AM Navigator

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Travelex Insurance Services provides travel insurance. We have partner travel agents who come to our site and book travel insurance for their clients as well as direct consumers purchasing travel insurance for themselves. My role is that of e-commerce manager. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AM Navigator?

AM Navigator has been helping us with the other side of our business, namely growing direct consumer customers, people who book travel insurance without the assistance of an agent. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

AM Navigator has become the manager of our affiliate program, helping us grow our direct consumers

How did you come to work with AM Navigator?

We were very unhappy with our previous affiliate manager, so I started looking. I had read Geno Prussakov’s [Founder, AM Navigator] book, An Hour a Day Affiliate Program Management, and found it to be very insightful, so I reached out to AM Navigator.

How much have you invested with AM Navigator?

We pay a flat fee of $1,500, which combines with a performance-based incentive. AM Navigator can earn well above this, depending on how well our program does in a given month.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our first month working with AM Navigator was September of 2016. I originally reached out to them a few months prior to that and was hoping to get started sooner. As a travel insurance company, there are many compliance elements we need to deal with, and there are multiple layers for approving such a contract. The collaboration is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

As soon as we switched to AM Navigator from our previous affiliate manager, the professionalism level became second to none. There is actually a strategy to our newsletters now, and AM Navigator has cleaned them up, removing the affiliates that weren’t actively contributing. They’ve helped attract more active affiliates by offering them a performance incentive for the first sale and other things of that nature. We’ve started to see sales from affiliates that were already signed up but hadn’t been participating. AM Navigator has also done a good job of attracting new ones.

We’ve seen an increase in traffic and sales through our affiliate program. The quality of affiliates being brought in is much higher as well.

How did AM Navigator perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a scheduled biweekly newsletter. On each one, we feature a new product that we recommend that affiliates promote. My manager is great at reaching out to us beforehand and offers his suggestions of what he’d like to feature. I’m able to provide feedback on other products I want to focus on or on changes I want to make to the copy. He gives me plenty of time to review this, as well as the overall newsletter.

One of the main things we wanted AM Navigator to tackle was to activate the affiliates already on our list. They’ve done a great job of documenting monthly communications with them. A second big item was bringing more affiliates onboard, which was also documented in detail. I can track that AM Navigator is doing what we set them out to do.

What did you find most impressive about AM Navigator?

Beyond their professionalism, the next biggest thing is being proactive. AM Navigator is constantly bringing me new partnership ideas. Even if the affiliate program isn’t necessarily the best route for a partnership, if they see someone as being a good fit outside of that, they will bring it to me.

Are there any areas AM Navigator could improve?

Since we started working with AM Navigator in September, it’s been a great partnership. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an identity theft protection provider that offers identity theft protection, credit bureau monitoring, and credit reports. I run our affiliate program. I manage the partnership with any websites that are not within our domain that market our product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AM Navigator?

We had been doing affiliate marketing for four years and were looking to grow our program. We had been building a decent base but we knew there were a lot of websites out there that we were not in communication with that we could be working with. We were looking for ways to reach out to those websites and that’s what AM Navigator’s expertise was for.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were pretty specific on what we wanted, which was affiliate management and affiliate growth.

How did you come to work with AM Navigator?

We saw AM Navigator at the Affiliate Summit West and the founder asked to meet with us. I found his credentials online and thought it was a no brainer to meet with him. We were looking at other affiliate marketers as well but the reason we went with AM Navigator was that they were interested in working alongside with us. The other folks we met with were more interested in overtaking the entire program and managing it from A to Z. AM Navigator came in and worked alongside us, being more of an extension of our team.

How much have you invested with AM Navigator?

AM Navigator was very flexible with payment, whether it was a set fee or a commission structure. They get a percentage of the payouts we get from the affiliates they recruit for us. They’re interested in making it work for both parties. They don’t have a set-in-stone method when it comes to the financial aspect while working with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2017, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

They’ve done an excellent job. They’ve provided us with a list of 300–400 affiliates per week. These have websites that really do match the type of partnerships we were looking for. Typically, when I evaluate applications that come to us organically, I accept about 10% of those. There’s a lot of lower quality sites that we’re not interested in. With the lists that AM Navigator provided, we accepted 80%–90% of those websites. They used technologies that were able to be specific to our niche and fit our program well.

How did AM Navigator perform from a project management standpoint?

They were extremely consistent. They exceeded our expectations as far as how quickly they were giving us those lists. They also reached out to the affiliates to get them on-boarded. It has really helped us grow.

What did you find most impressive about AM Navigator?

The quality of the recruitment lists they’ve given us has far exceeded the work of any other marketing groups we’ve worked with in the past. They’ve also somewhat audited and enhanced our affiliate program and our communication to the affiliates, whether it’s making it clearer up front how serious we take compliance, or how we interact with inactive affiliates who’ve already joined our program but haven’t been actively marketing our product or bringing in a steady flow of orders. They’ve helped us craft the messaging to reach out to these affiliates to get them re-engaged. In addition to the growth through their recruitment lists, they’ve also helped us with some best practices on how to communicate with our existing partners.

Are there any areas AM Navigator could improve?

No. They’ve been great.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO and a co-founder of Stowaway Cosmetics, a brand of premium makeup that is designed for how women actually live. Compared to the standard offerings, our products are all manufactured at half-size. They are designed to be purse-friendly, mobile, and affordable.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AM Navigator?

It’s always a challenge to fill the top of a funnel. I’m a big believer in affiliate marketing compared to all other traditional forms of advertising. Using the top-funnel to convert further down is more an art than a science, but affiliates can do an incredible job of leveraging the awareness that we do have, increasing brand awareness, and reaching a point of sale.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

AM Navigator had an immediate focus on affiliate and performance marketing. This is what they’re best known for. They’ve made sure that we were taking full advantage of the awareness we already had as a brand, pushing it further down the funnel, and that we were capturing as much value as possible at the bottom of the funnel.

How did you come to work with AM Navigator?

I found AM Navigator the old-fashioned way, namely by asking for references. I come from the e-commerce space and have done a lot of affiliate work. I was lucky to have the ability to ask a number of people who knew the best agencies. AM Navigator’s name consistently came up as the best option. Getting multiple recommendations for the same person made it unnecessary to look at the second-best, in my view.

How much have you invested with AM Navigator?

AM Navigator has a very intelligent model that lets us choose to pay an upfront fee or pay for performance. The former option would obviously be lower since AM Navigator would obviously deserve to be paid more if they performed well. I don’t know what their cost is off the top of my head.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with AM Navigator in 2016, and the relationship is ongoing. I couldn’t imagine working without AM Navigator.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Everyone’s cross-channel revenue distribution is different, but we have consistently found that affiliate marketing will account for 10%– 20% of our revenue in any given month, which I find to be impressive. I know that many other brands have lower numbers, and our success is all credited to AM Navigator’s team. We have similar mentalities in terms of performance, and the team was very easy to work with. AM Navigator is the best of breed when it comes to people who understand how to navigate the affiliate space effectively.

How did AM Navigator perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re a startup, so everything is done at the last minute, usually on a wing and a prayer. AM Navigator is incredible at working around our schedules and turning on a dime. When we do actually plan things ahead of time, they can execute flawlessly. AM Navigator’s team has gotten used to the fact that things are changing rapidly on our side.

What did you find most impressive about AM Navigator?

AM Navigator is creative in finding opportunities that I would not have considered on my own or even noticed. The depth of knowledge in the space is quite good, but we’re usually the barrier in implementing those new opportunities because we’re quite a small shop. Given how AM Navigator can think, bigger teams will definitely find many opportunities.

Are there any areas AM Navigator could improve?

Every company wants to make more money, but this is the duty of our brand, not necessarily the marketing team. I always joke that affiliate marketing is kind of the dirty swamp of online marketing and many shady things go on in this space. If we want transparency and an agency that can clear up a lot of the muck, we can’t really do better than AM Navigator. They’re straight-shooters in this space.