Phonexa CEO Lilit Davtyan recently joined BDEX Founder and CEO David Finkelstein and CMO Jessie Lizak on the Deconstructing Data Live podcast to discuss various performance marketing topics, including:
- Outcome-based approaches for affiliates and publishers during an economic downturn
- How data silos plague visibility into partner marketing attribution
- The importance of working with regulation-compliant partners
BDEX is a Data Exchange Platform that enables brands, agencies, and more to meet and build long-lasting relationships with their audiences.
The following are some of the key insights shared by Davtyan on the Deconstructing Data podcast.
Tying Publisher and Affiliate Outcomes to Actual Results
The podcast started with a discussion on a pressing issue currently facing the affiliate marketing space — the challenge of tying publisher and affiliate outcomes to business outcomes.
Davtyan explained that tying affiliate marketing to actual results requires an understanding of how publishers and affiliates specialize in very specific areas of marketing — from Google Ads to email optimization to cookie and click tracking to call center outbound outreach to customers.
“When in a high-traffic, direct-to-consumer market, you’re usually in a pretty urgent service space. These consumers are online looking for something, and they expect it right away,” said Davtyan. “Today, one consumer might reach out to you on your web form, but tomorrow they might call you. So, if you’re using different systems and you’re not tracking them in real-time, you might not be able to give the consumer the type of experience they need because you can’t identify all of those sources of traffic as the same consumer.”
According to Davtyan, the key to tying these outcomes during an economic downturn is quickly responding to consumer inquiries regardless of where they came from.
“If you’re using multiple tools and doing once-a-week export — even once-a-day export — by the time you can analyze the consumer’s needs, you might be too late. You’ve either lost this consumer to another product or the consumer is just dissatisfied with the response rate,” said Davtyan. “You need to make sure that the consumer gets the result whenever they actually need to, but the only way to really do that is to have proper real-time tracking tools.”
Overcoming Data Silos That Plague Visibility Into Partner Marketing Attribution
The podcast also focused on how martech challenges — particularly data silos — hinder visibility into performance marketing and partner marketing attribution.
Davtyan recommends that companies looking to optimize their marketing must assess how their tech stack integrates with each other.
“You can use multiple systems and tools but you definitely need to make sure that they all speak the same language, they can all have an API integration together, and they give you real-time responses in a way where you’re looking at it on a regular basis and you’re making changes as needed,” said Davtyan.
Davtyan also emphasized that if you don’t have tools that talk to each other or don’t take the time to integrate them properly, you’ll inevitably run into problems. A simple integration will provide all the tools one needs to analyze data instead of requiring additional support from data scientists, which is crucial for retargeting consumers.
“Everything should go in one place for retargeting … maybe they want to see a complimentary product. They don’t want to see the same product because it’s frustrating,” said Davtyan. “Take home services as an example. If a consumer has a roofing problem, they’re not going to change the roof every year, so you don’t want to target them again in two months. But they may have a plumbing issue.”
The key to overcoming these challenges is to know your consumer and their actual needs to avoid wasting money promoting previously purchased products or services and upsetting your target audience. Doing so will help increase visibility into partner marketing attribution.
Ensuring Regulatory Compliance for Lead Generation
Davtyan also delivered critical insight into the importance of ensuring compliance when partners and affiliates generate leads, which is increasingly critical as more data privacy laws go into effect.
The challenge here is that affiliates aren’t always fully compliant with consumer privacy laws, which necessitates the need to educate publishers about complying with these regulations. Furthermore, affiliates and publishers require tools to ensure full compliance.
“People are still trying to make sure that the technology is optimized for GDPR and their services are compliant with GDPR,” said Davtyan. “They don’t want to be non-compliant because, at the end of the day, some publishers would rather make a lot of money now and worry about it later. But if somebody’s in the game of long-term business and long-term revenue and can take the conservative approach, that is a conversation that should be had very transparently.”
Resolving this issue requires having these conversations in addition to having the right tools to maintain regulatory compliance and preserve the integrity of your affiliate program.
Leveraging a Multifaceted Tech Stack
Finkelstein and Lizak wrapped up the discussion by asking Davtyan to share some of the favorite tools in the tech stack used by her and her team. She stressed that the best tools are ones that not only do multiple tasks but also do them correctly.
“We have used many different tools and it’s actually the reason Phonexa was built to bring those tools in one place,” said Davtyan. “You want to make sure they specialize in what you’re asking for and can integrate with the tools you need in order to have a specialized process.”
“A lot of our clients use CRMs. It’s not just HubSpot — there are many of them we actually have to integrate with for our clients because we don’t service them as a CRM. We are the marketing tool that sits in front of the CRM, and in order for us to give the whole experience to this customer or their consumers, we have to be able to integrate with these tools.”
Leveraging a multifaceted tech stack is the key driver of success for Phonexa and its clients.
For more information about Davtyan, connect with her on LinkedIn.
For questions, or to learn more about Phonexa’s all-in-one marketing automation solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more, schedule a consultation, email info@phonexa.com, or call (818) 800-0000.
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