March Agency Spotlight: Vibrant Performance

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

This month, we caught up with Dan DeSilva, Sr. Director of Agency Services, Vibrant Performance. 

In 2021, Dan DeSilva teamed up with Aragon Company CEO Todd Stearn to establish Vibrant Performance, a full-service affiliate and influencer agency specializing in working with fintech brands. After growing up in Connecticut and spending some time in Tampa and Denver, Dan now resides in NYC with his wife Erin and adopted pup, Lilly Belle. In his free time, you’re likely to find him at a Yankees game, planning his next Disney trip, or going for a run along the Hudson River. 

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

Believe it or not, I got started in affiliate marketing because I’m a cheapskate. I love power shopping to find the best deals, over-analyzing the best ways to use credit card points and saving a dollar any way I can. 

Back in 2011, I started a Twitter account to share some of my favorite deals and shortly after, I discovered that affiliate marketing was a way to monetize my tweets. I built a small audience on Twitter and was then able to leverage that to get my first commerce content position at a leading consumer tech publication called 9to5Mac. 

Once I saw the power of combining highly relevant content with a loyal audience and affiliate marketing, I was hooked! I went on to run commerce strategy for various Future Plc websites and then made my way brand-side running the affiliate program for WorldRemit, a money transfer fintech brand. With experience on the publisher and brand sides, I took on the challenge of agency life and joined Vibrant Performance. 

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

I truly believe working with an agency provides most brands with the best opportunity to achieve growth and scale with their affiliate program. One of the biggest benefits is immediate access to all existing affiliates an agency has worked with across all their clients. 

At Vibrant Performance, our rolodex includes tens of thousands of affiliates that we’re able to leverage from day one for our new clients. We’ve worked with every affiliate type out there so we can help our clients navigate around low-quality traffic sources, which may be more likely to cause instances of fraud. Working with an agency ensures the affiliate channel is given the proper resources needed to thrive. 

Affiliate marketing touches on every aspect of the marketing funnel and is very time intensive to manage. Having the support of a large agency team means that tracking issues are identified faster, affiliates have access to useful performance reports, and the recruitment of new partners never stops. 

Q: What is Vibrant Performance? 

Vibrant Performance is a global performance marketing agency that assists brands in developing their go-to-market strategies, focusing on affiliate partnerships and influencer marketing as primary acquisition channels. 

Our team works closely on conversion-rate optimization strategies that lower CAC and improve ROI. Each Vibrant client has access to an extended team, including AdOps resources, providing technical knowhow and resources across their entire tech stack. 

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

There are a few key capabilities that make Vibrant stand out from the pack. As part of the Aragon Company, Vibrant has access to several internal traffic sources, including a premier affiliate network with thousands of top publishers and influencers and a content website named The Money Manual, which generates millions of monthly impressions. This means Vibrant clients have access to a huge amount of traffic instantly and industry insights that no other agency can offer. 

Q: What types of brands do you work with? 

Vibrant Performance is focused on working with brands primarily in the finance vertical and has carved out a niche helping early-stage startups form and execute their user acquisition strategy. 

Q: How does Vibrant typically work with Everflow clients? 

Vibrant has been partnered with Everflow since its launch years ago. We use the tracking platform internally as well as externally for our clients, providing insight on how it works (inside and out). 

For our clients, we’re able to help them integrate Everflow into their existing tech stack, recruit affiliates, and setup detailed performance reports to show important metrics like conversion rate, profit, and down-funnel actions. 

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Q: Please share a recent client success story. 

In less than a year’s time, Vibrant Performance grew the average number of monthly leads for a financial lead-gen client by 293%. We achieved this by migrating their program to Everflow, increasing the amount of data available to affiliates, and aggressively recruiting some of the biggest affiliates in the space. 

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

Often, brands are fearful of allowing affiliates to bid on their trademarked keywords on search platforms due to potential competition concerns but there’s a lot of success to be had working hand in hand with affiliates in this capacity. It can help broaden your brand’s reach on search while simultaneously decreasing costs, as many times affiliates are more effective media buyers than a brand’s internal team.