Affiliate Nerd Out

The evolution of affiliate landing pages to improve conversion rate with Andy Cloyd

February 22, 2024 Dustin Howes Season 1 Episode 71
The evolution of affiliate landing pages to improve conversion rate with Andy Cloyd
Affiliate Nerd Out
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Affiliate Nerd Out
The evolution of affiliate landing pages to improve conversion rate with Andy Cloyd
Feb 22, 2024 Season 1 Episode 71
Dustin Howes

Prepare to revolutionize your approach to affiliate marketing as Superfiliate's co-founder Andy Cloyd joins me, Dustin Howes, for an insightful discussion that will change the way you think about e-commerce engagement. Discover the transformative effect of co-branded landing pages and learn why your homepage should never be the default for your affiliate programs. We're peeling back the curtain on Superfiliate's innovative platform that's not just reshaping the affiliate marketing industry but also simplifying the complexity for brands eager to harness the power of word-of-mouth through influencers and ambassadors.

Crack the code on creating high-converting marketing funnels that stand up to the shifting sands of privacy laws and cookie attribution. Andy and I dissect the intricate challenge of balancing content rights and economic incentives, offering you a roadmap to craft performance-based relationships that result in measurable returns. With our exchange, you'll gain an arsenal of strategies for navigating the evolving landscape where content creators wield as much influence as traditional advertisers, ensuring you're not left behind in this rapidly changing ecosystem.

Wrap up your listening journey with a personal narrative that transcends business. Andy shares his own pivot from technology investing to leading the charge in affiliate marketing, underscoring the power of networking and community in this digital age. We spotlight the significance of fostering online connections that not only kindle industry growth but also open doors to collaborative success. Turn the dial to our channel for a conversation that's as rich in actionable insights as it is in inspiring stories, all designed to equip you with the knowledge to thrive in the dynamic world of affiliate marketing.

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Prepare to revolutionize your approach to affiliate marketing as Superfiliate's co-founder Andy Cloyd joins me, Dustin Howes, for an insightful discussion that will change the way you think about e-commerce engagement. Discover the transformative effect of co-branded landing pages and learn why your homepage should never be the default for your affiliate programs. We're peeling back the curtain on Superfiliate's innovative platform that's not just reshaping the affiliate marketing industry but also simplifying the complexity for brands eager to harness the power of word-of-mouth through influencers and ambassadors.

Crack the code on creating high-converting marketing funnels that stand up to the shifting sands of privacy laws and cookie attribution. Andy and I dissect the intricate challenge of balancing content rights and economic incentives, offering you a roadmap to craft performance-based relationships that result in measurable returns. With our exchange, you'll gain an arsenal of strategies for navigating the evolving landscape where content creators wield as much influence as traditional advertisers, ensuring you're not left behind in this rapidly changing ecosystem.

Wrap up your listening journey with a personal narrative that transcends business. Andy shares his own pivot from technology investing to leading the charge in affiliate marketing, underscoring the power of networking and community in this digital age. We spotlight the significance of fostering online connections that not only kindle industry growth but also open doors to collaborative success. Turn the dial to our channel for a conversation that's as rich in actionable insights as it is in inspiring stories, all designed to equip you with the knowledge to thrive in the dynamic world of affiliate marketing.

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Dustin Howes:

Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out. I am your narrator, Dustin Howe. Spread that good word about affiliate. You're gonna find me here Tuesday and Thursday 12, 15 Pacific Times, so mark it on the calendar and hang out with my me and my guest and my guest today, annie Coyd, co-founder over at Superfiliate. Welcome to the Nerditorium, andy.

Andy Cloyd:

Thank you for having me, Dustin. I'm happy to contribute to my nerddom.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome, and did I get it right? Was it co-founder or you got a different title these days.

Andy Cloyd:

Yeah, co-founder, office manager, you name it, I'll take it.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, lots of hats.

Dustin Howes:

I would assume you got that janitor code on as well, I'm sure? All right, we're gonna be hanging out and talking about landing pages and other types of affiliate stuff that are gonna be beneficial to your affiliate program. If you have any questions for me or Andy, please jump into the live Q&A and if you'd like to be an Andy's seat, come be my guest. Go to DustinHousecom, slash, nerd and fill out a topic that you'd like to nerd out about. Our question of the day is your homepage, your landing page. I want all those affiliate managers to tell me in that chat whether or not they're using their homepage as their landing page for their affiliate program. It's a really interesting question and we're gonna have that topic today, but what? Not further ado, andy or you?

Andy Cloyd:

Hey everyone, I'm Andy Coyds. Like Dustin Misson, I'm the founder of a company called Superfiliate. I grew up in the state of Kentucky. I'm calling in from New York. I've been in California and a lot of places in between, and before starting this company, I spent my whole career in, like early stage technology investing, before stumbling my way into like, the greater e-commerce space and then more specifically, into affiliate via starting the company about three years ago. So I've been on like a crash course of taking everything I've learned from experiences in the past to learning this new industry and getting to meet folks who have been around a lot longer than we have and just trying to ascertain the little knowledge that we can pick up along the way and build the company that we're building today.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome, and I got introduced to you by my buddy, patty McGill, who is always on the cutting edge of this industry and he knows all the coolest tools that are going on. And he mentioned your name. I'm like, well, I guess I gotta go find out who this is. I took a look and here we are. We had one conversation and just love what you guys are doing there, so excited to have you on today. So tell us about SuperFilliot, what you guys do and who you're serving out there 100%.

Andy Cloyd:

So SuperFilliot is a word of mouth growth platform for e-commerce brands and, if you think about that more specifically, we help brands grow via the affiliate, influencer, ambassador and even customer channels. We do that by one, allowing brands to consolidate all those programs into one easy to use application. So you can think about running customer facing programs, ambassadors, professional influencers, creators, affiliates you name it all in one. However, the most interesting and the most unique thing that we do that I think is most relevant for this audience, is we've developed a way to transform affiliate links into co-branded landing pages at scale. We got to that by talking to a bunch of big brands in the space that were doing a ton of like CPA model based acquisition via creators, publishers you name it all of these partners and we were talking to them and saying, noticing for their best partners. They were building these landing pages and they would say, hey, these are our best converting pages. And we started to dig a little deeper and it's like, why is that? And it's because there was this continuity between the moment of discovery of the brand and the actual content and shopping experience that's coming downstream from that. So you can think about seeing a creator and a post, clicking in and then, instead of landing on a homepage where that creator that brought you there or that media source that brought you there is out of the picture. If you're able to land on an experience that has that person bringing you through the funnel all the way down to conversion or checkout, that's going to be a higher trust and therefore a higher converting experience.

Andy Cloyd:

So we said, hey, well, why are you not doing this for everyone today? And it's because, as everyone here knows, brands have very limited development resources. There's 15 stakeholders all fighting over maybe a developer or two developers. And we found that oftentimes that influence or marketing manager or that affiliate marketing manager was not the person that was getting those resources. When it came down to like, hey, we need to fix our checkout flow or we need to build a landing page for this partner, that was just a push pull that, like, wasn't getting one as often as we thought it needed to be. So we developed a way to make that infinitely scalable. So with SuperFilliat, any, everyone here is probably very familiar with sending out a tracking or attribution link and we actually make it really easy to make that a customized funnel for all your partners at scale, so every partner that you're working with has a funnel that's featuring, maybe, their name, their content, their picks, their bundle all of these little personalizations to ultimately drive more conversion and make both you and your partners more money.

Dustin Howes:

That is incredible and it sounds like you've said that a few times. I just I get that vibe from you. Really amazing. And if you ask hundreds of affiliate managers out there what their biggest hurdle, you're gonna get a large handful. I don't know how many exactly or what percentage, but like one of my biggest hurdles I have as an affiliate manager is that dev work, like getting it done if we have a big affiliate and we wanna help them with their conversion rate, and it takes weeks, if not months, to build those things out and I was just blown away that you guys are building something that you can, you know, rely on your own internal team and your affiliate partner to get these things done, and less than a day, which is really crazy. So awesome product. Tell me more about your guys name origin story. Did we hit this yet? Why didn't you come up with that?

Andy Cloyd:

I don't think we've spoken about it but it's funny. So you know, if I fast or rewind back about three years, I actually moved into a house out in Venice, california, as a total stranger to three other roommates who were best friends. Some friends were like, hey, you'll get along with these folks. I moved in and I met you know who's now my co-founder, anders. I was working in like early stage investing, like I mentioned, and you know, every night you know he was up at you know, midnight 3 am really founder type, has only ever built companies and was always working on ideas of some sort. And this is like right when iOS 14.5 was happening and paid acquisition was getting a lot harder for brands and we saw, you know, affiliate kind of coming back into vogue and we saw people starting to think about how can we leverage influencers and affiliate models to like replace some of that growth that maybe was lost when paid acquisition was getting a little more difficult on you know the meta side. So you know we were thinking about ideas and I remember, you know Anders, at one point he was he's the type to buy the URL as soon as he gets a good idea and we knew we were zeroing in on this like word of mouth category, like people or publications or media properties, talking about brands and the discovery point for brands being that you know a partner talking about somebody as opposed to a Facebook ad or an Instagram ad. And as we started thinking about that, he was thinking about like the sharing component of all that. I remember we bought generatelove and generate like the letter and we were gonna like really thinking about this like generation of sharing and all of that.

Andy Cloyd:

And then we had a close friend, Wesley, who had built and sold the company actually in the e-commerce ecosystem, and it just came to him he was like super affiliate, no way. You don't see, yeah, we had people are kind of like you know, super affiliate. So he's like super affiliate, no way. And it just like, as soon as we heard it, we were like that's it. It says enough about hey, we are in this affiliate space in the sense that you know, we're thinking about the CPA based models where you're able to pay people for the performance that they're driving, what.

Andy Cloyd:

Well, no matter what that action is whether it's a conversion, you know, whether it's a click, it's a signup, it's whatever we wanna be able to like, put in reward structures to reward that on an affiliate basis. You know, in the same way that we saw brand marketing go to performance marketing, you went from billboards to measurable Facebook ads. I think we are seeing that happen in influencer dollars as well. You see, you know, $5,000 for a creator to make some content and throw a post up there. Now brands are starting to say is that actually a positive ROI investment that we're making? And we wanted to build the tools to like allow brands to think about these parts of their business in the same way that they're thinking about, you know, some of these other performance marketing channels and so super affiliate kind of stuck and then from there I feel like it's been fairly easy to draw those through lines all the way back. You know, even as we expand, the program and the platform will be on that.

Dustin Howes:

Well, awesome, love that story. I can't believe you guys didn't try to use Anders and Andy and the and Brothers or something in that nature of like your LLC, I don't know, like how you, how you, like the super affiliate makes sense now, but A squared. Yeah and squared. All right, tell us about what industry gaps you guys saw to come and build this product out.

Andy Cloyd:

Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at you know it really, for here I'll zoom in on the affiliate industry specifically, and you know maybe the more traditional I think there's. We're playing in a lot of ecosystems, but when you look at the affiliate space, there is a lot of apps that do, and platforms that do, an amazing job at tracking and attribution, because that is the you know the nuts and bolts of the affiliate industries. How can we know? You know who's clicking or when, how many people are clicking, how many people are buying, and then therefore connect our reward structures to that. However, I think, like what we saw when we just started to look at all these tools, is how you know where else is the product not being innovated on, and for us it was these conversion funnels. It was really thinking about how can you empower a brand and an affiliate with the highest converting funnel downstream of that link? So you know they're still sharing links on these channels, that they're used to sharing links on whether that's a blog, whether that's Instagram, whether that is a link in bio, whether that you know, no matter where on the internet. That is now what happens after you click.

Andy Cloyd:

We need to really think about like there's still some juice to squeeze by making that the right experience. And we talked to tons of people. Some people's answers was it was funnels, it's a listicle, it's how are you providing? You know people are innovating on this, but we wanted to give people the tools to be able to innovate and test in an extremely low friction way, without needing to involve development and letting the affiliate manager or the influencer manager really be in the driver's seat of how they're going to test and optimize these programs. And that just increases the pace of iteration, it increases the success of the program over time and it also just allows you know we saw an opportunity to empower affiliate managers, brands, influencer marketing managers to do something net, new and different for their affiliates.

Andy Cloyd:

You're not just saying, hey, dustin, we'll give you a $25 CPA. You're able to say, hey, dustin, you know we'd love to do the $25 CPA Also. You know, for our you know our affiliates. We want to make sure that you feel you know special, you have a high converting funnel for your audience. Here's a page. Here's your face on it. It's got your profile photo. Let us know if you want us to add a favorite pic or a, you know a quick little byline about you know your experience with the product. We'll get that set up for you and all you need to do is share this link, just like you would in the other link, and we'll take care of everything from there. And I think that has been the feedback that we've got from not just the brands but downstream, their creators, their partners, their affiliates, has been overwhelmingly positive, and you know, at the end of the day, who doesn't like to see their face on, you know, on a landing page or a shopping page or anything like that.

Dustin Howes:

For sure, and it makes your partnership feel so much more special as well, and you're going to motivate affiliates even more, having that co-branded landing page in there. I've had to build these out myself. When we were over at WP Engine, we got tired of asking developers to build out these pages individually, so we just started building up a standing WordPress install that like we could just copy over and over and then switch out the logo and their face, and it was basic stuff and this was like six, seven years ago, but we were doing what you're doing, but it wasn't as dynamic and nearly as cool looking than what you guys have got going on right there. I want to open up this chat to people. Is anybody using Super affiliate out there?

Dustin Howes:

I want to hear some feedback on what features you guys are utilizing, whether it be affiliate managers or some other role in that company. So tell us more about the main features. You told us about the landing page and then the conjunction with the affiliate and the affiliate manager. Any other features you guys have that are highlighted with this tool.

Andy Cloyd:

Yeah, of course. I mean, I think, you know, the arc of building a platform is always a really interesting journey, and I think what we ran out early is we said we need to do something new, different and exciting. We nailed these landing pages, these beautiful co-branded experiences featuring content, featuring, you know, favorite pics, all of this stuff. Then we realized, oh, we really need to now think about how do we build out with the workflows of our user in mind. So we've really started to expand down to like automating things like reporting, automating things like product seating, you know, and today, in 2024 that we're in now, you know, managing affiliates.

Andy Cloyd:

Content is such a part of the wheel and we need to get product in people's hands to produce great content that's compelling for audiences, for you know whether that's YouTubers, you know bloggers, anything like that and we make it really easy to fulfill orders via your existing, you know, order management system, make sure that influencers get product in hand, track the posting of that content on social, making sure that you have access to it, are able to negotiate rights, and then, of course, you know table stakes features like payments, things like that. And then one thing that we've been really excited about recently is just slight gamifications of these programs, put special rewards at different milestones and like, give people a reason to like continue to do that next post, or that reason to write that next article, and just have that carrot dangling across. So we've got people doing super interesting stuff on that side. Like you bring us 100 customers, you unlock a MacBook Air, stuff, like that, just cool, unique stuff, and we just make it really easy for folks to you know structure those programs.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome, awesome. We've got a fan in there. Amy Scanlon says she loves a milestone seeding feature. I didn't know you were servicing agencies. Are you working with agencies in this kind of capacity, or is she using this for one of her brands?

Andy Cloyd:

So we do. I mean, we have tons of agency partners who are extremely helpful on managing our tool. I think the one thing that we've learned about building software is you can build the best tool in the world, but you also need to have a fantastic user on the other side. For the most part, and we're going to do everything we can to make it as easy as possible, particularly with these workflow features that we've been building. However, you know, having amazing people like Amy on the other side of the tool I'm sure you know makes things a lot easier for us. So we have tons of partners, whether that's individual consultants and contractors to agencies that help support us, as well as our customers.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome. We're going to have Amy on in a future episode. I sure wish she would book her meeting. Amy, let's go. I want to talk about right side up already. Come on now, all right. So let's talk a little bit more about the evolution of where affiliate marketing is going. So our traditional, you know, click and link system and cookie tracking is moving out the door and the modern affiliate slash creator, slash influencer out there is really coming to fruition of what we thought the future would look like, and tools like yours are really helping move the affiliate industry in the right direction. Can you tell me about those differences you see between traditional and modern affiliates today?

Andy Cloyd:

Yeah, I mean, I think the best place to start on this question is to just zoom up all the way to the highest level of like. What is, you know, an affiliate? And at the end of the day, an affiliate is somebody that's in some way or another able to grab eyeballs and then push them down a funnel towards a purchase or an action. Traditionally, you know, these things were like we mentioned early iterations, the internet, bloggers, publications, stuff like that, gift guides, all of that. Those were just, yes, those are where the eyeballs used to look. Now, so many of the eyeballs they're still looking over there, but they're also looking at creators on social platforms. They're looking at YouTubers. They're looking at these sources of expertise and inspiration and in the same way they, you know, used to look to some of these other publications or media properties. Those eyeballs are here. They still want to discover products.

Andy Cloyd:

So affiliate is really thinking about, you know, the reward structures that you can put in place for taking those audiences and eyeballs and getting it. You know, in connection or exposing a brand to that audience, and you're using you have platform to facilitate that. What we're saying is, as the attention moves towards individual platform creators, maybe on social media and things like that. We're going to build the tools that are going to connect those folks with their audiences and make it really easy For those creators to monetize you know their audience in the most efficient way possible but also provide the most delightful downstream experience for those people to test and try and buy the products that these you know people that they follow are talking about or pushing. So I think, like you look at this like evolution, it's less of like a shrunk, it's more of a where are the eyeballs going than like we're really up, up ending the industry.

Andy Cloyd:

Obviously, there's things that, when it comes to privacy and stuff like that regarding cookies and attribution and all of that will probably make some change, you know, will continue to evolve over time.

Andy Cloyd:

But those are going to be decisions that are made at, you know, extremely high levels and you know it's going to be up to people like us to build the you know experiences that are able to optimize those relationships dependent on where those go. And I think, like obviously that means things like last click attribution is going to continue to become more and more important and like being able to bring people all the way down the funnel is going to become more and more important because we're not going to get to have the you know, seven, 14, 30 day periods of monitoring people that have come and seen something and come back to buy. So we're going to have to get better at converting people in that session and I think, like you know, funnels high converting funnels that are personalized and all that you need to maximize your chances of getting that conversion or that sale on that first visit, because it's going to be harder to find out who's coming back in you know 20 days and making the purchase.

Dustin Howes:

For sure and you bring up a great point of our industry is in a uphill battle against getting credit in terms of the other channels taking it from us, because that cookie window just doesn't exist anymore on the internet because everybody's kind of working against affiliate in a sense. But you know it's working. But the touch point is always going to be there if your company can track it. So how about? You brought up another point about influencers and their role in this and like your guys's tool can create some kind of contract where the influencer can create a piece of content but also allow the brand themselves to utilize that piece of content.

Dustin Howes:

Because, in my history, influencers own that unless we ask them specifically that we can pull that back and use it internally. You guys create a contract between the two.

Andy Cloyd:

Yeah, and of course, this is always going to be as permitted and as agreed upon for, like, usually an economic relationship.

Andy Cloyd:

But, like, if you look at the overall function of now that creators are such a part of this overall strategy on the affiliate and partnership side of things, it serves another extremely important function, which is content generation and, like, we as a platform can't ignore how important that content generation is in interacting in these partnerships.

Andy Cloyd:

So we came up with an easy way to be able to quickly and easily navigate those relationships and agreements between a creator and a brand to gain content access and rights to then be able to repurpose that and, like, how that content gets repurposed is going to be very important in that negotiation, because if a brand wants to run paid traffic using that media, that's different than something called white listing or allow listing where brands are actually using a creator's account to run ads and driving traffic to them. So, like, we want to make sure that we're you know those decisions are going to be up to brands and creators to figure out we're just going to need to build and continue to build the infrastructure that makes those brands and creators able to navigate those relationships in a very like easy native on platform way, because the content side of these strategies gets more and more important, as you know, as, as like the persona changes here.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, okay, so there, obviously you need some kind of contract in place to borrow that, but you're saying that influencers should be asking for a little bit more if the, if the brand themselves are allowed to utilize that content beyond.

Andy Cloyd:

Yeah.

Andy Cloyd:

So it's super common inside these contracts and inside these relationships with brands and creators that you know the cost for a post is X, the cost for a post with content usage is X plus Y.

Andy Cloyd:

The content, the cost for you know a post and content rights and also to run white list is X plus Y plus Z and you're just incrementing up. You know, and I think ultimately that's just a goal of like trying to align, as always, like services rendered and the value of those services with the value that a creator receives, and you know we are always going to be pushing to that a part of that economic relationship be performance driven. Because I think you know, if you think about a brand that's going to be able to, you know what, what marketing channels are you going to continue to scale it's the easiest ones to measure. You know attributable ROI as quickly as possible, like that's where dollars fly. And I think, as long as we're, you know we're going to continue to push the performance part of these relationships when it comes to affiliate and commission tracking, because that's, you know, the easiest, most direct way to say you know this strategy is working for us, we're making money and we're going to do more of it.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome, awesome, all right Switching gears here. I want to thank our sponsor of the day. It is Aftosash, the best affiliate recruitment tool out there on the market. If you want to bring in more influencers and more affiliates into your program, go check out Aftosashcom and start recruiting more. Let's switch gears into that full conversion funnel. Why do you think this is working so well with your product right now?

Andy Cloyd:

Yeah, I think it comes. You know, if this conversion funnel conversation is so important and it's such a, you know it's the reason why we exist at the end of the day is, you know, the way that people discover products is changing and I think creating that funnel to take people from discovery and inspiration through purchase is one of the most important things that you can do to, you know, increase the efficiency of the dollars in these channels, whether it's creators, affiliates, influencers, you name it. And for us, that funnel means somebody encounters a piece of content with somebody that they follow or somebody that they've discovered. They like that content, something speaks to them. They then want to explore further what's being talked about in that. I then land, you know, I engage, I click, I do whatever. I land on an experience. What I'm expecting to see at that experience is something related to where I came from, whether that's the person, the product. I think the more context that we can pull from where they came from on to now where they are where they can shop and buy, the better.

Andy Cloyd:

And you know, we've been very particular about making this landing page not just the same content that you saw and now you need to buy. We want to make sure it's a fully co-branded experience where you can continue on that education funnel, especially for higher consideration, higher AOV products You're thinking about. We need this page to have the social credibility of the creator. We need it to show the various purchase options that somebody might want to go down. Then we need to educate them on why they need the product and the core value, props and benefits. We need them to understand which one might be for me.

Andy Cloyd:

I love the automated reactions. Which one might be for me. I want to learn more. What's the brand story?

Andy Cloyd:

I know that Dustin works with Starbucks Coffee, but I want to read about Howard Schultz starting Starbucks in Seattle in 1976. There's the landing page section at the bottom. Now my heart's warm and I got yeah, sure, I'll buy this bag of Pike's place, and we're just saying we just need to make that entire funnel seamless all the way through. Though, to check out and I think that's a place that we're starting to spend a lot more time is how do we make sure that that decision, once you decide to buy, there is zero friction beyond that, thinking about what are the payment options, how do we, like you know, remove all friction from that consumer experience, which ultimately, at the end of the day, the North Star metric that we're looking at when it comes to a full conversion funnel, is. Here we go again. What is that conversion rate? You know, if I'm paying to push traffic to this page, I want to generate every sale I can on it and you know, looking at that conversion rate is really like what we're always thinking about and always trying to increment.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, gotcha, and when people are landing on your affiliate landing pages for this unique content, like branded content, are they allowed? So help me understand the tool a little bit better. Does the checkout system happen on that page and then there's like an API called to the internal system, or do they still go through the same checkout?

Andy Cloyd:

So right now. So you know, right now we're pushing people through to the existing checkout. That's for a very specific reason. We've got things like, you know, cross sales upsells, post purchase experiences that brands find very important. We're increasing, we're introducing some optionality there. If people want to use, start to leverage external payment methods like an Apple pay, like a shop pay, something like that, we want to be able to support that and ultimately, we want to lead it up to the brand in terms of how they want to do that.

Andy Cloyd:

Right now, the easiest and native way for us to do is we're just pushing a cart to the find, you know, to actually wherever the folks want to drop them off, but usually in the checkout, ideally like a deeper stage of checkout. So that way, you know, people can still leverage those cross sales upsells and things like that. But then also, at the same time, you know you're pretty far down funnel and ready to convert and there's not a lot of click. You know it's reducing clicks in that process is something we're always thinking about and trying to remove everyone that we can and when possible. But yeah, right now, and I guess, one last thing I want to tie that up with always making sure that this order coming through looks like any other order for data workflows, for reporting workflows, for all of that type of stuff. Commissioning even we want to make sure that there's you know, we're not disrupting a brand single source of truth on the performance of their business.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, with that in mind, like what are some of the best practices that you guys would suggest for brands to use, not necessarily with your, with your product, but and I understand that your guys' product is helping that conversion rate, but let's say we're not going with you what are some of those best practices we can do today for those brands that need to improve their conversion rate with the affiliates they work with?

Andy Cloyd:

I mean, I think going one level up is always, of course, partnership selection. You know, continuing to refine who are your partners, why are they good partners, why are they not good partners? Being specific about that? Because ultimately, their audience is who's coming to your page and you got to make sure that what you're saying on that page resonates with that audience. So, for example, if I am a, you know we work with a CBD sweet powder. They sell to, you know, my mom in Lexington, kentucky and they sell to CrossFit athletes. You know if my mom is posting to her audience, they probably don't need to see that. You know the person that won the bench press competition at the CrossFit Games uses the product. They probably need to see the Martha Stewart uses the product and they're like, oh, let's do that.

Andy Cloyd:

So I think it's all about thinking about the contextual nature of your landing experience. Who is this for, then? I think it's thinking about what are you as a business trying to optimize for? You know the selection, the selection that you're able to put on, you know, in front of that user, is going to be really important. So pushing you know if you're trying to push AOV up, then you should be leading with bundles and things like that that are able to push people up. If you're trying to lead with you know, if here's another one, if you have inventory you're trying to clear out, maybe you're pushing a little bit more on, like you have a special offer on the page that's getting rid of something that you're trying to get rid of in the, you know, in the warehouse. I think there's all sorts of different options that you should think about, like from a first principles basis what's my business objective with the traffic coming to this page? And then how am I going to use like the invisible hand to guide, you know, consumers down the path that I want?

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, and Christians or Brian Christian sends here, says put them on the spot. Yeah, that's what we do here, and I wouldn't toss out questions to guests that I knew couldn't handle it, Like a pro Andy's right in there just getting after it Awesome. As we wind this thing down, it is time for you to defend your post, Andy, and this comes from you're very active on LinkedIn, so this wasn't hard to find.

Dustin Howes:

But what do athletic greens and some other companies like Peloton have in common besides being products I can only dream of acquiring, of one day acquiring? They have incredible influencer partner marketing managers, who spoke super bloom and Libby Oklahoma this week about the state of influence I just want to note here where did this come from? And a secondary question are your aspirations to be that level of CEO one day? Is that a good?

Andy Cloyd:

dream.

Andy Cloyd:

Sadly, my aspirations are so much more modest than that. It's strictly to be able to afford those products. I've actually always and this I will tell Anders, my co-founder, he could attest to this I used to say that I'll know I've made it if I have a cold plunge, a tonal and a patio that opens up to or a living room that opens up to a patio. Those are my three. I'm a simple guy so I was trying to afford those things. So that's where that started with is. I'd love to have those products. And talking about getting down the funnel, athletic green to gets me every time I get down funnel and then it says $90. And I'm like I just don't know if I got the $90 today, but that's neither here nor there.

Andy Cloyd:

That post is actually derivative of an incredible content series that we have partnered with the incredible Lilly Comba from Super Bloom. She was the head of partnerships at a company called Seed Health that scaled the affiliate and influencer and creator channel in a very serious way. It was actually their main acquisition channel and they were putting a lot of budget behind it. We've teamed up with Lilly on a content series that is really just geared towards bringing the best and the brightest in the industry together on quick virtual panels 60 to 90 minutes once every six to eight weeks to talk about a subject. Last time was more general, like where is influencer marketing in 2024? We're gonna try to expand that into other verticals soon, thinking about whether it's is it category specific health and wellness, home goods, things like that or is it industry specific? Maybe it is performance marketing with creator UGC focused and it's very tactical, or maybe it's affiliate marketing in 2024 and we're just gonna continue to do that.

Andy Cloyd:

So that's trysuperbloomcom or at superfiliacom you can find more information on those events. But hopefully that would be helpful for the audience here. But that's the origin of that post. Hopefully one day, dustin, in two years, you and I will be having this conversation and you'll see me. I'll be sitting in my cold plunge drinking my athletic greens with my aura ring on and the pelotons in the background. But right now I just got this podcast studio, you know.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, well, you're not as big of a consumer as I am, like so many points on this. Like I've got a peloton, I have athletic greens that I drink every morning and I cold plunge, but it's like a, just a converted tub that I threw in the backyard to make it work but and you'll never see a ring on me. I don't do wearables by any means, but good to know that I've almost made it in your eyes Like that's great.

Dustin Howes:

And if Lily's out there listening and you need some experts, I know people that are better than me, so I will point you in the right direction. But last point there I thought you were genuinely trying to own these companies, not these products, so that's even fun.

Andy Cloyd:

I appreciate the endorsement of my ambition that you think that I would think that big. Right now we're gonna try to solve this problem first for all our brands and marketers out there.

Dustin Howes:

Hey, stay focused. I like it. Oh, and speaking of made it like athletic greens, if I ever get contacted by athletic greens for this podcast to be sponsored, the answer is yes first of all, but I think that's when a podcast has made it because they have sponsored. If you look at their hey, where did you hear from me A podcast? And there's a dropdown menu of thousands and thousands of podcasts on there Like they just give it away like to it to everybody. It's a wild marketing campaign from their part. Awesome man, really appreciate your time today. Thanks for being here. How do we connect with you?

Andy Cloyd:

Thank you, dustin. The pleasure is certainly mine. When it comes to connection, anyone can shoot me an email andyatsuperfiliatecom, or you can find me on LinkedIn just Andy Coyd. You'll see a guy that's got a crazy profile photo. It's extremely unprofessional. That one's me. It's just me smiling with friends, cut out of the background or whatever. It's no professional headshot. But yeah, those are usually the best ways to connect with me. I'm always happy to show anybody a little bit more about what we're up to, give them a tour of the product and hopefully find a way to help folks out. So reach out. Brand customer agency, consultant, contractor. We just like to talk to smart people that have been in this space and can help us along our journey, because we certainly don't have everything ourselves. So appreciate you having us on, dustin and looking forward to doing this again in a year and seeing how far things have come.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome, and if you would like to support this channel and my content creation habits, go to DustinAuscom slash super affiliate and I'll put that link in the description below. So thanks again, andy. Appreciate your time and, for those folks out there, keep on recruiting and we'll see you out there. Take care. See you all.

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