Speaker 1Anyone who can refer traffic to you or can refer outcomes can be an affiliate. A brand can't just say something, it needs to be verified by third-party sites. The funnel just collapsing in the middle. Hi, I'm Annabelle, and on this episode of Add to Cart, I talk about affiliate marketing and how it can be an incredibly powerful driver for your business, but one that needs to be used with great care.
Speaker 2For every one sale that your affiliate program can see, there might be 11 that it can't. That's a lot. That's the early test data out of one partnership platform that our guest today shares, and it's an indication of how AI search is collapsing the middle of the funnel when it comes to influencers and partnerships. Annabelle Gray has spent 15 years in affiliate and partnership marketing across two continents, and she reckons. This. Is the biggest shift she's watched happening in the channel. Annabelle is the vice president of APAC at Silverbeam, and she's the one who brought them here originally opening their first office outside of the UK in Sydney back in 2019. She'd worked in the channel from both sides as a retailer and agency before that. Since then, Annabelle and the team have been working with clients such as Virgin Australia, Modibodi, and MJ Bale on their affiliates and their partnerships. But what I love. About Annabelle is that she's not here to sell you partnerships and affiliates. She gives us so much information on how to make them work, but her mission is that she wants brands to stop getting ripped off in them. She knows how powerful affiliates and partnerships can be, and she wants everyone who experiments and scales with them just to have a good experience. In this conversation, we get into why a private Facebook group of. Swapping money, saving tips, outperform shopback on its very first post. Why a random chiropractor turned out to be the most valuable partner that a mattress brand could sign. And she also let something slip about a big social selling announcement that could, could be happening in Australia next year. Now, before we get into it, I want to say a big thank you to our partners at Shopify and Klaviyo. We can only go this deep. And I want to say a big thank you to the members of the Ad2Cart community who have supported us so far. And we really do appreciate it. And this episode only exists because Annabelle dropped in a set of AI prompts into the Ad2Cart community a few weeks ago, so brands could audit their own affiliate programs without needing an agency. Madness. But that is the sort of thing that often turns up in the Ad2Cart community. We'd love you to come and join us. It is free to join. Come and join us over on ad2cart.com.au. That's it for me. Let's get into the chat. Here is Vice President of APAC of Silverbean, Annabelle Gray. Annabelle, welcome to Ad2Cart.
Speaker 1Thank you. It's lovely to be here.
Speaker 2Oh, lovely to have you here on Ad2Cart. Joining us from your very prestigious office that I can see.
Speaker 1Excellent. Yes. Decorated just for you.
Speaker 2Lovely. Just my style. We were talking before of all the things, you've just moved your office into your daughter's room and in the craziness, haven't had a chance to redecorate yet because it is a crazy world of affordability. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1niches or nuances within the data but for every one sale within this category there were 11 other influence sales which weren't being detected from that one content piece and if you don't have that visibility what it means is you're then not investing in content you're investing elsewhere and then you're losing that demand generation piece so it's when the models get fixed and we can have better access and better visibility to all that data yeah it's going to completely change and support a lot the both ends of the funnel in terms of to my generation it's always going to be
Speaker 2a bit blurry isn't it because the walled gardens are going up higher and higher to try and keep that attribution apart yeah especially from a performance perspective but i can imagine it goes to an influence as
Speaker 1well yeah yeah absolutely
Speaker 2so i want to come back to the world of ai because i want to unpack those llm prompts that you shared in the community but before we do i think it's important exactly what you said at the start is to have a look at where the world is today before we move on to the future cast too far but i'm keen to understand from you from e-commerce businesses today with affiliate and partnerships what are the main channels that you see working today you know we've talked about rewards programs we've talked about search we've talked about social cashbacks etc if i was an e-commerce brand today where would i expect the majority of my affiliate partnership influence to come from
Speaker 1there's such a politician's answer but there's not one size fits all and i hate doing that because i get asked that all the time like what contribution should we have from this partner type and what contribution should we have overall and like for a contribution overall it depends on what other channels are doing like if it's too high it says to me that you've either got low quality partners or your other marketing channels aren't driving as much as they should because there's a balance between all of your marketing efforts in terms of where it comes from the traditional is a coupon cashback and loyalty so coupon has a role for some brands but i think there are a lot of coupon sites out there and there's a lot of rogue ones and they're ones that need to be managed or not included in your program i think brands particularly startup brands need to have the confidence to say no to some partner types and some partners and that's okay because every site is representing your brand and promoting your brand can
Speaker 2you give us examples of like the most popular coupon
Speaker 1sites yeah so global savings group or atoll is we work closely with them and they yeah they're transparent they're always making sure they've got up-to-date codes like they're adding value and that's the key piece whichever partner you're working with however they promote their audience they need to add value and add something in there that sort of justifies them getting a commission for it so yeah sites that are running old coupons and you know it's like click here to reveal and there's nothing there and then they're taking a click on the ticket that's what you want to stay away from but if they are actually you know exclusive codes or they're helping promote a specific brand and get you sales then they have played a valuable role and it's giving them you know recognizing that
Speaker 2and are those code sites still the old school aggregators of all discounts all over the place or is it more content driven
Speaker 1coupon sites traditional coupon sites are taking a hit at the moment so we are seeing a lot lot less that is down to a couple of things i think it's down to market maturity in terms of being more selective with which partners that they work with but also in terms of google's had a few algorithm updates which means that aggregator content has taken a hit and so it's getting surfaced a lot less so those those sort of sites that are just top surface and there's no depth to them they're taking a hit they're also not visible in llms very well because there's no limited value to them and they don't have the depth it's a declining market but in a program you don't need to have many coupon partners like you work with the good ones and then that's easier to monitor and you can work closely with them and they drive good results direct attribution then yeah completely yeah and support your campaigns and help you you know if you do want to look at brand bidding if you want them to support on some of your sales opportunities that helps take up real estate away from your competitors so you can be very strategic with it but it's just it's not set and forget so you can't just turn it on and be like hey it's gonna rack up to 25 percent or whatever it doesn't work like
Speaker 2that yeah all right so coupons and cashback are still up there as some of the main players
Speaker 1yes so cashback i get a lot of questions about cashback as well cashback can be very very powerful in your program but again it's if your competitors are there then it's worthwhile being on there if your competitors aren't there if you're part of consideration set and someone's saying am i going to shop with x y or z who am i going to then they go back and see who's got an offer on and that helps them choose then that's when it's valuable but then other brands and it's set and forget like they'll just turn on a cashback program and that's when it just sort of like mops up existing demand people like i'm going to purchase this from this brand here's their cashback i'll go get that whereas what we encourage brands to do is you need to if you have in a sale you need to run promotions you need to change behavior in order to make the sales that you're getting incremental and add value so running cpa increases going in newsletters going on front page you're going to have to do a lot of research like oh i was thinking of buying this black dress or whatever it is i'm going to get it from this brand because they're doing a massive commission boost and that's changing the behavior so they can be very powerful but it depends on how you're using them in terms of what that value looks like for your brand they're
Speaker 2really interesting i remember we did the interview with anthony at cash rewards a few years ago and i knew about the model but i never really used it and in the research i went and played with it and i told sarah my wife about it and she became just addicted afterwards like every holiday every purchase was like did you put that through cash rewards before you bought it and she doesn't speak like that so and she doesn't listen to this so it doesn't matter but do you think there's a certain type of customer who that behavior is ingrained with is it kind of like just this cohort of who always use cash back and then a cohort that don't because even when i told people about it afterwards they're like i've never heard of it i wouldn't even know or think about
Speaker 1it yeah so cash rewards closing was such a loss because they've been in the landscape for such a long time and it was interesting because we're and like top cash back are growing quite a bit over here they had very distinct audience profiles so shop back and cash rewards and top cash back as well so you would expect it to be a similar audience across all of them and they go to wherever they get the best discount and it's not at all people are shop on shop back or they shop on top cash back and they like to get or one of the other cash back sites out there and they like to see that balance growing so they do end up in quite a lot of people who are buying cash back and they're loyal to it and each of them have strategies where they talk to their audience specifically so shop back is very sort of gen z millennial it gamifies it a lot they put lots of like notifications and it's all very sort of mobile and app delivered which makes it very strong for that audience whereas cash rewards was a lot more australian kind of skewed a little bit older that's why it
Speaker 2got me so very different
Speaker 1even as i say mechanism and different audiences across all of them
Speaker 2lorna jane built a whole brand on the idea that movement is medicine and it turns out that customers took that literally because they do not stand still they'll discover the brand in a store shop online a few days later then tap through the app sometimes all of this happening in the space of a couple of days that is beautiful for loyalty but a nightmare to keep up with especially when like lorna jane your email and sms are stuck in two completely different systems so they brought it all together with clavio one platform one customer profile and a shift from blasting campaigns to nurturing proper life cycle journeys post-purchase upsells alone now drive three to four times the order rates and across the last year they've pulled an 84 times roi on email and sms 84 times for a brand that swears that movement is medicine that is a very healthy result head to clavio.com forward slash au and see how brands like lorna jane are doing it right okay that makes sense so they're still going maybe not as strong in the australian market as they once were but still significant
Speaker 1they they're just as strong so cash rewards closed nearly a year ago now and that was a significant loss but on the most recent stats that i've seen the revenue is equaled to what it was from those partners so that means that it's stabilized and that gap's been completely closed so if they'd still been there they would have grown pretty significantly bizarre isn't it
Speaker 2that's funny it was just the timing of it yeah all right so if we've got coupons and then we've got cash back as core elements generally speaking of an affiliate and partnership strategy and obviously different for every brand what are some of the other areas that you're typically looking
Speaker 1at as well yeah so our approach with partnerships and this is a lot of people who are looking at is where i really like it you've got your traditional and which is optimization and then it's anyone who can refer traffic to you or can refer outcomes can be an affiliate so when you take that lens it means that anybody could be an affiliate so anyone can be your affiliate so long as you can track it so it's understanding who your audience are so who's your audience where do they spend time online what are their trusted sources where can you get in front and engage with them in a meaningful way and then Those are your partners. So that could be anyone from. social commerce and so social communities like forums they're pretty big content publications which we've talked about influences as well so influences is a really interesting one because influence has always been brand budget but when you bring that into the performance space it's like brand and performance blending which is a really lovely area to bring some more sort of measurable and meaningful outcomes to brands we have comparison feeds so shopping feeds so it moves the value up the funnel so you can see where you know compare like for like or compare different attributes yeah so it's a range of different ones and then outside of that there's non-traditional and brand to brand so that would be more sort of like niche partnerships so it could be kids nurseries if you've got a family product and you want to promote something across to them if you're in healthcare doctors or healthcare providers going out on edms for those ones so it's really limitless in terms of the options it's just it's a different size for everyone
Speaker 2yeah and i know exactly what you mean now when you say you know there's not one size fits all it really is down to who you're selling who you're talking to what your message is in market so for you one of the things that we were talking about before we hit record was that you're really passionate around making sure that your clients especially don't get ripped off in this space that there's a lot of misinformation and there's a lot of money wasted where do you see people making those mistakes most often yeah and we're
Speaker 1it's not just my clients it's everybody i don't want anyone to have a bad experience with the channel because i think that does us all a disservice so the challenge with affiliate is that it's so vast and so varied and you're working across multiple different partners who are optimizing your program in different ways so that's what's great about it is its ability to scale but it's also what makes it quite challenging to manage because you need to understand what each of those individual partners are doing and to monitor them so i think that's a really good so that quite often causes a bit of a knowledge gap in terms of what do i need to look out for and what are the flags in terms of this is valuable is it not and so that's what i sort of i try and work to close is to make sure everyone has confidence in the results that they're getting and they know that they are adding value but some of the things that we look at so we have a range of different triggers so there's behavioral do we suddenly see like performance spiking from partners that suddenly haven't done anything and then suddenly it's just gone through the roof overnight so if we see that and we're like oh my god i'm not going to be able to do that we reach out to them to ask them what they did and then if they can't come back to us sometimes they don't reply sometimes they don't give us a very good explanation
Speaker 2and i suppose that that would be different depending on who it is right because someone like a coupon code site would have all the infrastructure set up or supposedly whereas someone who's a content creator might be a bit looser in terms of replying in terms of replying reporting having reasoning behind
Speaker 1yeah yeah but spikes are that are normally driven by something so if someone's like performance suddenly spikes there's usually a driver for it and so we're just trying to understand you know if it's a content producer they'll be able to see where their traffic's going and they can say oh yeah i just have this article that just suddenly went viral or whatever it is and then we'd be like great what can we do to jump on it let's do more but some don't come back to us and that's when we we then flag that as okay this needs to be reviewed we're not sure what's driving this and we need to investigate that a little bit more and then we're not sure what's driving this and we need to investigate that a little bit more other other areas that we look at brand bidding so you don't have to have brands bidding on your terms you can have that against your program terms and conditions so we use tools to monitor to make sure that no one's brand bidding what
Speaker 2do you mean by brand bidding
Speaker 1sorry so bidding on your brand name plus discount code usually so they're you know appearing on terms that you don't want them to appear to and if that's against your program terms and conditions not adding value and not adding value in the way that you want your program
Speaker 2to they're just cannibalizing essentially the offers that you got out out there and taking a clip on yeah getting that click yeah so it's
Speaker 1making sure that all of the sales are being driven in the way that you want them to okay and compliant so we have tools that will flag if there's any of that sort of behavior it's like all digital marketing there's ways that everything can be it can be injection or things you know browser extensions appearing at the checkout all of these we keep an eye on to make sure they're not happening in a program and you've got some pretty
Speaker 2amazing clients that you're working with all the way through and you know we saw the case study from modibodi was the one that stood out for me where you had revenue up almost three times 300 but commissions dropped from 14 to 6 and on that case study where your commissions dropped from 14 to 6 how did you actually do that because that's a huge draw did it all happen at once over
Speaker 1time it took a bit of work and reviewing the way we approach commissions i always say to brands your commission is your most powerful lever and so many brands don't use it well or take advantage of that so at its top level we look at commissions and paying a fair outcome to the publishers so should a content publisher be on the same as a coupon publisher for the level of effort and the outcome that they've delivered probably not so we tend to put those top of funnel partners on a higher commission and those bottom of funnel partners lower commissions so when we first set up in australia not many brands like 80 of brands didn't even have that segmentation within their program so we're seeing that's done a lot more and that's your base level but then you get more sophisticated with it in terms of supporting your wider business objectives so this is where we get into understanding how valuable the sales are from the channels so if you want to drive new customers then you can build in a new a new customer versus existing customers here and then you can build in a new customer versus existing customers here and incentivize new customers at a higher rate if you want to look at margin outcomes than sale versus non-sale products so you're not losing margin on sales and we work with a few bricks and mortar who want to drive in-store traffic so then we incentivize click and collect so it reduces delivery costs but it also drives that in-store traffic so once you've got the foundations you can be really strategic of what you're trying to achieve with your product so if you're trying to the channel and or what you're trying to achieve as a business and how you can use the channel and your commission structure specifically to support
Speaker 2it do you have to be careful with how complicated or how nuanced you get with your commissions do people ever go actually that all sounds too hard i don't know what i'm like i just don't know like yes i give up
Speaker 1like there is a bit of a balancing act like you can get super granular but then you have to manage all of those on an individual basis and it's how does that translate to outcomes so we start broad and then we get narrower and narrower to find out what the right fit is instead of starting with skew level commission
Speaker 2perfect outcome yeah yeah yeah does affiliate get easier as you get bigger
Speaker 1i'd say with all growth you you get diminishing returns the bigger you get because you you tackle your lowest hanging fruit first so and we've built out what we call our progression model and the reason we did that is because brands weren't clear on what the future growth looked like within the channel so the idea is that we're going to be able to do that and we're going to be you focus on your where you're going to get the best returns next so it's what's your next highest impact opportunity so you're always optimizing those and moving forward and so you've you've covered off all of your big gains and then you're looking at other areas for growth which may be a little bit more strategic or may require a little bit more heavy lifting or a bit more niche and you can get great returns from those but you need to make sure you have your foundations built and pretty solid first of all it probably gets easier in terms of the appreciation of the channel and the ability to have those internal conversations because the results are demonstrated and trusted so when it comes to other projects and building on those it's much easier conversations and i suppose
Speaker 2there's a resourcing piece internally too right in that it's not a paid performance where you can flick it on and let it be you've actually got to think and provide content and even form a relationship in parts over time to get the best out of it and i suppose as you start seeing more and more results you can justify putting more effort into those right relationships
Speaker 1yeah absolutely you've hit the nail on the head there so it's partnership marketing it's a partnership yeah so every publisher is a partner so it's it's a value exchange so we work with all of our individual partners and we make sure that they're getting paid fairly for the effort that they put in and likewise we make sure that the results that they're generating are valuable for the brand so that's the the value exchange there
Speaker 2are there any emerging platforms or channels that you're seeing your clients get some great results in that are kind of flying a little bit under the radar at the moment that you're like oh this is really interesting yeah
Speaker 1so again it varies it's by brand and it's knowing your audience we had some really great results with social communities so we were a budget conscious mum brand that was their audience and so we identified a social community which was targeted they weren't in the world of affiliate it was targeted at mum and we were able to get some really great results and we were able to get who were trying to save pennies and they would share all their tips and deals. And so we reached out to the admin and worked out, educated them on affiliate, got them onto the platform and worked out a.
Speaker 2Are you talking like a private Facebook group? Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1Yeah, they weren't in the world of affiliate. And so we ran a campaign for our client and it outperformed ShopBack on the first post, which is absolutely unheard of and was fabulous results. And it resulted in that being a global strategy that this brand adopted to then roll out across other regions, which was fabulous. And it's hard, you know, finding those golden nuggets can happen, but it comes down to, again, who's your audience and where are they? And let's have a conversation with them there and let's meet them there. And then emerging opportunities. So with content having its heyday and becoming increasingly important, we're seeing some really great opportunities come up within that now. And there's like definite first mover advantages. So there is one for a mattress brand and some of their key terms were back pains, you know, good mattresses for back pain. And one of the most highly cited resources for this was a chiropractor, was just a random chiropractor, but he was very good at producing content, didn't have an affiliate relationship with anyone. So it's one where you can go in and you can negotiate exclusivity for a time, get some really good rates locked in and increase your visibility by moving early with. Yeah, sites that are already ranking for your target terms.
Speaker 2The market is shifting, costs are climbing and the pressure to do more with less is very real. But when resources are tight, you can rely on Shopify, the platform that's consistently first with new capabilities. Shopify invests significantly in R&D and drops more than 150 updates every year, evolving with you and absorbing complexity. So you don't have to worry about the price. You don't have to worry about the price. So you can focus on what moves your business forward. From AI-powered insights to the world's best converting checkout, Shopify is designed for the next era of commerce, helping you sell more, scale faster and future-proof your brand. Build for what is next with Shopify. Visit Shopify for Enterprise to learn more. Wow. When you're going out to those new potentials, whether that be a community or whether it's an individual, what's kind of the. What's the range of commission that you're offering them? Like, what's worth their while? Because if I'm thinking about a chiropractor, I'm like, they're busy running a business. They've obviously got great content. They're putting a lot of effort into their content as well. How do we make this worth their while? How aggressive do you have to be?
Speaker 1Yeah. So that's a great question. So because affiliate is largely still last click, the way we structure it is you tend to do higher commissions for upper funnel partners because there is leakage and they won't get recognized as much. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. There's also other models. So they may have a CPC for X amount of budget or a tenancy, which means we do a fixed placement because we know that there's value outside of it. So we do a tenancy plus a commission on it so that they are getting a guaranteed outcome for the time that they put into it. And then we measure that in terms of like last click, but also what else we're seeing in analytics as well.
Speaker 2Okay. That makes sense. So it's just putting yourself in their position and go, how do you make it worth their while? I was interested there that you mentioned Facebook groups and it's actually a theme that's come up a lot on Add to Cart and we've had some founders have a lot of success with Facebook groups. You also mentioned forums and the old school world of affiliate is like blog posts, like give me a blue link in your blog and that pays off. Obviously, there's a lot of focus at the moment on social and on video, but would it be wrong to ignore the things like the forums where are they still a thing? Like is there still a lot of traffic? Going to them, forums and blogs?
Speaker 1Yeah, massive. Everything I feel is getting a lot more niche.
Speaker 2Yeah. I think that's the theme like coming through here, right, is like almost niche down and find your people.
Speaker 1Yeah, it is. And you can get these really obsessed subcultures and that's, you know, at your core, like they're your fanatics on a target, but they're largely very influential and they will quite often have blogs that they write for. So, yeah, they are still relevant. It has to be something like for something that people are passionate about and something that people care about. So if you're in one of those categories, then you can always tapping into your audience and tapping into that passion. Ones that always spring to mind is babies like so many like baby advice and sharing and there's a lot of discussion on it when everyone's doing it for the first time. Pets as well. And then games and then some toys and bikes. So there's different communities.
Speaker 2Yeah. It's categories where if you fuck it up, there's a big implication, right?
Speaker 1Like I know what I'm doing. Please help me.
Speaker 2That's right. Exactly. That's awesome. What about Reddit? Because they've obviously got their own advertising model. When you talk about forums, Reddit's the biggest forum in the world, as I understand. Is there partnership opportunities there or are they kind of it's all very much in the Reddit ad model?
Speaker 1Yeah. So there are partnership opportunity partnerships with Reddit. So we work with Reddit across a few. Different brands and they work on seeding. To be honest, I'm not in the detail of Reddit's strategy, so it's not my area, but they, they do, they lend into it a lot after they are so popular with ChatGPT and it's been a big area of focus and obviously that's not working for them now as much as it was before. So it changes very quickly. It's crazy how much the LLMs have fallen off Reddit pretty quickly. Still influential, obviously, but not as much as they were originally. Yeah. And I think that's because it's getting gamified. So as soon as people figure out what's working and we're just going to see a lot of that, aren't we? Where everything keeps changing.
Speaker 2Big time. One more question on platforms before I want to get into your LLM prompts is social commerce. It feels like the US gets all the bright, shiny toys. I saw this week that YouTube just did a deal with Amazon to allow affiliates to sell via YouTube with Amazon links. And we've obviously got the Google universal cart coming soon, or at least rolling out right now. Yeah. Where do you see Australia's role in social commerce? Are we going to get TikTok shop? Are we going to get all those ways to make affiliate a lot easier than what it is today?
Speaker 1I heard a rumour, I don't know if it's official, so I don't know if I can say it. It's official now. As soon as you say it, it's official. I wasn't told that it confidentially, and I wasn't told this by TikTok. So I think that means it's okay. I had TikTok shops coming to Australia next year, so it is going to be getting launched next year. And one of the platforms over here is also sharing affiliate links into YouTube. So we have got access to some of those things already. And then the rest of it, apparently, it's not that far behind.
Speaker 2Okay. What would you be doing to prepare for that? Because I feel like we're on this precipice of like, it's been coming for years. And now it's like, well, it does look like it's going to come because it's been proven in the US now. And it's such a significant channel for e-commerce. If you were an e-commerce brand today for the rest of 2026, is there anything you'd be doing differently to get yourself ready for that direct affiliate conversion?
Speaker 1In social? Yeah, making sure that you've got your technology set up, making sure that you've got your logistics set up behind it. Like, what does that look like? And that's in terms of what's your creator profile? Who do you want to work with? Who's your target? There's a lot of admin and influencer management. How are you going to manage getting the product to them? And then what's the timelines and what's the agreement? Like, what's the contracts look like? So have anything set up ready to go in terms? And if I was doing it, I would do a big push on the commissions to get content created quickly, which is always a nice little way to do it. So you can do higher commission for launch period and then bring it down. And that really incentivizes them to start creating content quickly. And then you can do sort of bonuses in terms of if you hit this threshold, you get this commission or like a bonus payout. So you can be quite creative with it to sort of drive that noise all at the same. So, yeah, making sure you've got your platform and your technology set up and your logistics sorted and then a plan on what it is so that you can just, when it goes live, you're ready to go.
Speaker 2Great tips. And I suppose there's part of that first mover advantage that you talked about before is having those trusted partners and creators and influencers ready to go. So it's almost like as soon as it drops that you can get them creating content with those affiliate links in platform ready to sell. If you've got all your tech and your operations and everything set up as well. So it's almost like everyone will be learning together, but you've got to be ready to go to get that early first mover advantage.
Speaker 1Absolutely. And then the other side of it is what does the agreement look like in terms of amplifying that content? So it's not just the creator. It's then your ability to amplify that content, which is where you get much stronger returns or much longer returns from each piece of content. So being able to amplify that through your own socials.
Speaker 2Makes a lot of sense. I'm excited. I hope, like I feel like we've got a shot in the arm with e-commerce, with AI. And there's been so much to do. And I feel like if next year the great promise of social commerce actually arrives, it's going to be another shot in the arm. Like something else that's exciting to be able to experiment and jump on.
Speaker 1I know. We're not going to be able to keep up.
Speaker 2Bring it on. I'm happy for it. All right. Let's get into the LLM prompts that you released with the team at Silverbeam. Because I'm really interested in that and that you've essentially gone, hey, here are some prompts that we would use if we were, if we were in your shoes and we actually use as an agency to make sure that affiliate is working for you as a channel. One, I'm fascinated to know why you're giving this away because you're an agency who probably, I don't know, I assume you want people to buy your services and not turn to an LLM. And number two, let's dive into how you're using them. But maybe start with the first question. Why are you giving out LLM prompts when you're a service-based agency?
Speaker 1Yeah. So what we spoke about earlier is I want to make sure that everyone has a positive experience. I want to make sure that everyone has a positive experience in the channel. And so I can tell when I audit a program or when the team audit a program, we immediately know where the savings are, what's wrong with it. But there are some barriers for us to be able to do that for a brand. It requires, you know, we've got to get them to trust us, to have a phone call, to get program access, to run it. And they don't know what the scale of the problem is. So I wanted to create a way to empower brands to be able to have a look and to give them some metrics or an overview in terms of what needed fixing first. There was a challenge with it. So I wasn't able to put as much as I wanted in there. I really wanted to address the incrementality and build that into a prompt. But LLMs are quite tricky, will often go off in their own direction. So I had to program it quite specifically. And as we spoke about with incrementality, it's not one size fits all. There's so many different triggers and flags that we need to look into. I couldn't put that into a prompt because it's, you know, it's 20 years of experience. It just was too much. I tried. I tried to make it have that answer. But the problem is when LLMs, when they have a bit of free reign, they then come up with an assumption that may not be right. And then that's got our name next to it. So I had to pull in some of those. So it doesn't address the incrementality, which was a big one that I wanted to. But there's a lot of other information and value in there from a starting perspective in terms of who are your partners? What are they driving for you? These are some of the flags that we look at from a top line program perspective. And then another one. So I took apart our like the internal audits that we do and tried to break down what I could share as much as possible. So it's not our whole audit as does do a lot more because we have our internal tools that we can use. But one area that we look into is third party networks. So a third party network is they're really good partners because they help you scale with long tail. So if you think of it from a content partner perspective, if they're working with Commission Factory, Eowyn, Impact. Partnerize Rakuten. For every single article they write, they have to log into a different platform, go find that advertiser, get those affiliate links and put them on their blog, which is really like a lot of heavy lifting from their side. So some of these third party networks will automatically sweep it and then flip those brand mentions into affiliate links. So it removes a massive amount of admin for those content partners. So that's really, really valuable. The challenge is when you look at it in your platform is you'll just see the name of the third party. Network. So you won't know who all of those brands below it are that are driving value. So some of these third party networks are great and they give you a lot of transparency and they work really closely. So Skimlinks is one that we work with a lot and they're fabulous. Other ones don't give you that sort of visibility and you may have them on like a content partner commission when actually 80% of those sales that they're driving are from coupon sites and they can use it as a bit of a backdoor to get onto your program. You could reject them direct. And then they can come sign up through one of these third party networks. So it's really important that you have visibility to ensure that everyone on those programs is brand compliant. They're getting commissioned fairly for the value that they're bringing. So we see some problems with that just because it's where you have poor visibility.
Speaker 2Yeah, that makes sense. If you are a brand who maybe has experimented with affiliates and partnerships a bit, but never really nailed a program consistently over time, where would you start with LLN prompts? What kind of queries and prompts would you use to surface if there's an opportunity out there for you?
Speaker 1Well, there's two different sides. So starting with the LLN prompts is understanding what's happening within your program and where the biggest opportunities are and where the red flags are. So looking at referral URLs to see who's driving sales. The LLNs are amazing. They can do such good data analysis. You can have a look at if you're doing commission increases, how did that work out? So you can really optimize what you're doing by working closely with them or you need to validate the data. And it also depends on what model you're using, depending on how good you get. But it can really help you optimize the known and flag some concerns. I'd say if you're being led by your LLN, you need to give it some pretty strict guidelines on what's good and what's not and what you look out for just to make sure it's not going rogue with its recommendation or jumping to assumptions. Outside of that, we're talking about content partners and growth areas. So I would start with what are your key prompts that you want to target? Like what are your sort of generic brand awareness, like discovery pieces? Are you solving a specific problem like back pain or flat feet or big feet? And then it's getting visibility in those. So there's a few different platforms that we work with that show the citations. I think Google is building it into their platform, isn't it? But it's just to Gemini at the moment to get AI visibility. But it's a good starting place.
Speaker 2I love that though, because even that example that you gave before, it wouldn't jump naturally to people to go, I'm a mattress brand. One of our claims is that we're good for people with bad backs. Therefore, we need to go find people who help people with bad backs. So there's a little bit of a string there, isn't there? And I could imagine that that can almost fan query out into different things because it could also be, actually, we help people get an extra hour of sleep every night. So let's find sleep experts. Yeah.
Speaker 1So there's another brand who, they make a lot of boots. So women's boots. And they found out through this research that a lot of their search terms or a lot of their prompts were curvy women who are looking for boots that went with their outfits. And it wasn't an area of growth that they'd considered, but they found out that it was a high discovery area for those. And then they were able to sort of optimize those listings and reach out. And the results they got from that were phenomenal, just from those sort of connections.
Speaker 2Yes. And that's interesting because it's responding to queries that are out there. Do you use partnerships much to shape new identities? So say you were the same pair of boots and you're like, actually, we want to be known for being high-end boots. And we want to be known. Can you create an identity with partnerships or do you kind of already have to have that and then use partners to amplify what already exists?
Speaker 1Yeah. So that I think is going to be one of the biggest shifts that we see, because up until sort of historically, like brand.com has always been where the storytelling is being done. And that's where the brand values and brand storytelling. And now this shift that we're seeing is a brand can't just say something. It needs to be verified by third-party sites. And that's the big role that affiliate plays because we work with all of these third-party sites to verify that story. And with everything moving away, my theory is we're going to see brand.com, the value in storytelling and the claims that are on there becoming less important. And that's that external storytelling piece. So your social commerce, your TikTok shop, your reviews, your third-party sites, your social is where your brand story gets told. So whatever story you tell has to be true because it's been stress-tested.
Speaker 2And it also then comes down to how you measure it. Going back to the start of our conversation around measuring pay per influence when building that brand story might not necessarily lead to an immediate sale. As per the old coupon model, it's actually multiple points of brand story over time leading to an eventual sale. So it's going to get murky.
Speaker 1Yes. Murkier. I think it's been murky like all channels. Attribution has been an ongoing one and incrementality across all channels and no one's found the silver bullet for it yet. So I think, yes, but I think it will just improve our appreciation that there's a whole big piece of the journey and we're putting the pieces together.
Speaker 2So the funnel's collapsed, but you've still got to think about partnerships and influences from a brand building and storytelling perspective as well as a conversion perspective as well. Yeah. Do you think about them as separate campaigns or can they kind of merge into one?
Speaker 1Oh, no, they're connected. So influences, depending on what sort of outcomes, rework with them on sort of a funnel strategy as well. So different messages. So it could be a brand awareness, your aspirational messaging. Then in the middle of the funnel is sort of like product reviews and comparison. And then you also want to have your technical. I'm like, hey, this brand's doing a sale now. So you mix up those messages with those different channels. So it's not an influencer is just brand. An influencer can also be demand conversion.
Speaker 2Yep. Makes total sense. And it's going to be fascinating. I love this space. I think it's a fascinating space. I think it's a really difficult space. So I love that your mission is to try and help people navigate it and make sure that they don't get ripped off because I think it can be really powerful, but I don't think there's any retailers or e-commerce people without a bad story to tell or a bad experience. And that can come from anywhere, but when it happens and it happens well, incredibly powerful. So I love that you've shared that with us today, Annabelle. Thank you so much. Brilliant, no worries. Next 12 months, what's on the radar for you? What are you keeping your eye on? You've already given us a hint around what might be coming. Where's your eye in the world of affiliate and partnerships? Content.
Speaker 1Well, so both ends of the funnel. So content, but also conversion isn't going anywhere, even with the change in role. We're very loyalty driven in Australia. We love our incentives. We love that. And with the universal cart coming, those partners are going to be really important at driving, providing first party data that may be becoming a little bit more difficult to get as we see everything progressing in markets. So focusing at both ends, going more into AI. So, deeper analytics. How can we automate? What can we automate from a program? perspective because there is a lot of partners, there's a lot of heavy lifting. So anything that we can automate in terms of insights and actions means that we can spend more time on growth. So how do we improve that analysis piece for better outcomes and yeah, partner discovery. So big on the LLM piece next year.
Speaker 2Very, very cool. I think a lot will continue to change in your world and I know you are the person to keep up with it. I look forward to catching up with you next week at IPX.
Speaker 1Thank you, me too.
Speaker 2But if people want to get in touch, what's the best way to get in touch with you or the team?
Speaker 1Well, pop on my LinkedIn is probably the easiest or yeah, on the Silverbeam site. I could give out my email as well. I'm happy to give out my email, but I'll give that to you so you can share it.
Speaker 2Don't do it. Don't do it. Awesome. Annabelle, thank you so much for joining us on AdvoCard. That was so much value in an hour of conversation. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1Thank you. You're welcome. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2How good's Annabelle? That is one of the best deep dives that we've had into the Influencer and Partnership channel so far. I always go into conversations around Influencer and Partnership like with my head scattered because it can go in so many different directions. But I think Annabelle really gave a good framework there around what part each part of the funnel plays when you're thinking about Influencers and Partnerships and also not to be afraid to niche down. It really helped get my head around it. Thank you. And hopefully saying something that's half sensible on stage. All right, here are the three things that I got from that conversation with Annabelle. The first lesson that I took out of that was that 2027 could be the year that social selling finally lands here. And the work that you need to do in preparation for it isn't actually the creative. Annabelle's heard the TikTok shop is coming to Australia next year. Nothing comes. It's not the creative. It's the creative. She confirmed and she was very careful about that. But one Australian platform is already pushing affiliate links into YouTube. YouTube has just done a deal with Amazon in the United States and Google's universal cart is rolling out now. It's just coming from too many directions to ignore. Australia has to have a piece of the social commerce puzzle soon. But Annabelle's prep list is actually all admin. Tracking set up, logistics for getting product into creator's hands, knowing who your creators actually are, contracts and timelines drafted and sitting ready. It's all boring stuff. But on day one, everybody will be learning the creative at the same speed. And the advantage goes to whoever finished the boring part ahead of time. The piece that most brands will miss is amplification rights. If your agreement doesn't let you run a content creator's content through your own channels, you probably need to get ahead of that game right now. The second lesson is that your content partners are almost certainly doing more for you than your reporting can see right now. And the danger is you're making decisions based on a fraction of the influence that they're actually having. The funnel, the famous funnel has collapsed in the middle. Some say it's disappeared totally. But we all know someone asks an LLM a question, it pulls a recommendation out of a publisher's article, and the shopper is influenced and buys without ever clicking or even visiting. That publisher's site. But they have influenced the purchase. Nothing then attributes back to that publisher. Annabelle sat in a talk this week where a partner shared their early testing. For every one track sale in that category, 11 more influence sales came off that same piece of content, but were never detected. The models to price that influence are being built right now, cost per influence sale. And real results should be during the market early next year, but expect to hear much more of that cost per influenced sale. I think that's a really fascinating metric. And the third lesson is that your brand story might not be yours to tell anymore. Annabelle's view is that brand.com has always been where most of the brand storytelling happened. The values, the claims, the founder's letter. But that era is getting harder to control. A brand can't just say a thing now and expect it to land because it is the final source of truth. It gets checked against reviews, comparison sites, content partners, whatever a creator said about you, and increasingly against whatever an LLM has pulled together from all of it. Her line on it was probably one of the best in the episode. Whatever story you tell has to be true because it gets stress tested. If there's a gap between what your website claims and what the internet has concluded about you, the internet will win. Which makes this less about writing better copy and fancier and flowery copy and more about the value of the content. It's all about being the sort of business that holds up to external checks when needed because it's becoming a lot easier to check externally. Thanks again to Shopify and to Klaviyo for helping bring us this episode. Conversations like this one with Annabelle happen because they back us at Add to Cart and we are incredibly grateful for their support. If you got something out of this episode with Annabelle, please hit subscribe or leave us a review wherever you're watching or wherever you're listening. We really, really does help us. All right, I'll see you next time.
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