How Affiliates Help SaaS Companies Scale Strategically

Ben Meyer (00:00):

We see roughly a three to 4% increase in renewal rates if the attributed beginning source or the attribution beginning from the initial order came from an affiliate. Having conversations from some customers and also with the affiliates, they're essentially reducing the amount of time that takes is consideration of a purchase and they go in purchasing with a higher level of confidence that they're making the right selection.

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Tyler Calder (00:25):

This is Get It, Together, the podcast where partnership and go-to-market leaders share the real stories behind programs they've built and scaled. In this episode of Get It Together, I talked to Ben Meyer who is the VP of Digital Services at Cleverbridge, and we get into all things affiliate related, which I think is an incredible conversation because it is oftentimes such an under-leveraged channel in B2B, and it is certainly a channel that I find is oftentimes ignored by people in partnerships roles oftentimes taken on by marketing teams. But really what we see, and Ben and I chat about this is in 2025 and moving into 2026, the real value is getting a bit of a flywheel going where you can have your affiliate program, influencer creative programs, driving incredible demand for the business and having that demand, having that pipeline move over and be closed by your co-sell partners, your resellers.

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(01:30):

And you get this really interesting, like I said, flywheel going. So Ben and I chat about that. We chat about the role of AI in affiliate and where it's all going. And I think as you listen through this, you'll find some pretty interesting actionable insights. Enjoy. Welcome everybody to another episode of Get It, Together. In today's episode, I am going to be chatting with Ben Meyer of Cleverbridge. Ben is the VP of Digital Marketing Services and he's been with Cleverbridge for a good chunk of time. And Ben, I'd love to just start right there. Welcome to the show.

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Ben Meyer (02:09):

Thank you.

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Tyler Calder (02:09):

Let's talk about 2011 when you joined.

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Ben Meyer (02:13):

It was a hell of a year.

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Tyler Calder (02:14):

Hell of a year. Yeah, absolutely. Lay it on us. What was that journey? What brought you over to Cleverbridge?

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Ben Meyer (02:18):

Yeah, it's an interesting story and one, I think about  2011 coming out of college where I focused on school was an advertising. It's interesting looking at advertising even back then, relatively short period of time, it was focused a lot on traditional marketing, a lot of things that I can leverage today and now being the VP of Digital marketing services. But I live in Chicago, so coming out looking for that dream advertising job out of Chicago, actually very rough time for advertising. So they were looking for three to four years experience, even at an entry level. So that's even hard to meet with internships and so on. So it was essentially a non-pay job right out of college. Didn't know if that necessarily would've flown, so I actually applied for an internship, the company called Cleverbridge. The internship was actually on the digital marketing services team.

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(03:07):

That internship actually fell through and didn't happen, but at the time one of the co-founders, his name's Craig, reached out to me, was essentially like, Hey, we've had good conversations. Why don't you come learn this thing called e-commerce and you can essentially get paid to look for a job that meets your needs. Now fast forward about 15 years later, I am still at Cleverbridge now overseeing that department that I applied for the internship. But when I first started at Cleverbridge, my focus was I actually joined the customer service team, which was I think Cleverbridge did back in the day where every new person that came on board had to sit in the customer service realm for a while to understand what our clients are doing. And if I look back on those days, the most, even more so now as a leader of this department, Glenridge also is the benefit of having two sets of customers.

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(04:01):

So we have our clients, which are the ones that are interacting with us on our e-commerce level, but then we also have our clients' customers because we're a merchant of record, meaning we own the full purchasing experience through compliance taxation, managing the cart and the payment processing and so on. So we get to interact with our client's customers, which me on a digital marketing services side that we provide on behalf of client, gave myself a pretty good understanding of what our clients' customers are actually saying. And we actually turned that into different marketing campaigns, different tactics. It actually is how we started one of our more popular marketing automation programs called Voice of Customer. We didn't have an automated way of just gathering feedback and taking that information into programs to increase customer acquisition support, renewal rates and successful subscriptions and things like that. So wore Everett hat in digital marketing services. Since that time with the past 15 years now, I am the VP of Digital marketing services, so I get the pleasure of working with many special and I would say very detailed oriented digital marketing experts that span across the globe and we operate different channels now.

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Tyler Calder (05:14):

Nice. And so for those that aren't familiar with Cleverbridge, and you touched on a few pieces of what you folks do, but do you want to chat through that Cleverbridge, who you are, who you serve?

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Ben Meyer (05:24):

Yeah. Cleverbridge is an all in one e-commerce and subscription management platform. And our model is one under Merchant of record. Merchant of record is kind of similar to operating as a reseller in the case that we, you're essentially working with Cleverbridge to manage a full digital experience. So what I always say is make this simple is that Cleverbridge essentially owns the last mile. So if you go to a Buy Now or a Renew Now experience, especially underneath the SaaS and digital goods space, that's powered by Cleverbridge. So that storefront, the payment processing that's taking place on the backend, what's essentially processing the payments and managing tax of compliance globally is what we do best.

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Tyler Calder (06:08):

Cool. And so you apply for an internship in the digital marketing services on that team that fell through, but you still got the opportunity to join, you joined in customer service, moved into email marketing was an email marketing coordinator. I'd love to hear a little bit about those experiences and sort of what you pulled into what you're doing now, which is overseeing that full digital experience.

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Ben Meyer (06:36):

When I came in, especially moving from customer support into the email marketing coordinator role, which is an entry level marketing position, I hadn't even understood HTML, which is the code that powers all emails. And my manager at the time, my first task was to edit 350 HTML templates to render correctly with a very tight timeline on that. So I learned HTML relatively quick and still work within it. Today we were a very scrappy team, Cleverbridge had a startup mentality back then we had to do a lot with less and also just continuously moving. So that gave me the opportunity of wearing multiple hats under one role. So that helped me kind of continuously grow and I will say Cleverbridge has always given myself the backing to talk of what we need to be doing as a company, but also helped my trajectory within my career, which has also helped me stay within Cleverbridge for the past 15 years and so on.

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(07:36):

If I would've been stagnant in a role doing the same thing, you'd probably be talking to me through a different company. So being a scrappy team, you have to learn marketing channels and tactics a lot faster than I would say just focusing on a singular brand, especially as we're representing so many different brands that are leveraging our service. So that helped me move between different marketing channels relatively quick. And that's actually how I feel like to a certain degree mastered the email marketing automation realm. I wanted to move more into hardcore market customer acquisition tactics. And actually since the beginning of Cleverbridge's time, we had been developing our own affiliate network. We did have our own platform back in the day, which great name very straight to the point, it was called the affiliate center, and that's where we hosted all of our network of affiliates and that's how we actually helped a lot of these newer based SaaS companies scale their business.

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(08:32):

In the beginning, they didn't have marketing budget, they didn't have the knowhow of how do I reach out into these new markets? And that's essentially what the, so marketing our network did and early on had a very heavy interest into that. We had a whole affiliate marketing team where then I started to do overlap, so managing marketing automation programs that were supporting customer acquisition, but I wanted to get more into the upper and the mid funnel focus. So from that point, my focus then became the affiliate program and our services back in the day was only focused on the network. So our affiliate manager's job was just to build a relationship with these affiliates and then introduce 'em into accounts, and then from there we facilitate the partnership and so on. We actually pivoted strategy. We still have a network team that manages the affiliate relationships, but now we actually have a team that manages affiliate programs on behalf of the companies that we work with. So it's kind of twofold, right? We're managing, we know the right affiliates already. We just make that introduction a lot faster. We get 'em set up. So that's where companies are starting to see faster revenue and also higher profitability through ROAS by just having it all in one and obviously you need the right platform to manage all of that and so on.

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Tyler Calder (09:45):

Cool. What drew Cleverbridge into the affiliate world?

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Ben Meyer (09:50):

So our focus is in digital goods, which is sophomore SaaS based companies. Early on, even before I started at Cleverbridge, we were about five, six years into our maturity At that time it was quickly identified that we need to have an affiliate network in order to make us look more attractive to the market, especially as clients are coming in. This was a back in the day, a level set. It's also interesting now looking at our competition. They do not offer much on the affiliate space and it is one of our core channels for driving acquisition with our clients. So that is why we put the emphasis in there that we need to develop this channel specifically and also acting as the merchant of record, which is a true partnership with these accounts. They had their own partnerships that they were bringing in, introducing. I remember having a very early conversation with CNET back in the day where I think before they even started really taking off, and it was a client that introduced us into CNET saying, Hey, CNET needs a link. They want to promote our product. Can you believe that? How crazy is that? And looking back out, this is just normal, you need to be at cnet. So it kind of organically but also a necessity that we needed to create and leverage this affiliate channel specifically.

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Tyler Calder (11:09):

Cool. And so this is going back to your point, even pre 2011 before you joined Cleverbridge was already thinking about affiliate relatively still an underutilized channel in B2B. How do those conversations go with you and your customers? So you're talking with a new customer, somebody that's in digital goods software, maybe they're new to this idea of affiliate. What does that conversation look like? How do you turn it from maybe an afterthought or no thought at all into something critical to acquisition

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Ben Meyer (11:46):

Cleverbridge's foundation was built off of B2C, so we can leverage a lot of what the B2C experiences and best practices are because B2B is catching up and they're roughly five to six years behind what traditional B2B processes are. You also have younger demographics coming into play that are making buying decisions, purchasing behaviors, things like that that need to be incorporated in. So it's paramount that you have at least this channel incorporated. The one thing too is if it's a heavy channel focused company, where this starts to get a little sticky and where the conversation really starts to pick up is where they as a channel based company, one of the biggest conversation is, okay, I got order takers, I got support level partners that are managing my business. This whole area around demand generation, I cannot scale today through a partner ecosystem. You actually can scale that through a partner ecosystem.

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(12:42):

It's just enabling new partner types and that is your affiliates, your influencers, and your referral partners, which essentially we're somewhat operating in the same format. They just have different focuses that they're specializing in. But when we start to put that under a full partner ecosystem view and map, that is where it clicks for these B2B accounts. You're absolutely right, and it's a benefit for Cleverbridge when our specialty in affiliate, by the way, is we drive to a direct sale. So true percentage based CPA rev share, we all have a stake in the game, but when you start to explain that it doesn't have to go down that route, you can also incentivize partners to drive leads and then facilitate those leads to your hyperscalers to regional based partners. The understanding becomes a lot more. Okay. I think there's a negative connotation sometimes with affiliate in the B2B space that it's these coupon sites.

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(13:37):

You start to promote affiliate types that are not so much focused on coupons, but are actually driving relative content that helps you scale your business to new markets, attract new customers, identify even new features within your product. That really starts to resonate specifically with the personas that we're talking with on the B2B side. And most of the personas we're talking with are somebody usually within a growth realm, a partner realm, their job is digital transformation. They need to scale and change the way their company thinks. That to a certain degree starts to become a no brainer. When you start to even present ROI as a component of this,

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Tyler Calder (14:16):

What I'm hearing is maybe negative connotations to the word affiliate. I think a lot of us know where that might come from, which is fair, but when you really start to look at the outcomes that a so-called affiliate can drive, all of a sudden it starts to become a no-brainer and it becomes far more maybe strategic than it's been looked at. When I say strategic, some of the things you pointed to moving into new geographies, moving into new buying groups, these are things that are pretty critical to the business and they're very challenging things to do, but you're suggesting affiliates can help you get there. So it's not necessarily just we're just going to funnel leads your way. We can also help you get in front of new buying groups, break into new geographies, we can help you launch new product features. I think you mentioned that's sort of what you are seeing help with the adoption in some of these B2B brands is when you lay that out and the impact, that's when it starts to become a no-brainer.

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Ben Meyer (15:15):

Yeah, big time, especially in that market expansion realm, right? It's more on the content side, but also publication sites fall under the affiliate realm. They have their own community that they've worked to establish and build up. You're essentially leveraging that community to promote your brand and it's risky. In this day and age, I call this, they call it alligator mouth, where marketing costs are increasing, engagement is declining. So you're putting a lot of risk in your business by I'm going to do a pay media campaign in Germany, for example, without having really the knowhow or the backing of what the right strategy is there, you're putting your business at risk, especially on a ROAS calculation. Why not just partner with affiliates that work already in that area? That can still fall under some form of paid media, but they already have their community backing or their subscribers, their users, things like that. And if you can get 'em into a rev share model or some type of compensation based or a commission based program and you get to test that program, how hard do you want to go and market specifically in that region,

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Tyler Calder (16:23):

Right? So rather than saying you're in the business, you're on the marketing team, top down, it's like, Hey, we got to go break into Germany and throw in a bunch of budget at your paid search person to go run those tests. And those experiments have them probably fail a ton and learn trial buyer. Why not take that budget, give it to a partner, an affiliate who already works in that market, understands it scaled that way. So I think the geography example is a great one. What about breaking into new buying groups? Do you see the same type of support potentially coming from affiliates there, especially as in B2B buying groups and the number of people involved in a decision has just exploded over the past couple of years.

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Ben Meyer (17:07):

And I think part of it is kind of a twofold answer here too, but there is similar strategies of getting incorporated that I was just kind of talking about. We reach a wider network or different personas within that company specifically. I always think this is where attribution becomes an important play, especially as you're working with various affiliate partnerships, who's going to be driving the actual engagement, who's going to be driving the directed version, things like that. But there's persona based affiliates out there. I always think of CIO.com, right? It's a publication site that focuses and targets on CIOs, CTOs, CFOs, but essentially it's tapping into those specialty type to make sure we're reaching the right persona. And I say the focusing on the younger demographic, it's an important tactic that needs to be brought in today. And I think this is going to be our focusing on the influencer society. A lot of our more popular brands we always say you should be promoting on Twitch, for example, because that's where we work with some gaming and some backend gaming software. Always a good spot for you to be promoting your brand. It's a sub network, but it's the affiliate with the individuals that are working within Twitch influencer specifically. They're the ones that can be out there actually promoting your product to your brand to the right demographic.

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Tyler Calder (18:27):

Yeah. Do you still use the word affiliate or have you transitioned into using influencer as the term

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Ben Meyer (18:34):

Affiliate influencer and referrals? They can be put underneath the same bucket when also I do go back, if I'm talking B2C, affiliate resonates right away. So does the influencer reseller B2C on B2B is a little bit different. We actually lead with Demand generation partners, which is resonates a lot easier, but we still do refer to them as affiliates, and those are the ones that are true marketing based sites, publications, they're generating content through their site structure, they're running their own kind of campaigns to drive demand and things like that. I always say think about non-branded keywords is where they're going to be specializing in, but that influencer and referral you can keep within their own docket. Influencer is just who's generating content specifically about your brand, but leveraging different mediums to get that message out there. And a lot of times it's under social. The YouTube based affiliates is kind of, they're flirting between that line.

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(19:28):

That's essentially however they're being compensated at the end of the day. And then referral for us, referral is a big program. In the case of we work with a lot of software programs that have a cult following or significant following behind their product. Benefit of us creating these customers on behalf of our clients is we actually can turn them into referral partners. So by giving them links as a part of a thank you for purchasing, we're going to give you access into this referral program. So we try to turn our clients customers into kind of like a micro sales team in the fact that they have links that they can go out there and promote themselves. In the case that, oh, I'm having a conversation about this product. It was so great. We also specialize a lot in CAD software. CAD has a great, those are designs, those are projects that somebody spent time to create. So going out there and promoting it, why not get compensated for it and help support the product that you love? So that's where all kind of becomes a big play in our realm as well.

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Tyler Calder (20:25):

I asked the question on whether or not you call it affiliate still because we do, but I also find myself, depending on who I'm talking with, I might refer to it differently, right? So I love what you said in terms of a blanket category of demand, gen partners, I think that lands really well. I've also found people that invest pr, calling it digital PR lands with them as well. There is still a negative condensation to affiliate, but then when you actually look at what these websites are, who these people are, they could be a massive publication. They could be somebody who has a huge newsletter, subscription lists that very much has the attention of the audience you're trying to get the attention of, could be a YouTube channel, same idea, huge following of the folks that you're trying to get in front of. And so I think it really does go back to just 1 0 1, right? You need to build trust, you need to build credibility. And one of the most impactful ways to do that is to do it with the people who already have that credibility, that trust. You mentioned B2C. What do you think B2B can learn from B2C when it comes to affiliate influencer creator, et cetera?

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Ben Meyer (21:40):

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that B2B can learn from B2C is two things. One is just the quality of partnerships you're bringing in. So making sure you're figuring out the right level of testing. How are you enabling those partners or affiliates with enough information to go out there, promote your brand? I would always say two, same with B2C, probably more so in the beginning with B2B, spending the time to review the affiliates that are coming on board B2C is different. In the case of the buying process, you have a longer sales cycle with a higher A OB that's coming through on the B2B side. So to me, you need to select the right partners that are going to understand your business, and those affiliates are then going to go out there and promote. So spend a little bit more time on the U component of it to make sure you understand their business as well.

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(22:29):

And then that's how you create this synergy between your two companies. Do I have the right material enablement training documents that they can have access to? Also, the number one success lever in affiliate marketing is fostering the relationship. So making sure you are establishing some form of a relationship with a partner that was very strong on the BC side because in the software space, if you didn't have an affiliate program, you're behind. So I would say the relationships were a lot more competitive back then in the case, like everybody's competing against each other, commission tiering and things like that. B2B is right now even some of these main verticals don't have an affiliate market in there. So untapped resource, especially if you're a game changer or a change agent, why not start activating these types of partnerships to get ahead of the competition? You get some market attraction just by doing those types of partnerships and activ that channel.

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Tyler Calder (23:22):

I think that's a really good point because I do find there are a lot of instances, and I find myself in a lot of conversations where I'm talking with somebody who manages the affiliate program and it's treated as strictly a transactional channel, which is understandable. Everything about it sounds transactional, right? It's a rev share. We're paying per lead. We're talking about testing and experimentation, but the sort of unintended consequence in all of that is I find that the relationship side of it is sort of lost. You're treating an affiliate just as part of this kind of massive just experiment that you're running and you're not really spending the time to understand their business, what's important to them. And so where I'm going with that question wise is what have you found to be critical in that relationship building with an affiliate? They'll say it out loud, somebody who is a very successful affiliate, their brains work a little bit differently than other types of partners and other types of third parties you might be working with. How do you build a really good relationship with them, one that will be multi-year beneficial to both parties? What does that look like?

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Ben Meyer (24:33):

I do want to hit on one point that you made. I completely agree with you that the affiliate, and even just in general partnerships today, it's just it's less about the transaction component. We're in an age of transformation right now, so it's how are we transforming the different partnerships and the relationships we have with these partners and affiliates today. So I think going back to what I said before is you have to have that close alignment, especially with what will be the stronger affiliates that you put within your program. And you might not know who those affiliates are yet. They might be in there right now, but there needs to be a level of incentivization incorporated into your program. That's why when we're setting up a new account, we always put incent tier in there, even from the get go. So how do I move from maybe I come in at a bronze package, how do I move to silver to gold?

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(25:27):

That's creating a loyalty program within your own affiliate program. So it gives every side kind of stake in the game, but that's essentially how you build a very strong affiliate base. Same thing like how you track your mileage program with your airlines. I might take that extra flight just to get to that next level, even though I don't need to go somewhere. Those affiliates are also picking in the same way or what do I need to do to get to that next level? And they're actively looking at it. And that's where I think affiliates, for affiliates that are listening too, I'm sure that they should also be interested in their own growth and what do they need to be getting back from the advertiser or the brand in this case. So it's that two-way level of communication. Both sides need to talk, both sides need to listen, both sides need to act. Same thing as a relationship. Yeah, for

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Tyler Calder (26:14):

Sure. Cool. So far, we've talked a lot about how affiliates can support top of funnel, they can support acquisition. What about post-sale? Do you see affiliates, influencers, other partner type supporting the entire journey inclusive of post-sale?

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Ben Meyer (26:35):

I do. I think it's a smaller impact on the retention side, but it's a different level of impact. And on the Cleverbridge side, we sit on a wealth of information mainly around purchasing behaviors and so on, and obviously managing our own affiliate network. And I think this goes down to the consideration phase that a lot of customers go through as a part of visitors to customers is that we're reviewing, but we see roughly a three to 4% increase in renewal rates if the attributed beginning source team or the attribution beginning for the initial order came from an affiliate. So with having conversations from some customers and also with the affiliates, they're essentially reducing the amount of time that it takes as consideration of a purchase, and they go in purchasing with a higher level of continence that they're making the right selection, which then makes sure that they continue on with the subsequential renewals.

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(27:27):

And so on the B2B side though, this does become a little bit different, especially if you create that incentive or compensation programs, there's always a land and expand opportunity within B2B. So however, they might be supporting that initial conversion, which is maybe their main product, but then they offer a subset of add-ons or cross-sells or upsells that they can get incentivized on. They have to be incorporated in managing that sales cycle, but also making sure that those customers have completed the activation of the initial product. They might not care necessarily so much about the product experience, how the customer is navigating within that product, but they're going to focus on what is the selling points against upsell and cross-sell, which once again, this is going to go back to the enablement component or are you giving enough information to the affiliate so that they can actively go in and do that?

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(28:19):

You'd give more information to the affiliate. There's more that affiliate can do to support your business. So if they're promoting leads, they're not able to see that these are being moved to a closed one or there is an expansion opportunity, then they're not going to be able to support you. But if they have that level of information, then they can go in there and actually just do it themselves. It's all based on controls that you've essentially put in and so on. But I also think too, on the reverse side of this, especially if you're working with, let's say your G2s, your TrustRadiuses of the world, which can technically fall within this bucket as well. How are they gathering reviews might not help the acquisition or helps the acquisition, but also does help retention, especially as new users are coming on board.

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Tyler Calder (29:02):

I don't think we can go a conversation without talking to ai. I

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Ben Meyer (29:06):

Haven't heard of this Then what's it called again? Oh, we haven't. Oh wow. You're going to be

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Tyler Calder (29:09):

Blown away. I heard it's cool. So helpful. It's neat. As the kids say, what are you seeing when it comes to the affiliate world, the usage of ai,

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Ben Meyer (29:21):

Where to begin with this conversation of ai, ai, it is a game changer, and we've had to kind of pivot on a lot of our strategies, and this is not just on the affiliate side, but on clever rich too as we specialize on the e-commerce side. So us enabling digital buying agents, recovery based agents, things like that, or AI strategy is, it's pretty much all we talk about. We did need to change our strategy and tactics when it comes to AI just because of the understanding of AEO and GEO specifically. Search rankings and stackings have completely changed, essentially overnight. If it's not a modernized affiliate or a site that is staying up to date, they're going to get crushed on search specifically as it's being generated by some type of ai. This also incorporates and brings up new affiliates, especially sites that specialize in AEO and GEO.

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(30:15):

Going back to something that I said before about coupon affiliates, we're actually seeing the resurgence of coupon affiliates right now, especially as Google has just launched their e-commerce. They're buying agent specifically, they're prioritizing discounted products based on a set. So it's going to be an interesting time. B2C will need to offer some type of coupon, and it'll be interesting if B2B, how they play with discounts. I would recommend just start with the discount on the B2B side, but just even in order to have a light discount to rank specifically how the AI is incorporating or bringing up your site organically and also within the search is going to be become important. But also this means identifying and updating your keywords specifically. So non-branded keywords, how does that get incorporated into AI search functionality? You're going to see some publication sites really dominate the space, especially ones that have a wide array of publication sites, but also some specialty ones that come in there that have really focused on the brand non-branded keywords that can set themselves as differentiators. I would say a recruitment process has changed where we're looking for affiliates that specialize more on the AI side of things.

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Tyler Calder (31:27):

Cool. Yeah, more and more companies looking towards affiliates to help with just simple citation building, improving brand mentions. Is that some of what you're talking about in terms of Yeah,

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Ben Meyer (31:40):

Yeah. And especially the site references of backlinking, which has always been a underutilized or not talked about enough benefit of affiliates, by the way. This is just AI is just bringing it up more and can do things faster. So that's what we kind of see it coming up. That's also where I put the non-branded keyword component in there too, especially if you're looking to extend your reach on roof site, back ranking does become a significant component to the strategy.

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Tyler Calder (32:08):

Cool. Any advice or anything that you would share with folks as they think about either launching an affiliate program or scaling out one that they have but maybe has been just off the side of someone's desk, hasn't been overly invested into?

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Ben Meyer (32:25):

I would kind of frame this based on the conversation that's transitioned, especially taking the learnings from B2C. It's a paramount channel to have some type of affiliate program activated to support with scaling your business, supporting costs, things like that. And actually Cleverbridge, we just finalized generating a report that we call the Friction report. So this report essentially highlights different issues or friction that is created through digital buying. And one of the metrics that we'll go into detail on is that 98% of software vendors are now selling at least partially through some type of e-commerce channel. So going back to what I said on the B2C side, it was a necessary channel to have some type of affiliate program out there promoting your digital products B2B. Now, being within that space and having such a high percentage software companies selling online, you need an affiliate channel to continue to sustain that level of growth. It's also going to be, don't take the market expansion lightly in the case that if you try to do it yourself, it does become a very cumbersome and difficult process. Leverage partners to do that, and affiliates are an easy way to get started, especially if you're working at a different level of commission. So I always say just don't push this one off because something else came up. It's low hanging fruit, quick weight opportunities just said to get the program.

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Tyler Calder (33:48):

Nice. Any big predictions for what the next 12 months looks like?

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Ben Meyer (33:53):

Good question. I mean, there's going to be the advancement. AI is going to be the biggest component is the agents, the ag agentic AI becomes more popular. I think we'll see affiliate agents start to become more of a popular thing, especially as how are we leveraging agents to do recruitment nurturing of different affiliate relationships, but also incorporating buying process direct on that affiliate site. So you think of things like Google shopping right now it's starting small new AI tactics. Typically you see this becoming a very more popular thing. So think about some larger publication sites actually enacting their own purchasing experience and how are they receiving compensation by not managing a storefront, actually having e-commerce experience. And you can see this already kind of happening on the payment space, which there is also a relative kind similarity between the two, but MasterCard and PayPal are starting to identify what their agent approaches are going to be. There's going to be more of an affiliate focus on that.

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Tyler Calder (34:57):

Yeah, I would agree with that. Given how quickly the space moves, the pace of change, how do you stay current? What would you recommend? For folks that are trying to stay on top of everything,

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Ben Meyer (35:09):

The first is actually the technology. So identifying the right level of technology that manages the affiliate program, and that is where your network's going to set where all of your marketing materials, your late. So being generated, why I bring the technology up is because that's actually where I gain and my team gains most of the knowledge they have to have the right level of know-how. Especially if they come with a network team, they're actually assisting you in your own company wide growth. So documentation specifically with your tech partner in this case is very important. Also, going back to my advertising mindset, I stay relatively up to date on advertising period articles and articles specifically. So adage still a great relevant based publication. They talk a lot about the digital space and there's actually, that's where we do a lot of recruitment too, where there's some affiliates that we identify in there, but their practices of advertising is essentially the same that falls underneath the affiliate. You're just asking partners to do those things. So it's part of it is staying up to date on marketing tactics and best practices and how does that relate into more of a partner ecosystem.

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Tyler Calder (36:24):

Ben, thank you very much. I appreciate the time. Thanks for the conversation. Appreciate it. How can people get in touch with you if they want to ask any follow-up questions?

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Ben Meyer (36:32):

Yeah, you can chat with me on LinkedIn. Just search Ben Meyer at Cleverbridge and you'll find me there. I think that'd probably be the best place.

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Tyler Calder (36:39):

All right. Easy. Let's leave it at that. Thank you very much, sir.

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Ben Meyer (36:43):

Thanks, Tyler. Thanks for having me.

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Tyler Calder (36:45):

All right. Take care. Thanks for listening to Get It, Together. If you want more resources to help you build and scale your partnership program, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app and get more proven tips and tools at partnerstack.com/getittogether.