Agency Partner Spotlight: Affiverse

Our Partner Spotlight series interviews experts from our killer network of agency partners and highlights their impact in the field of affiliate marketing.

This month, we caught up with Lee-Ann Johnstone, founder & CEO of Affiverse.

With over two decades of digital marketing and affiliate program management experience earned within the e-commerce, B2B SaaS, FinTech, and iGaming industries, Lee-Ann Johnstone is an award winning performance marketer and host of chart-topping Affiliate Marketing Podcast.

She is the founder of Affiverse, a performance marketing agency and media business launched in 2019 in the UK. She’s been in the industry for more than two decades and has a wealth of knowledge to share about affiliate program management, which is why we’ve invited her in to converse with us this month!

Q: How did you get started in the world of affiliate/partner marketing?

About twenty years ago, the internet looked exciting, so I got myself a job as a media buyer and started my career at the beginning by buying media online and brokering contextual advertising. 

A few years later, I landed a role as an affiliate account manager and started to work with a variety of affiliates to grow brand awareness and sales across a lot of industries. I learned a lot, I failed a lot, and every single experience has led me to where I am today. 

It has been a wild ride from then to now - but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it! 

Q: Why should a brand consider working with an affiliate marketing agency?

Believe it or not, I get asked this question quite a lot! My top three reasons why advertisers should consider working with an affiliate agency are:

1. Access to a depth and breadth of intelligent, useful behind-the-scenes data: Use data to fast track and implement only what really works, which simplifies the trial and error process most brands go through when incorrectly executing or running programs as they launch and feel their way forward. We can basically fast track you out of the pain of learning so you can succeed faster. 

2. Cost efficient resource management: Work with people who are specialists in what they do to alleviate the need to train staff up in-house (and the associated costs and hassle). Always work with people who specialize in what you need them to do and need little management to perform as requested. 

3. Leverage fast tracked affiliate relationships:  As an agency owner, I've spent years building affiliate relationships in this industry. As an advertiser new to the market, you’ll be able to leverage our contacts to grow your own. Our reputation has years of credibility behind it, while affiliates may not know yours or want to engage with it. We can help you get into the right places, at the right time, and for the right price a lot quicker than if you’re starting with a blank slate.

Q: What is Affiverse?

We’re a bit of a unicorn. I like to think of Affiverse as a flywheel of services that helps you take your affiliate program and affiliate marketing business to the next level. Our strapline says it all. We help the world do affiliate marketing better, done for you or with you. We have you covered no matter what stage of your life cycle you’re at in affiliate marketing.

How exactly do we do this?

1. MEDIA & EVENTS: 

We are a go to resource (Top of Funnel) for people who want to learn more about affiliate marketing or engage with brands, agencies, and tools that support affiliate programs. You can advertise your business, services, and affiliate programs on our website, newsletters, and industry-leading podcast. You can attend any of our virtual or in-person events to learn what’s new and trending in affiliate and performance marketing.

2. AGENCY SERVICE: 

We are an outsourced Affiliate Program Management Agency (OPM). We’ll help you launch, scale, or grow your affiliate program and manage your affiliate partnerships to help your business grow.

3. TRAINING & COACHING: 

We’ve helped train over 250 affiliate managers over the past four years to level up and grow their affiliate programs with our 12 week mastermind training program, helping affiliate managers get the best from their partners and strategize their program growth. 

Q: What makes Affiverse so innovative? What sets you apart from the competition?

Good question! I think it’s the fact that we’re so deeply rooted in everything affiliate. We have a pulse on the industry unlike anyone else because of the services we offer, the clients we manage, and the partnerships we’ve fostered by being deep in affiliate marketing for so many decades. 

We also genuinely care about what the future of affiliate marketing looks like and how we can leave a positive legacy behind us. I’ve been in love with affiliate marketing for a very long time and everything we do at Affiverse is about forward thinking and innovating how we can support our clients to grow and gain momentum through the channels we operate and the community we’ve built around our brand. 

Q: What types of brands do you work with?

In our Agency, we work with advertisers from eCommerce, iGaming, and B2B SaaS industries. 

In our Media and Events, we work with agencies, networks, B2B SaaS Tools, Advertisers, and Affiliates (all sides of the ecosystem).

In our Training, we work with affiliate program managers working across the agency, network, and advertiser sides.

Q: How does Affiverse typically work with Everflow clients?

Whether starting out or scaling up, we’ve worked with Everflow clients to launch new programs using their intuitive platform technology and support the strategic scaling up of their businesses as they shoot for the moon to grow! 

We support end to end from launch to scale and have a good understanding of how Everflow can be utilized to help brands scale and get more efficient with their technology to manage growth faster. 

Q: Please share a recent client success story.

Here’s a great one: our client, a prominent VPN brand, reached out as they were struggling to engage with big publishers as their technology solution was not yet integrated into these partner platforms. We worked with a leading UK network to integrate via the client's existing technology stack to enable big publishers to integrate with them and work directly within the network platform. 

This had never been done before as the network didn’t typically work with third party tracking suppliers (in fact, it never had in the past), but because of our reputational standing, the trust that publishers have in our agency, and the client’s resolve to trust us with problem solving, we were able to open up a new channel for engagement, helping them to increase their program sales significantly in a short space of time and overcome an obstacle that had prevented them from accessing top performing partners internationally. 

Together, we achieved success by innovating and bringing partners that could benefit from our expertise together. I mentioned earlier in the question above: why use an agency? This is a good example of what you can leverage and accomplish faster when you do!

Q: What is one unexpected opportunity for brands to scale up their partner marketing efforts?

There are two I want to really mention: microinfluencers (the power of word of mouth marketing is REAL) and leveraging unassuming B2B based partnership swaps. 

Both of these channels have seen significant results when used strategically to augment traditional content and coupon/loyalty site publishers in really big established programs. Keep looking at the niches and always keep networking at events, as you just never know when your next big affiliate deal can come in. 

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