Dustin: 0:27

Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out. I am your Nerdirator, Dustin Howes. Spreading that good word about affiliate marketing. You're going to find me here every Thursday at noon with a guest, and we're going to nerd out about affiliate marketing. And my nerd in the box today is Daniel Myers. He is the Senior Marketing Affiliate Manager over at National University. Welcome to the Nerdatorium, Daniel.

Daniel: 0:53

Thank you, Dustin. Happy to be here.

Dustin: 0:55

Excellent. If you would like to be in Daniel's guest seat, come and be my guest. Go to dustinhowes.com/ nerd and drop in a topic that you want to nerd out about. That's how Daniel got here and we connected on LinkedIn not too long ago and he brought up the topic of the day, which we're gonna get into. So, before we get into that, Daniel, who are you?

Daniel: 1:19

First and foremost, I've been married for over 26 years, have two kids, including my oldest, who's now a sophomore at the University of Arizona, following her parents footsteps. Bear down for anyone who, who knows what that means. And then for about the last nine years, I've been working as the affiliate manager at National University. I actually started with North Central University, which was a for profit university out of Arizona. That's how I got the job. And then National bought. North Central University combined those two schools under the national umbrella about four years ago.

Dustin: 1:52

Excellent. I love how you led with the family first. That's a great way to to not, not ruffle any feathers in the household. I like that your work does not define you first and foremost. That is a great answer there.

Daniel: 2:07

All

Dustin: 2:07

right. Tell us about what you do and who you serve out there.

Daniel: 2:11

Yeah affiliate marketing in the higher education space, it really is dominated by large companies including like Red Ventures and Education Dynamics and all the way down to small companies or basically individual companies. We work with about 20 to 25 depending on, you know, the month and what's going on with these companies and basically finding students top end of the funnel when people put in. You know, like best online MBA or best online business, you know, degree. The top results are these affiliate companies. Cause if we paid for them directly, we've blow our Google budget in about three days. But these large companies can aggregate to them and sell them to, you know, more than one school at a time.

Dustin: 2:54

Yeah.

Daniel: 2:55

And My day to day job is managing these relationships, following KPIs, making sure, I like to say the plates are spinning properly and, you know, if they're not, you know, I got to let one fall and break, you know, that happens from time to time, but really kind of keeping the inquiry volume flowing and making sure, you know, they're as high quality, you know, upper funnel increases as possible.

Dustin: 3:17

Okay, gotcha. And so National University told me you're, you're planning for LeedsCon coming up, you guys build a program on trying to capture new possible students. These are the leads you guys are, are paying for?

Daniel: 3:31

Exactly. And at LeedsCon most of the larger affiliates in the higher education space, we may not attend the show, but at least they'll be out in Las Vegas April 7th through the 9th. And we get a chance to meet with them face to face, talk to them.

Dustin: 3:44

Yeah.

Daniel: 3:44

And that kind of meetings are, are invaluable to be able to, you know, hash out a few things, you know, not over, you know, zoom or, or teams or whatever, and be able to talk to them.

Dustin: 3:55

Very interesting niche, something I've never dabbled in leads in general. I've, I've done them before, but not in this kind of essence of, and it makes a lot of sense. Like you can't pay a CPA or a, a rev share on a student that signs up for. Your university, I would assume.

Daniel: 4:12

It's a very competitive market with the large competitors, you know, have national name brands, you know, like Western Governors, Southern New Hampshire, you know, and then all the other like state schools. ASU has a wonderful online presence. We're all in Grand Canyon University, also in my backyard here in Arizona. All fine, you know, education institutions. And it's a friendly competition. And I know most of the affiliate marketers at, you know, these places is you're running the same circles, but it's, it's a difficult market. And a lot of people really don't know what they want, especially with online, it's better now post COVID. Because, you know, everyone has an online component, but still, I mean, as I could tell you with my own daughter's experience, you know, knew kind of what she was looking for, but you know. Visited a couple of campuses and it's not an easy decision and national kind of, um, as the niche for the non traditional student, it was founded in 1971 by a veteran really focusing on, you know, active duty and veterans and spouses, and that kind of grew into the working, you know, adult education. So our niche is kind of, the 25 to 35 for the undergraduate degrees and like 35 to 45 for graduate degrees and a marketing department. You refer to them as Anders because you know, their parents and they're working and they're full time students. So it's a little different, you know, we're not the 18 to 22 year old and we'll obviously take those students, but we're looking for the non traditional, which is a growing segment in the education market.

Dustin: 5:48

For sure. Love the concept. Love that it was a veteran founded. It speaks to me, especially there's a large market that I'm trying to tap into to get veterans, you know, traveling, transitioning into that civilian world. Filling marketing could be a great place for them. And, and I'm always pushing for that. Glad to hear you guys are

Daniel: 6:09

absolutely running that. People in the military are very good at networking.

Dustin: 6:13

Yeah.

Daniel: 6:14

So it's a easier transition. I'd imagine.

Dustin: 6:16

Yeah, cool. All right. Well, our topic of the day isn't necessarily around your guys's program and how you're running it, but the, the bigger conversation is higher education of affiliate marketing. And I'm, you're very uniquely qualified to understand like what's going on in the, the world of affiliate marketing and management, like training, and it's something that is so far behind Like I can't tell you how many stories of, of people that fell into this industry as an affiliate manager. It is very rare that people go and get marketing degrees and go into affiliate marketing. It is just a very unique field. And so I'm super excited to get into it today. So let's start off small. Tell us about higher education of affiliate marketing. What is it? And what are you seeing out there?

Daniel: 7:08

Like I said, it's mostly dominated by large companies and most of the schools have someone like me You know just at the manager level and report into higher like director level That's over kind of the whole paid, you know media team direct marketing So on my team is also like the paid search manager paid social manager and now the influential influencer manager What we? Don't have, you know, it was really specific degrees for affiliate or even have much of that in our MBA program. I was fortunate enough that, you know, national has tuition reimbursement and I got my MBA in marketing about five years ago, but most of that was still a traditional kind of a marketing program with some dabbling in digital marketing. We've updated that as far as I understand. I haven't been in class for a while, so can't really answer that. But for those who I know are in class but. Schools are always looking for that next, you know, like, new program that's going to blow up. Yeah. And a lot of that last few years have been a lot of, like, the cyber security programs you've seen. Okay. Especially with all those certificate programs and coding certificate programs. But affiliate marketing and kind of a part of a digital marketing degree is something that yeah, I know we've talked about it I'm not sure the demand is there yet because you need a lot of Because once you launch all the other competitors are gonna launch probably something similar. Okay, but it's definitely growing and you're right. We are behind We are not preparing the next group of, you know, digital marketers or affiliate marketers. And it's definitely kind of an issue with higher education. Very few higher education, you know, schools are willing to lead. We're followers because we want to make sure something works before we stick our toe into it. So we definitely are reactionary in that, you know, practice.

Dustin: 8:57

That's a good point. I've never met anybody that has a degree in affiliate marketing. Does that exist yet? Is that a thing?

Daniel: 9:08

As far as I know, I'd have to look. I don't think so. Yeah. I do have access to It's called IPEDS, which is the government database, which lists every person looking for government funding, which is probably about 90 to 95 percent of all U. S. based students are looking for some sort of, you know, financial assistance and that lists degree program of interest and what they start in. So I could take a look and see if there is such thing as a, you know, marketing. You know, degree with, you know, a specialization in affiliate marketing. But as of right now, I haven't, haven't heard of anything.

Dustin: 9:41

Okay. I have a few friends in the PMA that are instructors, if you will, like at universities trying to make this a thing Eric Nagel comes to mind. And they are like. Working hard to like integrate it into marketing degrees and trying to get our foot in the door. But one day I think I'm hopeful that affiliate marketing degree could be a thing. And I would love to see that on an application. Like, I think you'd get hired immediately today. Lots of agencies are giving people And networks for that matter. I got my first job at CJ, right? Like I had to do a degree in psychology and that was close enough.

Daniel: 10:25

Yeah, my, my degree is actually in history. So, you know, it's a great research and, you know, development and understanding. So. Yeah, it's a lot of people, you know, kind of fall into marketing with degrees that aren't marketing related. And yeah, we have to learn a lot.

Dustin: 10:42

Yes, absolutely. And, you know, we've kind of answered this for the, the folks out there, but Higher education and the current state and affiliate marketing. Can you tell me a little bit more about like even though we don't have degrees necessarily, how is it starting to integrate into MBA programs and, and the general like marketing degrees as well?

Daniel: 11:06

Yeah, every school is going to review all their programs usually every year looking at trends. We have a whole department that looks at like trends, what our competition is doing, and I'm sure they're looking at us. And what, what are the kind of the, you know, the big high points You know, from the Google like search manager, what's being searched the most. That's always a nice indicator. You know, what, what are people looking for? We, we have to offer and there are always tweaks and programs and catalog changes. And it's it's a lot of red tape. Unfortunately you're dealing with the department of education and also your own creditor schools and universities. Are regionally accredited. You know, we're the WASC, which is Western, I can't remember Association of Schools and Colleges, which covers basically California, Oregon and Washington, if I remember correctly. So any major change in the program we do, we have to get by our accreditor first. And then the you know, Department of Education, if it's like a new program, they need to sign off to make sure. So that's a lot of red tape still in higher education and another reason why we move slowly. But yeah. If we can add a course in like digital marketing to an MBA where it's kind of, you know, an elective course, if we have a, say a 10 course MBA, first five courses are all going to be the same. And then, you know, you could choose between, you know, 20 courses for your next five. Okay. That's something we should be able to handle. A little easier and certainly more digital marketing courses have been added since, you know, I, I graduated five years ago, which is a positive, a specific and like, you know, you know, affiliate would be something I think is definitely coming. Cause it is a growing field. It's just probably going to take some time.

Dustin: 12:48

Okay. Gotcha. Well, that's the current state of events. What about the curriculum that you're seeing in affiliate marketing? Are you an instructor? Are you a guest lecturer over at national? Like, is that a thing?

Daniel: 12:59

It's not a thing. I could be, if I really wanted to, it's kind of time consuming. Yeah. My associate director fills in occasionally as a guest both at national and his local community college. He's, we are pretty much a fully remote operation. Now he's out in the Los Angeles area. And occasionally he'll drive down to San Diego where our headquarters are and teach some classes, but no I've not been asked as far as I know to do a guest lecture. We do have a good group of, you know, people, doctorate degrees as our instructors, so. Okay.

Dustin: 13:35

All right. All right. Fair enough. I think getting somebody with real life experiences essential for some of those courses I've, I've created my own course about affiliate marketing, like piling out everything I know about affiliate management and tracking. Everything is soup to nuts, like goes into my course, but I've actually been asked by UC Davis to go and like build a course around this. But it is way too much work. Like

Daniel: 14:07

it is, and it's, it's difficult. It's people think, Oh, I'm an expert. I can, you know, teach others, but then you realize all the planning that has to go into it, all the research that has to go into it. You know, it's a ton of I's the dot and T's to cross before you even like get something on paper. And then again, there's the regulations that you have to, the hoops you have to jump through for higher education once you get there. And then they might uncover something you didn't even think about. So yeah, it's, it's not, not an easy path for sure.

Dustin: 14:38

Gotcha. And so The current state of like a curriculum and affiliate marketing. Have you seen this in place anywhere else? Or do you know if it exists yet?

Daniel: 14:50

Honestly, I don't think it exists yet.

Dustin: 14:52

Okay. All right. Well, we still got some work to do. It sounds like yeah,

Daniel: 14:56

but with UC Davis, which is a fine school, you know, looking at it if they're the first, you know, to Dipped our toes in affiliate marketing, being a UC school and one of the best in the system, you know, a fantastic school. Others will certainly follow because Davis is definitely a leader when it comes to higher education.

Dustin: 15:12

Oh yeah.

Daniel: 15:13

Yeah.

Dustin: 15:13

Karen Garcia is probably the closest to the UC Davis campus. She should be. Instructing she's organized enough and she's driven enough. She, she absolutely could be in there and get this done.

Daniel: 15:25

Yeah. And if they need someone, you know, a guest lecturer you know, I'm in Arizona, I have family out in Sacramento, so very familiar with the Davis area. Obviously about what, 20 minutes from campus.

Dustin: 15:34

Yeah. That sounds like a good idea. All right. We're going to thank our sponsor of the day and that sponsor is AFI stash. So if you don't. Or you haven't tried Appy Stash, you got to go and do it. If you're looking for affiliates to bring into your program, we find content affiliates that are niche relevant just by entering keywords. Come give it a try. 97 a month. We'll get you 500 searches for contacts that you're looking for at each one of these URLs or social sites. Give it a try. 30 day money back guarantee. I use this product every day and searching for affiliates myself. So nothing to lose. Come give it a try. Moving back into it. Something you mentioned is T C P a rules. I have no idea what this is, but can you explain for the folks what it looks like?

Daniel: 16:29

TCPA stands for Telephone Consumer Protection Act. It was the 1991 act that created the do not call dot gov list.

Dustin: 16:36

Okay.

Daniel: 16:37

So if you ever registered, you know, you are a part of the TCPA. And basically it governs phone calls. You know, can spam covers emails. And we certainly send emails, you know, to all the people who inquire. But we still Try to make phone contact to most of the people. So we do have a call center. It kind of reaches out and it's kind of the first contact center, making sure that the person who inquires is actually the person, you know, who did the inquiry and they actually exist. And then our, what we call an enrollment floor, even though it's now spread out all over the country. That, you know, enrollment kind of talks the inquiry, like making sure, yes, they want to go to school, they're interested in the right program, they might change the program when they're there, and then talk them all the way through, you know the enrollment process, which includes an application, you know, FAFSA, paperwork for, like I said, about 95 percent of the students, that's the but the TCPA governs who we can call, when we can call, there are certain states that have their own kind of, you can only call, you know, between certain times. Okay. And the FTC, which governs the TCPA, is putting out a new rule that begins in about a week on Monday, where every, you know, if you ever filled out any form and there's a little check box that says, I consent to have, you know, to be called, texted by, and emailed by, you know, whatever group.

Dustin: 17:58

Okay.

Daniel: 17:58

When you fill, that's, that's the TCPA consent. In the past that could list any number of, like, schools or any number of, say, insurance agents. Or even have a link where you can click on the link and it'll list all the agents in, like, a long list. For schools, most of the time, you know, when it's a shared lead like that, it's usually between three and four schools. But the new rule is going to be what they call one to one consent. So it has to have a checkbox for each school. Which means in the past, if we got say a shared lead with, you know, some of our top competitors like Grand Canyon and, you know, Southern New Hampshire, we can all be listed in like one line where now it's more kind of a you know, check box, like we'll have three TCPAs and the consumer will be able to check which box they want to check. Which is kind of interesting and definitely will be a topic in Leeds con because schools have been sued for TCPA in the past. So I have large companies, banks, insurance companies with settlements, you know, in millions of dollars, I believe it's like 1500 per, you know, error in TCPA and there have been large class action seats.

Dustin: 19:53

Goodness. Okay. So it is a big deal in your guys's. And I assume that's a big hurdle for you to get over to like qualify leads as well, right? Yes.

Daniel: 20:03

We have been working on this. They announced it about a year and a half ago. We've been working on it since then. You know, all of our in house leads, like if they come from the website or, or Google, they're going to be single one to one, you know, not a, not an issue, but if they're coming from these third parties, you know, the affiliates, which are, you know, leads that I helped generate, we can't really be sure that they are. You know, one to one compliant leads. And part of the rule is on the 27th of January that you have to ensure that they are one to one compliant. So we went back about three months, emailed all these leads and said, Hey, law is changing. If you still want us to be able to call, you know, basically fill out another, you know, RFI form. It basically gave us consent. So, and then we required all of our third party, you know, partners to be compliant. By December 1st, that way we know we have basically two months of these third party inquiries that we already know are compliant, and we'll be able to call them once the law changes. So it's been a huge lift. On our end and also all of our affiliates, because if they had like shared leads, which a lot of them do, they need to just change their online forms to be able to have one to one compliance, which is a lot of, you know, dev work on, on their end.

Dustin: 21:19

Okay. And is this specific to Your niche and, and vertical or is this like across all leads in general?

Daniel: 21:27

Across all leads higher education is going to be affected, but probably not huge. Cause like I said. It's usually three or four schools, and our average with the shared lead is actually about two and a half schools. Because a lot of times, you know, we have a niche program and there's only one other niche program out there that, that fits. But if you're like an insurance, you know, agent, you know, oftentimes they had a list of like 30 to 40 local agents in your area. And often more than one, like state farm or farmers insurance agent that you could choose from. Okay. You know, if you're looking for like home improvement projects, like new windows or something, you know, there are a lot of companies that buy these inquiries cause they're not expensive and you don't really have to convert a huge amount for them to make sense, but now they're all going to be one to one. So the effect will be probably less inquiries. They'll probably be more expensive to buy because the, these companies that generate them won't be able to sell them. To, you know, 30 or 40, but maybe only five. Yeah, we're hoping that on the back end, we'll have higher conversion numbers, but that's, you know, law hasn't taken effect yet. So,

Dustin: 22:32

okay.

Daniel: 22:33

Something to be determined.

Dustin: 22:35

All right. So something to pay attention to, if you have a lead based program, this is going to affect you. So learning and study up on TCPA rules. There's a few.

Daniel: 22:46

I will shout out to someone who we're not affiliated with, but his name is Eric Troutman. He has his own blog about the TCPA.

Dustin: 22:53

Okay.

Daniel: 22:54

Yeah. He's a lawyer. He knows more, much more than I do. I listened to his podcast, follow his blog and on LinkedIn a lot. And then. Happy to you know, listen to what he has to say. So

Dustin: 23:07

awesome. Let's share that link in the, in the description here going to Eric trout there. All right. Current trends we've kind of go gone into what. We think, what are you seeing out there as a trend in the right direction?

Daniel: 23:22

In the right direction, it's really difficult. Yeah, a lot of the smaller companies are already being bought out by the larger companies. With this new TCPA rule, we'll probably be seeing more, you know, of that happening, cause it's going to be more difficult for these smaller companies to be compliant. And we'll probably end up selling, you know, and getting out. So let's People to deal with in the marketplace, less competition always means you know, usually means a little more difficulty getting the quality because it's, you know, don't have as many options. We're also seeing kind of a switch in number of graduate students January for us has been good so far, but. Like October through December, there's been a lot less people looking for grad degree programs, which is often now bread and butter because grad programs, those students tend to persist more, they're longer programs, they're, you know, a little more expensive programs, so you have a better ROI on those programs for affiliate, but. We've seen less and less January so far is, is bucking the trend. But yeah, September through like December, if anyone had someone who was looking for a master's or a doctoral degree, yeah, I was buying.

Dustin: 24:35

Yeah, that doesn't January checks out for me. Like the same reason people buy exercise equipment, exactly the year, like. New you, like get educated. It seems like a natural fit. I'm surprised Q4 was so strong though, since people are buying into like presents for the holidays. Yeah. Interesting. All right. So new president in place. And you seem to think there might be some big plans coming in with this new election results.

Daniel: 25:07

Well, first of all You know, not to be political, try not to be, but Republicans tend to be a little more relaxed on, you know, the rules and laws and more business friendly. Okay. So there is a brief, actually, with that new TCPA law change that's been filed from what I understand to delay it. For another three months, maybe they won't be as aggressive in enforcing it. But then there's also, you know, changes in like economy and maybe people in Q4 were wondering what's going to happen when Trump takes office, the economy, and that kind of delayed their, you know, interest in higher education. Higher education tends to be reversed in terms of you know, trends when it comes to the economy, when the economy is good. People don't need a degree because, you know, there's more demand for, for whatever they're doing when the economy is bad, people are looking to get ahead or they're looking to maybe do something if they have extra time, if they're laid off and education is often one of the areas that they look at. So the uncertainty is really, is kind of what we're living in now, because obviously he just took office, what, 48 hours ago, and we're not going to know what's going to happen, you know, until it happens. So we're looking, you know, six months. It makes it difficult to forecast for us because we don't really know. Every new administration has different focus, different ideas, and different results.

Dustin: 26:29

That is an interesting trend with the economy. I would, it's almost counterintuitive to me. Like, it seems like, If the economy is good, then I have more income to invest in myself. But you're saying like, people don't have jobs, they have more time to go and like educate themselves.

Daniel: 26:47

People don't have the jobs or they're kind of struggling at a low end job with no room for advancement. So they look for, for education, which is always a great way to advance your chances of advancing your degree of your career. I mean, there are no guarantees that education will work, but you know, you look back throughout any history and the higher education level you have, it opens up more doors for, you know, better careers.

Dustin: 27:12

All right, as we wrap up here, let's talk about the future. Do you see, in the future, and if so, like, how many years away are degrees in affiliate marketing going to be a thing?

Daniel: 27:25

Years? It's hard to say, but there are more digital marketing courses. There are more digital marketing kind of certificate courses through, like Coursera, which does a wonderful job. Okay. Well, there'll be a one in affiliate marketing, most likely if they haven't launched one yet, that's probably the the first kind of foray into it. It's nice to hear, you know, UC Davis looking to at least, you know, a course in it, my guess is probably three to five years, we'll see more courses and full degree programs. Maybe after that, it takes some time.

Dustin: 27:59

Yeah well, when they do create one and like you can get a degree in it, I would love to get an honorary degree. I, I feel like 15 years of hard work might be a thing. So whoever's out there paying attention please send it my way. I'd love to, to make a speech, get a, get a new cap and gown, whatever it takes. Like I'll do whatever it takes. All right. Fun. All right. Last thing, Daniel, how do we connect with you?

Daniel: 28:29

Well you can always connect with me by email. It's D Myers, my last name. you or you could find me on LinkedIn. It's Daniel Myers and working at National University. Pretty easy to find me that way.

Dustin: 28:42

All right. Fantastic. We'll appreciate your time and your insight. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Daniel: 28:49

You're welcome. And thank you. I had a great time.

Dustin: 28:51

Awesome. All right, folks, keep on recruiting. We'll see you out there. Take care.

Daniel: 28:56

Good luck.