[Top Agency Series] Building Performance-Based Partnerships in Affiliate Marketing With Sarah Bundy

Sarah Bundy is the founder and CEO of All Inclusive Marketing, a company specializing in affiliate management services for a diverse range of clients, from e-commerce startups to billion-dollar brands. She has earned numerous accolades, including recognition as a Top 100 Female Entrepreneur, PROFIT500 honoree, and 40 Under 40 recipient. Beyond her professional endeavors, Sarah passionately supports female entrepreneurship through her involvement with For Female Founders, where she plays a crucial role in fostering growth and success for women in business.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [02:25] How Sarah Bundy built a leading digital marketing agency
• [04:18] Implementing the key elements that make affiliate marketing effective
• [09:33] The transformation from traditional to performance-based partnerships
• [15:27] The challenges faced in affiliate marketing and how the industry has evolved over time
• [23:47] The journey from solopreneur to industry leader
• [26:50] Strategies for navigating company growth and successfully managing acquisitions
• [39:41] The significance of referrals in a service-based industry

In this episode…

How does one navigate the complexities of affiliate marketing to achieve business growth? Can leveraging performance-based partnerships truly transform a brand’s approach to scaling and reaching new markets?

With her extensive experience and innovative outlook, Sarah Bundy sheds light on how businesses can harness the power of affiliate marketing to drive growth and reach. Through her discussion on building effective partnerships, navigating challenges, and the evolution of her team and agency, she provides actionable advice and key takeaways for businesses aiming to enhance their affiliate marketing programs and drive significant growth.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Sarah Bundy, Founder and CEO of All Inclusive Marketing, to share her wealth of experience in developing and managing affiliate programs that cater to a diverse range of clients, from startups to billion-dollar enterprises. Known for her innovative leadership within the industry, she reveals how businesses can harness affiliate marketing to drive e-commerce success in various sectors including b2b, SaaS, travel, hospitality, and more.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Sarah Bundy on LinkedIn
• All Inclusive Marketing
• For Female Founders
• Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman

Related episode(s):

• Leading with Passion with Gino Wickman Founder of EOS Worldwide on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• [Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “Investing in performance-based partnerships can revolutionize how companies approach marketing.”
• “Affiliate marketing offers a landscape of diverse and profitable partnerships.”
• “Longevity and persistent promotion are the heart of successful affiliate marketing.”
• “An outcome-based investment strategy is crucial for companies looking to drive definite revenue.”
• “Expert affiliate management is what fuels the growth trajectory of partnerships.”

Action Steps:

• Explore the affiliate marketing ecosystem and identify potential partners that align with your brand. This step can lead to establishing profitable partnerships that yield continuous revenue.
• Invest in reliable tracking technology to ensure accurate measurement of affiliate campaign successes. Accurate tracking leads to better assessment and optimization of marketing efforts.
• Focus on building long-term relationships with affiliates for sustained promotional support. Long-term partnerships enhance credibility and ensure a steady promotional effort.
• Pivot marketing resources towards outcome-based strategies to maximize ROI. Funding performance-based initiatives can lead to more tangible and measurable results.
• Hire or train a capable affiliate manager who can effectively guide and grow your affiliate partnerships. Having a knowledgeable leader ensures your affiliate marketing strategy stays on target and adapts to changing trends.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different, I have Sarah Bundy of allinclusivemarketing.com. And Sarah before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes people should check out of the podcast. You know, one that keeps coming up over and over actually says the part of the Top Agency Series, Gino Wickman who wrote the book Traction, he started EOS and like a lot of agencies mentioned his book as something that’s one of their favorite books. So check that episode out. Also, I did an episode with Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech, he says interesting agency since 1995, so he talks about business, the internet, you know, his journey as an agency owner, the ups and downs. So that was a really interesting episode, and that many more on InspiredInsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that, we do that by helping you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast and we do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution.

Sarah, we call ourselves the kind of the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host. So they can create amazing content, they can actually run their business and also create amazing relationships. So for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So you thought about podcasting you should. If you have questions, go to Rise25.com or email [email protected] And you could check Sarah’s podcast out to which we’ll talk about. But I’m excited to introduce Sarah Bundy. She’s the founder and CEO of All Inclusive Marketing and they’re an Affiliate Management Agency based in Vancouver. They deliver experience driven results for e-commerce startups all the way to billion dollar brands around the world. She was actually recognized as a Top 40 under 40, Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs in Canada, and is listed amongst the Most Innovative Influential Leaders in digital marketing space. And she’s also a sought after keynote speaker and author. And actually, this year, Sarah founded For Female Founders on LinkedIn helping women in business thrive, not just survive. And Sarah, thanks for joining me. 

Sarah Bundy 02:51

It’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

Jeremy Weisz 02:54

Talk about and just start off talking about, you know, what you do, and All Inclusive Marketing. 

Sarah Bundy 03:00

Yeah, I would love to thank you. So I founded All Inclusive Marketing back in 2009. We have a full service affiliate program management strategy and content consultation business. And we help businesses mainly in the United States and Canada, grow their businesses through performance based partnerships. So if anyone has not heard of affiliate marketing, it’s basically partnership and relationship marketing, like you said, and when somebody promotes a product or a service, and they help to transact a sale or transact a lead or someone wants to see a demo or download something. 

The person who drove that transaction gets paid a commission. So think of it like having a really robust online sales force that works on a commission base. Okay, so we manage affiliate marketing programs. I’ve been in the affiliate marketing industry for about 20 years. I actually just last month had the privilege of keynoting, the largest affiliate marketing conference in North America called Affiliate Summit West. And that kind of finished up the loop of largest affiliate marketing conferences that I’ve been able to keynotes was able to keynote affiliate world Asia, as well as PEI live in London, it’s a bigger show in Europe.

So we are definitely known as thought leaders in the space and we help brands in the B2B space with lead gen. We help brands mostly in SaaS, and in b2c, so e-commerce, so that includes travel, hospitality, brands,ecommerce from home and garden to health and wellness, fashion and beauty, fashion apparel, I should say, all the way up to sports, recreation and specialties in Canada in the United States. 

Jeremy Weisz 04:50

Before we get into, you know, because, by the way, if you’re listening to the audio, there’s a video component to this, and we’re on allinclusivemarketing.com You can see I want to talk about some of these. We’re on the Services page. But I want to talk about your real performance marketing approach. Before we do, what do you talk about that Affiliate Summit?

Sarah Bundy 05:10

Thank you. Yes, this keynote was actually a first of its kind panel, which highlighted all of the leading technologies in the world who track affiliate marketing programs and partnerships, there were five CMOs from these leading technologies. I put this panel together with the help of the Affiliate Summit coordinators, and the BI accident, the entire panel happened to be incredibly accomplished women in business. And so in our industry, it was the first time that the caliber and power of those global brands were on stage together, talking about the future of partnerships, the future of technology, the future of what expertise is needed for people to remain competitive in this space.

And it was so positive, it was incredibly collaborative. And I think everybody kind of left that keynote feeling really empowered and excited about the future of affiliate and partnership marketing. So the five technologies on stage were awin.com, impact.com, Rackets and Advertising, Partner Eyes, and CJ Affiliate. So cj.com. So those technologies, also known as affiliate networks, and tracking platforms, are basically the way that the ecosystem tracks all of those transactions and relationships. And they also act as a bank, for lack of a better term.

And they are the ones that facilitate the payments to the partners when commission’s are earned. So they empower — they create the foundation, and they empower the relationships and the tracking, so that people like us who manage affiliate programs, and bring affiliates into those programs, can have a centralized place to give them their campaigns and their assets. And they’re creatives and then also pay them for their efforts. And for their results. 

Jeremy Weisz 07:11

There’s so many moving pieces when it comes to that. And that was one of them. What was your from that panel, what was a favorite story or lesson that you took out?

Sarah Bundy 07:21

I think that it was interesting, because every technology, every person who is on that stage, every CMO had their own perspective, their own story, strengths that they had and ideas that they wanted to bring to the industry. And we’ve had instances in our past or history where sometimes those companies or just companies in general, will get on stage. And they’ll kind of disagree with each other. But it turns a little bit too personal. And it’s not about the advancement of the industry.

And I think as a whole, what I appreciated most about that particular panel was that it became a conversation about how do we push this industry forward? What are the stats reports, there’s industry benchmark reports that they were sharing, there’s the conversation around, what’s the value that affiliate and partnerships bring to growth for companies all over the world, when they’re thinking about it from a multi channel perspective, you know, you’ve got brands who are investing billions of dollars into Google and into Facebook, meta, and into all these different social campaigns. But the cost of those is getting really expensive.

And so we need to think about how do we diversify that reach? And how do we use our budgets to become more efficient. And a lot of the conversation was around how to do that, collectively as an industry, in partnership, so that we can showcase the value that we have as affiliate marketing experts to bring the solution to the world, especially during a recession, especially when money is expensive to borrow. So this being able to lean on performance based partners that are typically a much lower cost of consumer acquisition or customer acquisition is a conversation that everybody was enjoying having together despite the differences in opinion, and despite some of the different backgrounds so that I really enjoyed and then a lot of the a lot of the CMOs on stage, we’re talking about the skills that were needed in order to be effective in affiliate marketing, effective in innovation, effective and thought leadership, effective leaders.

So it was a combination of what is the opportunity that is affiliate marketing for brands out there, especially if they’re not investing in it yet, including what are some of the challenges, right? Why have companies not invested sooner into affiliate marketing, whether that’s compliance or lack of awareness? Or that affiliate is too small of a current piece of their revenue to pay much attention to it? So how do we help shift that conversation? And how do we get some more of that budget to be reallocated to what is performance based outcomes? Because it is a more cost effective way to grow a business. So all of those things were great conversations in this particular time.

Jeremy Weisz 10:00

How can companies invest in these performance-based partnerships? 

Sarah Bundy 10:07

Great question. So I think first, let’s talk a little bit about how the ecosystem is sort of structured, because it will make more sense, I think, to know what all the moving pieces are. So you’ll have a brand, also known as an advertiser. So these are the companies that are selling a product or a service.

You’ve got the affiliates, who are known as the performance based partners or publishers, these guys could be a coupon and deal site. They could be a loyalty or cashback site, a lot of people have heard of honey, they’ve heard of rackets and rewards. Those are examples of affiliates in the cashback and rewards sector. RetailMeNot is an example of an affiliate and the coupon sector. Lots of people use these. You’ve got content creators, and those content creators could be people who have their own blogs, they could be social influencers, or just people who are engaged in social communities.

So even down to the point where if you’re on Facebook, right, so you’re on meta, and let’s say you love cars, and you’re part of a big car group, right? There’s 700,000, people who are part of this particular type of car group, and they’re super engaged, and they’re buying and selling cars, and they’re talking about their parts, car parts, and like how they’ve upgraded their cars, all these things, the admin of that group, could be monetizing their Facebook group, through affiliate marketing partnerships. So there’s the communities, there’s the review and comparison sites, the content creators video, YouTubers often partake in affiliate marketing to help monetize their channels.

So there’s a very diverse type of partnership, opportunity that’s out there for brands. And I think the best way to think about affiliate marketing, compared to say, PR, or what you might pay an influencer to go do a campaign, they execute on that content piece, and then the revenue stops, and the partnership stops after that content piece is done. Affiliate is more long term, there’s longevity to it. And because these affiliates are earning after sales take place, they promote it for a further period of time, and oftentimes, the brand will receive a lot more money.

And the affiliate will also earn a lot more money. So people might consider affiliate marketing as a monetization strategy, or a monetization model, more so than a channel because it actually encompasses all of the digital marketing channels that a company could invest in. So they’re shifting their budget, towards things that are more outcome based, versus things that are more top-of-funnel and not guaranteed to drive revenue. And I think that awareness is part of what the challenge is, is that a lot of brands don’t know that that’s something that they can do that it can be measured, that the data is there, that the tracking is there that the attribution is there to attribute a sale driven by an affiliate versus a sale driven by a Facebook or Meta Ad or a sale driven by an email newsletter.

So I think a lot of it is really understanding how does it work? What are the opportunities and capabilities? Who are the different types of partners, which tracking technology should I use to track all of these things and have that transparency like the five that I’ve already mentioned before, but then you also need to have somebody who’s driving the ship, you need a captain, you need somebody who’s you know, the chauffeur of the car, you might have the passengers in the backseat, you might have the vehicle itself, but unless somebody actually knows where they’re going, and there’s fuel on the vehicle, it’s not going to go anywhere. So that’s where affiliate managers come in. And that’s what our company does. We help manage, scale, grow, fuel the growth and the trajectory of those affiliate programs, and partnerships.

And it takes work similar to SEO, you’re not going to just like search engine optimization, you can’t just put up a website and hope that you’re going to rank number one in Google. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in order for that to happen. And then if you’re lucky enough for that to happen, there’s still more work that needs to be done to keep you there. Otherwise, someone else takes over. So affiliate marketing is a lot like that it takes time to build up takes time to scale.

But once you’re there, you got to sustain it. And it can be a huge revenue driver. We have some clients that have 25 to 30% of their revenue driven through partnerships, performance based partnerships. Some of the largest brands that we manage, you know their multibillion-dollar clients or companies, they have 3 to 5% that might be driven by affiliate, which to them is a very small piece, but that can still account for a few multiples of millions of dollars in revenue. So, it’s a bit of a scale and it works for all kinds of different companies. I’ll pause there so you can ask more questions, but hopefully the answer is a little bit about.

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