part of that conversation. So it was nice that it worked out that, like, we actually had access to the people who were trying to figure out, like, where to allocate resources at the, at the company level. So that was unique.

B (13:11)

Yeah, absolutely. And when you've seen those measurement conversations progress internally, what were some of the bigger learnings maybe you've had in your career just at a high level that have kind of come out. Come out of some of these measurement conversations or holdout tests or experiments or. Mmm. I'd love to hear your perspective on it. If you have some things that you've observed over the years that like, wow, that was like a surprising learning or maybe something interesting to share with the audience.

A (13:41)

Yeah. When I first started at Xenny, they asked me to kind of do an overhaul of the program. They had kind of like what I just said at the beginning. They had like three or four partners doing 99% of the sales. It was all coupon and deals. Partners in the program. I think there was like three content partners in the program. They were like, and we know this isn't how we want it to be, but we don't know how to get to where we want it to be. So usually I would say, like, we don't ever just turn off a partner. Like, that's. Each partner is a relationship. And most of them don't take kindly to just being rejected out of the program and given like 24 hours notice. However, we didn't have an incrementality tool at the time. And I was like, really trying to argue the case that there are partners in the program that would have, that would be getting sale credit if other partners weren't in the program or that certain partners weren't bringing incremental value. And I like, really had to just have a conversation with my boss at the time and just say, like, your performance, the performance on the channel is going to drop if you want me to take these partners out and I will. But. But you need to understand that, like, that's going to be a consequence. It's not going to be. All of a sudden all the bulk of this revenue is just going to like, be given to the tiny little influencers that are also a part of the program. Just because they're part of a program doesn't mean they're doing the bulk of the sale. And so they were like, okay, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I cut the top three partners who were all deal sites and they, everyone freaked out because they were like, well, where did, where did all the revenue go. And I was like, well, truly, let's look at our site sales. How have they been affected? Because we just cut them in a day. And then they went to the data team, looked internally. They're like, oh, okay. Actually, no, we didn't see sales drop for the day. And I was like, yeah, we don't. That's like. That's truly like blunt force proving incremental value of a partner. If these were incremental sales, we would see the site suffer. Then we eventually, like, brought in a more sophisticated incrementality tool to kind of like tweak things at a finer level. But that was like a really shocking thing where it was kind of like a never say never. I guess you can sometimes, like, if you want to prove a point, just drop a partner from a program. But that was definitely a relationship that I was like, we may not get this partner back, so be okay to like, drop them.

B (15:59)

Yeah, always good to set those expectations internally. And I think, yeah, it's. It's good. It's a good, like, simple logic methodology to kind of talk through, like, have we actually lost something from the removal of this? Which is the true definition of incrementality, which people often. Obviously there's more accurate ways to actually measure that, but there's times when it makes sense to do it that way. And a lot of people don't even get that definition accurate in terms of this is how we're thinking about incrementality.

A (16:32)

Totally. Yeah. I think a lot of people also really struggle with incrementality because they feel like it's. It is the source of truth, but really it's like an educated guess. Like, we. We aren't actually able to like, prove at what point the buyer made the decision to make the purchase. It is at best like an educated guess. And so I think every like it if more than anything like Incrementality plus MMM has been like my magic solution to look at partners and say, yes, these partners are bringing incremental value according to this tool.

B (17:03)

But.

A (17:03)

But also if we're looking at an mmm, you can see how things play really well together for us. It's like customers love doing affiliate and our email tool, like our CRM solution. And so they like, we do a lot more partnerships with that department knowing that, like, that's like a pretty great mix to generate sales for us, but also knowing that, like, certain affiliate partners on their own just really seem to like, be the only touch point in the customer journey. And that's like a pretty incremental partner. Even if they're not bringing in like tens of thousands of dollars every week or whatever, it is like they an incremental sale to incremental sale. There is a customer lifetime value attached to that and like 10 sales is still better than nothing.

B (17:47)

Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes there's a long tail and mid tail aspect of partners that need to be addressed and rewarded. This brought the notion of attribution models and attribution method. Can you share a little bit with the audience? Like how you might think about attribution method and last click versus other types of attribution models?

A (18:09)

Yeah, it's something that we like some of these networks have released some tools for messing up the attribution. It's not all last click, only for networks now, which is nice. So we have been playing around with that for a bit this year and I mean it's pretty easy for us to figure out who's low funnel. Especially with the incrementality tool we can figure out which partners are our lower funnel and those. I'm fine giving like last click attribution to like lower priority, but there are partners, especially creators, who have value that's not just tied to a sale. Like a lot of creators, we will repurpose their content and to into like ads for paid social and so and that's a value that's like not necessarily tied to a sale, but it's a value for us. It would cost us a lot of money to just buy that content or create it internally. Internally for us. So giving them like a higher, I mean it used to be like we would just give them a higher commission knowing that like, okay, only one in five sales is actually going to get attributed to you. Now we can kind of tweak the system in the contracts such that they get higher priority for getting attribution for that sale. So if there is an affiliate who gets a click later on, if a partner is listed as a higher priority, they can technically get kind of like a first click attribution. I wouldn't say it's perfect. I did at one point and I don't know who this guy is, but if he hears this podcast, reach out to me. We had a great conversation at like three years ago when he was working for a mattress company and he went through and like created his own attribution logic. And partner by partner was like, if this partner gets first click, they get 25% commission. If this person gets last click they get 5%. Like I mean he said it took him almost a year. It was impressive. I don't think we all need to be like micro analyzing our program that way maybe for a mattress industry brand. But I think there's still a tool to be developed that's like a little bit more of an in between where it does require some human logic and placing value with the partners as each brand sees fit. But it's like kind of like automated as well.

B (20:24)

Yeah. I could almost see a world where you work with a team internally to almost emulate a Google's data driven attribution but apply it to the partner marketing world. I don't, I don't think, I don't think it has to get uber complicated, but I think it is fascinating and I think the landscape has changed to an extent where I feel like with partners being able to access audio influencer email, substack, various social podcasts like tracking is becoming. It's the privacy. The rise of privacy concerns leading to lack of fidelity on the tracking side. The benefits of like API and server server of tracking. I think there's so much to be desired and now with AI it's even more complicated with zero click coming to reality that just default type thinking default type practices is just beyond outdated. And I think that you're thinking about things differently. We're thinking about things very differently. So to provide more value that's custom to each situation and your situation is obviously very unique and I think that going well beyond last click is just the right approach and I love that you're thinking about it that way. I'm surprised just going back to our conversation about concentration risk partner types. It's mind blowing how many programs are still stuck in some of those older methodologies where maybe they've introduced content great, maybe they've introduced card link offers great, maybe they've introduced influencer, but they're still measuring off of things that don't, don't align with those objectives, don't align with that diversity diversified approach. I don't know how you feel about that, but it just seems like it's, it's far too common.

A (22:13)

Definitely. And I think that if a, if a company because I've spoken to a lot of marketing people who aren't necessarily affiliate marketers but they maybe are like I'm a marketing manager and I do, I do four different jobs in one kind of a lot and affiliates one of those and they aren't experts. There is no like if, even if you have a, an undergraduate degree in marketing, I don't think there's an affiliate marketing course that you're taking. It's kind of like a niche industry. And so if a business hasn't touched on an agency or they haven't hired someone with affiliate marketing experience specifically, it's kind of like they don't know what they don't know. They don't know that they're running the program wrong. They don't know that there's, that there are better options for attribution or for partnership opportunities out there. They're just like, well these are the ones who apply to the program, therefore that's who's going to be in it.

B (23:02)

Yeah, no, definitely, definitely thinking about it differently, which is great. One of the things that's interesting I'm sure you've observed is obviously operates very differently than search and social. Goes without saying. There's obviously a longer term, slower moving nature to it. But often I think the benefit of that is a lot of diversification. A lot of efficiency can be very cost effective if it's managed effectively. And obviously it's got a mix of part types that are going to represent different cost and efficiency. Most certainly there. How do you think about balancing that, that volume desire with the kind of well documented efficiency of the affiliate channel?

A (23:46)

I mean that's kind of what my quarter's been this quarter. I mean people love how efficient affiliate is. They really love the, the ROI, the ROAs, whatever number they're looking at, it's looking really great. But it, it really takes an effort to like educate people that you can't just turn on the affiliate channel like people would. I literally had a conversation last month where they were like, well if we give you five more million dollars this year, what can we do from it? And I'm like well I would love $5 million this year, thank you so much. But also I can't like just immediately in three business days turn around a partner that's going to generate a high volume of sales. Like those aren't, those aren't the incremental partners. And I've spent a lot of time getting the channel to a healthy place and just understanding that once you've got a healthy affiliate program, it is more of a slow and steady growth channel. Not every partner that you bring on is going to be in a top three immediately. Sometimes they may be a top three partner, but at night takes six months to really build it up to that point. I think a lot of people saw that with card linked offers, like they were like oh this is a wonderful partner to bring on. But it's not. There's a huge Legal review process and an onboarding schedule. And it's not like tomorrow I can call Chase and say put me in front of 4 million people across the nation. That's just not like how it works. So that does take a lot of education because with other channels like search you really can just like throw money at it and tomorrow you've spent it. So it is like a relationship first channel more than anything.

B (25:22)

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously AI is everyone's favorite topic. Buzzword. I was talking to someone yesterday about how it's the topic of the year. I said I think it's the topic of the decade, but we'll see probably. How do you, how do you see it being applied to your role and to affiliate?

A (25:42)

I really. Yeah, I mean I think you're right. It was a hot topic of like every conference this year. I don't think that's going anywhere next year. But I really, it didn't, I did want to think about this question because I think it's really easy to just say like, oh, AI like sure, like the networks are coming out with like an AI tool assistant. I'm not actually using that yet. I don't think it's at the place where it's like helpful for me in a day to day life. But I do use AI to help me do two things. I use it kind of as my assistant. I have IT draft my templates, I have it do competitor research, fix workflow efficiencies, that sort of thing. But I also can really see it like I've started to use it this way and I think I'm going to continue to have it help connect my channel to what's going on with the company internally. So using AI to effectively figure out how to translate affiliate to the company's KPIs or how to help understand like where affiliates fitting in with larger company goals at like the three and five year level. And because that's something that I would normally take like weeks to figure out and tweak with my manager and do a lot of back and forth and with AI it's more of like a conversation that I can have within an afternoon and like I feel like it's a pretty spot tool in that way.

B (26:56)

I love that I couldn't and on a similar trajectory there in terms of these are the things I'm using it for. We have rolled out a tool. We are, we are, we are encouraging a lot of folks to spend time, money and energy on, on using the tools using, improving their use cases and so we want to dedicate time and effort to. To it. And I think that it's, it's. I think it's becoming an expected part of the workflow for a lot of individuals, a lot of teams. I think we're absolutely on that end of the spectrum. I also like the level of reality that you're, you're coming to the table with when it, with regard to AI, it's not necessarily there for everyone. Like, it's not, it's, oh, it's working like gangbusters on everything I'm doing. There's certain things that it's not necessarily as ready for. And I think that the workflows of the writing, it's. It's nice to see it improving those cycles of efficiency, but it's not an end all be all necessarily yet, which may not be a bad thing.

A (27:57)

Yeah, yeah. It is still pretty nascent. It's like not that old as far as technology goes. So.

B (28:03)

Oh, my God. Every six months it's. Yeah. Something not something nascent. That's so true. And for me, and this is a good segue into our, you know, next topic as we kind of come down the stretch. But like I. My sentiment is that the human connection, the conversations like this, the conversations it shows, the dinner conversations are obviously central to affiliate, have been for a long time. I think they're only going to become more valuable as more tech gets integrated into our lives. And so I think we're going to need both. But I like that using it as an assistant thinking. And I think that the authentic trust isn't coming from AIs and algorithms really, it's coming from humans. And third parties are what we are leaning into completely in this whole ecosystem to say, hey, do you want Zenita, say how great you are. Do you want someone who's actually experienced eyewear and seen the pros and cons of it and have gone through it and are really fans or have some education to share with their community or their audience. And that's most likely what's resonating for you and certainly is for a lot of, A lot of brands we're seeing. So a long, long setup. But how are you thinking about tapping into authentic trusted third parties? And where does that fit into all this for you?

A (29:28)

Yeah, I mean, it's so true, like both at the brand level and at the affiliate level. Like, customers really don't buy unless they feel inherently connected to the brand or that they really trust that. It's like a brand that's going to either do good or sell a great product or work for them using like AI images or having a poorly worded return policy or something like that like really puts a bad taste in people's mouth and it really like just dissolves that trust pretty quickly. And the same with affiliates. Like I, I don't have like a three strike rule with affiliates, but there are affiliates that have really burned me and I'm like, will they come back a year later? And they said we've fixed some things and like that trust is really hard to, to build back. Especially because this is like virtual essentially they're virtual relationships. Like I may never meet them in person and I may never get to have like a conversation with their CEO or really see like how they've changed things. I'm relying on decks and case studies and things that can be easily like tweaked or falsified. And so it does require like a healthy amount of trust to say, okay, I trust that you're going to go and speak well of my brand out to your audience or that you're going to keep my best practices as best practices, that sort of thing.

B (30:46)

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think there's a lot of trust but verify parts of the relationship that absolutely need to be in place. Kayla, this has been amazing. You've definitely shared some really good insights and info and helpful tips. So just kind of coming down the home stretch on some personal questions. Your, I have to say your background is elite in your book presentation effort. Well done, well done.

A (31:15)

It is real, it's not a fake background. I get that sometimes you got the.

B (31:20)

Foliage, you got the color schemes. I mean there's probably some really good classics on that, on that bookshelf. What's your, what's your recommendation for a book for the audience?

A (31:32)

So a book I just read that I think would like everyone would love is called Dungeon Crawler Carl and it is like an end of the world fantasy book about. It's like Dungeons and Dragons meets an action movie and it's wonderful.

B (31:47)

Wow.

A (31:48)

It's hilarious.

B (31:50)

That's amazing. I love that.

A (31:51)

But yeah, if anyone out there needs a book recommendation, I probably can find one that fits there. They're deeds.

B (31:59)

You may get some DMS after this asking this is what I like. And what do you suggest? So sorry for your. Your. You're going to get so many direct messages now from people wanting a book recommendation from Kayla.

A (32:13)

That's great.

B (32:15)

I mean when you come on with our library looking that good, it's. It just. You're gonna get some request questions on books that's good.

A (32:22)

I'm more than happy to do that.

B (32:24)

Any trips or things that you're looking forward to or recommendations that you want to share with the audience, like maybe some of your faves.

A (32:32)

Oh, man. I like top three vacations of all time have all been in London. They've all been wonderful. So like, I was like, if you haven't been to London, you've got to go to London. Yeah, I've been, I've been like a lot since I was an early teen and every single stage of life, I've found something wonderful to experience in that city.

B (32:53)

That's really cool. I will say I think I went for the first time in 202012 and I was. It exceeded my expectations significantly. I didn't think it was going to be as nice amazing as it was and I had an amazing time. Got to experience some really great spots and yeah, colorful, global like had a lot to offer. Tons of history, obviously. Yeah, very cool.

A (33:18)

Good books as well, if you're into books.

B (33:21)

Yep. Did the Banksy tour. That was fun. A lot of good things.

A (33:26)

Oh, great.

B (33:30)

Kayla, it's so good to have you on. Thank you so much for taking the time and being so generous. Where can people find you and reach out if they want to learn more?

A (33:38)

I'm on LinkedIn. You're also free to email me Kayla castroni.com so, yeah, I'm always open to meeting new people and partners.

B (33:48)

Amazing. Kayla, thank you so much. Thanks for talking about your Mitten affiliate and have an amazing weekend. See everybody.

A (33:54)

Thanks, Ty.