Optimising the partnership lifecycle: Q&A with impact.com's Regional VP Marketing, Owen Hancock

As brand partnerships continue to establish themselves as a mainstay of the marketing mix in 2023, manually managing a growing number of partners is no longer sustainable. We talk to Owen Hancock, Regional Vice President at impact.com, who reveals the secret to streamlining the partnership lifecycle, as well as some of the new features in store for customers this year.

Welcome, Owen. With so many content creators, influencers and affiliates in the mix today, how do brands find good-quality partners?

It’s a good question - brands often have to sift through hundreds, even thousands, of partners manually, which can take up valuable time. That’s why we’ve created an automated partner discovery tool within the platform that can help them search for partners. And thanks to the ‘multiple search’ function, it generates a constant flow of matches, so it does the heavy lifting. 

Stay ahead of the industry with exclusive feature stories on the top companies, expert insights and the latest news delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe today.

What’s more, the search function also has a built-in ability to narrow down recruitment criteria - based on specific keywords, partner size, number of followers, audience region (and crucially, whether ot not they’re verified on the impact.com marketplace) - so brands can search for partners at scale and still be incredibly specific. Then, each partner request can be automatically approved or declined based on those preferences.

Discovery and recruitment forms just one stage of the partner lifecycle - what are the other stages and how does impact.com automate the process throughout? 

Typically, after discovery and recruitment, there are five other stages: contract and pay; tracking; partner engagement; protecting and monitoring; and finally, optimisation. 

We know how much effort goes into recruiting alone, but managing the rest of the partner lifecycle is a whole other ball game, and one that brands often fall into the trap of executing themselves, manually. 

Instead, they can use an automated partner application to manage all partner comms and assign partners to different account users.

It’s clear that automated partner management is beneficial to brands, but what about partners? How does it impact them?

When building out this tool, we wanted it to be something that offered a lot of value for both brands and partners - and we really believe it does. Thanks to the auto-approval process, partners don’t have to wait around for brands to manually accept or decline their requests. They’ll get notified instantly once they’ve been accepted and can get to work promoting content. This direct relationship means partnerships become productive, and partners start earning, much sooner on impact.com. Partners also have much highly sophisticated reporting available to them which helps them to optimise and prioritise the right relationships.

How can brands use impact.com to better incentivise their partners and create contracts that work for everyone?

We know just how important contracting is; it’s the stage that defines a relationship between advertisers and partners, so it needs to be done right. A common problem brands run into is a lack of parameters, such as not being able to fine-tune contracts at a sufficiently granular level to match the context and nuances of each individual partnership. 

We’re currently rolling out a beta feature that will enable brands to set up to 100 parameters, for far more tailored contracts. This enables brands to pay partners on exactly what is valuable for them. 

What are the stumbling blocks for brands leveraging the partnership economy and how has impact.com helped?

A common theme is the need for scale. For instance, many brands need to make bulk edits to a contract - or multiple contracts - simultaneously. With this feedback in mind, we’re rolling out a new B2B feature that’ll be hitting the impact.com platform soon, allowing users to make multiple edits at the touch of a button. 

When it comes to cost-per-click (CPC) contracting, many brands find their partners aren’t winning on the last click. Walk us through some of the newer features of the platform that help resolve this issue.

CPC has been part of the platform’s payment model for a while, and today, as you say, brands and creators are searching for more holistic insights to incentivise the types of traffic they find most valuable. We’ve incorporated a new CPC functionality into our platform that enables brands to pay a flat rate to partners across all their traffic - and also allows them to set parameters on these rates across things like ad ID, device type, partner referral URL and brand landing page URL. This will bring the idea of dynamic commission into the CPC world. 

So let’s say you’ve found a partner that fits your criteria, built a solid contract, and are starting to roll out content - how do you accurately monitor and track partner performance? 

To ensure that partners stay on the right track, impact.com customers can use the paid search monitoring tool, and set keywords they see bidding activity on. For instance, if a partner bids on an inappropriate keyword, they’ll get notified via the UI, and can send an automatic violation message to the partner.

Promo codes and coupons often get leaked onto websites - how does impact.com prevent that from happening?

It’s a common occurrence, sadly, but one that can really damage a brand’s reputation and weaken its sales. That’s why we’re busy creating a new feature designed to help monitor promo codes across the internet - by searching for instances of a brand’s promo or coupon code across the web. If something is flagged, they’ll be notified immediately and will have enough time to take the necessary action before it’s too late.

Some industries - like finance - have to comply with a lot of regulations, which means they need to keep an even tighter watch on how partners are promoting their services. What kind of compliance technology does impact.com have to make this process easier?

It’s a problem that lots of brands encounter. The last thing a brand wants is their content being promoted in the wrong place - for instance, a children’s brand being promoted alongside an adult lingerie brand. Thanks to our monitoring compliance technology, site content is automatically monitored and flagged where necessary, thereby deepening trust for longer-term, healthier partnerships. 

Another new beta feature is the Data Lab. How can brands use it to get more actionable insights into what’s working and what’s not?

Data is at the forefront of every partner programme, so we wanted to create something that would be able to bring together large sets of data and enable brands to create custom reports. And so the Data Lab was born - an easy-to-use drag-and-drop pivot table with a range of functionalities. From being able to present up to 12 different visualisations, charts and graphs, to creating custom measurements, there are a lot of ways brands can report on key partner data, at a really granular level.

How can brands avoid the scenario of under-rewarding partners, especially when working against their own biases?

The one thing you can’t do during a partnership is make assumptions. You might have an inkling that a certain partner isn’t closing sales, but you can’t act upon it with solid data. Once you’ve got optimised reports and can dig in to understand what’s working and what’s not, you can make confident decisions about whether to cut or reward partners. 

We have a number of new reports being rolled out, including leapfrog reports, incrementality reports, incrementality-by-partner reports, providing even more visibility across a variety of hot spots.

Anything else exciting in the works for impact.com?

Yes - too many to mention. We’ve got about 100 or so releases and improvements in the works, so watch this space!