TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
brands, influencers, affiliate, incentive structure, customers, platforms, referral program, product, year, great, black friday, selling, coupon, post, purchase, e commerce, find, discount, share, content
SPEAKERS
Mariah Parsons, Noah Tucker
Mariah Parsons 00:05
Greetings and welcome to retention. Chronicles, the podcast with learnings from expert e commerce brands and partners. I'm your host. Mariah Parsons, if you're here, you're either on a quest for E commerce enlightenment or you accidentally click the wrong link. Either way, I am thrilled you stumbled into our corner of the internet, and I hope you'll stick around. We've got pearls of wisdom for everyone, whether you're running a multi million dollar business or simply just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. Before we unleash the brilliance of today's guests, let's give a shout out to our podcast sponsor, malomo. Malomo is so much more than just another Shopify app, their post purchase wizards, making beautiful and branded order tracking smoother than a jazz solo. So our amazing founders, like our guests, can keep their customers happy and up to date while they track their orders. So hit that subscribe button like it'll increase your LTV overnight and go listen to our other episodes at Go malomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com Get ready for insights, chuckles and perhaps a profound realization or Two with this newest episode of retention Chronicles. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles. This is going to be a fun episode. Noah, so thank you for taking the time to join me. And pretty early in the morning, I think it's rare that I get like people who want to record in the mornings, a lot of people want to record towards the end of their day, so it's a great way for me to start. But thank you for joining us here today for our audience. Noah is joining from Are you? You're still in LA, right? Yeah,
Noah Tucker 01:48
I was gonna say, I don't want to be living a lie this whole episode. It's actually 3pm for me here in Spain right now. So, oh,
Mariah Parsons 01:53
my god, okay,
Noah Tucker 01:54
I'm not doing anything too, hero.
Mariah Parsons 01:55
Never mind. I take back everything. I just said, Wait, where in Spain are you?
Noah Tucker 02:00
I'm in Barcelona. Oh,
Mariah Parsons 02:02
that's amazing. Okay, I, um, during college, studied in Toledo, which is like probably an hour outside of Madrid, and did six weeks all in Spain. So I loved it. I could go back. Maybe someday I could make my way back. Um, but yeah, even if you're in LA, Spain, whatever, I'm happy you're here. So give our audience a quick, quick introduction of yourself, and then we'll, we'll tell them how we know each other and all that fun story for
Noah Tucker 02:33
sure. Yeah. So I'm the founder of a company called Social snowball, which, at a high level overview, is an affiliate and referral platform for E commerce brands. I've been running this for about four years. We have about 2200 merchants on the platform. And, yeah, just basically helping brands create a new acquisition channel with influencers and affiliate marketing.
Mariah Parsons 02:52
Yep, love it. So a little bit of background now for us, because we grew up in the same town, we're like childhood best friends, which is so fun for us to just end up in this ecosystem together. I definitely did not see this being part of my trajectory. So it's a fun, fun playground to be in now that I'm in it, but I did not see it so you've been in the space a little bit longer, I would say, just watching from like, high school days when we were like actual humans versus, like the four year olds that we used to, like, climb trees together. And I'm gonna ask my mom to see if she can find that picture. But I would say you're pretty entrepreneurial. In always been trying to start something, get your, you know, get your hands into some type project that you could try and scale. And I think that from our high school, I would say, like, I that was a newer concept to me. I didn't quite have, like, an entrepreneurial spirit myself, or I wouldn't have said the same thing for myself in high school. But now that I'm in this ecosystem and seeing all these amazing, you know, technologies, but also brands that people are creating it, it definitely inspires and gives me a little bit, yeah, yeah, exactly. And like, gives the like nomenclature to like, Oh, I've always been someone who's being creative and crafty and like, how does that actually look in business? It's entrepreneurship. So roundabout way of saying that it's one, fun to be here in the seat with you, but also, two, I'd love to hear your take on Have you always been more entrepreneurial? Has it started because you've been, I guess, associated or in the Shopify ecosystem within, you know, call it the greater part of, you know, the past four or five years or so?
Noah Tucker 04:43
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, it's so this is iconic, because, like, you've you remember, like, all like, the random stuff I was doing in high school, but I honestly don't think I was like, I feel like so many entrepreneurs have some story in high school about them, like, selling candy and getting kicked out of school. Just feels like everyone has that story. I don't have that story. Like, I wasn't like. That die hard. I mean, I was like, flipping Pokemon cards on eBay. And, like, I was always, like, trying to build things and, like, learn circuits, like physical objects, you know. But like, I wasn't like, one of these, like, Die Hard, like, million dollar candy Empire by the time he was 15 kids, but yeah,
Mariah Parsons 05:16
or, like, the kids that go on Shark Tank, and I'm like, Oh my God, how? Like, yeah, yeah,
Noah Tucker 05:20
exactly. They're like, literally 16, and they go from like, selling candy in high school to, like, starting some crazy company. So no, I mean, I think, like, there was maybe a little bit of that always in me, but it definitely didn't come out. I think when I first got into the E commerce world is when I started to realize, like, Oh, this is really cool and fun. And that didn't happen till the summer after I graduated high school, like, before, before we started college. So that was when, like, the big switch flipped in my head, and I was like, Oh, wait, this is, like, definitely what I want to do. But before that, I think I was kind of just messing around. I wasn't like, all in on, like, some candy empire. Like, I feel like a lot of people have a story like
Mariah Parsons 05:54
that, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. So walk us through, like, what social snowball looked like when you were starting it, and then where you are today. Give us, like, a little bit of context for our listeners,
Noah Tucker 06:06
sure. So at the time, like, and this is, like, the idea for this started brewing very, very early, because so, like, after high school, I kind of, like, got into this game of drop shipping, and then started building some stories, and started getting into media buying and doing consulting for brands, for media buying, and just kind of got sucked into, like, this post-purchase marketing world for E commerce. And so with that, I was one thing that I would always help set up for, whether it was a store I was working on or doing consulting was an affiliate program, so that I was, like, kind of familiar with the existing affiliate platforms that existed. And when I was building these affiliate programs, I was really just looking at like micro influencers on Instagram, people that, like, maybe were already buying from the brand that wanted to be affiliates. I wasn't looking for like publishers or PR, like news outlet affiliates like that was just like a foreign world to me. I was just looking for like creators and micro influencers and just people who wanted to, like, do any post for us, like, that's really what I cared about. And so at the time, I was using these other affiliate platforms, and I realized that a lot of the things that I wanted to accomplish were just very clunky and difficult to accomplish. Simple things like onboarding affiliates, sending payouts, just very, very basic functions of these programs were just incredibly difficult, and it seemed like they could be solved, really. Could be solved really simply with the right app. It's like, I mean, I'm not technical myself, but it just seemed like very simple features to accomplish, like, what was,
Mariah Parsons 07:32
yeah, like, you want to be you have to be able to do those things to have, like, effective marketing strategy there.
Noah Tucker 07:38
Yeah. And it was like, these things were so basic and we're causing so much headache that, like, affiliates would just, like, not really participate in these programs that much, because it was just so much work to get them on board, to get their links or CO generated, send them a payout. Like, send them a free gift, if we were, like, gonna see them a product. Everything was just so difficult. So at the time, I kind of just ruled it in my head that, like, oh, all of these affiliate platforms suck. And like, that's kind of how the idea for social snowball started. In hindsight. Now, knowing what I know, it's not that those platforms sucked, it's just that they were built for a very different type of affiliate than what I was trying to partner with. And this is kind of, you know, what led to where social Snowball is today. Because, like, at the time the word affiliate and like, if you were to zoom back, like, 10 years ago this, this is the only thing the word affiliate meant. It's like, I call these now the legacy affiliates, which is like publishers, listicles, review sites, bloggers, even media buyers, were affiliates. Like that. Used to be exclusively what the word affiliate meant. And then all of these platforms that existed that were calling themselves like affiliate platforms. You could find them in the Shopify, App Store and all store and all that stuff. They were built for creating an affiliate program for those types of affiliates. And then what I was trying to do, and what many other brands were trying to do, is partner with influencers as affiliates, not just like influencers in a content partnership or like a deliverable partnership, but like, I actually want you to drive attributable revenue, and I want to track that and reward you for doing that. And the only affiliate platforms that existed to enable those partnerships were built for these like legacy publisher affiliates. And what I realized, like you know, later on, is that what you need for a successful partnership with one of these publisher affiliates is just super different talk, like user experience and Functionality wise, than what you would need for a partnership with like an influencer affiliate. So that's essentially what social snowball became to as you know, I started to understand more about what the whole landscape looks like and what was really going on. It wasn't that those platforms suck, it's just that they were built for a different type of affiliate. So social snowball now really became the first affiliate platform for D to C to just be laser focused on enabling partnerships with this newer type of affiliate, meaning the influencers, creators, your everyday customer ambassador, and so that's really what we focus on now. So we're kind of like at the in between space of like an affiliate platform and an influencer platform, wherever those overlap. That's where social snowball exists, wherever
Mariah Parsons 09:57
you want to decide whatever. Terminology you want. Okay, that's a great comprehensive view. So for you know, when you're talking about legacy versus, like this newer age affiliate marketing, would you say that when you're looking at social snowball and then those like legacy or more legacy platforms, was there also, like, a divide of, like, like, enterprise versus maybe SMB brands who are using or like, who SMB brands were struggling with the legacy affiliate programs? Or was there not really that divide of like, company size didn't matter. It was just what you wanted to get out of it. Because I think a lot of the times I see software that's younger, like malomo and social snowball. It's more for the like agile marketer who wants to be able to just easily get in there, set it up and not be restricted by, you know, maybe you need an agency to, like, fully own this platform or this, you know, affiliate marketing or like PR firms are way bigger, most of the times, than your average creator, and like, the resources that they can dedicate. So were you seeing that division or that clear difference at all? Or was it not really? It was just the different aspects of affiliate marketing? Yeah, honestly,
Noah Tucker 11:16
not too much. I think the problem, I think what it is is the problems that different sized brands faced were different, but they were still facing problems that were like legacy versus like modern affiliate like, for example, the more enterprise brands they were not like the payouts and like the onboarding, like I talked about earlier, like those were problems, but the bigger problem for them that really created, You know, a big financial loss for them was their codes leaking to coupon sites, the affiliate codes. And with these legacy affiliate platforms, it's usually more like Link based cookie tracking. Adding a coupon code generating feature was like a new thing. So they could pretend that they were an influencer platform, but they just did a very basic you could generate a static code that influencers could share. And then, of course, honey and RetailMeNot Capital One shopping they're picking up these codes and leaking them. So that was, like a problem that more enterprise esque brands were running into, and the legacy affiliate platforms didn't have solutions for it, because they barely even had coupon codes as a feature like that was like, already, like a stretch for them to add something like that, because, like, a review site or a publisher doesn't really need a coupon code. So I would say, like, they both were running into the same kind of, like, Legacy versus modern affiliate problems, but the problems specifically were different. Okay, that's,
Mariah Parsons 12:34
that's a helpful delineation. So I think a lot of people, even if they're not in the E comm space, know, or at least, like, are more in the sphere of knowing about affiliate marketing, just because, like As consumers, we see it more right, like, we're pretty used to interacting with influencers, or even if people aren't buying from them, like you see them on your feed and you're like watching their content. And so I think it would be a fun exercise to walk through. Say, a brand comes to you like, what are they? What is enabling their influencers look like? Like? Are you coming to them with a list of, okay, this is your industry like. These are influences that we work with, right? And then you have that relationship with influencers who are on your platform already, and you know, you know, perform well, they're trustworthy, all that stuff. Or is a brand coming to you saying, you know, like we've done the research, we think these influencers are who we want to work with. Can you help onboard them? Or is it somewhere in between?
Noah Tucker 13:33
It's definitely somewhere in between, but it's different for each brand. So I'd say, like social snowball, we do have an influencer discovery tool that we that brands use, like find new influencers. But I would say for the most part, like there's a few different channels that brands are acquiring these affiliates from. One, you know, could be our influencer search tool, so they could be finding new influencers that way. Two could be inbound. So, like a lot of brands, just by existing, have a ton of influencers reaching out, and obviously social snowball like creates forms. So you could capture the influencers that are reaching out and then approve the ones you want gift, the ones that you want to send products to enroll them in your programs. So that would be another way. Three would be customers. This has been a big one too. Is turning customers into affiliates the post purchase experience and basically enabling customers with an affiliate link so that they could share immediately after making a purchase, create content with the product that they've already ordered, so there's no additional cost for the brand. And just creating an incentive structure that actually motivates them to really share, not just like a give five, get five, they like see the widget once and forget about it. Something a little bit more incentivizing than that. But yeah, I'd say between, it's really like inbound influencers are always coming to you outbound, like you're either using, you know, one of our search tools, or you're just searching on Instagram natively and Tiktok natively and then doing outreach, or customers like, and a lot of brands are doing all three. Honestly, it helps increase customer retention so much and it's a great customer retention strategy.
Mariah Parsons 14:58
yeah, it's smart to tell. Into multiple lanes, because also they provide different things, right? If someone's inbounding to you, then it does take, like, the need of resources a little bit off of your plate, right? Sure, for you to have to go and dedicate time to find someone. But then outbound, you can get pretty targeted and see what kind of content they're already producing. And then customers, they're serving your customer, right? Well, because they are lumped into that same, you know, bucket. So you mentioned the that you have it the incentive structure for customers specifically built out so that it's motivating for someone to share that link and then also get other people to purchase. Can we dive into that a little bit, because I think that is something that might be a differentiator and like for something, something that our audience would want to understand of like, because post purchase, we see a lot right like, even just having something that is right in front of the customer and just visible already does so much. But then having like, an extra layer on top of that, of being a like, smart cross seller upsell, then you can see, okay, if they bought this directly next to it is like the product that they would probably buy, or they even have, like, the data internally to know consumer buying habits. Usually, if someone buys this, then they're going to come back later to buy this, or they're gonna add it right from their post purchase page. So I think it would be interesting to hear, like, how you're thinking about the incentive structure for customers to not just have it be like a quote, unquote basic,
Noah Tucker 16:32
yeah,
Mariah Parsons 16:33
you know, referral program, 100%
Noah Tucker 16:35
that's a, that's a really good question. I think this is like, I think there, in general, is just like, a huge fundamental flaw with these very like, basic, and I'll get into what I mean by basic, but like, refer a friend programs and like, we've seen these everywhere. Everyone's seen these. Everyone. Every consumer has seen a give five, get five, or a give 10, get 10 program where you give, you know your friend, a coupon off their order, and then you get a coupon off your next order. And like, the fundamental flaw with these is that all of the incentives that you're giving your customers to refer a friend are loyalty based, meaning like, if I'm giving you a coupon, then I'm getting a coupon off my next order, meaning that that coupon I'm getting off my next order, it really only holds value to me if I'm planning my next purchase. And I think the reason that these loyalty incentives are so common in referral programs is referral programs, historically have often been baked into a greater loyalty program. So there will be, like, a loyalty program vendor that a brand signs with, and then a feature in that is a referral program. They don't put a lot of thought into it. They just like, turn it on, set a coupon structure, and then just let it run and it generates like, point 3% of their GMV, and they just like, be like, Okay, well, whatever. And they're
Mariah Parsons 17:44
like, Okay, check it off the list. We're good, exactly, we have it, so it's fine, exactly, yeah.
Noah Tucker 17:48
They're like, Yeah, we do that. But the thing is, with these loyalty incentives, like I said, they only hold value if the customer is planning the next purchase, right? A coupon to anyone, to any consumer, is only valuable if you are planning your next purchase. So let's say you have a lower LTV brand, and not even for a bad reason, like if you sell furniture or something, you buy a couch and your own, and you love the couch, but your only incentive to refer a friend is a discount off your next couch purchase from this couch seller. You really have no incentive to refer a friend, because you're probably not buying another couch for the next five years, because you just bought a couch. And so there's really like the loyalty incentive for a low LTV brand is basically completely valueless, but even in the scenario of a higher repeat purchase rate brand, like a CPG brand, for example, that, let's say, has a 60% repeat purchase rate. Now the coupon incentive is valuable, maybe for those 60% but what about the other 40% if the goal of the referral program is to maximize customer acquisition, which should be the goal of it. You want your incentive structure to be aligned with that goal. And if your incentive structure is eliminating 40% of your customer base from having any incentive to make a referral, even if they love your brand, they might just not be planning a purchase for any other reason you want to be capturing them in that referral program. And even if you do have a customer that is planning their next purchase, and let's say someone refers three friends and now they have three coupons sitting in their account, they're probably not going to be as motivated to make that fourth, fifth, 10th referral, because the more coupons they collect, the less valuable the next coupon becomes. And again, if the goal of the referral program is customer acquisition, we want to be incentivizing the customers to refer as many friends as they can. And we don't want the incentive structure to lose value the more times they complete the action that we want them to be completing. So that's like, in my head, the complete fundamental flaw with these give five, get five. Give 10, get 10. Referral programs. You know, that was kind of very long way to say cash is a much better
Mariah Parsons 19:41
incentive. Cash is better cash over coupons. Exactly, that's what this can be. Yeah, exactly, no, it's great. Yeah. I think that even as you're talking, one of the things that even as a customer, like when I'm putting myself in those shoes, I. Coupons you're talking about, like, high versus low LTV. But even coupons, usually they have, like, the date that you have to use it by, right? So it forces someone into that, like, buying cadence, even if it isn't their preferred one, right? Say, like, right, the couch example. Obviously, I think a lot of people can understand that one, but something that's higher LTV or, like, say, like a subscription brand. A lot of the power of subscription brands that do it well is that you can customize your cadence, because you might not use depending on the product, the cadence you know that they've calculated should be average, right? And so, like, I buy shampoo bars so I will use it way more when my hair is longer, just because I need more product. But when it's shorter, I don't. So like, I have to be able to flex, be flexible, and I need a subscription program that's flexible to do that. And so if I get a coupon that's, like, by next month, and I'm like, I'm not going to use this full thing for the next three months, and I don't want to have too much product in my, you know, in my sphere, because I'm moving around a lot, I don't want to have to, you know, have, like, a stockpile when I'm, you know, moving houses probably every year, right? So, like, things like that that maybe you wouldn't think of. And then one of the other things, when you were mentioned, like, Okay, you have three coupons in your account that also sends out a little bit of a flag of, can a customer even use three coupons on one purchase, because then you're going to see, like, if they don't even have that ability, then they're not going to be motivated to keep referring their customers. They're just going to be like, Okay, then I'll just refer someone in six months when I need this product again, because I can't, you know, stockpile my coupons to maybe get something for free or get something with a crazy discount, if it's, you know, 10% is the is where I'm locked and I can't stockpile three of them together exactly,
Noah Tucker 21:48
yeah, and they usually don't stack. So, like, that would be something that's going on in people's minds, like, oh, I guess I'll wait longer to make a referral. And it's just, it's just a misaligned incentive structure for those reasons. So, yeah, anyway, cash works way better because it doesn't matter. It doesn't discriminate against any of these scenarios. You could be, you could have referred 100 friends before. You could have you could be selling couches. You could be selling CBG, it doesn't matter. Cash is always an incentive. That works.
Mariah Parsons 22:12
We're funny humans of that cash is cash, right? Like it's motivating, even if it's a little, a little amount, something, agree, or something you know, getting some type of cash back. Um, so would you say that when you're working with the 2200 brands that you have on your platform, is there any like hesitancy to flipping how they're thinking about these incentive structures? Is there anything that you know they're really excited about or, like, when you tell them, Okay, this is how we think about it on this platform. How you could set up that incentive structure? Is there any like, Aha, moment of someone being like, oh, yeah, like, no, no, shit. That makes so much sense that you would like, think about that. What's kind of the reaction there?
Noah Tucker 22:56
Yeah, I mean, I'd say most brands react positively and they're like, oh yes. This does make a lot of sense, but it's also not a hard sell, because most brands that we're explaining this concept to have been already using one of these more legacy referral programs, and it's generating usually less than point 5% of their GMB. So it's really not doing anything to the business, not helping their blended CAC at all. And when we show them, like, Hey, you could, you could, you know, replace your incentive structure with this. We make the cash redemption experience for customers super seamless. And this, these are the results that brands have been getting after migrating off of legacy referral. It's, it's kind of just a no brainer,
Mariah Parsons 23:33
okay, that makes sense. So let's dive into a little bit of, I guess, like best practices that you've seen people implement through the year. I don't know if we want to break it down by you know, because we've been dancing around incentive structures and kind of what you all are talking about to these brands already, but when this episode will go live, it'll be late August, and as anyone in E commerce knows, people will be gearing up for Black Friday Cyber Monday time they're ready. Yeah, we're doing it. We're doing it. We have to, um, but we'll find a way to make it interesting. So it's not like the other, you know, millions of episodes and content that are talking about Black Friday Cyber Monday, at least that's the goal. So can you walk us through, like, best practices kind of take it as you want, with what you've seen from your your expertise in the affiliate marketing space, yeah, like Black Friday specifically, yeah, yeah. I think it would be fun. And you can, like, also say, like, this is specific to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and call that out so people know, but I know it always piques people's interest to hear, like seasonality, how it's influencing advice, yeah, thing 100%
Noah Tucker 24:46
so I think what I'm about to explain would apply to, I mean, bfcm, for sure, and really, any holiday sale period, like, you know, it's, I think, prime week, or whatever, this week. Like, really, any of those sale periods, you. Apply this to which actually
Mariah Parsons 25:01
real quick. It is so interesting. I've been seeing so many brands sell during Prime Day Like, way more than I saw last year of just like Prime Day sales, right? It's like crazy. My whole inbox. It's like Prime Day deals. Prime Day deals. We're just smart because everyone obviously knows, like Amazon and I've also been seeing that Prime Day deals just like, aren't really a thing this year. A lot of people are just using, like, a cross out discount image, and they're not actually good deals. Like, they're like, people have been putting stuff in their cart, and then it was like, $400 you know, before Prime Day sales, and then it went up in price. So I was like, yeah,
Noah Tucker 25:42
that's super sneaky. I did not hear that. That's crazy. Well, yeah, that's That's wild, but
Mariah Parsons 25:47
yeah, very timely holiday stuff, yeah, yes, yes, exactly. But
Noah Tucker 25:52
yeah, and, I mean, in general, for like, bfcm and any of these sale periods, a lot of brands, I think a mistake they make is, is neglecting their affiliates during this because what like your affiliates? Usually you have a two sided incentive structure, meaning part of the program is they're sharing a discount to their audience. But during bfcm, you're probably sharing you have site wide discounts. Maybe it auto applies. Maybe it's code list that is probably, in most cases, greater than what your affiliates are are sharing on, like a random Wednesday, and during the summer, like it's gonna be a higher discount. So there's a few things you could do to make sure that your affiliates could still be involved. One is make sure that there's no code clashing happening. So if your affiliates are sharing a discount, you wanna either make sure that the discount stacks or is greater or equal to the Black Friday sale that you're running, which could be, you know, an advantage, like your influencers could share a slightly better deal if you decide to do that. If not, you could just, you know, change their links to not have any discounts associated with them, disable their codes temporarily during the sale period, so that they're just sharing the same discount that everyone else is getting. And then, you know, after the sale period is over, then you could return everything to normal. But the most important thing to do beyond just make sure that the discounts don't clash, is increasing their commission value during the sale period. A lot of brands are going to reach out to every influencer, every micro influencer, affiliate, even customer ambassador. Everyone gets reached out to, and they're like, oh, promote our Black Friday sale. Promote our Black Friday sale. And it's gonna like, if a if an influencer is working with 10 brands, it's gonna come down to what's gonna make them the most money. And so, you know, of course, a factor of that is what converts the best with their audience. But assuming that you're in, you know, a contender for, you know, you ready, check that box, then you want to just be giving the highest commission. So I think brands should be really competitive with commissions during the sale period, and they also need to communicate that well to their affiliates. So they should send emails in the weeks leading up to it being like, hey, during Black Friday, we're boosting your commission from 20% to 35% you know, you can help. You can make a ton more money. You could promote our Black Friday sales can be the biggest discount we ever give the whole year. So it'll be really easy to drive a lot of revenue. You can make a ton of commissions, and then just keep reminding them, reminding them, send multiple reminders while the sale is happening. Update their, you know, update their affiliate link. Make sure they know how to share if they have a code, make sure they know it's just disabled if that's the route you're going. But yeah, I mean clear, like adjusting your incentive structure for affiliates, and then really clear communication can make your affiliate channel really powerful during this bfcm period.
Mariah Parsons 28:22
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting to hear about all the different ways that you can, kind of like customize it. And you have to think, you have to be prepared for it, right? But I think a lot of the times when someone has, like a brand, has a technology, it's tempting to just have it be the same throughout the year. And we see this with post purchase experiences during Black Friday of if you swap out like the imagery or the products to be very focused in like seasonality, then it also increases, you know, those post purchase rates a little bit higher as well, because you're meeting the customer in that like mindset, that buying mindset that they're already in. So it's interesting to see the one all the different ways that you could do that, like even if you know a brand decides, Okay, it's not financially, right? Now, it doesn't make sense for us to do this one way. Let's call it like increasing commissions, right? But you, if you, if you are communicative, and you say to your affiliates that you know this is going to be the best sale of the year. So communicate that, because even, like, even if they don't get commission, they're going to get, you know, they're still going to get the kickback if they're selling more, right? So I like what you said about like, not just making sure that they're aware of, like, the technical aspect of how to use their affiliate link and how to, you know, giving them assets to sell, or whatever way you want to enable your affiliates, but also educating them on, like, okay, you can rest assured that this is going to be the biggest sale of the year. Sure, yep. So capitalize on this with us for XYZ reasons. And you give that, it's like, it's kind of, you know, you're, like, selling your your brand. You're selling your product in another way, because you want someone to sell it for you, right? So it's like you're communicating with, like, a, I don't want to say, like a different type of customer, or, like, a different IC, no, it's,
Noah Tucker 30:24
it is selling, though it is, yeah, like, it's like, in the realm of, like, why
Mariah Parsons 30:28
would someone do this? Like, yeah, pitch them on it almost 100% 100%
Noah Tucker 30:32
you're always selling your influencers. They're getting bombarded by brands. So, yeah, that's something that you need to always be doing. And yeah, during during Black Friday, you have a very enticing, you know, compelling reason for them to promote you.
Mariah Parsons 30:44
Yes, yeah. So, when, so after Black Friday? Do you think that a lot of, is there any kind of like, like, break season, almost for like, influencers, or is it really, like full year? Because I see a lot with brands, as I'm sure you do, is like second half of the year, all Black Friday, Cyber Monday, prep, pretty much like all of it, right? But then the first half of the year is basically prepping for the back half of the year. And that's like internal brands, agencies and SAS all together. But because affiliates are like on their entire different platform, like they're on social media, or they have their email list, or whatever. Is there any like from working so closely with affiliates? Is there any type of seasonality to affiliate marketing? And when you see like upswings, like, is summer? A big part of you know, the holiday, like a holiday air quotes. Is summer part of seasonality that's mixing into it? Or is there any like, are influencers just trying to, you know, capitalize on these platforms year round?
Noah Tucker 31:52
I think the influencers themselves are always trying to capitalize it. I would say like GMV, of affiliate programs, like fluctuates with this the greater space, like, you know, summer can be a little bit more quiet. Second half of the year, getting closer to Black Friday. Holiday Season is always hotter for affiliate rev, like, for a brand's affiliate channel, as well as, like, their entire business. But the influencers themselves, I think, you know, this is for a lot of them, this is how they make a living, you know. So they're always posting, and maybe right after Black Friday, it's a little slower, or sometimes during the summer it's a little slower, but they're still very active. I wouldn't say the influencers like take a break necessarily, but I do think like the consumer behavior that we see across every channel is consistent, you know, through affiliate as well.
Mariah Parsons 32:40
Yeah, consumers are taking the break from
Noah Tucker 32:42
yes, they're the ones, they're the ones pumping the brakes. It's not the influencers, yeah,
Mariah Parsons 32:46
yeah, getting a little bit of that overwhelming, like, I need to shop for all of, all of my people in the, you know, in the winter season, and then slowing, slowing their role, letting the bank accounts recover a little bit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Not a secret to open up those wallets. Um, so I want to circle back to when at the top of the conversation we were talking about, like, how you kind of get familiar with influencers in the space, and break it down by industry. So when you're for first starting and, like trying to find influencers. Maybe a brand is coming to you for a recommendation. You want to fill out that directory. Um, how are you? Are you like, just like on the platform, searching yourself of like influencers who are in the space doing this? Are you just naturally seeing a lot of influencers, like, on your own social feed that then you're, you know, you're taking inventory of like, okay, this was good content. This is maybe someone who would be, you know, helpful for XYZ brand. I ask this because I have been a strong proponent of being on social media just to observe trends and observe what's going on. And so I don't know if it's just me justifying being on social media to like, call it research. It probably is. But I think there's a lot of value to being just familiar as a consumer of social media and seeing like, Okay, this is what other people are doing to then someday maybe be beneficial to a brand or to, you know, an affiliate program, to say, like, okay, these are actually the people who are, like, popping off right now. This is someone who's new in the space, maybe doesn't have a lot of you know, like, exposure or brands that they're working with yet. So you might be able to get in there early, become like, one of their staple brands, all that kind of stuff. How are you it can be like in the earlier days or still today, like finding those resources, those influencers, to fill out your like, internal resources.
Noah Tucker 34:46
Yeah, so, I mean, I definitely do stay on social media to an extent, like to keep your finger on the pulse, or just as an excuse to use social media. Yeah, we all do, right? So I feel, I feel you there. I would say, like I'm not. I'm definitely not. I don't think it would be a good use of my time to like, be trying to find new influencers to like, recommend to brands, because we're just at too much, too big of a scale for that to be valuable at this point, like we you know, it would just be too difficult. But that being said, there have been a lot of things that I've noticed, and some of this, you know, people have shown me as well, but there are definitely things that I've noticed make a really good affiliate from an influencer, because I think a lot of influencers historically have been used to just getting away with always, like deliverable partnerships, where it's like, paid for a post or paid for to make a piece of content. And now brands like, you know, obviously paid ads are getting more expensive and less reliable, so they're relying on influencer to be more of an acquisition channel. And it's starting to become more and more clear who what, which influencers can actually drive revenue, not just have the best esthetic and engagement rate, but actually drive revenue. So that's that's been something I've definitely noticed recently. And like, I think the most important things there are literally just, really, the most important thing by far is just how frequently is an influencer posting other brands. Like, if you go to an influencer and like, let's say, on Instagram, and you and they have story highlights, and you click through their story highlights, even just a few clicks, and you don't see a brand that's tagged or an affiliate link in those first like, five clicks, that's probably a sign that they're not a great affiliate, because the influencers that are sharing brands frequently, their audience follows them to learn what to buy, and their audience wants them to be posting affiliate links and brands, because that's that's why they follow them. And then when there's these other influencers that maybe have, like, a good engagement rate in the right esthetic, but never share a brand, when they share a brand for the first time, it's it usually doesn't convert as well. And so if the point of this partnership with an influencer is solely to generate content and impressions, then those esthetic influencers maybe are fine. But if the point of the partnership, which more and more brands are turning to now is to, you know, directly generate attributable revenue, then you need to know that this the audience of this brand is likely or not likely to convert. And that's been the most telling way that I've been able to determine that it's literally just like, are they frequently posting brands? I think sometimes people think that, oh, like, that means the influencer is diluted, or like their customers have already shopped with them. But that's like, could not be further from the truth. Like these, these are the followers of these influencers. Want to know what products they they recommend. So that would be like, the most, the biggest takeaway I've had from, uh, you know, being active on social media.
Mariah Parsons 37:29
Yeah, no, it's a great takeaway to have it. I'm glad that you mentioned it, because I 1,000% would have been in that bucket of if I'm because I don't typically buy from a lot of consumers, I'll see, just to like to see what they're talking about. But if I was a betting person, which I'm not, but if I was, then I would have said, Okay, I would guess that someone who's posting a lot, if I was a brand operator or working in ecommerce operators or a brand founder, I would think that that is like a more saturated market, and I would be, I would probably be scared to agree to work with that partner, because I would think, okay, they're already selling, you know, someone who's in XYZ market. But like you mentioned, it's also easy to flip it on its head and say, Okay, that's exactly your consumer, though. If as long as they don't have, like, a direct competitor, of a partnership with a direct competitor, there's, and I'd be curious to see, like, if there are, if you've seen influencers who have, you know, like competitive products that they're selling on their page. So we can, we could put a pin in that, but I definitely would have thought, just firsthand, a brand maybe would be weary of signing with someone who is like, Okay, I have. I'm running like campaigns right now for all these different products, because you just think, like, okay, they are they have their customer base. Naturally, it's going to be segmented by like, Okay. Group one buys this product, group two buys this product. But really, it could be group one and two are buying both products. So walk me through the like, the differences, or what you've seen with can influencers work with two brands that maybe have overlapping products or direct competitors? Have you seen that at all? I
Noah Tucker 39:08
think if it's competitive, then that's probably not like you should like a brand or like an influencer should not work with two competitive products. And I don't see that happen often. If there's like, minor overlap, like, you could have two hair care products, but, like, hair care is, like, a big category. There's
Mariah Parsons 39:23
a lot of stuff that you can fit in there. Yeah, a lot of things you could
Noah Tucker 39:26
put in your hair. Yeah. So I would say that, like, as long as they're not, like, directly, exact competitors, then it's probably fine. But if they are, and if you find an influencer that is, you know, checking these boxes, meaning that they are super engaged, super engaged on social and posting brands frequently, but they are working with your direct competitor. That's probably like a deal breaker, honestly. Yeah, really.
Mariah Parsons 39:52
And I think that makes sense, right like, then I think you would get the market split of that influencers base right of like one and two. Are going to be buying different brands, and you can probably find someone who you could capture, you know, their whole customer base, or at least hope that you could capture their whole customer base. So I want to pivot for this last question and focus more on E commerce, so less on like the influencers that the brands you're working with work with, but like more of our space, because I think that there's a lot of I don't know if it's specifically unique to e com. I don't think it is, but just like the influencers in E Comm, who are thought leaders, and I just want to get, like, your take on it, because it's very interesting to sit in the marketing realm and see all these great people who are, you know, like their whole or part of their whole, um, like, customer, not customer, their reviewer base or their viewership is like e com operators, which is a fun way to, like, flip conversation, yeah, yeah, B to B influencer. So I'm so curious to hear take just like being in the space and, you know, like where, where different people sit, and what platforms they sit on. Because I traditionally see a lot of LinkedIn and Twitter is more for like, e comm operators, like brand operators, where LinkedIn, I think, is a little bit more of like B to B to each other. So I'm curious just to hear your breakdown of the space and, like, all the friendly faces that you know go to these conference and we're all seeing each other, and we're all, you know, talking on these podcasts and seeing, you know, like, Okay, what have you learned from your area of expertise? Expertise? How does that tie into XYZ?
Noah Tucker 41:37
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really funny because it, you know, we went to high school together. It feels like the space is almost a little bit like high school, like there's always like, I think it's funny. I mean, I love, like, everyone in the space. I have no problem with literally anybody. But it does sometimes feel like there's like, drama, yeah, and it's like a little bit childish, almost like on, maybe more on Twitter than LinkedIn. I think Twitter is a little bit more like, just crazy in that way than that is, yeah, for sure, like, people are always arguing over, like, the most random media buying, you know, people have just different opinions on cost caps and just, like, completely random stuff. So I think, I think it's funny and fun. I do think it's, like, a little bit silly in that sense that there's drama, but it's, I don't, I think it's harmless for the most part. You know, I think the B to B influencers, it's cool. It's like, it's a cool shift that's happening. I think, like, for us as vendors, like you, kind of need to have presence on social media. Like, it's, it's the selling, selling B to B SAS is not just a team of SDRs anymore. Like, that's kind of how it used to be. And I think, like now it's really more about creating really great content and building brand awareness. And social plays a huge part in that. I mean, I could speak for social snowball specifically, and say that Twitter is, like, where maybe even most of our growth has come from. Like, we've created a ton of content on Twitter. We partnered with a ton of you know, influential people on Twitter, and I think for us, it's been natural to do that, because there's not a lot of content in general around influencer and affiliate marketing. I think this whole concept that influencers can be affiliates and influencers can be an acquisition channel is just kind of new, and it's not, it's even if it's, you know, you argue it's not new, it's definitely just not as mainstream as paying, paying, you know, Zuck to acquire customers. So I think that, like, it was a natural decision for us to, like, go heavy on content, because people need to learn the different strategies that you can execute to have influencers and customers and ambassadors and creators be affiliates for your brand. And so we've, you know, leaned really heavy into social media. Also, just like educational content in general, we have like free video courses and playbooks, and we do like webinars to just basically teach people how you could turn influencer and affiliate into an acquisition channel. So I do think the community has been, like, super helpful in, like, spreading the thought leadership and, like, the educational content that we've worked on creating. But I do think there's also, you know, some some aspects of silliness in it. Like, when people get, you know, offended over like arguments, over, like Facebook ads, it's like, okay, this is a little bit silly, but I think it's, you know, it's harmless, and it's all in good fun,
Mariah Parsons 44:23
yeah, yeah, I would say I'm in the same camp of, I think a lot of the, I think a lot of, like, it turns out in like, conferences, right? Of like, you see people still get along, like, even if it's for sure, on Twitter, where people are, like, going back and forth and saying, like, Okay, I believe this versus I believe this, like you see him in person. No one's throwing punches, no Exactly, exactly like we're all, we all understand that there's a baseline level of, at least, from what I've seen. All understand that there's a baseline level of respect of, like, Okay, you're just an expert in this, and this is what you believe. And then I'm just going to be, I'm going to disagree, and that's going to be fine. And, like. Like, there can be that divide, but you can still, you know, be civil, and still have find value in, like, knowing that person. So I'm going to wrap us up and one last quick question that has nothing to do with E commerce influencer marketing, or anything of the sort, but if you say yes to it, I'm going to see if my mom can find that picture of us in a tree from when we were
Noah Tucker 45:22
younger? 100% Yeah, I'm sure it's somewhere. I'm sure it's somewhere.
Mariah Parsons 45:28
If you said no, I would have cut this part out of the podcast, but we'll be on LinkedIn soon. Tidbit for our audience to
Noah Tucker 45:37
both high schools, our actual High School and ecom LinkedIn High School. Yeah, we'll make them both happy with one post. Yep,
Mariah Parsons 45:45
yeah, exactly. Oh, my God. Well, this has been so much fun. Noah, I'm glad I got to start my morning with you. You're finishing up your day. Maybe, if you're no
Noah Tucker 45:53
because I have to work, I have to work late because my whole team is, uh,
Mariah Parsons 45:57
okay. Are you doing that? Yeah, I wasn't sure if you're trying to do an async moment or not, so okay, you're then also still continuing your day, but this has been delightful. Thank you for coming on and sharing. It's
Noah Tucker 46:08
been a blast to have you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.