In the ever-evolving landscape of affiliate marketing, there are certain individuals who truly stand out, and one of these is Mandy Pinar, Director of Accounts at PerformCB. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Mandy brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to the table. In the latest episode of Affiliate Nerd Out, she shares her journey through the affiliate marketing world, providing valuable insights into how to run a healthy affiliate program and how to evolve in this dynamic industry.
One of the key insights Mandy shares is the importance of understanding the role of conversion partners in a healthy affiliate program. As she explains, these partners can drive up to four times the return on ad spend (ROAS), a figure that clearly demonstrates their significant potential for optimizing partnerships and driving profitability. This is achieved by understanding the intricacies of these partnerships and reinvesting the savings they provide into top-tier content for greater awareness.
What is PerformCB?
One of the biggest takeaways from our Affiliate Nerd Out session was the importance that brands offering full transparency to the agencies and networks they are working with. Seeing the full customer journey as it coincides with other channels give the affiliate channel the chance to find the best partners.
Mandy provides an insider's look at performcb.com, a leading sub-affiliate network that is a blend of Clickbooth and Ignite OPM. PerformCB effectively manages three tiers of clients and continues to evolve within the industry. By focusing on performance marketing, PerformCB is able to touch on all digital elements and convert them into performance-only opportunities, driving growth for its clients.
Another key topic of discussion is the labyrinth of multi-touch and first-click attribution models. Understanding the pros and cons of these models and how to make them work best for you in the affiliate space can be crucial for optimizing your marketing efforts. This episode provides a deep dive into these models, discussing their potential advantages and how they can be best utilized in the affiliate space.
The importance of leadership in any organization is also highlighted in this episode. Mandy shares how PerformCB's leadership team was a pivotal factor in her decision to join the company, and how her own leadership style has been shaped by past experiences and solid examples. She emphasizes the high regard PerformCB has in everyone's opinion and how it shapes their company culture, setting them apart from many other organizations in the industry.
The episode also sheds light on Create, the new platform from Impact that could potentially diversify your performance channel. Impact is one of my favorite picks for affiliate networks, and adding in this influencer platform is icing on the cake. With its potential to drive a lot of revenue and new customer acquisition, Influencercom represents another tool in the ever-growing arsenal of affiliate marketers.
In conclusion, this episode provides a wealth of insights into the world of affiliate marketing and the leadership principles that drive success in this industry. Whether you're an experienced affiliate marketer or just starting an affiliate program, there's something to learn from Mandy Pinar's wealth of experience and insight.
Full Transcript of the Affiliate Nerd Out Podcast
Dustin Howes:
Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out. I am your Nerdirator, Dustin Howes, spreading that good word about affiliate marketing. You'll find me nerdin' out on Tuesdays and Thursdays on LinkedIn Live and anywhere you get your podcast. Please consider subscribing. My guest today is Mindy Pinar, director of Accounts over at PerformCB. Thanks for joining me today, Mandy, and welcome to the Nerditorium.
Mandy Pinar:
Thanks, Dustin, super excited to be here.
Dustin Howes:
Well, anybody that is watching it comes in. Make sure that you jump in this Q&A and throw in some questions or some heckles. Don't you worry, we can handle it. Come on in the water's nice and ask away. So without further ado, Mandy, who are you?
Mandy Pinar:
Well, that's a loaded question, Dustin, but for the sake of this podcast, my name is Mandy Pinar, director of Accounts at PerformCB Agency. I have been in the affiliate space oh my gosh 10 years as of today or not the today, but as of this year and 12 years in digital marketing. So that kind of ages me a little bit. And I got my introduction in a small little agency that used to be called AffiliateManager.com. That was acquired by Gen3 Marketing. So I've gone from being started my career at an agency, left the agency after five, six years, went to private sector and was working at brands and I was their brand internal affiliate manager loved that. Went to the publisher side of things, was at LTK for a brief period of time and found myself back at my passion, which is agency management and working for brands directly.
Dustin Howes:
Well, awesome, I didn't realize you were an affiliate manager. I love Mike. He was an early mentor of mine and always very helpful in my career and love him to death. I haven't caught up with him in years since he saw it. I just expected him to be on an island hanging out with Brian.
Mandy Pinar:
I think he did that from a certain time, but if you know, Mike, Mike cannot lay down for a very long period of time. He's gotta have something going.
Dustin Howes:
Yeah, I think he gave me some free sunblock one day for a little bit. He was like, please write a review for it. Here's a free bottle, mike, cool, all right, you got it, buddy, all right. Anyway, good to hear about your background. Thanks for explaining. There is gonna be a link in the bio to Mandy and where she comes from and how you can get ahold of her, so please check in the chat down below and I will get that in here shortly Now. As we get into this, we've already got a few people jumping in, so excited to hear this from Mayhem. Do you know?
Mandy Pinar:
Yeah, Maham is actually one of my growth managers at PerformCB, so what would in a traditional agency would be called an account manager. She's essentially a growth manager for PerformCB, so she's my little cheerleader.
Dustin Howes:
Well, we'll take cheerleaders all day here. We've got another cheerleader go Mandy. I'm not sure who this LinkedIn user is, but sometimes that shows up and identify yourself a LinkedIn user. If you wanna be in here, ask a question, okay. So, speaking of PerformCB, tell us about this name. Every time I look at it, I see it and it stands out and it catches my attention and I hear about you guys in this industry, but I wanna know where this name comes from. First of all.
Mandy Pinar:
Sure. So I'm happy to kind of give you a little bit of history on who we are and how we became. So if you're familiar with a network that used to be called Clickbooth it used to be a really well-known lead source third-party network. They acquired oh James, sorry, they acquired a small little agency out of Denver. Colorado called Ignite OPM and they married together and performed CB was born. So the CB stands for Clickbooth. That's where that kind of comes in, just a reminder of our history and since then and since our inception and throughout the years, we were established in 2002. So we're talking what, oh, 21 years we've been in business was established in 2002. We've acquired multiple different types of companies, like ad perio and those kinds of things, and brought them under the perform CB ecosystem. So we have our network side of the business, which is to be Clickbooth. We have our paid media side of the business, which used to be at period. We have our agency side, which used to be Ignite. And because we are one organization, our motto has always been we perform. So we evolved into perform CB.
Dustin Howes:
Fantastic. Okay, and with that are you guys acting as a sub affiliate network, joining programs in the capacity?
Mandy Pinar:
Okay, yeah, so are we calling our outcome engine side of things? They do a lot of that. They are the third party network. They can provide lead sources, mobile application opportunities. Sky's the limit over there and my side of the business. I work on the agency, so we do program management for direct, direct consumer brands, b2b brands, those kinds of things.
Dustin Howes:
Beautiful and that that segments into. What do you do there? Tell me more.
Mandy Pinar:
So, as I mentioned a little bit before, I'm the director of accounts here. I manage a team of six or seven right now account managers that are really focusing on our mid tier and entry level brands. So we have them segmented into three different tiers. We have enterprise level, which is the large guys that you can think of, one of our biggest clients there is a Capital One shopping we have. We work with them essentially on our enterprise level of team and our executive vice president his name is Craig McGlynn manages the enterprise team. I am the manager of the prime team and the essentials team. So that's our mid tier team, which is not necessarily small brands but maybe brands that don't want to invest into the enterprise level of tier. And then we have our essential brands, which are startups and SMBs and those kinds of opportunities where they come in and they just really want to start up an affiliate program. They don't know where to begin. We kind of walk them through that process. So I manage both of those teams, but together we as an organization are very much a high mentality. So, craig and myself, we have two leaders of the agency plus our C-suite team, which is Bill Greer, aaron Sickage and Matthew Lord, those are our main, and Brad Dobbins as well. So those are our C-suite level of people, and then it kind of trickles down from there.
Dustin Howes:
And we saw James in here. James is a big fan of this show. He's always telling me I'm doing good work and he's just a supporter, just love his vibe. And then we nerd out on baseball and stuff, so also super cool. What's up, james? And then he kind of went over this. But like, who are you serving here? Is this merchants in the small market or the large market? What does this look like?
Mandy Pinar:
So the sky is the limit in terms of Gambit. We have FinTech brands, we have direct-to-consumer brands and then we also have some out-of-the-box brands, like, for an instance, we have a company that we work with that focuses on futures and how to trade the futures market where to go from there. It's a very unique type of program, so somebody who's not interested or not knowledgeable in the trade space, for example, can go and learn how to trade futures on the market and they will help you do that and they'll actually fund you to do that. So we do some of these outside-of-the-box partnerships as well as the traditional affiliate programs and direct-to-consumer opportunities.
Dustin Howes:
Okay, excellent. And the agency itself. Do you guys do anything outside of the affiliate channel and you're working this all together into the full funnel presentation, essentially so since we're kind of going to jump into that.
Mandy Pinar:
It's really great for me to kind of give you this idea, but we do, as I was mentioning before, the affiliate space has really evolved and it's more of a performance marketing space. That's one of the things that PerformCB has really changed our verbiage. We're really focused on performance marketing and touching all digital elements that we can within our purview and trying to convert those into performance-only opportunities. So what would have traditionally been a budgeted line item for, say, trademark bidding or PPC bidding or SEM bidding, we now have partnerships that we can bring in through the performance program that can service that need to the client but only being paid out on a performance-only basis. So the client is more interested in obviously testing in that market because the risk is a little bit better for them and you know the risk and reward factors will really break. So we touch base in a lot of PPC marketing. We dive into influencer marketing as influencer and affiliate kind of go hand in hand in terms of things. We really kind of try to diversify out our opportunity. There is no limitation or walls or ceilings when it comes to what PerformCB will do for our clients, as long as we're staying within our scope of work and our purview and making sure that we're really honing in on growth. Our whole thing is growth hacking and how do we grow a program as quickly and efficiently as possible and making sure that we are leveraging all the partnerships that we could possibly leverage throughout the funnel.
Dustin Howes:
Yes, yes, that is interesting and our industry has evolved radically over the last five years, with a lot of companies working on a performance basis and believing in their process, where other agencies or companies in the past have worked on a front flat fee of some sort. Just so many performance believers are showing up and I remember the first time I ran into I am Wave I had Eric Nagel here last week, but I am Wave is the first company that I ever employed to do PPC campaigns and do brand bidding on a performance basis and that was eye opening to me.
Mandy Pinar:
It's insane what they can do, and even down to like CCTV television. Right, tv scientific, for an example, is a great new. I call them a third party aggregator, but basically an outside of the box partnership that in the past to get CCTV television or to get any kind of inclusion on television was going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars for a brand. Now they can come in and work with a company like TV scientific and for a small nominal fee, or no fee at all, depending upon. You know cyber traffic, all that jazz, like there's the ability to be serviced on Hulu, and you know Paramount plus and all of these Opportunities where people are now consuming their content. Like, let's be real, even taking it to that aspect of things, like people are no longer going to be using cable ten more years from now. I first see cable being a thing of the past or being a very small fraction of what we do. People are utilizing streaming services, and what a great way to introduce performance marketing right now, as it's becoming more of the norm. I love opportunities like TV scientific where we can do that for our channel and for our programs. Just to give you some backgrounds. In the month of March, tv scientific ran for two of our programs. One was a footwear brand, another is a nutrition supplement brand. I can't share those names, but in the course of those two months they were able to generate over a hundred thousand dollars for the footwear brand in one month in revenue and for that nutrition brand the smallest amount Of revenue we saw from them was a thirty thousand dollar inclusion. So it's just one of those things where these are big potential partnerships that can drive a lot of revenue, incremental new customer revenue, which is key right now, especially in today's climate and day and age. It's really great to be able to diversify into those opportunities.
Dustin Howes:
That is. That is an awesome Story to hear. I tried working with Vicky over at TV scientific. Didn't work out with the brand I was working on, just because the integration was a Bit of a pain on our end not on her end and their team, but really interesting what they're doing over there and they're they're really coming up like well fire. Yeah, explain the the concept of what TV scientific does.
Mandy Pinar:
Yes, what they do is they require a brand to install some JavaScript onto their, onto their page, provide some creative, or they can provide creative on on a brand's behalf for an additional fee, but essentially it's like a one to an eviction is going to kill me because I don't know the exact parameters, but it's like a one to two minute video. That is required essentially, and then they'll take that information, they'll make sure the JavaScript is running properly. It takes about four to six weeks for implementation and then they'll service up that creative ad through Hulu, through Paramount Plus, through they have an NBC Universal partnership and any of those streaming services where people pay for, pay the lowest amount, where they showcase some sort of Merchand. That's the commercial that shows up nowadays. So it's not traditional commercials that you're seeing on cable. These are going to be those ads that you free and what they'll then do? Either put a QR code or Some sort of parameter around that that will then service over to their website and then convert from there or utilize a coupon code. You know we have to money now to monetize coupon codes and we're able to kind of get rid of that. But they also have their own recording and they provide that update to us as well in terms of like the types of conversions that they can drive based upon xy and z parameters. So really interesting to see how technology has evolved and therefore we're able to kind of offer these great opportunities to typically New brands and new opportunities in the digital marketing space, instead of it just being affiliate only traditional affiliate model, blog post link, go forward.
Dustin Howes:
Yeah, yeah, one Quick note like with scientific TV, scientific they're taking the traffic that was already on your website, pixeling it and then turning that end user Sending that message onto the TV.
Mandy Pinar:
Right okay.
Dustin Howes:
So they're already hot to your, your brand. Now, now they're seeing you on TV and just think about that Thought process of like I can't think of how many times I've watched TV I'm like, wow, they have a, they have a TV commercial. They can afford TV. That's crazy. I didn't expect that from that brand. Like it's a good, good thing to be a part of and TV scientific is doing in a really cool way. Go give them a look up. Now, getting back to this full funnel attribution, our whole topic here today is is talking about the full funnel channel mix for a healthy affiliate program. Let's dive into that. What does that look like?
Mandy Pinar:
So traditionally, a lot of marketers will come to us and we call brands marketers at the perform CB agency. A lot of our marketers will come to us and they already have preconceived notions on what we call conversion partners and traditional coupon sites, deals, loyalty sites. We call those conversion partnerships. So we'll have preconceived notions on they don't drive incremental value, they don't drive revenue for us. These are cannibalized opportunities that we would have gotten either way. So when I first came on board at perform CB, our CSO his name is Matt Lord and I sat down as well as our EVP, craig McGlenn, and we just said, like how do we prove this Either truthful or how do we prove this as a false statement? So we took some time over the past I want to say about eight months and really, really dived into details and in pulled data to really showcase the value behind what we call conversion partners and what we found was, on average, conversion partners Can drive up to four times ROAS Versus content and influencer partnerships, and the reason that is is because a you do not have to pay them at the same level you would have to pay out for a CPA money, influencer or content partner. You know. For an influencer content could be anywhere from 10 to, you know, 50%, whereas with conversion partners they typically will accept 3 to 5% on a CPA because of the volume that they drive. So you're already seeing the ROAS there. But on top of that, we were also able to find that they are the ones driving new customers to our site, consistently driving new customers to marketer sites and those kinds of opportunities on average. Now, obviously there's going to be one-offs, but if we're looking at it from an average perspective and we took about 50 accounts and really drive, you know, looked at all of the metrics from these 50 accounts the majority of the drivers were those conversion partners. So what we do and what we take up an approach is that we will, when we bring on or an ingest a new marketer into our system, we will do an internal audit. Who do you have in your program? Who's driving revenue for you? What are they set out for CPA? Can we ultimately lower their CPA or adjust their CPA and then use an additional CPA for negotiation tactics, for better placement on their website and really optimize those partnerships while we're Cultivating content partnerships, because you and I both know Content partnerships are great and they drive a lot of awareness but they are not driving incremental new customers. It's just proven facts at this point in time and you know, I know that you have a link that you're going to share in a little bit to showcase our white paper and I really just want to throw this out there. I recommend anybody going and downloading that because there's a lot of information for anybody in the agents industry that's really wanting to show the value of what conversion partnerships do. But getting back to what I was saying, so we'll deep dive into their program and identify Top conversion partnerships that they're missing exactly what they need to be successful, even if it's something as simple as an evergreen coupon code so we can stop Canalization from the, the larger partner that won't say their name, that has an entire team that will just go out and scour the internet for any coupon code for that brand if you give them direct, direct opportunity for them, and it only has to be one and it doesn't have to be a massive discount. We notice that we're seeing Four times return on ad spend or higher from these conversion partners and they're really driving the value of incrementality at that point in time.
Dustin Howes:
Well, that's awesome and no doubt, like you, save money with coupon sites. It's no Secret that I usually don't allow them in my program all together, just because I don't like them. Taking away from the top of the funnel Contributors right. But if you have a system in place where you're saving four times that money, that's a good thing. But do you go back and reinvest that in like sponsorships?
Mandy Pinar:
Yeah, so that's getting to the next point, absolutely, we do that so that money that we say we always encourage our marketers to then reinvest that into tendencies, with those awareness partnerships, with those influencers, with those top Content, top tier partnerships. That makes sense for them. That might not necessarily drive revenue right away, but maybe evergreen, will you know, down the road, six months from there. From now, they might be generating some opportunity, but what they're are bringing in value is that SEO backlinking opportunity, you know, getting the crawl on the on the page, getting them up further in terms of their competitors, as well as Saturating the market and saturating their name. So if it's not a well-known brand, like you know, I'm gonna use Walmart for an instance it's not a well-known brand like Walmart but say that our competitor of Walmart, we want to be wherever Walmart is. So we'll utilize that, that savings, and then service ourselves up either through PPC or through Tenancy or pay placement opportunities. That really makes sense. So the client is then reinvesting their savings back into their program and then diversifying their channel mix from there and we will award out different CPAs depending upon where Affiliate falls within the funnel. And then we also have VIP opportunities. So if there is an ability to say they want to do a tendency, but we only have two thousand dollars to invest, maybe we can increase them from 10% to 50% during that that tenancy, placement and and negotiate opportunities. So we have the ability then to really diversify how we approach Different areas of the funnel. And one of the things I just want to drive home is that affiliate is not one size fits all and every Part of the funnel is going to be unique to every type of brand that we work with. So by Getting the lower funnel or the conversion partners really moving and getting them driving revenue, it gives us time to cultivate relationships with those awareness partners and those influencers and the conversion, like the conversion partners, will Substain as we then bring in those awareness funnels and then those third party out of the box opportunities like TV scientific that we mentioned is that middle Fun part of the funnel that really helps kind of. I always say that instead of falling down it always funnels up to me.
Dustin Howes:
I like to work on the bottom and then work my way up, because building those content relationships take time 100% and I think there's a good message there as well, with the content and your influencers that say I hey, I don't have budget today to give you sponsorship, but if you promote us and we get this wheel running, I'm going to be collecting budget from savings from coupon sites. We get to reinvest that and you're gonna be the first person that I come to to reinvest this money for additional opportunities. Do you think you guys could do me a solid and and start working on a commission basis early on? And that message seems to resonate pretty well, but not everybody's on board with it. But you can do your best as as a negotiator.
Mandy Pinar:
Absolutely, absolutely. Like I said, it's not one size fits all, but it is in the larger scale of things. We are seeing success in doing this and it's one of the things that I'm really proud of. My team, for an example. You know we have roadblocks and and all the time, but there's goals and KPIs that we're constantly achieving, and on a consistent basis. By taking this approach, my team is seeing success across multiple channels and that's why we have partnerships that have lasted. You know, agency partnerships don't tend to last that often, but we've got partners that have been with us for eight, nine years and have no intentions of leaving our organization because they trust us. You know, affiliate marketing, at the end of the day, is all about relationship building. They trust us, we're honest and we we don't sugarcoat anything. We're very direct with them and saying if you want to be Successful, you need to reinvest in this channel and it can be a lucrative channel for you. But we need freedom to diversify and diversify our funnel approach and we need funding to make sure that we're securing those placements for you and our marketers are successful because of that.
Dustin Howes:
Awesome, great, great points there. Now continuing on on to Attribution and and what the perfect setup is. I've never found this a perfect affiliate program. I've created the perfect affiliate program, but what are you guys striving for? What's it look like in your guys eyes?
Mandy Pinar:
in a perfect world and I'm sure some network partnerships are gonna be mad at me for saying this in a perfect world, I'd like to see every single network be able to offer an MTA or a multi-touch attribution model. That just isn't readily available across all networks right now. So we're a lot of our programs are in traditional last-click model. But I love the idea and this kind of talks about the conversion, the funnel as well. Like being able to diversify payout for an MTA is what I would consider and this is my honest opinion and again it's just one person's opinion but I honestly feel like being able to do an MTA really would be able to whole cultivate those relationships with the awareness partnerships, really driving in content and those opportunities and rewarding them for their introduction into a brand. One of the things I hate about last-click is that sometimes conversion partners can cannibalize that and that is a traditional message. But in those instances where a awareness on a partnership or what we consider consideration, which are those third-party opportunities, drives introduction but doesn't close the sale, mtas are always going to be my go-to method. Also, the opportunity of diversifying into first-click. I know a lot of networks are starting to focus on first-click attribution. I haven't dealt a lot in that full, full honesty, like we don't have a lot of First-click opportunities right now, but as they come on board, I think it's really fascinating to take that data and see how well they perform versus the traditional last-click model. Did that answer your question?
Dustin Howes:
I believe so. So Last-click is a way as everybody's default yeah, it is not in your ideal game plan is essentially we would. We would you do the split attribution, would you do Multiple attribution? What would you have there?
Mandy Pinar:
So I think my answer, the simplify my answer right now, mta and multiple touch attribution is my Nor star goal. I don't have enough data and I don't think there is enough data yet on first-click attribution for me to say whether I think it's going to be sustainable long-term, but in terms of right now what we have in our ecosystem, mta would be my first choice, then maybe first-click and then final finalize out with maybe last-click. I I have a love-hate relationship with last-click because I think that it's traditional, it's easy, we all know it. But I think we need to get out of our comfort zone a little bit and test the law, true, so true.
Dustin Howes:
Like it is it is, it is comforting and people are going to expect it. But if you want to go above and beyond for clients like you might have to think outside that box and With the networks that you're you're working with, I can expect you're using some of the major ones to set these up with that. Mta, perform, cb, do this on the clickbank side, or is this something you have to go to impact for?
Mandy Pinar:
So we will do it as an agency partner with whatever network we're working with. We are a Partnership with impact. So we have a lot of our programs are on the impact network. But we also work with CJ, partnerized and ascend. Now, share, sale and a win ever flow like we have. We have opportunities on all of them so we'll go directly into the networks and make any adjustments that need to be made directly in there. So we work directly with network partnerships. We don't our click the side of the business, which is now called outcome engine. We don't really dive into that. Very often they are a publisher. We work hand-in-hand where they'll join our programs that we have on agency side of things. But they are their own ecosystem within of themselves and they drive really great value.
Dustin Howes:
Oh, no, I think we lost her Alright. Well, while she's out, we're gonna go with a sponsor of the day and Big surprise, here it is impact. Impact is the go-to solution I have for affiliate programs. When you need that MTA style of Tracking attribution, go check out impact. They have great packages for companies of all sizes and Work for me.
Mandy Pinar:
Sorry about that. My internet went out, of course.
Dustin Howes:
We'll sponsor the day. Not to not to worry, we segmented into it very well.
Mandy Pinar:
Oh, good Okay.
Dustin Howes:
Set me up there and if you want to go check out the the Perform CB white paper, they have it down below. It's dustin house, comm slash perform CB and you'll be able to take a look at that. It looks like we got some chats going on as well. Such a great point. I mean you're gonna be have to be more specific here, brenda.
Mandy Pinar:
I think she mentioned when we were talking about attribution models. I know Brenda, she also works for me here at Perform CB.
Dustin Howes:
Okay.
Mandy Pinar:
The ongoing conversation Brenda and I have about multi-touch attribution versus traditional last-click attribution models.
Dustin Howes:
Beautiful, all right. Yeah, mandy's dropping so many knowledge bombs here it's tough to keep up. So we did our sponsor the day and that segments into hot news and we're going to start with the new product, which is Influencercom. This is an influencer platform that they're integrating into their existing awesome platform that they have. You come from the influencer background. We're going to LTK. What are your thoughts on this and initial impression on another company adding on influencer?
Mandy Pinar:
marketing to their sweet and popular brand. I think it's a great move on the impact side of things for them to stay relevant and to stay top of funnel and compete with the Rakuten situation. I do think and you know I love Rakuten. I think Rakuten is great, but I love the impact team and I love what they're doing over there and obviously we're preferred partners with them. So to be able to bring in an affiliate model makes a ton of sense or, excuse me, an influencer model makes a ton of sense and I love being able to do that for my current company. I'm excited to see more and more opportunities coming into the influencer space where it is tied to affiliate performance marketing, specifically Mavly. I'm really excited to see what Mavly is going to bring to the table. They are a direct competitor with LTK. I think it's Collective Soul, which used to be a shop style which is owned by Rakuten Grinn and those kinds of opportunities. And even taking it back old school, I'm going to take it back 10 years like IZEA. Izea is a brand that's on board and was really the one that was showcasing influencer marketing, the value it could provide to affiliate space. The only differentiator between the two is that there's multiple different types of partnerships across the affiliate space, whereas influencers focused on content, but it's still a part of our ecosystem. It's still a massive, huge part of our ecosystem. So to see more and more networks bring in these opportunities and be able to diversify our performance channel, I'm all for it. I'm super excited to utilize it. I'm really excited to see how well Create is going to plug into our existing programs that we have currently going on. I want to shout out to our direct contact, drew, over at Impact. He is really excited and has been super eager to, kind of like, build out our programs and I love what they're doing. Essentially. I'm just excited to get in and really hone in and have my team start to utilize it.
Dustin Howes:
I am as well. I need another opportunity to jump in there. I've every client that I've ever had on Impact is, at least in the last two years, since the integration of media rails and some of their other acquisitions been really great to be on the platform and, from a recruiting aspect, just super helpful in terms of like finding the right partners for your program, really like what they're doing over there, so great to see. And speaking of the continuation of evolving in this space and influencer marketing, where do you think next steps are going to go? If we're seeing this trend from platforms and networks, what's next? Who else is going to be injecting influencer marketing into their suite of services here?
Mandy Pinar:
I love that you actually said going into that, because there was another point I wanted to bring up to you. There's another company that we just started working with called Open Sponsorship, and it's a way to take things from the sports space right. So I don't remember a couple of years ago the Supreme Court changed it to where college students could then get brand deals and those kinds of things. But they don't have the kind of following typically to get large brand deals that you would see NBA players, you'd see baseball players, those kinds of things. So Open Sponsorship is another network, subnetwork similar to LTK, Mavley Grand, those kinds of things but they focus on, right now, athletes, all different types of athletes from around the world, from college level up to NBA stars. I mean, Shaq is on there and it's a similar situation to like LTK and those opportunities. So diversification is basically my answer to your question. I really see it diversifying out into the celebrity space, which it already does right, but to bring it into the performance marketing industry. I think we're going to see more and more solutions come to the table that are going to be able to give you direct access to the celebrity space, that are going to give you direct access to these musicians, that are, you know, all types of opportunities. I think there's going to be a lot of diversification. I think we're going to see more and more networks evolve their tracking platforms to then track more data from the influencer side of things. One of the things that LTK does really well although they don't share this information is that they are able to gather really great data on exactly which influencer drives revenue for a brand. From the life cycle of the brand, which influencer is going?
Dustin Howes:
to. You're still good. You're still good. We heard you.
Mandy Pinar:
In my back. Can you hear me?
Dustin Howes:
Your audio is still good. Keep on rolling.
Mandy Pinar:
So which influence are going to drive revenue? Which influencer is going to really really be the driving factor? Because, at the end of the day talking about what we were talking about before content partnerships really take a long time to cultivate. These are ones that are driving revenue from the get, similar to what you're seeing from the conversion partnerships we talked about earlier. So I love that LTK has that data. I wish that they could share that data out. Maybe they have something in the roadmap where they're planning to do that, but I do see more and more influencer solution providers coming out and providing that proprietary data, either on a SAAS model or a pay to play model or an additional fee. So I think there's going to be more openness within the influencer space, more openness to consumer as well, so consumers understand that influencers are part of this kind of ecosystem. As well as really honing in specific skills, we are actually building out. Mahamud you mentioned earlier is an influencer strategist on our team and she's really building out great influencer programs, utilizing these opportunities for our brands. We're seeing a lot more investment into influencers and the purpose of influencers in the United States specifically.
Dustin Howes:
Fantastic and I don't know exactly what impact model is for create If you have to be an existing customer, if you have to or you can buy this. I'll look hard and I have no idea. I'm talking to some of the folks over there and it's just unclear. I mean, it just launched today. So, yeah, a lot of questions to be answered in the future. But for those of you I'm going to do another quick sponsor here because it ties in so well together Affluencer. I am a big fan of this platform. You can dip your toes into influencer marketing and mix it with affiliate marketing using Affluencer. Dustin, housecom. So that's Affluencer. Go check it out and do some collaborations with the small budget. So well. That ties in really well to what we've been talking about today and anything else you had on the top of your mind that you wanted to get out before we close up shop here I know,
Mandy Pinar:
we've been talking a lot you know I told you I had a plethora of knowledge I wanted to share with your people. I think I've hit everything, but you know there's always opportunity to come back If there's anything else you want to. You want to talk about.
Dustin Howes:
Awesome. I'd love to hear that. I haven't had a second guest or a two time guest yet, but you could be the first in the future. We'll see how it goes. I'm, I'm, I'm liking what you bring to the table here, manny.
Mandy Pinar:
Thanks anytime, I'm happy to be a regular.
Dustin Howes:
Now it is time to defend your post, though I see a post in a lot. You're big fan of evolving as a leader and that just is amplified in the message you brought today. Like you've only got 10 years in this industry, but you are a sharp 10 years. Like you're well above my years of 13. You're doing great work, but I see post in you know there's. Is that a purpose? There's a purpose for everyone you meet. Some people come into your life to test you. Some teach you, some to use you, some to bring out the very best in you. And you said it's so true. Tell me, tell me why you think this is so true.
Mandy Pinar:
So one of the things when I came to work for PCB I was, you know, talking to a couple of different agencies. I knew I wanted to get back into the agency life, but what was a differentiator for me was the interview I had with Erin Sitchich. She's going to kill me. The interview I had with our CEO, erin, as well as our chief strategy officer, matt Lord, and our CFO, bill Greer. I wanted to know from a get because I had been at every level of an agency how involved do you get? Are you going to put your money where your mouth is and really hone in on the people that are driving your revenue for you? Are you going to sit up there and share your thought process down without really getting in? And one of the things that solidified this opportunity for me was Erin Bill and. Matt, saying we absolutely roll up our sleeves, we are there for every single one of our team members. And then they provided examples for me and that was a differentiator between me choosing this job and the three other jobs that I had lined up at the same time. It was a chosen factor of yeah. It might not be as well known as some of those other opportunities, but the leadership team matters more to me at this point in my career than money, and being able to hone my skills and working for people that are going to educate me and advance my knowledge level is really important, and I always said, if I was going to come back and then manage a team of the size that I managed, I wanted to be the leader that I had wanted, you know, way back in the day. That was encouraging, supportive and educational, and I've had that. Throughout my career, I've worked with some amazing people. We've mentioned Mike earlier. I've worked with some amazing people in this industry, but I've also worked for some people that maybe weren't so amazing. We all have yeah, I wanted to make sure that I was just really becoming the leader I always wanted. So I learned from example and I wanted to make sure my leadership was that as well. So that's where those posts come in. When I'm inspired by those, I'm constantly trying to be a servant leader and I work for my team. They don't work for me, and that's how I take my approach. If I'm not providing you with what you need to be successful in your day to day, let me know what it is and I will do everything in my power to action that and that trickles down from our C-suite level down to my director level. Every single member of our team is exactly that same way. We take a high mentality when it comes to approaches of affiliate programs, but also when it comes to our internal teams. We are a team. Everybody has a say. It doesn't matter whether your entry level or a C-suite level. Everybody has a say and everybody matters. And that's where that kind of comes from and that's my thought process and kind of my philosophy in the way that I approach things.
Dustin Howes:
Well, that's well said and that's a great way to end it. And you know, Performcb is not sponsoring today's video at all. I just had on Mandy cause I've seen her super passionate about things in this industry and I wanted to get her perspective, and that's what this podcast, affiliate Nerd Out, is all about. If you would like to join me on Affiliate Nerd Out, go to dustinhowes.com/nerd and sign up and I will take a look and schedule you in a couple of months. Here I've got a whole lot of people coming on. Wade got bumped. I was going to talk to Wade on Thursday and I had to give him the bump because I got a special opportunity to take the family out of town for something really cool and we got to do it. So Wade is after this. Next week Wade will be coming on David Hall and Dominique Scafaldi there, oh, and let's see. Oh, we got one more chat before we go.
Mandy Pinar:
Just my team is awesome, so sweet.
Dustin Howes:
Look at all that support. You must be loved. That's good to see. Awesome. Thank you for chiming in and thank you for watching folks. And, last but not least, if you would like a free call with me for 15 minutes, go to dustinhowes.com/pod. If I am not going to be able to help you, I will point you in the right direction. For who can? Mandy thanks for being here. Appreciate your knowledge.
Mandy Pinar:
Thanks for having me, Dustin. I'm super excited about it.
Dustin Howes:
All right, folks, that's it for us. Take care and good luck recruiting out there. Bye-bye.
Mandy Pinar:
Bye-bye.
