#335 - Affiliate Marketing 2.0: Trends, Tools, and Tactics for E-commerce Success

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What is going on? DTC pod? Today we are joined by Noah Tucker, who is the founder of Social Snowball. Um, we're really excited for this episode because, uh, affiliate influencer creator sort of marketing is, plays a really big component in growth for all sort of consumer brands and it's been a really hot topic recently. And not only that, um, social snowball is definitely, uh, one of the tools that we've seen a lot of brands who are scaling really fast and doing really well on consumer social, um, killing it. So I guess without further ado, uh, let's just go ahead and kick it off. So, no, why don't you give us a little bit background about yourself, social snowball, and then we can kind of just jump into the broader landscape of affiliate and commerce.

Sure. Yeah. Well, thanks for that intro. I'm super pumped to be here. Yeah. So like you said, I'm the founder of Social Snowball, which is an affiliate platform for e commerce brands. You know, the quick version of what makes us different is we help brands partner with what we like to call the modern affiliate, meaning like influencers, creators, ambassadors, instead of what we call the Legacy affiliate meaning like publishers list to go review site affiliates. We've been around for about four years.

We have about 2200 brands using the platform. And before that I was on the brand side of the ecommerce world using other affiliate and influencer solutions. And that's how the idea for this all started.

Yeah, and I think that's actually a great place to start. I'd love if you could maybe let's just break down the landscape of affiliate. Why was there a need to build in this space? What sort of changed when we moved from legacy affiliate into traditional and the evolving sort of uh, affiliate landscape that we're seeing?

Yeah, for sure. Um, it's funny because like now if you say the word affiliate to anyone in like our e commerce space, it can mean so many different things. Like you have to be, you have to be more specific because like ten years ago if you were to say the word affiliate, it had a totally different meaning than what a lot of people think about today. Like the word affiliate in the e commerce world. Ten years ago exclusively meant what we call now the Legacy affiliate, meaning publishers list of goals, review sites, bloggers, there's media buyer affiliates. I put those all under the umbrella of legacy affiliate. And although I'm using the word legacy to describe them, I still think they're a really important affiliate that brands should be partnering with. It's just very different and undeniably very, very different than what I call the modern affiliate, which is a newer type of affiliate partner that brands are prioritizing.

And it's under that umbrella we have influencers, creators, ambassadors, and even a brand's own customers can be affiliates. That's kind of like the macro shift in the affiliate landscape. And then I think on the influencer side, more specifically, brands used to partner with influencers because they wanted content and they maybe wanted to build brand awareness. But those were really the only two goals of the partnership with an influencer. And then today, since paid ads are just becoming more expensive, less reliable brands are turning to find, are looking to find other uh, acquisition channels. And of course influencer is a great one. But influencer partnerships historically have been so focused on content and awareness that the tech platforms that existed to power these partnerships revolved around like those goals because that's what brands used to carry care about. So we're also kind of the first influencer platform that is just kind of focused on affiliate and attributable revenue from the partnership.

Not just like how many views did this get or how many content deliverables did we get from this influencer. So that's kind of like the shift in the landscape that we've noticed. And that's kind of why I, you know, had the idea for social snowball, because these two shifts are happening simultaneously and there's nothing really that existed in that overlap area between an influencer management platform and an affiliate platform. So that's, that's kind of how the idea started.

Yeah. And I'd love to like dig a little deeper there in terms of like, what are the challenges that a brand has when running? Call it like a modern creator, affiliate influencer sort of program.

Right.

So say you're, you've kind of tapped out. Um, you know, say your cpas are going up on Facebook and you're on meta and you're like, you know, I want to get more involved in creator, but like attributions are scaling hard. Like, what are some of the challenges that brands face if they're trying to like run these sort of programs?

Yeah, I think they're overall, like, there's usually a lot of friction in these programs, which it causes a lot of problems. Like the whole sign up process for someone to join the program is like a lot of steps and it's like confusing UI and is just not intuitive. And like an influencer is like a consumer, you have to treat them the same way. They need a really smooth experience. If you expect to get a lot of activation out of, you know, whether these are bigger influencers or even your customers joining an ambassador program, everything needs to be very smooth. So that's one big issue. I noticed another one is just a lack of communication with their affiliates. People will onboard, whether it's customers or influencers into their affiliate program and then they won't have an activation flow set up to welcome them to the program.

Explain how it works, give them examples of content, inspire them with other affiliates who have done well in the past. Those kinds of things go a really long way. And just from those two things, if you were to just reduce friction and sign up and payouts, because also there's a lot of friction and payouts. Traditionally, if you're able to reduce friction inside of a payout and have a really strong email sequence for your affiliates after they join, after they make a few referrals, just keeping them nurtured and engaged, those two things alone go a really long way. And I think a lot of these legacy affiliate platforms weren't really built for influencers that they don't, intuitively they don't have great features for this, but those two things alone go a really long way for sure.

So I think this is really important because brands that are working with partners, a lot of times you'll see people being like, oh, I've grown so much. And it's through affiliates and, like, they're, you know, making up a third of my revenue. But like you were saying, behind the scenes, there are things that are happening in order to drive that growth. So, for example, you just mentioned I being able to, like, manage the life cycle of these sort of partners. So what does it look like for, like, let's just dig in right there, right? Like, what are the brands that are, like, really killing it? Like, what do those sequences look like? What are the types of communications? Like? How do they set it up? You know, is it a simple, like, for email sequence, or is there, are they building in conditions? Like, what are the brands that are, like, really doing the best? Like, how are they gamifying this whole ecosystem for, like, partners and creators who are really killing it for them?

Really good question. Really good question. So I would say so everything happens for the most part in Klaviyo. Like, we integrate everything with Klaviyo. Like, social snowbot's a platform because it's. We have these brands building our really complex flows. So that's the first thing I'll say. Everything exists in Klaviyo for the most part, or other esps, as far as the sequences themselves.

So we talked a little bit about, like, a welcome flow for new affiliates. The point of this is to educate them. There's really three things, like educate, inspire, and then just straight up remind them. So you want to educate them how the program works. When do they receive payouts? You know, just the simple terms of the program. What's their commission rate? What discount can they share to their audience? Does it ever change other tiers in the program? Then you want to inspire them. So, like, kind of like the example I used before, showcasing other affiliates that have done well and then just remind them. So you wanted to send strategic reminders so that they stay engaged.

That's like, the most basic thing you have to do. By not doing that. It's so simple to build something like that out, and you're leaving a lot on the table as far as affiliate retention by not doing that. The second thing that I would say really goes a long way. And definitely all of our highest performing brands are doing this is creating tiers. So essentially you can create these performance milestones and tie rewards to them so that affiliates have and a new goal that's always, like, kind of just out of reach. And as soon as they unlock one, then there's another one to work towards. And so for an example, you could build something out where it's like, after you refer something easy, like five referrals or ten referrals, you unlock a 5% higher commission.

So it goes from like 20% to 25%, let's say. Then after you refer 30 sales, you unlock a new gift. So maybe you were gifted immediately, but now when you get 30 sales, you could redeem another gift. And then when you hit 50 sales, you unlock an even higher commission than 100 sales and even higher value gift than a higher commission. And you can keep creating these tiers so that affiliates can stay engaged in the program in the long term. Because the worst thing that can happen, I mean, not the worst thing that can happen, but a problem that often happens is an affiliate posts, once drives however much revenue it drives, gets their commission, and then they're getting hit up by another 20 brands in the next month, and maybe they forget about it. But if they have these milestones to work towards, one, it's just a way to keep them motivated, and two, it's also a great way to communicate to them as well. So, like, we always help brands build out flows that revolve around these tiers.

So in the welcome flow, you have something that just explains the tiers. Like, here's tier one through five, here's the milestone you need to hit to unlock each, and here's the reward you get at each, whether that's like a higher commission, a free gift, a higher discount to share with their audience, and then as they're getting closer to another tier, you'll send a reminder email being like, hey, you're only five referrals away from unlocking this gift. Things like that get them to keep posting. Like, they'll just be like, oh, yeah, only five referrals. I'll put up another Instagram story. Like that's, you know, that's more content than you're getting and more revenue from the partnership. And then, of course, when they hit a tier, you'll be like, congrats. You just unlocked, you know, tier three, which gives you a new gift.

You could pick from any of these. And, you know, higher commission moving forward. The communication with those tiers is obviously super important. If you build out a great tier structure and the affiliates don't know about it, then it's useless. So, yeah, between a really good engagement flow and then building out this tier structure and having strong communication around the triggers of the tier when someone's getting closer to the next level and locking the next level that is night and day with affiliate retention and just keeping them engaged in the long run. So those would be the two biggest ones. Other things I've seen brands do is, you know, with our clay integration they'll have like a flow for affiliates who haven't made a referral in the past 30 days to like reactivate them or maybe like give them some incentive to continue sharing. Excuse me.

Um, so, you know, those are the things that I would say. I've seen brands do that, that really work.

Awesome. Um, the next question I have for you is what do you see that tends to get affiliates excited? Right? Is it the offer? So is it like, you know, the price point of the product and the amount of commission that a brand can offer? Is it, you know, the product is just like affiliates just want to share stuff that they think is cool. Like I don't know if you could speak to a couple examples of maybe like brands that are like really crushing it, what their typical, you know, maybe the cost of goods is maybe what like categories they're in and then what like the actual affiliate structure sort of looks like that's like getting these affiliates interested.

Yeah. So for, for one, I would say like high ticket products are usually able to offer more generous commissions. Um, and that goes a long way. So like some of our highest performing brands are like cold plunge or like sauna companies because they could give hundreds of dollars per referral and that really motivates people. Like that makes a huge difference whether that's an influencer or a customer. Everyone wants a couple hundred dollars for a referral. Um, but, but the thing is, like we have like that, although those brands tend to always do well, we have so many brands that are lower ticket that just consistently crush and I do think that kind of comes back to the product. Um, for example, we have this hair care brand called Diddy and it's just a product that people get excited about.

I think it's like celebrity or influencer own. So it's like there's just like hype around it and um, like, like they do influencer outreach and they manage all their influencers on social snowball and they get like the craziest response rate from the influencers they reach out to. Everyone wants to partner with them. I think it maybe matters a little bit. It still matters, but the commission maybe matters a little bit less when it's a brand that just people are excited about. Maybe they've seen it on TikTok, they've seen other influencers post about it. They want to be part of the program. Of course, the commission still matters a lot.

And I think a mistake brands make in general is giving too low of a commission. I think brands are like, oh, wow, we could choose our own CAC here. Like, okay, 5%, let's go. But the truth is, like, you want to give a more generous commission. Of course you still want to acquire customers profitably, but you don't want to be too stingy with the commission because the difference of a program generating 1% of your GMV, but it's a ten x ROI because you give a really low commission, is way less like a program like that is way less valuable than a program that's generating 15% of your GMV at a 2.8 x ROI because that's 15% of your GMV. And let's say you're paid ads, Roas is like a 2.3. So. And you could acquire customers at a 2.8 through affiliate and that's 15% of your GMB.

Like, that's doing real good things to your blended CAC and just like, healthy for your business overall. Whereas a ten x roi, ten x roas equivalent program that generates 1% of your gmv, that's cool. And. But it's, it's, it's more of a gimmick than anything else. Like, that's not actually doing anything to your blended CAC. So that's usually how I like to approach it. Like the commission. I would say, like, benchmark it against your paid ads, target CPA.

Like, if there's a number that you're aiming for with your paid ads, that's maybe a little better than what you're doing now, but also realistic. That's usually a good starting point for your commission. And, yeah, I mean, you have to think, like, influencers getting, are getting hit up all the time. Not every influencer is always going to be down for an affiliate partnership. But if you're giving a more generous commission and they like the product, then that's how you win.

And typically, what do you see that just in? I know it's like a bit of a blanket, sort of, uh, of save and. But like, roughly, like, generally, like, what range do you see commissions going in terms of just pure percentages that brands are succeeding with?

Ten to 30 is like the most popular range and sometimes that's paid out as a percentage, or sometimes that's just like a flat dollar amount because they know, they're aov and they don't have, like, any super low ticket products that could, like, put them at risk of getting a flat fee commission or they just exclude those products from program eligibility. But, yeah, between ten and 30%.

Sweet. Moving forward, I want to cover one of the other really important parts. I know we jumped right into how to activate affiliate partners and how to pay them and how to incentivize them, but how do we get them? So why don't you talk through what does it look like if I'm a brand, I'm starting out, or maybe I'm scaling and I'm just looking to scale the side of the program. Where do I go to find these creators affiliates? How do I activate them? How do I recruit them? How do I get them into my.

Program to begin with? Yeah, it's a great question. So we do have our own influencer matchmaking tool in the works right now. But I would say just in general, what it really comes down to is finding the right influencer to be an affiliate. And there's things that you need to look for to find the right influencer, because you could find an influencer that has a really good engagement rate, the perfect aesthetic, you know, that matches the vibe of your brand. But the truth is, a lot of influencers don't drive revenue. And obviously, like, the whole point of this affiliate partnership is you want them to be driving revenue. Um, so I'd say, like, if you're looking on Instagram, and we'll start with Instagram, let's say you're just like, looking through Instagram's platform directly, not even like a third party tool. Um, to find influencers, the most important thing I would look for is are they actively tagging or posting affiliate links of other brands consistently.

So if you click through their story highlights, right, like, their highlighted stories on their profile, if you could click through, like, five of those and you haven't seen a tagged brand or an affiliate link, that's probably an indicator that they're not a good fit. Um, the influencers that can drive revenue, they're actively partnering with brands, they're actively tagging with the brands, they're actively posting affiliate links. And because of that, their followers are accustomed to trusting them for buying advice. And their followers aren't annoyed that they've been posting other brands. And, like, it's not like a saturated audience, it's an audience that follows this individual because they want to learn what to buy, they want to, they look up to this person's lifestyle to an extent. And they want to, they're curious to what they're buying and they're curious to what products they're sharing. Those influencers that are just frequently posting affiliate links and they drive lots of revenue. So that would be like the most important thing I would look for.

And then, yeah, I would say, yeah, I would say that that's the most important thing when evaluating because, like, first, specifically an affiliate partner to be or, yeah, like an affiliate enjoys it.

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Podcastnetwork. Yeah, and I think that's so spot on because we've worked with affiliates and I've seen, you know, sometimes smaller affiliates, like, drive way more actual conversion than like, you know, bigger people who are just like posting about things. And I hadn't even really like, thought of that on, in terms of like, as a way to identify who's, like, good and who's not. It's like the people who are posting a lot of affiliate links because their audience actually trusts them for buying advice. Or like, where should I go? As opposed to a random, like, lifestyle, lifestyle creator that like, you know, people are just kind of looking at and aren't like, oh, this isn't someone I trust on buying decisions. It's just someone who, you know, I like looking at for random reasons. So I think that's a, that's really solid advice. Um, my next question was going to be more on the discovery side.

How, like, what strategies have you seen brands using to, like, find and recruit? I know we mentioned, like, there's other, like, platform tools. I know you guys are potentially, like, building something out in social snowball. Like, what else is it, like going to a brand's Instagram page and like finding who's collaborated and like, who they're following? Or like, what are the ways that you've seen brands really scale the way that they're able to find good affiliate partners?

Yeah, I mean, so honestly, we have a ton of brands in the beta for our influencer Discovery platform, and that's done well beyond that, I don't think there's a silver bullet for it. I think it's about finding the right partners more than just sheer volume. It is a volume game as well. But you want to make sure that the influencers you're reaching out to are ones that you actually want to work with enough to, that you'd want to gift them a product. So I mean, there's tons of free ones, right? There's like the TikTok creator marketplace and yeah, there's plenty of free places where you could search and discover influencers. Um, but the most important thing for sure is that you want them to be like an eligible affiliate partner. Um, another way though that we've helped brands is, and I think a lot of brands should be doing this, is looking through the customers to be affiliates. Actually, customers can be really powerful affiliates.

And I think a lot of brands are not activating their customer base into their affiliate program. Or if they are, it's just like some loyalty refer friend program that doesn't get a lot of activation. So what we've helped brands do is basically instead of making customers jump through the same application form hoops that we maybe expect like a bigger affiliate to jump through, um, essentially like what we can set up for a brand is every time a new customer purchases from their store, before that customer even gets to the order confirmation page, we could take their order data from Shopify checkout and use that to automatically generate them an affiliate account, automatically generate them a custom tracking link or discount code with their name in it, and then give all that information to them natively on the thank you page as soon as they complete their purchase. So without any pop up or signup form or click here to get your code or anything, all their affiliate info is generated given to them on the thank you page. And then of course you'll have follow up touch points in the post purchase journey through Klaviyo or whatever email and sms tool you're using. But essentially this is kind of like pouring rocket fuel on more legacy Gibfi get five refer friend program and actually treating customers as affiliates, allowing them to enter the same tier structure that we talked about, redeem rewards in cash and just having it be as frictionless of a sign of process as possible. And I mean, we have some brands that are generating 10% plus of gmv just for their customers, which is like customers making referrals, which is crazy. And of course some of these customers have social media, they're posing, but some are just also just sharing with friends with literal, you know, spoken word of mouth, like a good, good old fashioned word of mouth.

And, yeah, so customers could also be great affiliates. That's another way that we help brands recruit new affiliates.

Yeah, I think that part is what you mentioned about, like, the friction is so important. I remember when we were setting up our affiliate program for like a SaaS that I run, one of the big sticking points was like, sure, we can send them to this page to sign up as an affiliate, but by just doing that, you're creating friction. If you can just give them an auto, generate the code like you're saying, and give it to them where they need it, they've already got it. They don't have to be like, oh, do I want to be an affiliate or do I not? Is this something that I want to invest time into? It's like there. It's like, you got the code. If you want to use it, go for it. So I think that's a really, really good component. Um, just backtracking a second.

Um, I'm curious, like, if you guys have any insights into, like, typically how big these affiliate programs are.

Right?

Because, like, you guys are obviously, like, you know, you're saying, like, you know, we can create, uh, affiliate sort of codes and links for any customer. You can invite as many people as you want, but typically for brands that you see are doing well, like, how big is an affiliate program? Like, how many people are in there?

Well, I mean, the way that we usually measure, like, the size of it is not necessarily the members, because some brands are definitely turning all of their customers into affiliates, and a lot of them are active in sharing, but of course, not all of them are. Um, and, you know, that's the scholars, the way it goes. I'd say, like, the North Star metric that we're usually using to measure the success of these programs is, like, affiliate revenue as percentage of GMV. Like, how much of your total revenue is this program driving? And hopefully that, you know, if you set it up right, like, it should always be at a lower calc than your paid ads. Um, so that's more. And what are.

Yeah, and what are you, what are you guys seeing? Like, how much, like, brands that are, like, really going hard on affiliate, like, how much of GMB are they able to drive through affiliates?

Yeah, so, so brands that are just doing customer affiliate, I would say the average is more like the four to 6% and the highest performers are like 10%. Um, and, you know, there's some that are a bit bigger, but those are definitely, like, the most passionate customer bases ever. I don't think everyone could replicate that. Um, then there's the brands that are also doing influencer, and this is tough because there's the, I mean, I've seen it be over 50% because there's some brands that can't run paid ads because they're like, you know, selling cannabis or whatever it is. And, you know, their affiliate programs are the majority of their GMB. But I would say for most brands that are maybe in a more in a product category that can run ads and they launch a customer affiliate program at an influencer affiliate program, it's probably more like the 20% of GMB.

Sweet. Okay. Moving forward, one thing that I think would be awesome for you to kind of like clear the air out is why don't you paint a picture of like this whole affiliate landscape? Right? Like we've got TikTok shop where like brands can go and like recruit, recruit creators through there. You've got, you know, being able to like turn your customers into affiliates and also recruit affiliates through you. So if you could just like paint a landscape of like, how everything plays together and how you see like the landscape evolving, how would you paint that picture?

Yeah, so, I mean, you know, you mentioned TikTok Shop. I think that was like the biggest disruption to the space, like, probably ever in like the influencer and affiliate marketing world. There are a lot of different programs surround where we talked about customer affiliates. There's influencers that you're reaching out to or coming inbound and you're seeding product to, and then that's a whole separate program for them. Then there's the tiers from both the customers and the influencers and then there's stuff like TikTok Shop. I think we have lots of brands that are using all of those and I think there's no right or wrong. I think some of them take a lot more work than others. And so if youre a brand that is fully dependent on paid for acquisition right now and you want to branch into these influencer affiliate channels, you should, but you dont need to do all of them.

Day one, I think the lowest hanging fruit would probably be turning customers into affiliates because its a lot of just setting up these automations, the thank you page emails and then its pretty much runs on its own. If you were to do an outbound program doing manual outreach to influencers at scale and then gifting them, that takes a little bit more work. It still can be a lot of, it can be automated with software, but there's still some manual parts to it. Another thing that would be low hanging through is an inbound program. So just having an application form on your website so that influencers could apply if you like them, you could trigger a gift to be sent, create their affiliate link, they could start sharing, enroll them in an activation flow if you don't like them. You could reject them if you like them, but you're kind of on the fence. You can enroll them into a different program that doesn't incorporate a gift. So they could still have affiliate link and share.

You don't have any out of pocket costs by gifting them. And the worst they could do is not drive revenue. So there's kind of, like, no harm for you. Um, and then 100%, I think TikTok shop is incredible. Um, I think it really proved that the future of influencer marketing is affiliate. I think before that, you know, it was kind of just social snowball and maybe a couple other platforms that, you know, had this idea that influencers can be affiliates and that that's where the, the direction of this landscape is headed. And then a lot of brands hopped on that. A lot of influencers were on board with that.

And now with TikTok shop kind of taking over, that's undeniably where the landscape is heading. And I was just talking to one of our agency partners yesterday that does influencer marketing, and she was telling me all the brands she speaks to, even a year ago, not even that long ago, the only thing they would ask about for reporting and the performance of the programs was EMV. Just like impressions, like, just awareness or end content deliverables, like, how many pieces of content did we generate? Let's repurpose that for ads. And then she said in the past year, like, not every brand, but a lot more brands, to the point where this has been, like, a big talking point in their agency, is asking about ROI and attributable revenue and new customers acquire. And that's a little bit more of the focus now. And I think TikTok shop kind of pushed the industry in that direction. And it's awesome for us because, you know, this is kind of what we bet on with building social snowball, that the future of influencer would be affiliate. And it's definitely headed in that direction because now you also have YouTube shopping that just launched.

Right. And I think we all are on the same page that Instagram is going to come out with something similar, even though they haven't announced it yet. I think we just, it's just very very, very likely at this point. And now all of these social media platforms are coming out with like their, their own affiliate products, affiliate enablement, even like having their own checkout. So it's really interesting to see the landscape moving that direction. But I would say to kind of circle back to your question, there's a lot of different types of programs you could run, and it just comes out to resources that if you want to launch like a more manual, tons of outreach influencer program where you're gifting and having all these tiers, you know, there's plenty of agencies that can take that off your plate if you don't have the bandwidth to do it in house. But yeah, I mean they're all, they're all really great and have their own differences.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is, and you kind of brought it up, was attribution, right? So when, if I'm using social snowball, what does attribution look like? What is like an influencer creator partner get? Are they getting a link? Are they getting a code? Like how are you guys able to attribute the sale that they're driving and be able to reconcile that with the brand for sure?

So we have a lot of different optionality here. We of course have codes, so code usage at checkout can track a sale. We have UTM links and cookies, so you can choose an attribution window for the duration of a cookie. To live on a browser, we could use a link that auto applies a code, so you could have kind of a little bit of a wider net with the code and the like. But we have also something that's unique that I think is like really important, called safe links, which is essentially a way to combat codes linking to a coupon site. So basically one of the biggest issues that we've seen with affiliate programs pre social snowball was that affiliates would post, they would share codes. Codes are great because they're the only activation method that jumps from device to device. Because if someone sees an ad on Instagram with an affiliate and then buys on their computer, they'll take the code with them because they want the discount, which is like, you know, a pretty crazy concept.

But then the problem is, honey, capital one shopping retail, me, not all these websites picking up, or maybe some, you know, sometimes people might leak it intentionally, but regardless, it gets onto a coupon site and then there's an attribution disaster because all these sales are coming through the affiliates code, which media affiliate gets attribution for those? And then not only are you giving out a discount to customers who weren't supposed to be getting a discount, but you're probably paying a commission to an affiliate that didn't refer their sales. And then when you realize you overpaid the affiliate, there's no way to figure out exactly how much you overpaid and it could damage the relationship with the affiliate. It's just like this domino effect of disaster every time a code leaks. So anyway, at socials Noble, we have this tool called safe links, which is essentially the whole point of it is to allow affiliates to share a discount with their audience without the possibility of a code ending up on a coupon site. So a safe link itself is essentially like a coupon code alternative, like a replacement to coupon code. So wherever an affiliate would have been sharing a code, they wouldn't be sharing this link instead. So instead of using this code, we're trying to push it off. It's like click my link for 20% off and the link itself just looks like a normal affiliate link.

You customize it and shorten it. But the way it works is whenever a shopper clicks on that safe link and gets taken to the brand storefront in real time, a unique single use discount code will be generated from the brand shopify and given to the shopper to use during their shopping session. So if I'm an influencer and I post use my link for a discount and ten different people click on my link, ten different single use codes will be generated, one for each shopper, and the shoppers can go ahead and use the discount. So every shopper still gets the same discount. Me as the influencer, I'm still giving a mechanism that allows me to share a discount at scale to my audience. But if honey or any of those coupon sites were to pick up one of those codes, it just wouldn't matter because they're valueless to these coupon sites, they're all single use codes. So that's been a really great attribution tool that we've came up with because not only does it track sales with the link, click with a cookie, but it also tracks sales with the code usage. So if someone clicks a link on their phone, generates that single use code which can be shown to them in like a pop up we can build, and then they decide to buy later on their laptop.

They could still take that single use code, use it on the laptop. So it still has like the benefits of, you know, how codes can jump from device to device per attribution, but without the risk of a code leak happening. So that's been, like, definitely our most popular attribution tool.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

Because I know, and this is kind of something that we were talking about, but if you, if you just even think about SEO and, like, a branded search, like, number one will be the brand and number two will be, like, brand and discount for the product. Right. So being able to prevent those code leaks is absolutely massive. Now, as we wrap up here, the last question that I have for you is you guys have, like, clearly, like, built so much, you know, really exciting space to be building in. What are you guys focused on? Like, what are some of, like, the key initiatives that you guys are, like, doubling down on and scaling and building in to, like, prepare for the, you know, affiliate ecosystem and creator ecosystem that continues to grow?

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, we started our products being really focused around just, like, the core of affiliate, and that's, like, I think we've built for sure the best product on the market for affiliate, for influencers, creators and ambassadors. But to have a successful partnership, there's more pieces of the puzzle than just affiliate. I do think affiliate is the most important now because brands care about your global revenue. But there's. There's other pieces of that puzzle right there. Like we mentioned earlier, there's finding and discovering new influence areas to partner with that scale. So that's something that we're working on building.

There is the content side of it. Right. Even though content doesn't have to be the main focus of a partnership anymore, it's still important to be collecting the content. You still want to repurpose the ads. You want to know when you get tagged. So there's these other pieces of the puzzle that we're kind of bringing into social snowball, so that it's the all in one solution for everything you need for all of your influencer and creative partnerships. So that's definitely the biggest focus on the biggest thing that we're focusing on right now.

Sweet. And last question for you. If we're looking to connect with you, like, where do we find you? Why don't you shout out your socials? Are you guys on LinkedIn, Twitter website? Where do we find and connect with you and social? So well, yeah, well, I'm on LinkedIn.

And Twitter all day. If you search Noah Tucker, you'll find me on LinkedIn. And my Twitter is oatuk. N o a t u c k. So I love chatting about this stuff. Definitely feel free to message me. And if you wanted to check out social snowball, our website is social the world IO sweet.

Thanks for coming on the pod.

Appreciate you having me.

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