Umberto Giannini + Envolve

Rob: [00:00:00] Hi, Sam.

Sam: Hey Rob. How's it going? You look a little hot over there today.

Rob: Yeah, I'm very hot, very sweaty. I'm in London today. It's 33 degrees, I think. And you are out in Baltimore. What's the weather like?

Sam: Yeah, I'm out in Baltimore, 89 degrees here.

Which-

Rob: the conversion means it's like equivalent.

Sam: -It's basically about the same.

Yeah.

Rob: Okay.

Yeah. I wanna talk a little bit about hair.

Sam: Really?

Rob: Yeah.

Sam: I never thought you would want to talk to me about hair. I've, been waiting for this my whole life.

Rob: You've been waiting for this moment. Yeah.

Sam: Yeah.

Rob: And I can, I could- there's a natural kinda segue from weather chat actually, 'cause I -did you know that hair can predict the weather?

Sam: I did not know that.

Rob: So there's a word, called hygroscopic and that means that, it's something that absorbs moisture from the air and hair is hygroscopic. So when it's humid, it can frizz up your hair or make it change shape. Fyi.

Sam: I don't know if I needed that fun fact to know that at least about my own hair.

Rob: Did you know as well- another fact for you.

Sam: Oh, another one. I thought we were [00:01:00] done. Another fact.

Rob: No, I'm chock full of facts today. So average amount of time that human spends on haircare over their lifetime, what are you, what's your guess?

Sam: Like 20,000 hours.

Rob: You- do you know what? You're not actually far off.

So it is it amounts to about two and a half years.

Sam: Okay.

Rob: So it's about five hours a week in total.

Sam: Yeah.

Rob: So yeah, two and a half years of hair care and grooming.

Sam: Wow. And look at us. I mean.

Rob: I know, I look like I've had zero.

Sam: Maybe it's a good thing you can't!

Welcome back to Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.

Rob: For today's episode, I spoke to haircare brand, Umberto Giannini and their tech partner Envolve on how they used AI Chat to improve their customer experiences on site.

Sam: It's a really interesting example of how retailers can use tech solutions to cultivate a unique brand identity and community feel via their website.

Rob: Yeah, and they're a company with a really distinct brand actually. They've got a pretty specific customer audience, primarily women with curly or frizzy hair. And they're also a brand that's got a really strong ethical stance [00:02:00] too.

Sam: That's right. Umberto Giannini is a certified B Corp and a company with an all female management team.

So getting the right tone of voice with a new virtual shopping assistant like the one Envolve offered was going to be crucial to success.

Rob: Exactly. So let's dive into the interview to find out how they did it.

Rosie: So Umberto Giannini is a vegan haircare brand specializing in curly hair products. It's an all female brand, small team, but mighty.

Rob: With me is Rosie Donoghue, digital marketing manager at Umberto Giannini.

Rosie: So it's all vegan and cruelty-free. PETA approved. Our mission is to get everybody to embrace their natural curls and coils, helping the environment, helping our planet, and just making sure we do everything with passion.

Rob: Was Umberto Giannini the first brand that you'd worked with in an affiliate capacity or were you already had some experience?

Rosie: I was- I already had some experience, so I was doing affiliates with Philip Kingsley.

But it was a much kind of lower [00:03:00] scale.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: And yeah, it was through a different platform.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. You can say that.

Rosie: Yeah. It's through a different platform.

Rob: An inferior platform I think. Yeah.

Rosie: An inferior platform of course.

Rob: From the brand's perspective, how does affiliate marketing actually support its marketing goals more generally?

Rosie: Brand awareness.

Rob: Okay.

Rosie: Mostly.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: Just because I think we're quite a small brand. A lot of people know us through retailers. So they don't know us as a standalone D to C eCom business. Also getting us in front of different people. So those kind of sheer lux or luxe gen readers or, those sites that people might not know us on.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: Obviously sales is great.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: But, I think the brand awareness piece is, where we're at the moment.

Rob: Dan, just to go back to your kind of own professional backgrounds, where were you prior to Envolve?

Dan: Yeah, I fell into the wonderful word of affiliate straight out of university. I went for a job interview in Bristol where Voucher Cloud happened to be.

Rob: And that's Daniel Harding, commercial director [00:04:00] at Envolve Technology.

Bristol is such a kind of like grassroots affiliate community.

Dan: Yeah. I, for, me, after uni, it was either London or Bristol. My now wife happened to be in Bristol, so we were there. Went to this interview at Voucher Cloud. I rocked up in a suit, which is not really a very affiliate. I turned up in there and everyone's in casual gear as we are, sort of are today.

And that was my first entry into affiliate, the early stages of Vouch Cloud. And I was with the business for just over five years, through the Vodafone acquisition, then onto the, to the Groupon acquisition. Then I, that's when I left and joined Envolve.

I had an opportunity to join another startup at the very start of the journey, which was something that I was really interested in being involved with, because I joined Voucher Cloud just as we'd passed that initial whole, scrabbling sort of startup feel if you like. And that's what I wanted to be a part of. We didn't have a technology really to speak of. We were feeling it out and we had no clients at that point.

Fast forward where we are now, five plus years on, we are working with hundreds of [00:05:00] brands across mainly English speaking territories. But you know, takes us to the US as well. And yeah, we've got a really great technology that's leveling up constantly. And the affiliate channel has allowed us to scale at speed really.

Because we just don't have those traditional SaaS barriers. But, it's not a traditional SaaS model that we're leveraging from a commercial perspective. So affiliate for me, for us, was an obvious go-to, and that's what I also brought to the-

Rob: Yeah.

Dan: To the opportunity really. And we ran with it.

Rob: Is there something about the startup stage that you find particularly attractive, do you think?

Dan: Yeah, I think so. I think for me, I find it hard to sit, sit still and like it's,

Rob: You're doing well so far.

Dan: Yeah. Thanks. it's just something different every day. You're not just confined to one thing within a business.

You are doing lots of, wearing lots of different hats and yeah. Really feeling part of something and, even the smallest things feel like big achievements when you are maybe a smaller group and you're - Not the underdog as such, but you are, you are starting from scratch, really, which is quite exciting.

Rob: Yeah. I think [00:06:00] that's something that probably resonate from your perspective, Rosie, right?

Rosie: Yeah.

Rob: We were talking earlier, like before recording and all the different hats that you've got to wear from a marketing perspective, and it's a lot of responsibility.

Rosie: Yeah. And it's felt like partnering with Envolve, it feels like they're just another member of the team. It just feels like I've got extra resource.

Dan: Yeah.

Rosie: And someone just to help me, which is yeah. Invaluable.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. So talking about Envolve specifically.

Dan: Yeah.

Rob: What does the company do and how does the technology work?

Dan: We have developed over the years, I say initially a chat-based technology, designed to improve site navigation, improve product discovery through product recommendations in real time.

It's a piece of site technology, as I say, that users can engage with when browsing online, taking that sort of in-store journey online and allowing customers to engage with the brand somewhat. Our sort of early prototype, if you like, was built in Facebook Messenger. That turned out not to be a scalable project because of the cost associated with Facebook Messenger.

So we developed our own widget, if you like. The technology itself is designed to be on every single page of the site to support a customer at any stage of the user [00:07:00] journey. And of course, this is a technology that supports sales, marketing, and customer service teams. It's not just limited, it's not just affiliate. We are not just discounting.

This is looking at the whole, how can we improve the onsite journey for customers. And also learn from that engagement really.

Rob: Yeah.

Dan: To improve the overall site and give those insights as well to improve the onsite journey basically.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: It's real time feedback from customers as well, which is invaluable as well.

Rob: Just to go back to the origins of the partnership between you guys, how did that come about? What was the original challenge or goal that you were trying to achieve?

Rosie: So the goal was help with kind of resource and also developing the website. How can we make it better without having to do this massive tech plugin?

Or how can we direct consumers through the site in an easy, integrated way. And also how can we create more of a community on site? So I think that's what is so nice about Envolve is that it really feels like you are engaging with the brand.

Rob: I think there's something to be said for that.

We've had previous guests talk about working with technology partners in the affiliate [00:08:00] channel, is this great opportunity to be able to bring in some technical resource that you just don't have capacity for. Particularly when you're a smaller, maybe retailer and your e-comm site is, you've got your dev team and they're like fully committed to the priorities that they've been given.

And it's difficult to then spin up something new when you don't have maybe evidence for it.

Dan: Yeah.

Rosie: It's also hard to get buy-in from like the managerial team, whereas this was just so seamless. It was a quick win really.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: And it's just been even better over time.

Rob: Yeah.

Dan: And on that point, it's the opportunity to do something as opposed to not, so I happened to speak to a client the other day that we've spoken to, probably right at the start of our business.

They've been trying to build something internally for five years and I think, oh, you've been doing it for five years. We could have been live with you two, three years ago. Unfortunately they're not on Awin. Otherwise they probably would've discovered us a bit quicker. But it's just like you say, that ability to turn the key and access technologies.

Rob: Yeah.

Dan: And there's so many available now via Awin.

Rob: Yeah. It's that kind of build versus buy dilemma that a lot of advertisers and [00:09:00] retailers face, I think, and either of those choices, there's a big commitment that you have to go forward with. But I think that there's like a third way with the affiliate channel.

Dan: Yep.

Rob: Which is almost like if you were to stick with the Bs, it's like the blend.

Dan: Yep.

Rob: And it's you can take this other technology, you can blend it into your existing stack and it's not gonna cost you the earth. You can do it on a performance basis largely. And like you say, it can be a really quick turnaround in terms of implementing it.

I wanted to actually, ask you about that, Dan. How quickly was the tech live, would you say, from having those initial conversations and agreeing to work together?

Dan: So probably this, we've been working together a couple of years now, so probably slightly longer than it would take today. So I'll give you both.

So when we started working with the guys at Umberto Giannini, it was probably turned around in less than a week. So at that point we were integrated with the Awin Master Tag, the team at Umberto Giannini accepted us onto the program. You guys at Awin deployed the script via the master tag on our behalf and on the client's behalf.

There was nothing that the team at Umberto needed to do and then two days later we at Envolve would have something ready to go live. Our [00:10:00] team are using the information on the website to create the foundation knowledge base that the technology feeds off of initially. That includes information pages, FAQ pages.

We'll also look to plug in a product feed. If it's a brand that's obviously operating a product feed. Plug that into the technology as well. So probably under a week, whereas fast forward to today, a couple of years later, we're one of the few tech providers integrated with Awin one click activation.

Which means, now you could be an aspiring, fast growing brand, looking to diversify your affiliate program. You can discover us in the Awin sort of publisher store if you like. I'm giving all the wrong names, but you'll know what they are Rob.

Rob: That's all right.

Dan: Go into that and select an affiliate to help with conversion or whatever it might be.

Click on that, Envolve's there, click a button, our script's pinned, and we're ready to go.

Rob: Yeah.

Dan: We start the work. Two days later we flick the switch and we're live on site.

Rob: Yeah.

Dan: So there is little to no dev resource required now, and very little lift from the client side. What we don't want is, and what we did very early on as a business, was try and create vast knowledge [00:11:00] bases.

A lot of probably time invested from the client side, but they're investing loads of time in something that, again, you may not have the buy-in of, you may not have the full confidence in. So you don't wanna sink a load of time into something that you don't necessarily know.

Rob: No.

Dan: Until you've seen that performance.

So again, the performance channel allows brands to say, Hey, let's try it. If it works, great, we'll keep working with, build a stronger partnership if it's not for whatever reason. Go back to doing whatever you were doing or weren't doing before them, basically. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, very light touch.

Rob: So on that same tangent actually, Rosie, what was it like getting Envolve implemented?

Did you have any pushback at all from senior stakeholders or even just from the web team themselves?

Rosie: A little bit. The web team was ecstatic because it meant that their dev team didn't need to do any of the work. So they were more than happy to give it a go. But it was more kind of the senior stakeholders.

I think they were more worried that it would divert attention away from the website. 'cause obviously it's another popup, it's another kind of way to grab the consumer's attention. So that was probably the only issue that we [00:12:00] faced. But as soon as we got it live and it was going, I think the opposite was found.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: It's actually a great way to direct the consumer through your site instead of someone clicking off your site because they don't know. They can just ask it a question or try to find something that they want. We found bounce rate really dropped because people were staying on the site for longer.

'cause they actually had a way to navigate through if they couldn't find something. So I think that really helped and really turned around the stakeholders kind of opinions of it. And that's why we kept it. It is been working so well for us.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah.

Sam: Just interrupting Rob for a minute to tell you that Awin-Win Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Awin. You might be listening because you're an e-commerce retailer, struggling to grow your brand awareness, generate additional sales, or maintain your bottom line with marketing and advertising. Using the Awin platform, these challenges go away as you unlock pay on performance, partnership opportunities, and promotional [00:13:00] spaces that reach consumers everywhere.

Choose which affiliate partners best match your marketing objectives, control your costs by defining how you pay these partners and customize your affiliate marketing program using Awin's tech to mirror your unique goals, whatever they may be. Visit awin.com today and start growing your own way with the Awin platform.

Rob: You said one of your key goals was to obviously try to cement that community feel, and that's really important to the brand identity as well. How does Envolve's tech actually help in that regard?

Rosie: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the AI kind of learns what to say?

Dan: Yeah. We're growing that knowledge base continuously, so it's not stagnant. The team are bringing in new products, there's new questions around that. But our team at Envolve are constantly looking at ways to optimize and continually retrain it because. Again, based on the commercial model, it's in our best interest for this to work well for the client because if it's not [00:14:00] working well for the client, we're not getting paid.

At the end of the day, we're not getting any commission. We're not sat back knowing that we've got 'em tied into a 12 month contract for an X amount fixed fee. We want it to be working for the client and the customers. And again, to Rosie's point, we are learning based on what are the customers actually asking on site?

What do they wanna see? Everyone's asking about this product. Okay, we wanna focus our efforts and energy on growing knowledge around that as a priority, if you like. That's really the focus for us as a business. And again, that does sit with us like we'll try and bother the client as little as possible unless we really need to come to the team and say, Hey, what do you guys want the answers to be to this particular question? Where would you like to steer customers in this scenario? And that's the points that we'll involve to really dig into things with the client.

Rosie: And it feels less formal if you're just chatting into a chat box. It just feels like you're talking to a friend, like asking it questions instead of having to email customer service and go through that rigmarole.

It's about hair at the end of the day. So it's a very personal thing and we just wanna make everybody feel seen and heard that we are there for them and we are there to help them with [00:15:00] any questions that they have. And I think Envolve really do a great job at helping us do that.

Rob: Which leads onto my next question actually, and this is a question for both of you presumably because how do you get that right tone of voice and strike the right balance there because- you obviously have a very clear brand identity. You've got a relatively like niche audience that you are going after. Clear demographic there. So there's a real desire then to surely make sure that the chat bot reflects that in the way that it's speaking to those people.

And it's got that kind of more informal chatty nature to it.

Rosie: Yeah.

Rob: So, where, how do you strike the right balance?

Rosie: We want the informal, but we also want to keep that expertise that we are here to help you. And I think it does it through the AI scouring the site, the way we talk in our blogs or on site in general.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Dan: Yeah, you're right, Rosie. It is using that information and initially we are growing that knowledge base using the information on their site. So the guys have proofed it, they've written it, so it's gotta-

Rosie: Usually me.

Dan: It should be. Hopefully in some cases that's not the case.

Rob: Basically Rosie's tone of voice.

Dan: Yeah. Sometimes randomly oh, you don't use that. We haven't updated it for ages. [00:16:00] But moving forward, again, we are not just making up answers ourselves as, say our team will share what we call the gaps in the knowledge, essentially with, Umberto Giannini and Rosie's team to say, right guys. What do you want the answer to be for this question? And they may want to say, Hey, we think you should speak to an expert in this scenario, or We wanna guide you this way. We are curating a real tight knowledge base continuously, as I say, steered by the client. It's very rare that we'll just have free reign to just makeup.

Rosie: Hey mate, how's it going today?

Dan: Exactly. We want it to be right. and saying that on brand tone of voice, we had a client which wanted every response to start with, Hey babe. I think it was a fast fashion brand.

Rob: Oh wow.

Dan: So that was, that was a while back. A co- a couple years ago now.

But yeah, it's, we wanna make sure it's right and we've got the controls of that. It's not just deciding what it says itself in that regard.

Rob: Rose, if I come to you on, thinking about how you actually measure success for the partnership. Is it purely about sales or are you looking at any other metrics too?

Rosie: No, not- obviously sales is fantastic. But [00:17:00] no. The little widget, it has little buttons that you can press. And we can change where that directs to. So we use it as a kind of test and learn to see who's clicking on what. What's being clicked on the most. And obviously garnering sales through that, but I think click rate is such an important measurement for us.

We're also looking at what consumers are asking and how that can lead our marketing or lead our maybe actually we are not doing this quite well because a lot of people are asking about it. So how do we rephrase this? How do we kind of reposition this to get people to understand it a bit better? So it's not purely through sales, it's about the overall experience as well on site.

Rob: Yeah. How do you report back to the brands in terms of what you guys are delivering?

Dan: At the moment, we're reporting on a monthly basis, it's a mix of our data, Awin's data, and that's in an email report. Second half of this year that will become a dashboard for clients to log in and see all those metrics. And of course, we're getting more and more insights all the time that we can feed back to [00:18:00] clients and that's the feedback Rosie's given there is what we tend to hear from the majority of our clients, like sales is part of this.

Yes. But there's so much value in that candid engagement of, what are customers doing on site? And that's what we are gonna be deepening as a business, moving forward. Where are the holes in the current e-comm journey on site? If you're not running this type of technology or, and, even people who are running this type of technology, but it's not geared up in this way where you are leveraging our technology and engagement to better enhance the overall site.

So this will feed into the whole e-comm team, the wider business. What do people wanna see out of products that they haven't co, not currently got in their features, ingredients, whatever it might be? Where are we losing customers on site is something that we're really helping clients highlight, and when we start working with them, 90% of the time, they're not getting that level of insight into that customer journey.

They could, they're running click based tracking. I can see users have clicked here, clicked there. Okay. The, we've just spent loads of time optimizing this section, the site. But conversion hasn't [00:19:00] improved, but, we don't really know why. With our technology, we can start to get a bit deeper in, into what the customer's asking as I say, and share that data.

Rob: Yeah. You've got a really unique vantage point that I don't think many affiliates really have.

Dan: Yeah.

Rob: And like you say, most metrics that are being measured by other affiliates are to do with kind of online behaviors, like tracking kind of clicks and journeys, et cetera. Whereas you are actually, you've got dialogue, right?

Dan: Yeah, sure.

Rob: With the customer, like firsthand.

Dan: Yeah.

Rob: And so do you do any sort of like sentiment analysis? Does it inform like your customer feedback or the teams that are dealing with customers and inform like their own approaches and?

Rosie: Yes, definitely. Actually a couple months ago we'd changed kind of our loyalty scheme.

And it was more of a points based system. I think it was just too complicated for everyone. And I, we noticed that we just kept getting questions about it. In, on the chat box and that it was just clearly not working and people weren't sure how to use it or, it just, it wasn't converting either.[00:20:00]

So we actually switched it back to the old model. Because it, we'd never had questions on it before.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

Rosie: So it actually really helped inform that and has now also made our loyalty scheme so much better.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: A lot of people also ask about their hair types. And what products should be used for what hair type and like routines and things like that.

And it's actually shaped the way how we merchandise products and how we put products together in a bundle. It even informs like product development.

Rob: Now, black Friday is obviously a big date in the calendar for retailers everywhere. I imagine it's the same for you guys as well.

Did you do anything unique around the actual period to, to promote the brand at that time?

Rosie: I think the noise around Black Friday is getting more and it's so hard to cut through it. And I think actually harnessing the period before Black Friday is where you get your customers.

Dan: Yeah.

Rosie: Envolve helped us by creating more of a lead gen aspect. So the popup on the site, it was a lot talk about lead gen, get early [00:21:00] access, like exclusive discounts when you sign up.

And that really was at the forefront of the site.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: And then when you clicked on the chat box, there'd be like a reminder kind of thing, like don't forget to sign up. So I think we really harness that going into Black Friday with Envolve.

Dan: Yeah. And, on that, the feature Rosie's describing there is our enhanced trigger message, which is a message that appears based on a user being on site and essentially a period of inactivity.

So if you use it onsite, doing nothing, the technology can pop out from the widget icon itself and it will spark engagement essentially. And that piece of real estate has about three to four buttons in it. And it's used by our clients to say, where do you as a business wanna hyper-focus traffic landing on site?

Today, this month, this moment. So of course across Black Friday, it's our Black Friday deals that one of that links is straight through to that bestsellers, whatever it might be. What we had this year that we didn't have last year was the ability to schedule our enhanced trigger message, which follows through into the initial engagement when you open the technology.

So we could schedule that for all of our clients. Whereas before it was a [00:22:00] manual piece, which is obviously huge across all of the clients who give us that information. Umberto Giannini and team were able to give us their marketing calendar, and we were able to optimize based on that and schedule.

So the guys had it set up ahead of schedule. It was just running in the background, didn't have to necessarily have to worry about it. We didn't have to worry about it so much this year, and it just played out. Perfectly so that -

Rosie: And it meant that we could - throughout the week, 'cause we wanted to offer different deals on different, try to stand out from the crowd.

It just meant that we could schedule that all ahead of time. So obviously as we all know, Black Friday week, it's just hectic.

Rob: Yeah.

Rosie: It takes a bit of that pressure off lets a bit of steam out.

Rob: Yeah. It's just so much information thrown at you, especially when you land on site and using Envolve, it really helped us navigate the customer's journey to get those sales.

Rob: So a question for both of you. Like looking ahead, future plans. How do you see the partnership actually evolving in the coming months?

Dan: Well from our side, the focus is always to give Umberto and our clients more insight, right? So for us it's just to maintain that and as we add new [00:23:00] releases, make them available to our clients as quickly as possible to improve the overall experience for their customers.

And obviously results. Results for them, really.

Rosie: Completely echo that. And also for us, it's about leveraging it to be more personal. So say it's like really rainy. Like we've got a storm coming in and we wanna highlight like our anti frizz hairspray or whatever, and just talking to each other more so that we can just really harness that personalization of content.

As well as being very agile with it.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rosie: I think it works really well.

Rob: Yeah. Is that - sounds stupid, but does thinking about things like weather, right? Seasonality is like a big factor, right?

Rosie: Massive.

Rob: For curly, frizzy hair.

Rosie: Yeah. Yeah. Really big.

Rob: So does that inform your own marketing strategies and the way that you -

Rosie: A lot, yeah, and, we are quite a reactive team 'cause we're a small team.

We can be so reactive. So say that happens, we'll make sure that maybe it'll go on the chat box, but I'll do a CRM about it as well being like, don't let the storm kill your curls. Or, something, to really just make it super [00:24:00] personal so that you feel like you're just chatting to a friend.

Rob: And then from Envolve's perspective, thinking about your own product roadmap and future plans there. What's the future look like?

Dan: So new features ahead of us really, and being able to deliver more insights to our clients, but instantly. So developing a suite, essentially a dashboard, to be able to log in and see those insights be more reactive.

That's a key focus for us this year. That's the probably missing piece of the puzzle, but being able to give the keys to that insight to our clients, whereas at the moment we have that and we are sharing it manually. So that's the big piece that's on the roadmap for us at the moment.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: A lot of work on gone into that last year, into this year, really.

Rob: Yeah. And how are you thinking about the wider context of chatbots, right? And with large language models and there's massive disruption coming into that particular market. I dunno if you are using these kinds of things on a daily basis.

Dan: Yeah. Yep. Definitely.

Rob: But how does that inform Envolve's strategy?

Dan: Yeah, so that been a part of our solution as well in terms of the first half of this year really. Looking at large language models and [00:25:00] how we can integrate that to our current solution really. Because a retailer's not necessarily gonna be like - and you can't necessarily say, I'm gonna go and put chat GBT on my site, it's not accessible.

But if we can leverage those large language models, integrate 'em to our solution, then clients will have that benefit. So that is a focus for us and is also part of the work that's going into that first half of this year really, as well.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. I guess you've already got the foundations there, right?

And it's just about trying to integrate that.

Dan: It's leveling up, really.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Just taking the whole experience for customers up to the next level, really.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. What's one piece of advice that you would have for an advertiser entering the affiliate industry today?

Rosie: Build long lasting relationships, that's where you get the wins.

It's not the quick wins, it's the really building that those partnerships and creating longevity in those is where you really see the uplift, not only in brand awareness, but further down the funnel into the sales because you really get to know each other, help each other. Again, it feels like an extension of your own team.

Rob: Dan, same question to you.

Dan: Interestingly, I had very similar. [00:26:00] Affiliate marketing isn't just about sales and quick sales. It's about building those deeper partnerships and growing with that partner and investing time in that. It's not just a quick win, even if something can be accessed very quickly.

My advice is to use the channel to test things that you wouldn't usually test. You've - we've got a great model. A performance model that extends across all of the partners available in Awin. So really leverage that and get out there and test, test everything. You've got great tools in Awin to help you discover new publishers, test them, and obviously test the publishers that you find within them and the tech providers and everything that falls into the, the ecosystem.

It's a vast network of connections that are already there at your fingertips. So get out there and test something. Don't just keep doing the same thing year in, year out.

Rob: Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of Awin-Win Marketing podcast.

Sam: In two weeks time, I speak to Alcohol Retailer, the Bottle Club, and OPM Agency, RevWise, about how they [00:27:00] brought new life to the Brand's affiliate program.


Rob: If you've got a win-win story to tell, email us at podcast@awin.com and pitch why you and your partners deserve a moment in the spotlight.

Sam: That's it for this episode of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast, where we show you how affiliate partnerships always offer a win-win.