Finance affiliates & The Motley Fool with Noelle Spagna

Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: Finance affiliates & The Motley Fool with Noelle Spagna
Host: John Wright
Guest: Noelle Spagna
Published: Tue, 07 Jan 2025 10:41:00 +0000
Duration: 23:10

Speaker labels are a two-speaker split from pauses (host vs guest). Timestamps are `[HH:MM:SS]` from the episode audio. Light ASR; names and brands may need a pass.

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[00:00:00] John Wright: So specifically, I can say around the full and what we look at, we have a business intelligence team and it's constantly diving into information. And the biggest things for us, especially being a subscription based member of a business is looking at the lifetime value of the consumers that we're bringing in, what's their customer journey with the path here? What channels are bringing them in versus which ones are closing and how did those channels kind of work together intersect. And then also again, like how what the customers that are staying with us and upselling long-term, what makes them different than the ones that maybe only stick around for a year or two and just really looking at how we can tap into

[00:00:40] John Wright: different partnerships and marketing channels to find the most qualified members that we're bringing in and, you know, BI definitely plays a huge role in that.

[00:00:49] Noelle Spagna: I'm Joan Wright and you're listening to Affiliate BI, the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by StatsGo.

[00:00:59] John Wright: Welcome to the Affiliate BI podcast. Today we're chatting with Noelle Spagnu, who is the affiliate program manager at The Motley Fool and she's held similar roles at Partner Centric and Pepper Jam. And I think it's safe to say we've got an expert in finance affiliate programs on our hands. Noelle, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, John. I'm glad to be here.

[00:01:21] Noelle Spagna: And would you say the finance affiliate programs are saturated with affiliates or are you seeing new finance focused affiliates coming into the market?

[00:01:30] John Wright: So I think the beauty of the affiliate space is that there's always new partners coming out. So, and people ask me that a lot, specifically with The Fool, because I've managed the program since it launched and haven't you run out of partners, but I didn't help to get into the program. No, cause there's always new ones coming up and we don't always work with just finance focused affiliates. Our affiliate partners are very diverse across the spectrum. We're always keeping things fresh and bringing new ones in all different calibers. So that really makes it easier to find partners, but there are more limited. I've managed credit cards in the past and it's definitely more limiting because there are a lot of compliance and regulations around those programs.

[00:02:09] John Wright: So they're very tight with who they allow in and whatnot. So I would say it's probably harder to find new one specifically around more tight verticals like that. But overall with our program, it's been really good. And even recently I've had so many partnership discussions over the last month that it's been like just fine talking to all these new partners in the space. Awesome. So would you say influencers and social media are part of the new revenue stream for The Fool and basically becoming part of the lead gen?

[00:02:41] Noelle Spagna: So at this time, we don't do too much with influencer marketing. We've tried it in the past. We've worked with an influencer network. We dabbled in it. We're very direct response though, with our marketing. So more like top of funnel channels like that aren't always prioritized, but we do have this new YouTube specific YouTube creator program that fool.com, our editorial team that runs that is actually managing and they are commissioning videos and they commission multiple ways on those videos. So if somebody was interested in doing something like that for us, that's like

[00:03:19] Noelle Spagna: a different team, but they they've been trying to grow that program a lot. And it's been very successful for us. And then in terms of like paid social, we have a team that manages that. And we are starting to do a lot more with our own organic social media, especially going into 2025 and just trying to revamp that. So I think we'll get back into it. We do have some influencers in our affiliate program that run on the CPA. I would like to expand that too, but I know sometimes it's difficult for creators because they need that upfront investment.

[00:03:49] John Wright: So I'll throw the curveball question we were talking about just before getting started. So Authority Hacker just made a post, I think it was a day or two ago saying that affiliate content sites are dead.

[00:04:01] John Wright: They've been making money selling courses, teaching people how to do affiliate content sites. So you're on the opposite side of the fence where you get to see which new affiliates are happening. And you mentioned that TopofFunnel is interesting, but would you say that the middle and bottom of funnel content sites are more, more relevant? Let's say forums and communities, for example.

[00:04:24] Noelle Spagna: I think it depends on the site. And I think obviously Google with the algorithm changes. I know that's a big topic right now has affected things a lot. Like if you look at our top 10 publishers this year, some of them are the same, but some of them are drastically different than they were this time last year. So that has affected that. And we do have a lot of content sites, especially in the finance realm that create a lot of content for us that do drive a lot of sales and that are very valuable, not specifically. I wouldn't consider them to be like directly influencers, but more like finance blog and finance specific sites around investing and managing your

[00:05:03] Noelle Spagna: money, things like that. And they've started to do more with videos and whatnot, but they've been pretty successful and we've seen some new ones pop up into our top 10 this year that I wasn't expecting. And again, that's, I think the fun thing about this channel is that it's always changing.

[00:05:17] John Wright: And what would you say for your database of affiliates? Would you say that there's a lot of newsletter type of creators?

[00:05:25] Noelle Spagna: Not really. We do, we have newsletters specifically. I also dabble in that, that we book outside of the affiliate realm. So we are always looking for new newsletter partners and we usually run that on a different model. It's usually like flat fee CPM.

[00:05:40] John Wright: But that's also been a valuable channel to us. And we're actually working to book Q1 because that's our peak season. So we've been planning that out with a little slew of newsletter partners.

[00:05:52] Noelle Spagna: And I want to talk about The Motley Fool and I want to ask what are the ways that the company makes money assuming that there's products, there's subscriptions and things outside of affiliate revenue?

[00:06:03] John Wright: Yeah. A lot of people don't realize like The Motley Fool is very multifaceted company. We have a lot of different divisions, a lot, and we're all separated in a way. So the division I work on is our premium investment services. So those are our subscriptions and we're most known for Stock Advisor. That's our oldest product. That's the one that recommended Amazon when it was like 20 cents a share all those years ago. And we focus on driving new members to those products, but we also have, we're also a publisher that confuses, I think a lot of people too, because a lot of people reach out to me thinking that I'm, you know, the publisher

[00:06:42] John Wright: site looking to get in front of our audience, but that site is called Motley Fool Money. That's like our personal finance site and they promote like credit cards, personal loans, brokerages, things like that. Then we have a venture capital division. We have actual money management. We have international sites. We have a Canadian product, a UK product, an Australian product. So we have pretty much your entire journey of finance covered under The Motley Fool. Yeah. I did know that there is different aspects because I mean, I see it like I'm in Canada, so I see lots of different things for different products and services that

[00:07:19] John Wright: appear and so how big is The Fool as a company, The Motley Fool?

[00:07:25] John Wright: In terms of like employee count? Yes.

[00:07:29] John Wright: I mean like maybe 450? Okay. I know it's not a small company. No. But it's really interesting that you just mentioned that you've got like the publisher division, would you say that maybe there's going to be different affiliate sites that they're going to be considering building their own products to evolve? If Google isn't going to give them that, that traffic that they were used to before, maybe this is like a way to diversify. So let's say The Fool would be fully dependent on just affiliate revenue for the publisher side. It's hard to answer that. I know like at least in what I do with some of our top partners who were hit with the changes, a lot of them have come back and said they're

[00:08:07] John Wright: changing things and because a lot of them were originally like coupon sites and they're trying to build out the content more and trying to make it more relevant so they do still show up on the ranking. I think the algorithm changing a lot. And I think with the addition of a lot of like AI generated content, that's starting to take its toll on algorithms as well. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out with Google in the new year.

[00:08:34] John Wright: But would you say that overall on your side, the affiliate division and the affiliate program is growing?

[00:08:41] Noelle Spagna: Yeah. Yeah. We've had, it's been a really great 2024 I will say, because also our affiliate business kind of goes by like market trends as well. So during COVID we're very strong. A lot of people were getting into the market and investing and then it could blow down a little bit. So we have to look at what's going on in the market. Is it strong? Is it hot? Like right before the election, we were not sure how it was going to go after and things slow down right before that, but as soon as the election was over, things were starting to shoot right up again, which is what we want to see. So it's been really good now that we're through that and heading into our peak season, but we are very seasonal too, in terms of the trends

[00:09:19] Noelle Spagna: that we see and on the publisher side as well, they are also very seasonal based on how the economy is going, how many people are looking for loans and looking for lenders and credit cards and things like that. So they have their ups and downs opposite of ours. So this is not investor advice, but rather affiliate advice.

[00:09:40] John Wright: Exactly. So how does the affiliate program work? What are the different commission models and is it rev share, CPA, CPM?

[00:09:48] John Wright: We have a CPA that we pay out on new members. So when somebody buys a subscription to say stock advisor or Epic or one of our other products, we will pay a flat rate CPA for that member to the partner for driving sales. Most of our other marketing channels are CPL based and they're driving to advertorial pages, which capture an email and then go to our order page. Affiliate is, I believe, the only channel that goes straight to order page and pushes that sign up. And it's always been that way, but it works in this channel. So we've never really changed. We've tested a few things with CPL on the channel, but I like to keep it separate.

[00:10:23] Noelle Spagna: And what are the different ways that you help affiliates be successful rather than just having an affiliate program, get your tracking links and do it on yourself?

[00:10:32] John Wright: It's yeah, it's harder in finance, right? It's not always as fresh. We're not getting brand new products or launches. And we do have promotions from time to time, but not as flashy as like different seasonal sales and retail. So what we do is we try to launch new campaigns and new order pages and provide new content. So right now, again, AI is the hot topic in the investing world and videos of the world. So that's what we're basing a lot of new content around. And I've been working with the team to create new order pages that actually overlay like our advertorial reports over them so people can still get to that content and then order very quickly after.

[00:11:12] John Wright: So we're building a lot of different campaigns around that. We also provide product trials. I think the best way, especially for a content site, is to get your hands on the product so you can get in there and you can see what we do. Cause a lot of people might not know exactly how our service works. So we want you to get in there and play around yourself, but also just providing partners with anything that they might need information wise, making sure like I'm readily available to answer questions or provide any assets that they need and just keeping it fresh with market trends and providing new reports and information.

[00:11:46] Noelle Spagna: And if someone wanted to get into the world of affiliate marketing, especially on the B2B side, you've got your university, university educated, but I've noticed that on LinkedIn, you've got a bunch of certificates, like I think it's CJ ambassador certified radius by impact and stepping up to leadership by LinkedIn. I just wanted to ask, are these worth it? And when you see other people with these certificates, do you think they're more positive and they come with a lot of benefits of what you can learn?

[00:12:13] John Wright: I think it's very beneficial on the network side, like the CJ one, the impact one, when you're working in the agency world, you're managing clients across all these different networks and no two networks are the same, even though they have similar features. So to me, it's very relevant when you're in that space and you're trying to manage clients across the spectrum to be able to get into those networks and really know them. And that's how be certifications help you do that so that you know what you're doing. So I think it's definitely more relevant on that side of it. In terms of the leadership ones, I've also done, I did a leadership course with a local university in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area.

[00:12:50] John Wright: And that was actually, I think really helpful in terms of just, you know, teaching you some things about how to lead a team and just what it means to be a good leader. And so I think anytime you're educating yourself in that way and you're gaining new knowledge that you can bring into your career, it's definitely a positive stepping stone. And I think for anybody who's trying to get into the affiliate space, actually joining on, I joined at Pepper Jam, but I was managing accounts like on their, almost an agency side, managing clients across different verticals and the same that I did at partner centric. And to me, that is a really great way to learn the space because you're

[00:13:28] John Wright: going to really get thrown into a lot of things right up front and chaotic, but I learned so much in such a quick period of time by being thrown into all these different aspects of affiliate marketing that way.

[00:13:42] John Wright: And what would you say are the future of affiliate networks? Do you think networks are going to play a bigger role as the years go on like 2025 and beyond?

[00:13:52] Noelle Spagna: I think it depends on what direction the network is going to go.

[00:13:57] Noelle Spagna: Being that I had worked on one years ago, at that time Pepper Jam was always trying to come up with new tools and things to make the network better and more desirable and get better tech to solve problems that our clients were bringing to us like attribution and different payout structures and things like that. And I see that even our program is on impact. So I see that now with impact they're building out, they just built out their referral marketing tool and they're building out more advanced tools to work with content creators and influencers. And I think the networks are working more towards becoming like an overall partnership marketing platform where it isn't maybe just affiliate.

[00:14:34] Noelle Spagna: Maybe it is referral, maybe it is brand to brand, maybe it is influencers. And I think also I've noticed certain tools coming out, I think are designed more to make our jobs as affiliate managers easier. There's a lot of AI tools and automation trying to make your life easier in terms of like recruitment and outreach and communication with partners. So I think that will continue to be a focus also is just to help some things with those back end tasks so that we could focus on more of the relationship building and more of that important side of the job.

[00:15:06] John Wright: So going back to Authority Hacker when they shut down the, they said they're going to shut down their course. Given the experience that you have, what would you do today if you were to start your own affiliate site or become an affiliate? Like what would the product or service or even the channel be?

[00:15:23] Noelle Spagna: The publisher side is honestly the only side of the house that I haven't worked on yet. So I feel like for me, educating myself more on maybe what other successful publisher sites have done, especially in the content space, I feel like the biggest thing is making sure your site gets traffic and it's seen. So being able to promote your own site and make sure that you're showing up, not only in the rankings, but you've got a social presence. You are drawing in users because obviously without an audience, your links aren't going to be clicked on.

[00:15:54] John Wright: But what would you think would be interesting? Like creating a forum, a YouTube channel, a podcast. If we're going to assume that, I wouldn't say affiliate sites are dead, but I'd say like the, what was done in the past of creating content, creating reviews. Everyone can do that. And as you mentioned, AI is making that even 10 times easier. So what channel do you think would be interesting for you or ones that you think are like the really ones that are trending in the direction that are becoming your bigger affiliates or the ones that are growing the fastest?

[00:16:23] Noelle Spagna: I'm definitely seeing a lot more video. And yeah, and we've actually had partners starting to use AI to create the videos and which make the, a lot easier for them because the production costs are smaller. And again, like I said, we are building out this YouTube program with creators. So it's definitely been a bigger channel. And even in the past, when I was managing like fashion brand, the most success that we saw with our creators was on YouTube. What were the ones that were creating the videos? I think that we're a visual culture. We like to see things and then we get these platforms like TikTok and Instagram reels, and we're just devouring like this kind of like short form content.

[00:17:02] Noelle Spagna: So I would definitely say more visual.

[00:17:07] John Wright: Would you say that maybe there are some videos that maybe on the surface, you're looking at a YouTube channel and you see a video and it's got, let's say a hundred different likes, so it might not be like prominent or amazing, but it might actually have a lot of sales behind it. I think maybe what could be happening is that people are, they want to buy from people. So I think if they have a video, the trust factor is a lot higher. Maybe you don't need the a hundred thousand impressions you would, you'd typically get on a blog.

[00:17:34] Noelle Spagna: Yeah. And that's something that I feel like people, when people started looking and brands started looking at influencers, it was always about who had the most followers, who had the most countenance and likes and things like that. But then it got to be those mid tier influencers that maybe don't have as many followers, have the most dedicated followers. They're the ones that are more trusted. So yeah, I think trustworthiness is definitely important. And I think it's a generational thing too. I think younger audiences, especially like millennials, Gen Z, and I've been saying this at work, we consume information differently and we also, as consumers act differently because we are a little less trusting, right?

[00:18:12] Noelle Spagna: We need to get like that, that backed up information. We try to get reviews outside of just what the company is saying and definitely, you know, videos and things like that. Anytime I'm even just personally looking to try a brand or a product, like that's what I'm doing. I'm going and I'm trying to see reviews about it or are there videos that talk about the quality, things like that.

[00:18:34] John Wright: What you're saying is Google's for old people.

[00:18:37] Noelle Spagna: I think that Google is always going to be Google and I'm relevant and people are always going to go there to try to search for information. But I think more and more people are starting to search different platforms, like using search functions on Facebook and Instagram. And it's just changing to where people are going to search.

[00:18:56] Noelle Spagna: Yeah. And maybe the future of this is that Google has had a monopoly on search for a long time. And I think, I think search has already spread like TikTok. That is a new search engine. It's just a different way of looking at it.

[00:19:09] John Wright: Yeah. When I travel to like new places, I go to Instagram and I search like, where's this in the city or what's fun to do here? Like it's just a different type of search. And it is, it's nice. It's visual. It gives you something to actually look at rather than just like a list of search results. So it is a different experience. And then there's Reddit geeks like me that will search for something and then add Reddit. Do that inside Google, go to Reddit and then look for human content of trying to get people's opinions on something. Yeah. And I, you're always getting Reddit results with Google. To finish this off, what do you see the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence?

[00:19:44] Noelle Spagna: So specifically, I can say around the full and what we look at, we have a business intelligence team and it's constantly diving into information. And the biggest things for us, especially being a subscription based member of a business is looking at the lifetime value of the consumers that we're bringing in. What's their customer journey with the path here? What channels are bringing them in versus which ones are closing and how did those channels kind of work together intersect? And then also again, like how, what the customers that are staying with us and upselling long-term, what makes them different than the ones that maybe only stick around for a year or two.

[00:20:20] Noelle Spagna: And just really looking at how we can tap into different partnerships and marketing channels to find the most qualified members that we're bringing in. And, you know, BI definitely plays a huge role in that.

[00:20:33] Noelle Spagna: It sounds like I'm a bit biased building BI tools for affiliates, but it sounds like this could be something that everyone needs to be doing. The affiliates could do this on their side going, Hey, can we analyze for traffic a bit better and understand where we're getting conversions and the data they're getting back from affiliate programs, as well as the affiliate programs themselves. I think, I think everyone wants to know that they're investing in analytics and going, we're going to use this analytics to get better, to drive better player values, lifetime values and things like that.

[00:21:02] John Wright: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree there. And I think different partners too, like we look at, we're starting to look at like LTV by partner. So we can see which one is bringing in that higher value. And then if somebody is, say bringing in a lower value or somebody has like a higher cancellation rate, we can look at, okay, how are you promoting this exactly? What kind of messaging is out there? What is, what is the main message being pushed and what is making those consumers sign up and then have this other behavior that we want to correct and fix, so it's looking at that to see, but I think it would be helpful. You know, affiliates were also diving into that data and really analyzing their audiences.

[00:21:42] John Wright: It's refreshing to know that you do that on your side for your program, but in us as a company, when we integrate with thousands of affiliate programs, it's a rare conversation. It's something that you don't hear about affiliate managers or even anyone on the operational side going, let's look at the data and let's look at the, the, the player or user value based on cohorts, based on data segments, based on the actual affiliate themselves. And I hope in the next two years, we'll see a lot more of this and not just from the bigger companies that have the luxury of being able to say, Hey, let's have an actual in house BI team.

[00:22:16] Noelle Spagna: Yeah.

[00:22:18] John Wright: And Noel, thank you so much for doing this really fascinating. It made me look at the Motley Fool in a different way. Like I knew I had a couple of questions there to go, let me look at this entire ecosystem. So really fascinating. Want to pass it back to you to ask how people can get a hold of you.

[00:22:32] Noelle Spagna: Yeah. You can find me easily on LinkedIn, Noel Bagnaugh, and then you can email me, my email is very easy. Noel.Bagnaugh fool.com. So that's pretty easy as well. And then you'll see me and affiliate summit West and short month and a half. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much. John.

[00:22:52] John Wright: Thank you for tuning in to the affiliate BI podcast. I'd like to take this time to ask for small favor to leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast. That helps us expand our reach to rank higher in podcast directories and reach more listeners.