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By Alex Cramer
In part 2 of our conversation with Incubeta partnership manager Callum Kennelly, group commercial director Alex Haynes and senior partnership manager Chris Donovan, we delve into the future of affiliate marketing and how Incubeta helps North American brands sell overseas.
Q: How do you see the future of affiliate marketing, looking forward to the next one to three years?
AH: What we’ve seen over the last couple of years is the emergence of more and more technology partners that are coming up with smarter ways to work on a performance model across different aspects of e-commerce. I think that’s going to continue to head in a direction where rather than incentivized traffic through vouchers or coupons being the cornerstone of affiliate, I think it’s going to move more and more into technology partners that are going to continue to drive growth for the sector. So obviously, we’re slightly biased in that opinion, because we probably sit in that area too, but we’ve clearly seen the emergence of more tech-based affiliate partners.
CK: I feel like brands now want to work with fewer publishers but the right publishers, whereas before brands would work with hundreds of publisher partners and just try and get as much revenue coming in through the affiliate space. It also feels like the “partner” part of partnership marketing will be more important. Case in point for us, if you work across a number of different channels, you’ll have at least one person per channel looking after your accounts. And it’s more than just us making them money. There’s actually a partnership there that we can support them across the whole paid space and help them understand all of the data that we’re collecting for them. So I’ll definitely say less is more when it comes to the affiliate space.
Q: You have offices all over the world. Geographically speaking, where are the markets that you’re selling to the most?
AH: For performance marketing, the percentage split for our clients across the US to the UK and Europe is probably about 60/40 with the sixty coming from the UK and Europe and forty coming from America. We do ultimately deliver campaigns for clients globally. So if there are businesses that ship globally, then we have the ability to deliver campaigns in 100 plus markets. And that covers both the language side of it, but also the experience of how the campaign should be different in Australia in comparison to South America. Incubeta has offices in about 14 different locations but in terms of where the pure performance part of the business sits, it’s predominantly the UK and Europe.
Q: How do you help your US-based clients sell into the European market?
AH: I think a lot of the time it is just a learning exercise in terms of understanding the cultural nuances of how EU buyers shop online. You can go from Germany to France, and they will have very different preferences for the payment systems that they’re more comfortable using to the platforms that they spend more of their time on. The good thing is that there is a certain level of consistency and if you’re going into Europe, things that will have worked in America are still going to work in Europe, you just have to layer some of those nuances on top. So when we have those conversations with our clients, we talk about what’s been working well in America and then help them apply that to Europe.
Q: Incubeta and Advertise Purple have worked together for a number of years now. What do you consider to be the strength of that relationship?
AH: I think that the thing that we’ve always loved about you guys is just the sheer proactivity that you have in terms of always trying to take new solutions to your clients and the openness to just have that conversation and to help educate them because we appreciate that we aren’t a plug in and play solution. We aren’t perfect for absolutely everybody. It takes a certain situation for us to be a great partner for a business.
AM: I feel like your reps have a good working knowledge of the businesses they serve and therefore are able to understand the pain points of their business and if we’re able to offer solutions are able to match this up. So I think they do a good job of listening and understanding the business of the clients they serve.
Our partners at Incubeta are at the cutting edge of performance marketing technology and we appreciate the time they took to speak with us and explain how they work.
If you think that Incubeta could be a good partner for your brand, then speak to your AdPurp account executive about how to connect with them.
