Dustin: 0:45

Welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out. I am your Nerd O Rater, Dustin Howes. Spreading that good word about affiliate marketing. You're going to find me here every Thursday at 1215 on LinkedIn Live or on YouTube. So go ahead and smash that subscribe button. My guest today coming to Nerd Out in the Nerdatorium is Noel Spagna. From Motley Fool. Welcome to the Nerdatorium, Noel.

Noelle: 1:10

Thank you so much for having me, Dustin.

Dustin: 1:12

Well, we don't have a long history, but I have always been intrigued by Motley Fool and the guys your guys model and the success you guys have. I know nothing in the fintech world beyond what Nick Marchese, like, traditionally, like, Spits off to me, but I'm super excited to have you and, and glad we can talk through this today and, uh, nerd out about some FinTech, uh, um, affiliate program stuff here.

Noelle: 1:42

Yeah, absolutely. It's a, I always tell people it's like a different world when you're used to like the retail side of affiliate. So it's different, but it's fun.

Dustin: 1:52

Awesome. Yeah. If you'd like to be in Noel's spot, come be my guest, go to Dustin hounds. com slash nerd, and let me know what you want to nerd out about. And before we get into it, Noel, tell us about who you are.

Noelle: 2:08

So, uh, my name is Noel Spagna. I'm now at the Motley Fool, but I've been in the affiliate space. For about 11 years now, I started at Pepper Jam, uh, years ago. And that's how I kind of got my start. It was eBay enterprise at the time and jumped in as an account manager there. And what learning experience that was just jumping right in. And, but I'm really glad I got to kind of learn things that way on the network side, you know, managing programs. I then went to the agency side. I worked at partner centric for years. Uh, that's how I got into the finance world. I was really known as like the fashion person at Pepper Jam. I managed a lot of fashion brands. And then when I went to the agency side, I started to get into finance and credit cards and Motley Fool. And then I went directly to the brand side. So I've been on a couple of different sides of the house and the affiliate space.

Dustin: 2:59

That's always a great experience to have. Um, I think ultimately one of the best jobs in this industry is working directly for one brand and focusing your time on it. I, I find that the easiest way about things. Agency life is a little hard. Uh, network life is, is a little weird altogether. Um, but, Doing your own program with one brand is just where I love to be essentially. And are you having a good time with this? How long have you been with them?

Noelle: 3:31

I've been with the fool about three and a half years now, but I had managed the program on the agency side since its launch. So basically touched it for, you know, since. It was founded. Um, but yeah, I agree. It's, I'm really glad that I got my start in the networking agency world because I feel like that's almost the best way to learn affiliate because you really get a lot of things thrown at you and you're juggling so much and you're learning about so many different facets in the industry. So by the time I got to the brand side, I feel like I have kind of a well rounded view of, you know, publisher side of things and the brand side, which I think you have to have in this industry to be successful. You've got to look at it from both sides and how to make the relationships successful for everybody.

Dustin: 4:15

Uh, I remember going from the network side of things directly into a brand at Volusion and not knowing what I was doing. Uh, which was, uh, very difficult to succeed with, but I figured it out. Uh, but I wish I had some kind of other background, the agency background, having starting relationships with publishers is a really great starting point to like starting with your own brand. But, um, all right, tell us more about what Motley. Fool is, what do you guys do and who do you serve out there?

Noelle: 4:49

Yeah. So the division of the Motley Fool that I specifically work on is our premium investment services. So it's an annual membership and we just did a product overhaul. So we're now, we went from about 45 products down to five, just to streamline things. And basically there's different kinds of levels of products that we have based on what type of investor you are and how far along you are in your journey. But basically our. You know, our purpose is to make the world smarter, happier, and richer. That's what we say. And basically it's just to kind of teach people that you can manage your own portfolio. You can do this yourself. You can invest. It's not just for one subset of people. Everybody can do this and we help you do that because we do the research. We have our analysts that make the stock recommendations and we're basically telling people, you know, recommending what stocks they might want to invest in based on the research that we've done. And it kind of makes it easier for people to then, you know, get the brokerage account and then start going to buy a stock. So as you know, an employee of the full, obviously, you know, I kind of started investing as well. You know, once we, I started here cause I have access to all of our products, which is super helpful. And. Yeah, it's been, it's been a really good journey. Just personally, just getting into investing and learning how to do that. And it's not as hard as you would think. And, you know, we have a philosophy of holding stocks. For at least five years and diversify in your portfolio with at least like 25 different companies to kind of Help buffer you against those companies that don't maybe do as well. So Yeah, I mean personally i've seen a lot of great success in my own portfolio with our recommendation so I can honestly say We know what we're talking about. Yeah.

Dustin: 6:34

Funny. Um, that's a great perk working at a company like that to be able to, you know, not only earn a paycheck, but know what to do with it. I think that's a, that's a dream of a company to work for. And, uh, forgive me for not knowing this, but I feel like you guys are, you're like base product is a subscription model for, uh, being Within the Motley Fool, like crew, right?

Noelle: 7:01

Yeah. Stock advisor is usually the product that people join us, um, starting with. And that's one of our longest running products. And we're best known for, you know, recommending like Amazon when it was like 3 and 20 cents a share, like all those years ago, and, you know, recommending some of these bigger stocks, like, you know, Disney, Nvidia, Apple. And you know the service has come a long way and when you join you actually get access to the entire history So you get to see all of the pics that we've made throughout the products like 20 year history So that's pretty pretty neat to see as well But yeah, that's how we kind of get people in it's more of the I'm going to say intro level because it's really designed for investors. No matter what stage of the journey you're at, whether you're just starting out your portfolio, whether you are pretty experienced and maybe just want to get more hands on.

Dustin: 7:50

Okay. Awesome. All right. And our topic of the day is the finance side of affiliate marketing. This is something I am not in tuned with nearly enough, and I'd love to learn more from you, which is why you're here today to educate the folks out there on how. This finance side is really different from your traditional e com and maybe a great place to start out there is what do you see is the biggest difference between e com and the finance side of things here?

Noelle: 8:20

The finance side is Obviously, it's less promotional. It's not as based around, you know, obviously we don't have like new products launching all the time. So it's, it's definitely, you have to kind of lean into, you know, really selling your product and What you are and what you can offer people more so than leaning into like promotions and new product launches. And, you know, so I think some people might think like, Oh, finance isn't quite as as maybe fun as the other sides of when you have like, you know, a major brand or a fashion company that you're working for and they're constantly putting out new things. So you're, you know, you have constantly have things to get partners excited about it. So, What we really focus on is, you know, we do do some promotions here and there, but it's really just putting out like a great product and getting that product out there. So we offer our partners like trials, for instance, like we want them to understand what we do. And, you know, we are constantly putting out new content advertorials based on what's going on in the investing world or in the world in general. Right now, AI is obviously the very big, um, Topic at hand and there's a lot of stocks. That are doing really well. I mentioned NVIDIA and some of the other chip makers that are doing really well because of that. So we kind of hone in on those different areas. So it's a little bit more content focused, um, and, you know, product reviews and trials go alongside with that. And just really educating, you know, there's a lot to at least Our program about again, educating the public and letting people know that you can do this yourself. So it's really promoting, you know, education in the finance sector, which, you know, unfortunately, I think in our country, it would be nice to see more people learning that when they were younger, right? Like I would have loved to invest in, in high school or college, but it's not really something that is, you know, wide scale offer just yet, but that's what we're trying to do. So. That's what we're kind of selling and that's different. It's not a physical product. It's something that you're using to kind of educate yourself and then build your wealth.

Dustin: 10:33

Gotcha. And, um, with that, like, I don't see a ton of influencers in my feed. It's probably just my feed, but I would assume, uh, you know, I get targeted with products all the time from influencers. Or like repurposed content from influencers promoting a product. But I don't see anything in the FinTech world in particular. Um, do you find that there are a lot of influencers in this space that do great contact on like an Instagram or a TikTok?

Noelle: 11:08

There are some we don't do as much with the influencer space right now. It's something, something that we've dabbled in. And I do have some that are in the program, like running and operating on a CPA. I do have several of my content partners now, as I mentioned, we just did this product overall. So, We've been giving out trials to the new products so people can update their content and write new content. And several of my content partners have actually started creating videos and kind of doing things a little bit more in like the social realm in terms of the way that they're promoting us. So we've been excited to see that cause it's a little bit different and I think helps reach different generations in that sense. There are. A good deal of finance influencers out there. Some that I follow myself and it's interesting to see, cause a lot of them use like humor very well, I will say that in the finance influencer space, just trying to make light of things. Cause I think you kind of have to do that in finance too, right? It's not, can't just be all serious all the time. You have to kind of find. Find some of the humor and the fun in it. Um, but it also gets tricky on the influencer side because of the compliance side of finance and basically making sure that everything is compliant and legal and has been approved in advance, which sometimes can be tricky when dealing with influencers.

Dustin: 12:26

Sure, I, I get that, um, that, that message has to be just right in that space, I would assume, um, for, for the brand that you're working with. Um, and let's talk about, you mentioned CPA, like, I misspelled Revshare, but, um, are you guys usually working off a Revshare, a CPA, a CPO? CPL, all of the above, like, how do you figure out what's your program in the finance world should be paying out to their partners?

Noelle: 12:58

It really varies at the full, because we do have an actual paid subscription, paid membership, our program has always run on a CPA and. It's unique in that sense because every other marketing channel that we do internally, nobody, none of them run that off like that model. They're all CPL. It's all email capture that then leads to the order page. And obviously we monitor the sales coming in. So we know which channels are successful in that, but it's more so to make sure we get that e cap and, and that we can remarket to them affiliate is different in that sense. And when it was launched, I originally had thought that before would do it that way on the CPL, but they were like, no, let's try the CPA. And it's worked very successfully ever since just driving people straight to that order page in other finance programs that I've managed. It makes more sense to be on a CPL, like for credit cards, for instance, because you're really paying on that signup. You're not, there's no actual purchase happening. So, Obviously you're going to pay on like the approval sometimes, you know, cards pay on the approval and then they pay when that card is actually issued. There's different ways of doing that. I've worked in life insurance as well, too. That has been more so about the ECAP and like them filling out the The initial forms, but not necessarily when the policy is issued. So it really depends on what sector of the finance space that you're in and how your program would be built and what model, but there's definitely something that makes sense for whatever vertical you're in finance.

Dustin: 14:30

Yeah. Yeah. Well, in a world where you're in the CPL world, finding affiliates that are going to take a CPA, do you find that difficult?

Noelle: 14:41

Not necessarily. I do have partners that, you know, we've tested some things on a CPL through our affiliate network as well. I try to kind of keep them separately and running things like direct when it is on a CPL, just because it's, it's easier sometimes to have that direct tracking and, um, Doesn't kind of interfere with the stats that we have on just the CPA side of the program, keeping the CPL side of it out, because there are partners that do prefer to work on the CPL, especially in the finance space and some that you prefer the CPA. And those are very different payouts. You know, our, our CPL is very simple because, you know, like I mentioned, like life insurance, their signup forms are Way more complicated and they have a lot more questions, but with ours, it's just a simple email capture. That's usually the first question is, well, how much information do you need off the consumer for it to count as a lead? Just the email, which is pretty easy. So the payout structure obviously is very different from the CPA side of what we pay out on a membership than what we would pay out on an email. So that usually sometimes sways a partner either way on which model they want to go forward

Dustin: 15:50

on. Sure. Sure, okay, gotcha, and in regards to like, after you set up this commission structure, what do you guys have to have in place in regards to compliance? Because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, I think that's the old saying, right? Um, do you guys Like in this space, I would assume network quality is of the utmost importance. So what are you guys doing to prepare yourself and protect yourself?

Noelle: 16:23

The first thing we do is we created, I worked with our legal team to create, it's basically a content Creation document that it's tied to our contract terms in our program and impact. So anybody who joins our affiliate program automatically gets those that basically outlines what you can and cannot say. And it's looked at from a strictly legal perspective. A lot of the times I have worked with other finance brands in the past where you submit the content and when legal gets their hands on it, sometimes they tend to try to. Alter the content in terms of the the voice and partners don't necessarily like that They want it to be their voice They want to be able to give their honest opinions And I will say our legal team is really good at just looking for the things that we cannot say because it will get us into So we're really looking for that So we outline that in a document and we give that to people in advance to try to avoid that back and forth between compliance because When people are putting out, you know articles laws They're writing any of their own content to promote us. Well, it could be something as small as like a little newsletter snippet. It could be a whole product review. It could be a small insertion in a listicle. It's still, if they're writing it and it didn't come directly from us, it has to go through legal review. So I'll get the content. I mark it up cause I know now what legal points out and then I give it to them to see if they have anything else. Um, it usually only takes a couple of days, two, three days. I tell partners they're pretty quick with it and getting that back. But yeah, it's a pretty smooth process. So that's the first step is making sure partners know in advance, like what they can and cannot say. Then they submit the content to us. Like I said, we go through that quick review and then we get it back out there. So I try to make it as painless for partners. As possible and making sure that they know These things in advance of what can and cannot be said because some things are surprising Like our product is called stock advisor, but we can't use the word advice. That's like one caveat So that's one thing that we have in the doc Like just don't say it till they say that word basically So and there's other things too if you're using like our returns data or like the promo has to have a disclaimer So that's kind of what we're looking for is like the legality of it.

Dustin: 18:36

Gotcha. Yeah And How do you get around like emails? If somebody shoots out, uh, an email swipe that you guys didn't approve, there's no pulling that back. Like you can't take that content off the internet and change it and modify it. It's gone. Uh, what do you do with some kind of maybe let's call it an accident or they didn't get it approved with you. And it was not up to your standards. What do you do in a case like that?

Noelle: 19:04

That's funny. You bring up, I actually just had this happen like a week ago. Um, A partner had sent out a promotion that was not even an active promotion and I just I go to them and I say, you know Can you make sure that this is not being I understand it already went out But could you make sure like on your website? It's changed if it's there And just kind of tell me like where it came from just so we know we can get it out of there Because it's not active and the partners are usually really good They offered to just send another one, like a new one with the right promotion. That's usually what happens at that point. Like it's already out there. There's not much we can do in that sense, but it's more so like anything that lives on the web, uh, in terms of, like I said, product reviews, listicles, things like that, where people will go back to over and over. That's more so the kind of stuff that we monitor and we use impact compliance tools to help us. Scan for that. So whenever we make a change to our promotions or our products and things like that, we'll do a compliance scan. I try not to just go straight to issuing violations. I have a good relationship with majority of my partners. So I just email them and just say, Hey, we picked this up. Can you, would you mind making this change? And they're usually good about that.

Dustin: 21:17

Okay. That's fair. And then you mentioned partners. Uh, how are you guys finding and testing new partners out there?

Noelle: 21:26

You know, it's interesting. I feel like this space, there's always somebody new, you know, a group people have to ask me, you've managed this program for so many years. Don't you, by now have trouble finding new people to work with and new partners. And I feel like I usually never do because there's somebody new coming out in the space. Some people find me on LinkedIn. I've been going to a lot of the affiliate conferences this year. So I've met so many great new partners and been able to launch new partners that way, just getting out there and meeting new people and having these conversations. We do use, um, a publisher, like tool that helps us, That kinds of new partners. We've been kind of testing out a couple of different ones this year. Just kind of trying to find the right fit for us. And then impact also has publisher recommendations and lists that come out. So we'll search there and then kind of just keeping an eye on, even in Google, like if I Google like one of our competitors, you know, and it's like this product review and I could kind of see who's writing about us there. So we kind of look at that as well.

Dustin: 22:33

Okay. Yeah. And yeah, this industry is ever changing. Like rarely do you see people working at a company for more than three years in the affiliate space in all reality. So there's a lot of turnover and that turnover has them going to new companies that are, that are spinning up in that same space, but doing it a little bit differently. So like the contact information that you might get from a platform Might be old contact information and, um, keeping up to date with that as difficult, but in general, that's why I want to bring up, uh, my sponsor of the day. And that is AFI stash. If you want fresh affiliates in your program, go check out AFI stash. We're scraping those content. Publishers in real time for the people that are working there Right now and who is ranking on the search engines that you're looking for you want lookalikes We've got them we can even find Facebook groups that you're working with and want to work with so give us a look go check out appy stash calm and learn more about that go grab a demo Getting back into the finance program, peak season is upon us. Now you don't have a Q4 peak season. You have a Q1 peak season. So what are you doing to prepare for that Q1 coming up?

Noelle: 23:55

Yeah, at this point, we're kind of, we do plan for Q4. It. It all kind of depends. We've seen some really strong Q4s and we've seen some slower ones. Uh, election years can be tricky

Dustin: 24:09

as

Noelle: 24:10

well. Things tend to get a little, I think people are a little uncertain until they know where, what the results are going to be. And then they feel a little bit more confident. I think the interest rate cuts recently also are going to help in, you know, our favor as well as people start to, you know, maybe feel a little bit better about investing their money and. You know how their money's being spent and whatnot. So for right now We're kind of looking at I am booking q4 currently and looking at those packages But I also am working with partners to kind of plan out q1 at least through january january's really Are usually always our biggest month of the year because people you know after christmas They start to look at their finances again, and they start to try to get back into that And I think new year new year that whole theme Ties into it as well. And finances are a big part of that and getting yourself back on track and just making sure you're in a good place. So we start seeing our peak happen. It's literally like a day or two after Christmas, like we start seeing the spikes

Dustin: 25:11

that

Noelle: 25:12

late. So people really are, I think, plus a lot of people have time off that week. So I think it's people just really like, Oh, I can really hone in on my portfolio now and really start to get back into spending on. Stocks and investing rather than, you know, the Christmas rush. So, so yeah, it's really just looking at what partners are doing the best. And I like to have placement packages set up for the entire quarter with our top partners. And then if we're going to test somebody new, The best time of year for us is Q1 because it's the best time to see success. I always tell partners, like if I think it might do well, but I'm kind of unsure, I kind of tell them like, let's wait until Q1, because if you're going to do well, it's going to be during that time of the year. And I'd rather. Set us both up for success that way. So right now that's kind of what I'm looking at. And also in terms of content, we are also looking at a lot of content campaigns and what we can do to gear up for peak. And that usually starts now because we'd like partners to have some time to, you know, we'll give them like the trial and they're going to write the content and we have to go through like the review process. So we start looking at kind of what we want to have. Up and running. We start planning now our newsletters and kind of which partners we want to work with in that space as well, in terms of getting that content up and running and who's been performing well. So a lot of it is looking at our strongest drivers in the program, really optimizing, seeing who we really have strong conviction for testing and getting them set up for peak season. And again, just making sure we have all of our ducks in a row with the You know, new new content that's coming out that might need to be reviewed.

Dustin: 26:59

Okay, gotcha. And I would assume it would be, you know, a lot of looking at lifetime value of the affiliates. You know, what kind of lifetime value the consumers are, that they're bringing in. It has to be a big lion's share of your guys's preparation of like, Hey, we want to put more budget in the guys that lifetime value is up. So, um, Any, any reports in particular that you like to run to like take care of these preparations, essentially.

Noelle: 27:32

We actually use a lot of internal attribution and reporting systems. And we have a BI team that is able to look at, and they use all sorts of different models, but it's really, they're able to really look at a customer coming in and kind of predict like. If that person's going to renew, if they are going to upsell and what's the likelihood of that, because we're looking at, like you said, the LTV and that attributes to like the overall margin and the projected revenue that we expect to receive from that person over the next. Year, the next three years, the next five years. And it can be even like simple things like which credit card did they use? Like it, there's a lot of different factors that go into that in terms of evaluating how valuable the person is and how quickly they're upselling and whatnot. So we do look at partners in terms of who is driving the most members that upsell quickly, or who was driving the ones that renew. Cause that obviously makes the LTV look higher. And then we kind of lean into those partners.

Dustin: 28:34

Gotcha. All right. Um, switching gears, Motley Fool in general, as, as we close this thing out, Stock Advisor you mentioned is like your staple product. Can you tell us a little bit more about what this is and what other products you might have that are complimentary?

Noelle: 28:50

Yeah. Stock Advisor, as I mentioned before, it's what we're most known for. It's the oldest product that we have, the longest running. It is famous for picking those early day stocks before they really hit the boom. But basically you join, it's an annual membership. We do have an offer. It's 99 for your first year for new members. That's 50 percent off the list price and you get two new stock picks per month, but you also get, like I said, access to our entire history of recommendations that have ever come out of the product. You get access to various reports. We've built out. new tools in our system too. And you have access to our community of other, you know, members that you can talk to and share. Um, we're constantly coming out with new reports and in depth analysis. Fool IQ is a new tool that we built out. And that basically goes into in depth into companies and what. You know, their overall finances, why we're making the recommendations, just looking at their books overall and why it's a good recommendation. We also can sell recommendations. We also give the best, best buys now, and basically staple stocks that you should have in your portfolio, regardless. So it's really a lot of, like I said, research that we do for you. So you don't have to go out and do all this research yourself. And then you feel more comfortable being able to make those, uh, Stock purchases in your brokerage account.

Dustin: 30:16

Gotcha. Gotcha, and I've always been so curious about your guys's Revenue model essentially of like you guys are a product a subscription, but I know you guys are Promoting certain products to go and do maybe it's a stock exchange Product that you guys are promoting. Like, do you guys act as affiliates as well? Do you guys do JVs, joint ventures with other companies and like email on their behalf and the email on yours, how does that all that work in your guys company?

Noelle: 30:48

We do have a lot of different facets of our business, and I think a lot of people know us for like one thing or the other, but it's there's a lot of different things. Like we have a, for instance, a venture capital side. We have a money management side. We have a Canadian product. We have a UK side of the house. We have an Australian product. And then we have our Ascent side, which is our publisher site. That's And I, I go to, you know, after just going to several conferences this year, I do get mistaken for that side. A lot of people come to me, you know, I'm them and then vice versa. People go to them thinking they're me. And you know, you hear the word affiliate. And I think that's, you know, people just tend to go to, you know, whoever has the affiliate title, I think in within the organization. But our ascent side is basically our personal finance side. So we try to, you know, Have something for everybody, regardless of the stage in their finance journey. And the ascent is more so on, you know, helping you get personal loans. brokerage account recommendations, credit cards is a huge space, high yield savings accounts, just anything that you would need in the finance sector. And then, yeah, we do make recommendations based on that. What makes the Ascent unique is that every recommendation that we make is strictly based off of the editorial team actually researching those products and reviewing them. CPA that they're getting paid. It truly is.

Dustin: 32:12

Integrity.

Noelle: 32:13

Yeah. Strictly like we have to actually endorse the product. We actually have to like the product and review it in order to promote it. So they do really put their, they do the work, you know, and they don't always, you know, have new openings for new brands or new products, which I think that's the question I get a lot is how do we, how do we get in front of the Motley Fool's audience? And you know, it depends on, um, What the brand is and what they offer and if we have a category for it or if we're considering opening a category for it Yeah, the ascent team side does that side of the house? So It's a little everything.

Dustin: 32:50

That's a good question like how does a brand get a get in front of your audience is is there a A way to like give them a free account or like how do you do a pr pitch to get on their radar? Is there a good answer there?

Noelle: 33:06

I always say just having worked, you know, closer with the Ascent this year, the first step is to go on the Ascent site and look at our categories and see if you fit into that because we have started to do stuff with like business software and things like that. So they've started to branch out a little bit outside of just the traditional finance categories. And they even did some things with like different review sites where they would review like Rakuten or Capital One Shopping, for instance, and just different points. Systems and whatnot. So they are looking at new categories there, but the first step would be to see if you fit into one of the existing ones and they might even have a review about your product up already. I've actually had friends come to me and say, Oh, I would love to talk to you guys because you already have this content about us, but I'd love to monetize it and kind of work with you more on it. So the same team has told me like, just, You know send them through and we'll vet them out and see if it's a good fit or not because they are open to new categories if it makes sense, so Yeah, that's the best way is to just kind of reach out but check and see first if if it's something that we're currently promoting

Dustin: 34:12

Awesome a great great insight We'll really appreciate all these knowledge drops and giving us a better understanding of what Motley Fool does out there Um last question, how do we connect with you out here?

Noelle: 34:25

LinkedIn is probably the easiest. You can find me very easily there. Just Noel Spagna. And then at the Fool, my email is pretty simple. It's just noel. spagnaatfool. com. So you can reach out there too.

Dustin: 34:37

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate your time. Um, and, uh, enjoy your off season in Q4, I guess.

Noelle: 34:49

Yeah. Usually summers are slow season, but with all the product overhauls, it ended up being much busier than what we planned. So we've just kind of been trucking along and keeping as busy as possible the past, this past year.

Dustin: 35:03

Awesome. All right. All right. That's it for this episode, folks. Keep on recruiting and we'll see you out there. Take care.

Noelle: 35:10

Thanks so much, Justin.