Disclaimer: The articles and contents of this website are provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The information contained herein does not create an attorney-client relationship and should not be used as a substitute for professional legal consultation. Always seek the advice of a qualified attorney for any legal issues or concerns you may have.

Resource Centre
Cheque out the following resources released by the FCC:

• FCC fact sheet
• FCC announcement outlining new rules
• FCC report and order and further notice of proposed rulemaking

The FCC will enforce regulatory changes to protect consumers from unwanted marketing communications and enhance the integrity of telecommunications. Central to these changes will be the new one-to-one consent rule, which will take effect on January 27, 2025. This blog will primarily focus on understanding this specific component of the broader FCC ruling and its implications for your business.

Prior to this rule change, FCC regulations permitted sharing a consumer’s consent to multiple entities listed on a single lead form. However, under the new consent rule, this practise will be prohibited. Businesses will be required to obtain prior express written consent from consumers for each seller individually, one at a time, to ensure consumers are protected from excessive unwanted marketing communications.

The rule will significantly impact businesses, particularly those involved in lead generation, marketing, and sales.

Background on FCC’s Efforts to Mitigate Robocalls

The FCC has long been at the forefront of efforts to combat robocalls. Initiatives like the STIR/SHAKEN protocols have been implemented to prevent caller ID spoofing, a common tactic used in fraudulent robocalls. These protocols authenticate caller ID information to ensure that the displayed number is accurate, helping consumers trust the calls they receive.

The FCC’s one-to-one consent rule is a new regulation that will modify the existing Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). This change will aim to provide greater transparency and control for consumers over who contacts them and for what purpose.

Key Facets of the FCC’s One-to-One Consent Rule

Preparing for the FCC’s new regulations will require a firm understanding of the one-to-one consent rule.

One-to-One Consent

Under the new rule, businesses can no longer bundle consent for multiple goods or service providers on a single lead form. Each seller must obtain separate, prior express written consent from the consumer. This means that lead generators and marketers must revise their consent forms and processes to comply with this requirement.

Impact on Lead Generators and Marketers

Lead-generation businesses will need to adapt to these changes by ensuring their consent forms are clear and specific. This will involve updating online forms, scripts, and other mechanisms used to obtain consumer consent. The shift to one-to-one consent may increase operational complexity and require more sophisticated data management practises.

Challenges & Considerations

The following are potential obstacles for businesses to consider when preparing for the impending changes to obtaining consumer consent for receiving marketing calls or texts.

Complexity of Autodialler Definitions

One of the ongoing challenges under the TCPA is the complex and continuously evolving definition of what constitutes an autodialler. An autodialler, or Automatic Telephone Dialling System (ATDS), is defined as, “equipment which has the capacity—(A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and (B) to dial such numbers.” Businesses must stay informed about the latest interpretations and ensure their dialling technologies comply with TCPA regulations.

Handling Manual Dialling

Although the one-to-one consent rule will specifically pertain to calls made using regulated technology, manual dialling is not entirely exempt from compliance concerns. Some businesses may pivot to using compliance and engagement solutions for consumer consent management to comply with FCC regulations and minimise risks associated with manual dialling practises.

State-Level Regulations

Businesses must also be aware of state-specific laws in addition to federal mandates. Some states have their own TCPA-like regulations that may impose additional requirements. For instance, certain states prohibit calls made without prior express written consent regardless of federal law allowances.

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How Will the Rule Change Affect Businesses?

Here are some potential implications for businesses stemming from the one-to-one consent mandate.

Obtaining & Documenting Consent

Businesses will need to implement robust processes for obtaining and documenting consumer consent. This will include ensuring that the consent record clearly demonstrates one-to-one consent was obtained. Documentation from a reputable consent management platform is likely to be sufficient, although this has not yet been confirmed by courts.

Listing Sellers on Consent Forms

Simply listing your company name on a consent form will not comply with the new FCC rule. The form must specify the ultimate provider of the good or service, known as the “seller.” Lead generators must accurately represent the relationship between the consumer and the seller to avoid legal issues.

Independent Agents & Consent

One unique aspect of the one-to-one consent rule is its focus on the “seller.” If a consumer consents to hear from a seller, such as an insurance carrier, independent agents authorised by that carrier do not need to be individually listed on the lead form. This will allow independent agents to continue operating without significant changes to their current practises.

Preparing for Compliance

To make strides toward complying with the new one-to-one consent rule, businesses may consider:

1. Revising Consent Processes: Update all mechanisms used to obtain consumer consent to ensure individual, one-to-one consent is obtained for each seller.
2. Ensuring Logical & Topical Relevance: Make sure that the lead generation process is both logically and topically related to the calls that will be made.
3. Possessing Consent Records: Confirm that the caller has possession of the consumer consent record before initiating any calls.

Looking Toward 2025

The FCC’s new one-to-one consent rule will represent a significant shift in how businesses approach consumer consent. Being proactive will be the difference between businesses that will successfully navigate the FCC rule change and those that fail to prepare for the evolving regulatory landscape. By understanding and adhering to these new requirements, businesses can ensure compliance and build greater trust with their consumers.

Stay informed on updates to the FCC’s one-to-one consent rule change by checking out the Phonexa blog.

Disclaimer: The articles and contents of this website are provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The information contained herein does not create an attorney-client relationship and should not be used as a substitute for professional legal consultation. Always seek the advice of a qualified attorney for any legal issues or concerns you may have.

Resource Centre
Cheque out the following resources released by the FCC:

• FCC fact sheet
• FCC announcement outlining new rules
• FCC report and order and further notice of proposed rulemaking

The FCC’s latest regulatory requirements will transform how businesses approach lead generation.

Previously, it was permissible to sell a consumer’s consent to multiple entities listed on a single lead form. However, starting January 27, 2025, this practise will be prohibited under the new FCC ruling. Consumers will need to individually select and provide prior express written consent to each seller, one at a time.

Lead generators are scrambling to understand how these FCC rule changes will impact their business operations. The shift to one-to-one consent will mean adapting to new compliance standards, rethinking marketing strategies, and potentially facing increased operational complexities.

This blog will address key questions and share answers, helping you navigate this significant regulatory shift.

Does the one-to-one consent rule apply solely to lead sellers?

No, a lead seller is not considered the “seller” under the FCC’s new one-to-one consent rule.

Typically, in the lead generation industry, “sellers” are those who sell leads. However, under this new ruling, the “seller” is defined as the ultimate provider of the good or service; the “buyer” of the lead is actually considered the “seller.”

Even if you are an agency involved in selling a product, you are not classified as the “seller.” For example, an independent insurance agent selling policies does not qualify as the “seller.” In this case, the insurance carrier holds the title of “seller.”

Source: The Future of Performance Marketing: Navigating FCC Regulatory Changes

Will outbound manual dialling allow me to avoid the need to obtain express written consent?

Technically, this rule pertains to the definition of prior express written consent, which only applies to outbound calls made using regulated technology for marketing purposes.

Therefore, you can still use old leads if you are dialling manually, with a few important considerations:

• The definition of what qualifies as an autodialler under the TCPA is highly complex and continually evolving. Instead of assuming your click-to-dial process complies, consider using compliance and engagement solutions for consumer consent management.
• There is some risk that the one-to-one rule might also apply to numbers on the Do Not Call (DNC) list, even if dialled manually. While it’s not believed this is currently the law, influential groups advocate for this interpretation, and the issue may be tested in court. This creates additional risk for those looking to avoid the one-to-one rule by dialling manually.
• Additionally, certain TCPA-like state laws, such as those in Connecticut, prohibit calls made without prior express written consent, even if federal law permits them. Source

Can consent be obtained from an inbound caller?

No, prior express written consent can not be obtained from an inbound caller, even if a disclosure is read during a recorded phone call. The foundational agreement that the consumer accepts must be presented as a written disclosure. While the signature can be obtained orally, the agreement itself must be in written form. Source

What does the ‘logically and topically related’ language mean for lead generation?

The ruling restricts the scope of consent to matters “logically and topically” associated with the website where the consumer gave consent and related to the transaction that led to the consent being given. But what exactly does “logically and topically related” mean?

The truth is, no one knows for sure. The FCC has yet to define what “logically and topically related” means. Instead, they advise texters and callers to restrict their content to what the consumer would reasonably anticipate.

Consider the following example: If the offer is for a specific product, such as a “7% 30-year fixed mortgage rate,” deviating from that offer can put you at risk. For instance, if a consumer enquires about this mortgage rate but can’t qualify, offering them a different rate, an adjustable-rate mortgage, or a different product might not be considered logically and topically related to their original request.

It’s wise to adopt a conservative approach until the courts have clarified this phrase.

Source: The Future of Performance Marketing: Navigating FCC Regulatory Changes

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Does possession of consent roll over to third-party lead generators?

One of the most overlooked aspects of the new FCC one-to-one ruling, which could have significant implications, concerns the possession of consent by third-party lead generators.

According to the new regulation, callers cannot rely on third-party lead generators to maintain consent records. Callers must obtain the complete consent record before making any calls to the consumer.

While it is not entirely clear what documentation the caller needs, it must undoubtedly demonstrate that prior express written consent for each individual seller was obtained. It is very likely — though not yet confirmed by courts — that a record from the likes of ActiveProspect or Jornaya will be adequate. Other types of data records might also be acceptable.

However, under the new rules, a single line of API data or a simple third-party token is presumably insufficient. Source

Does listing my company on a form comply with the new FCC rule for obtaining consent for marketing calls?

Simply listing your company on a form does not comply with the new FCC rule for obtaining consent for marketing calls.

According to the rules, the name on the form accepted by the consumer must be that of the ultimate provider of the good or service — the “seller.”

It is illegal for a lead generator to list only their name, call the consumer, and then make oral offers for third parties.

However, it is permissible for the lead generator to offer their own services — likely as a broker — to help the consumer find services offered by others. This requires an objective rationale in the consumer’s best interest rather than just selling to the highest bidder. Additionally, the consumer must agree to the service before any offers are made. In many states and industries, broker licences will be required, along with increased regulatory scrutiny. Source

Is there a cap on the number of sellers that can be listed on a form?

There’s no straightforward answer to this question. Troutman Amin, LLP suggests limiting the number of sellers to what is visible on a single screen frame of the website, considering how the consumer views the page. However, the FCC has not defined a specific cap, and the courts may need to resolve this issue. On the plus side, you are not mandated to list only one seller on the page. Businesses may list multiple sellers on one page, generally by using checkboxes, as long as they allow consumers to select each seller individually. Source

Will the rule change go into effect as currently written?

According to Troutman Amin, LLP’s Eric J. Troutman, the answer is likely yes.

“There is a [small] chance that the challenge by the Insurance Marketing Coalition down in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals is somehow successful. I’ve taken a look at the briefing; I just don’t think it’s very likely, but it could happen. I think the FCC has enough of a record built that they’ll be able to move forward with this new one-to-one rule. Is it going to go into effect as written? That’s an interesting question because there was a second NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) comment period that was reopened following some of R.E.A.C.H.’s efforts. R.E.A.C.H. went to bat with the Small Business Administration of the FCC and did obtain some more time for small businesses — which almost all lead generators are — to weigh in on the impact of this one-to-one rule and to propose some modifications to the rule as it is written. Now, understand that the core of the one-to-one rule is not going away. There is going to be a one-to-one rule, almost certainly, effective in January of next year.”

Source: The Future of Performance Marketing: Navigating FCC Regulatory Changes

How can my business achieve full compliance with the one-to-one consent rule?

To achieve the highest level of compliance with the one-to-one consent rule, there are three essential steps your business must take. First, companies must establish a firm understanding and adhere to the intricate new one-to-one consent rule framework. They also have to ensure that the way leads are captured is logically and topically aligned with the intended calls. Most importantly, businesses must confirm that the caller possesses the consent record prior to initiating any calls. Source

Stay tuned to the Phonexa blog for updates on the FCC’s one-to-one consent rule change.

AI is revolutionising the digital marketing landscape, emerging as a transformative force with great potential for the lead generation industry.

More and more leadgen professionals are exploring AI’s advanced capabilities to gauge how it can be leveraged to automate repetitive tasks, provide personalised interactions, and drive more effective strategies.

In our latest Amplify webinar, Arvell Craig, the AI Evangelist for VAgents, joined Phonexa’s Chief Marketing Officer, Talar Malakian, to explore the integration of AI in voice, chat, SMS, and email.

Together, they shared insights into the future of AI-driven lead generation and offered actionable techniques to enhance marketing and sales efforts.

Watch the Webinar

Here’s a recap of the fascinating discussion as Craig and Malakian uncover the future of AI in lead generation.

The Current State of Conversational Channels

Malakian: What are some of the gaps in conversational channels that you’ve identified throughout your career?

Craig: If you’re looking at conversational AI on the various channels — voice, text, SMS, email, social; those are the main channels — every platform is going to have its limitations. When you deal with voice, you have the extra layer of regulations and things like that to deal with. There are privacy laws, there are legal and compliance situations that can challenge businesses. You always want to communicate properly in the context

There’s a gap depending on what your background is. I was building chatbots in 2016, 2017, and 2018, so I knew conversational marketing and how to do that at scale even when there wasn’t AI. So there’s a bit of a learning curve if you don’t know how to communicate properly in the channel because you want to set expectations right. You want to not confuse the customer — is it AI, is it a person? In leadgen, the goal is to get them to the next stage. It’s a balance between how friendly are you, how human are you, but also how do you stay focused and legally compliant.

Also, the last thing is the technology — how good can it be, how much do I delegate to the AI, do I need to give it a simple prompt [and] let it run wild, or do I script every single solitary exchange which I have more control [of]. But that’s just a basic, logical kind of sequence flow that doesn’t allow the more human intuitive response; there’s a balance between that as well. So there’s some skill, there’s some technology, there’s some compliance, and then there’s understanding the user. Those four different components [will determine] what’s going to work best for your business.

Advancements in AI and its Impact on Lead Generation

Malakian: What do you foresee impacting lead generation the most in the next three to five years?

Craig: The biggest opportunity is going to be the highest volume of activity with the most human involvement. There’s a [significant] human component, [which] is one of the biggest opportunities to reduce versus if it’s just media buying because media buying, technically, the intelligence that manages and optimises [Facebook and Google] campaigns is AI. That’s machine learning, deep learning that’s been around for five to 10 years. So [those platforms] using AI is not new, and the way it will scale or change will be minor. Yes, Google and Facebook will do more to aid the media buyer with what they’re doing, but I don’t think that’s going to be as disruptive as highly human-involved systems, strategies, and platforms which are going to be call centres. Companies have chosen to go overseas to cut costs because that human touch is very valuable, but if the work is very routine, that part is definitely going to be impacted by AI because it doesn’t [require] a lot of intelligence.

Whether you’re outsourcing something or even in-house, your resources are going to be consolidated because all the technology and platforms — your design, your Canva, your Photoshop — are starting to [integrate] AI. If it’s a low-skill activity, I think 50 to 60 to 75% [of costs] could be cut and reduced with AI. If it’s a high-skilled activity, I think you’re looking at more of a 20 to 30% possible reduction in cost and efficiency. Those are some general ballpark [figures] I think will be helpful for people to understand what to expect…other than that, [there’s] a lot of unknown factors.

AI & Personalisation

Malakian: In terms of personalisation on the contact centre side, how do you think AI is going to create more personalised leadgen experiences across some of the other channels? How do you see that looking for email or voice or chatbots?

Craig: When I think about personalisation, it’s about the speed; it’s about allowing the user to do things on their own terms. So, as we’ve seen more multichannel and omnichannel platforms, as those things continue to evolve, the context of personalisation is giving people what they want, when they want it. Then, with the AI aspect, you can make sure that the conversation is seamless. It’s not just a live chat here, a phone call here.

You can’t quickly learn and feed and read everything…so the fact that this AI can allow the person to talk where they want to talk and then dynamically curate or customise the conversation specifically toward them — it makes them feel heard, it makes them feel understood. There have been studies on doctors talking to [patients] over chat versus AI talking to [patients] over chat [that showed] the AI was more empathetic. There’s a false assumption that because it’s more human, it’s better or more empathetic…there’s real data showing that AI can be empathetic; it can give a good experience and feel personalised because it’s listening. It’s going to see everything you’re doing, and if you can use that data to change the way the AI talks back to the person, [customers] will feel heard.

Industry-Specific Applications

Malakian: Are there particular industries where leadgen, or even in the contact centre space as an extension of that, is more effective or has more potential? What are some of the industries where you see more adoption or openness and stronger use cases?

Craig: Most people have assumptions about whether AI is going to work or not work for their audience or customer base. One of the things that was holding a lot of companies back was they wanted the AI to sound human. Typically, when you listen to the types of AI voices, some of them sound really good with long latency…it may sound good, but that sound [increases] the cost to send that voice over channels and the telephone system. Some business owners want [AI] to sound so real that [customers] don’t know because they make the assumption that people don’t trust it or they won’t respond. Some leads or prospects who deal with older demographics assume that because it may not sound too human, [customers] may not trust them.

So the people that have come to us — whether it’s time, comfort, or seeing more and more companies using [AI] — will be willing to experiment. The type of companies we’re talking to now typically have a call centre for retention on e-commerce; we’re helping them use AI to do basic retention questions. We’ve got home service companies coming to us where they’re willing to try out AI for their use cases…we’ve had more and more insurance companies coming to us to try us out. Those are three examples right now where we are running AI. If they’re using an offshore call centre, our AI can perform just as good as an offshore call agent except there are no disposition times and no breaks, so the efficiency is automatically 30% better because there are no gaps to anything that it does. Those are three industries that I think are pretty warm and bright for using a technology like ours.

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At a time when TikTok faces potential bans in the U.S. and Instagram shifts toward a pay-to-play model, the importance of future-proofing your brand through robust email marketing strategies has never been more imperative.

But how do you create a cohesive and resilient future-proof email marketing strategy amidst a rapidly evolving digital landscape?

These questions took centre stage in the latest instalment of Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series, as Carlos Gil, GetResponse’s U.S. Brand Evangelist and author of “The End of Marketing,” joined Phonexa’s Director of Email Marketing, Alexander Cartigan, to explore innovative approaches marketers can use to enhance their email outreach efforts.

As the U.S. Brand Evangelist for GetResponse — an all-in-one online marketing platform that provides tools for email marketing, marketing automation, landing pages, and webinars designed to help businesses grow their email lists, engage with subscribers, and increase sales — Gil leverages his expertise in brand building, digital marketing, and growth strategies to spearhead tactical initiatives to boost brand visibility and foster partnerships in the states.

The webinar offered valuable insights into enhancing email marketing efforts, including how to integrate email marketing with social media, safeguarding your brand against potential disruptions, optimising engagement, and leveraging AI to make campaigns more efficient and impactful.

Here are some of the key takeaways and insights from this enlightening discussion.

Watch the Webinar

The Current State of the Email Marketing Ecosystem

Cartigan: Can you start by sharing your perspective on the current state of email marketing, especially with the new era of artificial intelligence?

Gil: If you’re going to talk about the state of email marketing, you need to address digital marketing as a whole…I look at the Internet as a noisy digital ocean. What I mean by that is you have noise that’s being created at a rapid rate every millisecond of every day at every hour. There’s no shortage of noise; however, there is digital overload from today’s consumers — they’re receiving tweets, emails, and Instagram messages everywhere they turn. So today’s consumers are having a hard time keeping up with all this information being fed to them.

I put up there along with social media marketing — even though it’s a different medium to reach your audience, the actual methodology by which you’re using email is really no different. I’ll break this down here; I’ll [also be] at MailCon on July 28 in New York explaining this in my talk on humanising your brand. In order for you to be able to break through the noise, you need to be more human and more relatable…what today’s consumer doesn’t want is sales rhetoric. People don’t want to be sold; they want to be engaged. I believe AI can help brands and marketers be much more effective in that [regard].

Email continues to be one channel marketers need to invest their time, money, and efforts for no other reason than social media in itself is broken right now. You’ve got algorithms that control what gets shown to whom, you have platforms like Instagram and Facebook/Meta forcing you to pay to get reach, then you have platforms like TikTok that might go away over the next year. With that being said, as a marketer, you have to take a step back and analyse in the short term where can [you] get the biggest ROI in terms of reach. But long-term, [determine if you’re going] to hedge your bets on building a following on social media, which is very much rented land, or start moving those followers over to owned media, which is email.

Strategies To Optimise Engagement and Drive Conversions

Cartigan: How should brands pivot their strategies to ensure email marketing remains essential to their digital strategy?

Gil: My recommendation is don’t eliminate TikTok or social media altogether — you still need those mediums to exist. You need to have an omnichannel strategy. Think of it like a funnel…the content that you post on social media is very much your top-of-the-funnel or brand awareness content. It’s where you provide value, whether it’s education, inspiration, motivation to your audience…the hook is to drive those followers to click on the one link in your bio and take action to opt into your email newsletter or email list. A lot of brands have found this balance where inevitably [consumers] can only interact with a brand so much on social [media], but [they] have to go back to [your] website to shop.

Whatever business that you’re in, you need to find ways to give your followers upfront value so in return they visit your website and take action. The first primary action needs to be the sign-up — whether it’s a loyalty programme or an email newsletter, you need to capture their email address.

Social networks make it really easy for you to convert your followers into email subscribers…let’s take Instagram, for example. Instagram allows you to put up to five links in your bio on your profile. The very first link you put in your bio [should] point to your website and specifically to your email newsletter opt-in. The reason you’re going to do this is when someone lands on your bio you want them to click on that link…you need to focus on getting as many email addresses as you possibly can in order to truly see the value of email marketing. [Also] engage with your audience [through] Instagram Storeys. When you’re posting your content on Storeys, let your audience know to go on [your] website and sign up for the newsletter if [they] want to see more content. Create experiences, create challenges, offer exclusive content that [they] can only get through email.

The other tactic that I’d recommend is for anyone [who’s] commenting on your post, send a private message with that link inviting your followers to sign up for your email newsletter.

Building and Nurturing Relationships

Cartigan: How do brands leverage email marketing to build long-lasting relationships?

Gil: Relationships come in all different forms and levels. For example, I am very active on the speaking circuit — I go to around a dozen conferences a year. And when I go to these conferences, I network — whether it’s a happy hour or after my keynote, I’m always talking to someone. If I go to a conference for three days, the entire time I’m there (with the exception of sleeping) I’m speaking to someone. Throughout those interactions, people will normally ask for a business card. I tell them I don’t have a business card, but I have Instagram…I’ll ask that person if they’re on Instagram, and we usually connect right there on the spot. Follow for follow…now we’re connected. Organically, that’s how I’ve grown a following on Instagram over the years.

LinkedIn is a little trickier because on LinkedIn I don’t necessarily connect with everyone. What I do is, if I’m at a conference having a conversation with someone and I see myself potentially doing business with this person or being able to facilitate an introduction in my professional network, then I’ll connect with them on LinkedIn at that point. It used to be in reverse…my connections are right at 30,000, which is the limit that LinkedIn caps your account. So, I’m constantly having to go in and unfollow individuals just to free up some space…it’s almost like you have to prequalify the person you’re talking to, but what you absolutely need to do is get their information or get them to follow you somehow.

Now, how do you expand that into email? Well, it’s simple. You let that person know, “I have a newsletter, this is what I do — a weekly newsletter sending out marketing tips. I’d love for you to opt-in.” That person I guarantee you is not going to say no, especially if you’re vibing and building rapport. Give them your website, ask them to opt-in right there and then.

Tips for Enhancing Your Email Marketing

Cartigan: What are three actionable insights you would give to brands to elevate their email marketing efforts?

Gil: Engage first, sell last. I think a lot of brands lose sight of the fact that today’s consumer doesn’t want to be sold to; they want to be engaged. As soon as you go into your email inbox and see the word ‘sale’ or ‘offer’ or ‘limited time,’ these are all cringey buzzwords that associate your content with being an ad. So, stop selling! I know that’s tough because we’re all in business to make money and sell, but you have to nurture your social media followers and email subscribers no different than you nurture any other relationship. People are already conditioned to tune out whenever they see content that’s salesy.

The second [tip] as a follow up is to use AI as a tool to bounce ideas off of a platform like ChatGPT. For example, if you have a sale coming up, use ChatGPT and ask, “How do I make this content more personable? How do I make this content less salesy?” That’s where you’re going to get value from AI and you’re going to be able to move a lot faster.

The third actionable tip for email is to create segmented audiences. Don’t just email the same list all the time. Use a tool like GetResponse to create segments of your most engaged subscribers, the people who are consistently opening up your emails…if you want to go one step further, create a segment for those who actually click within your emails and then create customised content or emails specifically for them.

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Building a media empire is no small feat, especially within the dynamic landscape of affiliate marketing, but it’s one of the many remarkable accomplishments that reflect the storied career of Lee-Ann Johnstone.

As the Founder of Affiverse — an award-winning performance and affiliate marketing agency and media outlet — Johnstone is the driving force behind the agency’s mission to help publishers, suppliers, networks, agencies, and affiliate programme marketers connect and grow their businesses.

Affiverse helps people in the affiliate marketing ecosystem learn how to excel through agency services, content marketing, events, and training programmes.

However, Johnstone’s path to becoming a trailblazer in the affiliate marketing industry wasn’t an overnight success. She earned the distinction with over two decades of digital marketing and affiliate marketing experience within the e-commerce, retail, fintech, and iGaming industries.

Johnstone joined Phonexa CMO Talar Malakian on the latest episode of the Amplify webinar series to provide invaluable insights and practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and marketing professionals.

Let’s dive into the key takeaways and insights from the enlightening conversation.

Watch the webinar here.

Supporting and Empowering Affiliate Managers

Johnstone started the conversation by sharing her experience starting an agency and media company to help advertisers, affiliates, and networks improve their affiliate marketing.

“Very early on, I realised that people wanted the knowledge or for us to do the [work] for them, but that wasn’t ever really our focus,” said Johnstone. “So the agency is there for me to be in the weeds, actually understand what’s changing, and have that interface with publishers working in multiple industries.”

Affiverse’s mission is to help affiliate managers become more efficient in their roles. Johnstone clarified that although affiliate management has always been either a sales or customer support job, it’s actually skill-based since most affiliate managers work with different channels and platforms, and they have to know how to engage with their partners and support them in order to deliver great results and drive growth.

“With the advent of better data and better technology, affiliate management has become a very skillful role, and many C-level execs don’t understand that yet,” said Johnstone. “They’re not supporting affiliate account managers, so we see a lot of burnout and brain drain … all of that has fed that fast-fuelling growth we’ve had at Affiverse because we’re pretty much a one-stop place where people can get practical advice.”

The Future of Lead Generation and Affiliate Marketing

The conversation then shifted to a discussion on the future of lead generation and affiliate marketing, particularly as marketers prepare for cookie deprecation and the ensuing changes to tracking that will follow in the next three to five years.

Johnstone warns smaller advertisers that they will fall behind the competition when cookies are finally phased out and those traffic sources disappear.

“They’re going to need to learn very quickly how to do lead generation for themselves or work with lead generators who buy and sell leads,” said Johnstone.

To prepare, independent advertisers and smaller B2B brands must learn how to change their marketing when all of this occurs. Johnstone explained that while lead generation and performance management typically sit on opposite ends, they now need to collide as the marketing landscape changes.

“A lot of performance managers who haven’t had to work with lead generators are not going to understand how to incorporate that into their business,” said Johnstone.

Johnstone shared that one of the goals of Elevate, Affiverse’s virtual summit, is to help performance managers navigate the transition to life without third-party cookies.

“What we do at Elevate is bring people together to talk about the changes that are on the horizon, their impact, and how they can prepare for them,” said Johnstone.

Prepare for third-party cookie deprecation by tuning into our Amplify webinar, How Performance Marketers Can Thrive in the Post-Cookie Landscape, featuring Michael Jeter, Director for Google Cloud Enterprise.

Preparing for New Consent-capturing Requirements

Another key element of the convergence of lead generation and performance management revolves around new consent-capturing requirements that is being enforced by the FCC.

“We need to educate people on best practises before this comes into play because otherwise, we’re going to have another GDPR fiasco where everybody has a deadline to get up to date,” said Johnstone.

“When we look at the demand based on the changes in the market, you [address] that through transparency, visibility, authentication, validation, and compliance,” said Malakian. “All of those things are going to be really important because there’s going to be a surge in demand in that area but done differently than before.”

Evaluating the Types of Partners in Your Affiliate Mix

Johnstone also shared tips on how to evaluate and audit an affiliate programme when you’re looking to bolster your partner mix. It all depends on what industry you’re in.

“Certain industries are reliant on certain types of partners simply because of the way they’re regulated and how they can or can’t promote,” said Johnstone. “What you want to remember is the customer funnel … the start of the customer awareness journey is getting longer before they actually purchase.”

Johnstone emphasised the importance of reaching your customers by knowing where they are.

“If you’re not [reaching them] with your direct-to-consumer advertising channels, then that’s where you leverage your performance partners to come in and fill the gaps,” said Johnstone. “You need to have a good understanding of where your customers are coming from and where they’re bouncing off to, and then you can match that back to the types of partners you want in your programme.”

Why Continuous Learning Breeds Success

Continuous learning is essential for keeping pace with the latest trends.

“Because this industry moves so fast – from the Wild West era to the regulatory era to the future trends era – it became apparent to me that there is no one place where people can learn,” said Johnstone. “We have to gather pieces of information all over the place because performance works across multiple channels.”

Johnstone emphasises that today’s affiliate marketers must become a jack of all trades to ensure they’re up to speed with emerging developments. Regardless of their experience level, continuous learning is paramount for all marketers.

“I don’t believe anyone can be an expert in marketing since we’re constantly changing and learning as our consumers change and the channels we work in change as well,” said Johnstone. “Look outside of your own industry and what’s happening across multiple verticals because all of those things impact what’s happening in yours.”

Johnstone warns that narrow-minded marketers risk making continuous learning more complex than necessary.

“I’m a big believer in not only telling people how to do things but showing them too,” said Johnstone.

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

It’s essential for enterprise affiliate marketing team leaders to collaborate with other leadership and product marketing functions in order to educate, evangelise, and inform around the medium.

But how do you demonstrate value from the affiliate channel overall, and what tactics can you implement to ensure that the buy-in occurs, and that you continue to demonstrate value?

The answers to these questions were at the forefront of the latest instalment of Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series, as Phonexa CMO Talar Malakian and Jessica Robinson, Founder of Affiliate Marketing Partners, made the case for investing in affiliate marketing when building a programme from scratch.

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The informative session thoroughly explored strategies for evaluating opportunities and managing a pay-per-performance budget with a diversified pool of partners based on what makes sense for a buyer’s journey and respective business models.

The Case for Investing in Affiliate Marketing

One of the initial hurdles often faced when establishing an affiliate marketing programme from the ground up is securing the necessary investment and buy-in from leadership or new clients. 

Convincing decision-makers to allocate resources to this marketing channel requires a compelling argument highlighting its potential value and returns.

Since affiliate marketing is, at its core, a pay-per-performance channel, Robinson believes that is a compelling opening argument to present to a marketing leader.

“You’re not paying on impression or a click … you’re paying when the action you want happens, so I look at what competitors are paying out in the space to show [marketing leaders] how they’re building their affiliate programmes around these payouts,” said Robinson. “I like to Google their top keywords … about 80% of the organic and paid listings on a SERP page are affiliate sites … if they’re not talking about your [products], they’re talking about your competitors.”

Robinsons said another key factor to consider is the diversity of the affiliate set. With regard to publishers, this can range from content influencers to technology partners to email or native ad experts. 

“In terms of partner types, the most undervalued partners that aren’t talked about enough are brand-to-brand partnerships,” said Robinson. “It’s definitely one of the more challenging ones to stand out in the affiliate space, but they can be extremely valuable.”

Cheque out a recent episode of Amplify: Essential Insights for Achieving Affiliate Success & Building Lasting Partnerships.

Managing Budgets for Diverse Partners

When heading an affiliate programme, marketing leaders have to assess which partner types make the most sense to sponsor with an upfront fee. Robinson shared that this decision ultimately comes down to what your goal is and what your preferred partnership set looks like.

“For instance, if you’re a finance brand and you want to show up where your competitors are showing up, oftentimes you need to have a sponsored placement there,” said Robinson. “I wouldn’t go out and do a $50,000 ad buy for a coupon deal or loyalty site. There’s value in that for certain promotions but if you’re trying to gain share of voice on sites that are comparing your competitors, that’s a good example where [an upfront fee] is worth it – especially when it results in an evergreen placement.”

Robinson has encountered brands that manage affiliate channels differently from other paid channels.

“[The affiliate channel] is a relationship-based channel and relationships take time to cultivate,” said Robinson. “[My colleague] phrased it really well, ‘Proof of life at three months; proof of growth at six months.’ Just because you launch an affiliate programme doesn’t mean you’re going to start seeing as many convergents as you see through your paid search campaigns right off the bat – having time for launch is a [critical] piece of it.”

Looking to acquire high-intent leads? Our comprehensive guide –“How to Scale ROI Across Publishers & Partners: An Affiliate Network’s Guide” – uncovers the secrets to boosting ROI.

Evaluating Opportunity Size

Controlling outcomes and making them scalable is mission-critical in affiliate marketing. 

Malakian shared that cost stabilisation is a big part of that conversation, as cookie deprecation and other factors make it more difficult for marketers to do the type of targeting they might want to conduct.

Robinson provided an example from her tenure at PayPal.

“One of the slides in my pitch internally at PayPal was comparing our costs to other paid channels to showcase the difference in our CPLs depending on the programme we were talking about,” said Robinson. “Normally, our return on ad spend was second only to branded paid search.”

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Mistakes can erode confidence among leadership and work against the trust factor in running a channel. Robinson gave an example of a client that committed the cardinal mistake of having their programme on auto-approve before migrating to her platform.

“There are many publishers operating in this space, so when we’re talking about building out a programme, we’re still evaluating these partners and not everyone can get your affiliate link,” said Robinson. “[Auto-approve] can open you up to all sorts of issues like FCC disclosure violations, fraud, and being on sites you don’t want to be associated with.”

Robinson said a common mistake brands make is not being open to testing their way into a B2B partnership.

“There needs to be an upfront investment either to get on these platforms or get sponsored content to stand out and jumpstart a relationship,” said Robinson. “As soon as you pitch someone on a pay-per-performance channel and you bring up [additional expenses], trying to go back on that can be challenging.”

The balance of employing an optimal tech stack and testing in this phase becomes crucial.

“There are definitely times that it makes sense to have the right tech stack for affiliate marketing, but certainly having four affiliate networks that all had different agency management built-in into it, they were just paying four times the cost,” said Robinson. “Make sure that you’re consolidating your tech stack and that it makes sense for your business.”

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

The pay-per-call industry is growing exponentially as businesses embrace PPC due to its higher conversion rates, customer spending, and retention.

With PPC continuing to grow in popularity, the industry is projected to reach a $12 billion valuation by 2025, with an annual growth rate of approximately 16%.

A recent episode of Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series hosted by Evan Weber (Founder of Publisher Finders) featured David Pickard (CEO of Phonexa UK) and Nareg Arakelian (Director of Operations at Profitise) as the three industry veterans analysed the latest trends in pay-per-call space.

The webinar provided a thorough exploration of PPC marketing as the trio delved deep into the strategies, trends, and technological advancements currently propelling the sector forward.

Here’s a summary of the pivotal insights discussed during the informative conversation.

Ideal Modality for Generating Traffic

Businesses thrive on inbound calls. Gone are the days of companies getting a bunch of lead forms and having to call people back to try to reach them. By driving inbound calls, businesses can connect consumers with call centres and achieve their objectives much faster.

To illustrate this point, Pickard cited a Forrester study which found that calls convert 30% faster than web leads, and they spend 28% more with a 28% higher retention rate. While these numbers indicate that spending money on generating calls instead of web leads is more beneficial, Pickard noted a trend of businesses pivoting toward generating both.

“We’re seeing the most success where clients are building hybrids, allowing the consumer to buy their product in the way that they want to buy it,” said Pickard. “Essentially, that is what Phonexa is trying to promote … take those warm consumers out of the marketplace as quickly as you can and track them as granularly as you can so you can go and reinvest in the things that are encouraging those positive conversion metrics.”

Pickard gave an example of working with clients who make substantial investments in web leads rather than focusing on calls.

“Sometimes it’s mind-blowing to tell them, ‘You just spent $50,000 on web leads last week – why don’t you just buy the calls instead?’” said Pickard. “If what you’re trying to do is actually speak to the customer, why don’t you allow them to call you? It’s surprising how many people don’t actually do that in the first place.”

In addition to neglecting to invest in calls, Pickard also explained that marketers often fail to track calls as effectively as they track web leads.

“A lot of people will track a web lead exponentially,” said Pickard. “They’ll track every little last detail to make sure that they’re optimising their advertising spend, but they don’t do it for calls; therefore, calls are getting treated unfairly in the marketplace when they’re not being tracked to the same level.”

3 Ways Calls Are Processed & Sold: Ping Post, Ping Tree & Host-and-Post 

Pickard shared insight into how calls are processed and sold to lead buyers through ping post, ping tree, or host-and-post by breaking down each method.

Ping Post

“The lead is sent into the marketplace in the form of a ping, so you’re using some level of customer data to ping that data into your marketplace in one go to give all of your advertisers a chance to review that customer and give them an opportunity in real-time to decide whether they want to acquire that customer,” said Pickard.

The ping post method allows advertisers to dynamically bid against each other by asynchronously pinging all the data to everyone at once. 

“The advanced routing is essentially quick matchmaking based on the campaign’s location and availability,” said Arakelian. “Now, when you go into that ping tree or when you go into the host-and-post, Phonexa has made it so easy for Profitise to take our business to the next level and continue scaling.”

Ping Tree

A ping tree is a distribution logic that offers more control and deliberation than a ping post.

“A ping tree is more of a one-by-one routing logic where you’re applying some kind of filtration initially and ranking your list of advertisers or buyers by a specific priority,” said Pickard. “It may be ranked by the price they’re prepared to pay, an advertiser of choice that you prefer 80% of your traffic goes to … or you may want to split test advertisers against each other to equally distribute calls between the two.”

Host-and-Post

Affiliates who aren’t technologically advanced in their lead management and call-tracking software typically go down the host-and-post route. 

Host-and-post is determined by people owning their offers by building their own pages, sales funnels, and traffic funnels and distributing those customers to an end user. This process often entails using a hybrid between a ping tree and a ping post to route the customer to the end destination.

Arakelian shared a real-world example of a key disadvantage of using a ping-tree model, particularly in the call space.

“As an account manager, if you aren’t keeping an eye on your overall system and the schedule is wrong and you send a call to the buyer or the advertiser and their call centre is down, you’re just sending them free calls at that point,” said Arakelian. “For a ping post model, if you don’t get a response back with a bid, that call isn’t going anywhere – especially if you have them in the bid price.”

Since implementing Call Logic, Phonexa’s call intelligence platform equipped with ping post capabilities, Profitise has significantly improved its reporting and grown its business model.

Are you looking to bolster the ROI from your pay-per-call efforts? Choose your subscription plan or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa’s inbound call management platform.

Enhancing Lead Conversion With AI Chatbots

Regarding the emergence of AI in performance marketing, Pickard detailed a hybrid approach to facilitating lead conversion that involves buying web leads to take customers out of the marketplace and then converting them into calls through an AI chatbot. Leads then engage with the chatbot based on API data it received from the form filled out by the customer.

“They’re taking the customer out of the marketplace and warming them up to keep pushing them down that sales funnel,” said Pickard. “And then the AI is essentially analysing when the customer – based on what they’re saying – is at the best moment to give that call to action using that API data they’ve received from the web lead to nurture that conversation.”

Cheque out Amplify’s latest webinar: How to Scale Lead Generation Across Calls by Automating & Enhancing Outreach with Conversational AI.

Ensuring Quality of Incoming Calls

With a high volume of inbound calls, it’s important to ensure that each call meets an advertiser’s criteria. Pickard outlined how Phonexa optimises the process based on numbers. The key is tracking everything – call outcomes, the source of the call, the route that call went through, which publisher did it come from, which IVR model did it go through, which buyer bought the lead, etc. – in real time.

“That’s one thing many forget to do because their system doesn’t track things in real time or it’s difficult to actually pull the stats quickly enough for whatever reason – multiple dashboards may be required to pull data from various places,” said Pickard. “First things first, try and put everything in one place so that you can actually follow everything in one easy process.”

Pickard stressed how crucial it is to give your decision makers and media buying teams the right data so they can differentiate what works best from what doesn’t.

“Give them the right data to say ‘This is what’s happening, go do more of the stuff that’s working and less of the stuff that’s not working.’ That’s the performance marketing logic, but it’s surprising how many systems don’t allow you to do all of that quickly,” said Pickard.

Spotting issues on the fly as they occur in real time allows marketers to focus more on optimising their processes. 

Robust fraud detection capabilities are also key to ensuring quality.

“We’ve got fraud detection set up to ensure that users aren’t living in a false economy,” said Pickard. “The numbers that they’re looking at are real numbers, the customers that they’re monitoring are real customers, doing the things they should be doing, coming from the places they should be coming from, and they’re not leaving themselves exposed to fraud.”

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

Finding your footing in affiliate marketing can be both exhilarating and daunting, especially when cultivating a dedicated audience from scratch. Fortunately, there are tried and true strategies that lay the foundation for scalable growth for affiliates exploring new niches. 

Jeannine Crooks, Partner Acquisition and Development Manager of global affiliate marketing platform Awin, joined Phonexa CMO Talar Malakian for an instalment of Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series to deliver a step-by-step breakdown of the key strategies necessary to establish a presence, engage a new audience, and to ultimately carve out a niche affiliate venture poised for success.

Let’s say you’re just starting out in a new niche, don’t have any traffic, and struggle to find an effective approach to building an audience. What do you do?

The insights shared during this enlightening conversation serve as a roadmap for newcomers and seasoned affiliates alike to navigate the intricacies of affiliate marketing in uncharted territory. 

Let’s unpack some of the key takeaways.

Determining Which Niche Is Right for Affiliates 

For affiliates looking to enter a new market, it’s imperative to thoroughly evaluate the niche’s revenue potential.

According to Crooks, there is a set of criteria to consider when analysing a market from an affiliate marketing perspective, beginning with assessing the traffic for that particular niche. This can be achieved by answering the following questions:

• How many people are searching for keywords related to this niche?
• How great is the longtail list of keywords? (e.g. car insurance for drivers with good credit instead of simply car insurance)
• What kind of searches are being conducted?
• Are people actively looking for this product? 

Crooks implores affiliates to do their homework before pursuing a specific market by keeping an eye on what the competition is doing. This helps pinpoint the best approach for entering a new market by seeing what competitors are doing, and what you can do differently.

“What can you bring that somebody else isn’t doing right now? Are you passionate about it and able to convey in your language and tone that this is a product you really believe in?” asked Crooks. “People are going to pick up on that, and they’re going to respond to it.”

Malakian summed this approach up perfectly.

“If you’re doing a competitive analysis, don’t do it to look back – do it to look forward,” said Malakian. “Ask ‘what is my path to achieving this without replicating what’s already been done.’”

Cheque out our comprehensive e-book, “How to Scale ROI Across Publishers & Partners: An Affiliate Network’s Guide,” to unlock the secrets to maximising ROI.

Establishing Affiliate Expertise

Learning and finding opportunities are intertwined when analysing the landscape of a particular niche.

During the process, you’re also learning a lot about the product and educating yourself, sometimes around something that you don’t really have expertise in. Therefore, affiliates and publishers must become expert learners in order to extract that information, understand it, and then deliver captivating content.

“I’m a big proponent of really getting to know your [niche] … you need to have inherent knowledge of the product,” said Crooks. “Take enough time to really know that product to where you can go and have a conversation with a salesman and [educate them] about it – then you’re ready to start pursuing a niche.”

By educating yourself and establishing expertise, you’ll be better prepared to identify which merchants you want to work with and differentiate who’s selling good products that solve a need and who’s just selling anything.

Establishing a rapport with your audience is key to thriving as an affiliate. It’s crucial for your consumers to trust you, knowing they can rely on your recommendations and seek your advice whenever they encounter challenges – they’re looking for effective solutions.

“It’s important for you to know and understand what [their] challenges are, the right products or services for whatever the challenge is, and where to research to find that [information],” said Crooks.

Engaging a New Audience

The conversation spotlighted essential strategies affiliates can employ to build and engage a new audience. 

Crooks suggests that new niche affiliates begin by conducting keyword research to identify the issues people are encountering. Then, they can create content tailored to address those challenges or provide solutions to enquiries.

“Don’t try chasing the big keywords when you’re getting started,” said Crooks. “There’s going to be a lot of competition for those – anybody else who’s already established in that niche is going to already have a leg up on you for those big keywords – so start with the little ones as a blog post topic … then you’ll start ranking on the bigger keywords.”

Crooks also emphasised that conscious consumers will want to see your credentials when determining whether to trust your offerings. She explained that a strategically crafted About Us page can sway consumers in your favour.

“That’s a place where you can really make your sales pitch on why you’re amazing and why the recommendations you’re giving are to be trusted, so don’t make it just fast, and don’t make it too salesy,” said Crooks.

Monetisation After Engagement

Once you’ve engaged a new audience, you can carefully craft strategies for monetisation. But what if you still don’t have a large audience?

Crooks explained that niche affiliates don’t have to have a huge audience to be successful – they just need an engaged audience. When scaling and aiming for growth in a new niche, affiliates can either go wide or deep into their topics.

“If you have a site about pasta or cooking and want to go wide, you can talk about different kinds of noodles – spaghetti, angel hair, elbows, lasagna, [etc.],” said Crooks. “Or you can go deep [by discussing] wheat noodles versus egg noodles versus vegetable noodles versus lentil noodles. You can always find those areas to go deeper or wider on any given topic.”

Malakian echoed those sentiments by touching on how affiliates can leverage their expertise on a specific topic to provide multiple options to their audience.

“I can help tell you if you want X, Y, and Z, this is an option. If you want these other things, this is also an option,” said Malakian. “I think being able to help people see through the weeds is that role that you’re playing and can also help you scale considering you’ve now provided more options, and that’s going to create more monetisation opportunities.”

Crooks added an effective strategy for monetisation.

“Any noun can be an affiliate link, and I find that text links outperform banner ads … if you can put in a text link, you’re more likely to have somebody click on it than an ad,” said Crooks. “Interestingly enough, if you’ve got a banner ad on the same page as a text link for that product, the text link will perform even better.”

Measuring Success

The final stage of the roadmap for affiliates starting in a new niche entails identifying crucial KPIs and determining how to track them.

“I pay attention to what topics people are reading and focus on those topics…I also look at how many pages they’ll go to so I can do a lot of cross-linking within the site,” said Crooks. “Do you have just one page on that [topic], or can you get them to go to [multiple pages]? [Search engines] want to see if people are continuing to find information on your site.”

Crooks also identified time on the site as a key metric because it signals to search engines that people are finding valuable content and it’s worth their time in further exploring. 

“Keep putting out more content … I go for quality over quantity because it will help me with those other metrics,” said Crooks. “People are going to want to spend more time reading that whole article that they really love … they’re not going to go to five different useless articles just because you’ve got five on your site.

“I would rather put up one or two really good posts a week than put up something every single day that the reader could’ve gotten anywhere.”

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

Engaging potential leads across calls can often feel like navigating a labyrinth, but leveraging the power of conversational AI emerges as a beacon of efficiency and efficacy.

Matthew Black, the Founder and CEO of Mav – an industry leader in automated two-way texting – and Evan Smith, the Head of Sales for Mav, joined forces with Phonexa COO Jeff Schaffer to illuminate the transformative potential of the technology as part of Phonexa’s Amplify series.

Delving into the economic impact and efficiency gains, the trio discussed how pioneering AI-driven text-first strategy is reshaping outbound call outreach and crafting an inbound-style experience that resonates with leads and propels conversion rates to new heights.

Let’s dive into the key takeaways and insights from the enlightening conversation.

Watch the webinar here.

High-level Pain Points Call Centre Operators Encounter

The informative session kicked off by taking a hard look at call centre operations, challenges, and where conversational AI belongs in the world of lead generation.

Speed-to-lead is outdated, and in its place, the importance of speed-to-experience – leveraging conversational AI to get in touch with a consumer and take them off the market before a competitor reaches them – cannot be overstated.

To illustrate this point, Schaffer presented the following hypothetical scenario: a consumer submits a form, returns to their busy day-to-day life, and the respective call centre wants to contact them without conversational AI.

“The trend used to be email – people used to open and reply to every single email they got, and then email became something people couldn’t stand anymore,” said Smith. “With the advent of power diallers, lead generation, and comparison shopping sites, it became [overwhelming] to watch your phone blow up with call after call after call.”

Black echoed these sentiments by sharing his experience shopping for a mortgage loan and being bombarded with calls from unknown sources, eventually becoming the specific use case for launching Mav.

Today, Mav uses conversational AI to offer “speed-to-experience” for SMS.

Solving Pain Points with Conversational AI Across Calls

Smith demonstrated how text messages helped fill the void from dwindling contact rates since consumers are more likely to read every text message they receive rather than answer each call that comes in.

“Now, with AI, when you tack on those open rates that no other channel gets and tack on automation, you’re able to do call centre-like work without actually having a call centre,” said Smith. “That’s where Mav has come in to be that minimum viable call centre that can operate entirely over text message – it can reply, qualify, do lead outreach, lead intake, and can live-transfer calls.”

High labour costs and attrition are common challenges of operating a call centre and also make it hard to run campaigns.

Conversational AI over SMS can solve these issues, saving call centres tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

Best Practises for Lead Nurturing & Re-engagement for Calls

Black explained how the benefit of using conversational AI over SMS from the lead’s perspective unlocks when they look at it as a utility.

“[Consumers] can use this experience to get from point A to point B,” said Black. “Point A may be, ‘Hey, this is X insurance agency following up on a quote.’ Point B could be getting that quote or getting in touch with an insurance rep.”

Black views the transition from Point A to Point B as an opportunity to educate consumers and further differentiate your brand from the competition by providing value – for example, by answering any pressing questions a prospective customer may have regarding your product or service. He shared one of his client experiences to drive the point home.

“We have a customer that’s a larger life insurance company, and when we were building their experience that delivers a life insurance quote online over SMS, a lot of the leads were asking, ‘What term policy do I need – 10, 20, or 30?’” said Black.

He soon realised that whenever the leads called into the customer service centre, the reps always said the same thing: ‘Do you have a mortgage? Do you have a child that’s going to graduate college? And if so, pick a term length that matches that policy.’”

To improve the conversational flow, Mav customer service reps prefixed those questions with, “Consider picking a term length that lasts until your mortgage matures” or “Pick a term length that lasts until your child is out of college.”

“[Prospective customers] then feel educated, gain some value, and know how to appropriately answer those questions along the journey of getting a quote,” said Black. “And that’s the kind of speed-to-experience that makes it a curated journey and sets you apart from everyone else.”

Operational Efficiency

Smith shared his experience running a call centre to highlight how conversational AI makes processes more efficient by requiring less manpower.

“If I had Mav back then, that call centre that was 100 people could’ve been 15 because the conversational AI could sit in front and be a call centre for the call centre,” said Smith.

Smith lauds conversational AI for essentially performing lead triage by scrubbing out uninterested consumers, getting rid of those unqualified leads, and trimming down the list of phone numbers to call by removing those who don’t respond. This also helps to reduce overhead costs by addressing issues related to attrition, which can price call centres out of growth.

Smith explains that the general rule of thumb when replacing a call centre rep is that it’s going to cost one year’s salary. For instance, if a former call centre rep was making $30,000, it’s going to cost that much in lost revenue, new training, HR, and more just to get a new rep back to the level of the person that churned out.

“Even if you have 10 reps and lose four, that’s $120,000 a year that you’re burning on attrition,” said Smith. “If you could run a four-person call centre instead and you only have to replace one person, conversational AI just saved you $90,000.”

Operational efficiency ultimately sets the stage for a call centre to achieve long-term growth.

Take an interactive Product Tour to discover how Call Logic and Cloud PBX streamline inbound and outbound call management and enhance the incoming caller experience. Get a demo with one of our experts and build your plan today.

Customising Sales Scripts and the Customer Journey

Smith touched on how conversational AI improves efficiency as it pertains to changing the customer journey based on where a lead originated from, especially when compared to a human who may take a script down several paths when working on a lead.

In the end, it comes down to whether you want to offer a talk-to-human option for all leads at the top of the funnel or wait until you qualify them.

“For a third-party aggregator in the home services field, you may want to scrub out anybody that’s looking for repairs – if you’re a remodelling company, you don’t want to talk to somebody about repairing a couple of shingles on their roof,” said Smith. “Those leads are likely to come from a third-party aggregator and be of slightly lower quality. Mav scrubs those out and does not offer the talk-to-human option until after they’ve qualified.”

It’s these types of procedures that improve the experience for both the call centre and the consumer, particularly for the latter, since they won’t have their time wasted if they don’t qualify.

“Especially with third-party leads, you have to put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. It’s important that you make reference to the originating source,” said Black. “Bridging that gap is so important and will set you apart from all the [competitors] fighting for that consumer’s time and attention.”

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, success hinges not only on the strength of your product or service but also on the quality of partnerships you forge with affiliates and publishers.

The key to driving revenue growth and ensuring long-term success is to establish enduring partnerships.

Amber Spears – the Co-Founder of East 5th Avenue, an affiliate management education and marketing company – recently joined Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series to talk about “Growing Your Affiliate Revenue and Building Lasting Partnerships through Programme, Process & People.”

East 5th Avenue has trained over 2,500 companies and helped them generate over $530 million from their training methods. Spears has been called upon by industry giants like Kajabi, Clickbank, and Digital Marketer to create courses on partnership and affiliate marketing that are being used by companies all over the world to grow their business with her proprietary methods.

From refining account management structures to incentivising performance and fostering open communication, Spears’ insights offer a roadmap for unlocking the full potential of affiliate partnerships and driving revenue growth.

Here are the key takeaways, as shared by Spears, shedding light on the crucial elements underpinning sustainable affiliate relationships.

Watch the webinar here.

Define the Ideal Affiliate for Your Business

Spears started the informative session by imploring viewers to define which type of affiliates would be an ideal match for their business.

Spears categorised affiliates into three types.

• Traditional Affiliates: Generate leads, help attract buyers, and facilitate brand-to-brand collaborations to open up new markets, verticals, and consumers. Marketing channels used by traditional affiliates include affiliate networks, email marketing, newsletters, SEO blogs, e-books, review sites, and media buyers.
• Influencers & Creators: Subject matter experts or micro- to macro-celebrities with a big social media or podcast following (or a smaller, more engaged audience).
• Ambassadors: Regular clients and brand enthusiasts who hold a big influence over their friends, family, and peers. Ambassadors are integral to businesses with referrals and testimonials.

The key distinction among the three types is that traditional affiliates, influencers, and creators have an audience, whereas ambassadors have influence. Ambassadors are not as effective at marketing as creators and, therefore, do not command the same audience.

The 3 Pillars of Partnership Marketing

Spears continued the deep dive into the intricacies of affiliate programme success by examining three essential elements of partnership marketing – programme, people, and process.

“When I start looking at [a programme], I might say, ‘We’ve got the people and the programme, but that means we have no process, so we have no consistency,’” said Spears. “Or we have the programme and the process built out, but we don’t have a good person in the driver’s seat – they’re doing 10 other things; they’re the social media manager, the copywriter, and they’re expected to be an amazing affiliate manager. That’s not going to work.”

Spears encourages managers struggling with any of these elements to assess their programme as a whole to identify areas for improvement. This will help programme managers determine whether they’re weak in one particular area or if all three elements need overhaul.

Programme

For programmes in need of improvement, Spears recommends the following steps for success:

• Develop a high-converting sales funnel
• Implement industry-leading payouts
• Establish sales tiers for your top affiliates based on volume and payout increases
• Provide white-glove, proactive partner services for top affiliates

Being proactive with partner services provided to top affiliates is crucial, according to Spears.

“If you do not woo them, take care of them, nurture them, they will go somewhere else,” said Spears. “You are sadly replaceable for them.”

People

“You want to align yourself with people – at your level or above it – who are going to give you good credibility and have offers, products, and services you feel comfortable promoting and are a service to your community,” said Spears.

What will ultimately make your internal people successful is hiring salespeople rather than “people” people.

“You have to have somebody who likes to hunt in this position, who is motivated by money, and who can actually close business – not just somebody who is good at talking and just managing and growing your current department,” said Spears.

For Spears, it all comes down to complementing the right sales personality with adequate training.

“They need clear KPIs, a generous [compensation] structure, and they need to be good at both cold outreach and management.”

Process

Regarding the process component of partnership marketing, Spears emphasised the importance of deep vertical integration by using an example of maximising opportunities for exposure when working with an affiliate partner that promotes you once a quarter in their email newsletter.

How do you maximise these opportunities? Spears encourages affiliates to start by asking partners the following questions:

• Can we also get on your podcast?
• Can we sponsor your podcast?
• Can we do livestreams together?
• Can we do banner advertising?
• Can we do co-branded blogs?
• Can we connect on LinkedIn and support each other on the platform?
• What are things we can do to own that category in that business?

After posing these questions, programme managers must assess how they can diversify the types of affiliate partners they work with.

“If we’ve already gotten really deep into influencers and creators but haven’t touched the other types, how do we start diversifying into those new verticals? How do we expand our team?” asked Spears.

Growing a team is a critical first step for a programme manager looking to expand into new verticals. Spears urges managers to foster loyalty among their affiliates by signing them up for Mastermind classes, incentivising them with prises or gifts, or, most importantly, planning the entire year with them.

“I closed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales as an affiliate manager, and one of my secret sauces was that I planned my whole year in advance with my top affiliate partners,” said Spears. “I knew what launches they were having, I didn’t put mine on top of theirs, I knew what contests they were doing, I was sending them referrals every month, they were sending me referrals every month – we mapped out our entire year so it worked together and not on top of each other.”

Tips for Structuring a Programme That Motivates Affiliates

Spears explains that nurturing partnerships and sustaining long-term success can be achieved through a handful of steps.

• Identify the sphere of influence and potential partners to pinpoint those who already serve your target audience
• Determine the standard in your niche by monitoring the practises of rival programmes
• Establish your terms, programme structure, and assets accordingly while keeping your ideal affiliate partner in mind

Spears views the process as a journey.

“Take care of [your partners] and build loyalty instead of just giving them money. You have to go the extra mile and that’s when you really start being sought after,” said Spears.

Plugging the Holes in Your Programme

Spears also warned programme managers who focus solely on attracting new affiliates.

By neglecting their current affiliates, programme managers risk having them poached by competitors.

“Anyone doing process should be looking at this and saying, ‘What are the holes in our current programme? What would happen if our top affiliates left? How do we make sure we build a moat around them so they never want to leave?” said Spears.

“They need white-glove service … be proactive and take care of them – keep regular contact and be responsive.”

Nurturing Partnerships

The importance of building lasting partnerships cannot be overstated. In essence, the key to sustained affiliate success lies in cultivating meaningful connections, aligning incentives, and continually adapting strategies to meet the evolving needs of both affiliates and the business.

As we navigate the dynamic landscape of affiliate marketing, Spears’ insights serve as a guiding light, illuminating the path toward enduring partnerships and sustainable growth in the digital age.

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

Staying ahead of the curve is the key to sustained success in today’s ultra-competitive digital marketing sphere.

In particular, marketers striving to steer the ever-changing landscape with finesse and precision require a strategically planned roadmap for mastering the dynamic world of pay-per-lead (PPL) marketing.

Phonexa’s recent Amplify webinar, “Mastering the Dynamics of Pay Per Lead” brought together seasoned industry veterans Evan Weber (Founder, Publisher Finders), Sevada Markosyan (CEO at Zero Parallel and Profitise), and David Pickard (CEO at Phonexa UK) to dissect the latest trends and strategies in PPL marketing.

You can watch the Amplify webinar in its entirety here.

No stone was left unturned as the conversation delved into the intricacies of lead optimisation, emphasising the symbiotic relationship between publishers, advertisers, and the lead optimisation platform.

Here’s a recap of the key insights shared during the enlightening discussion.

Regulatory Changes Impacting the Pay-Per-Call Industry

Weber kicked off the conversation with a discussion on new rules adopted by the FCC designed to close a TCPA loophole that previously allowed single consent from a consumer to apply to multiple marketing partners automatically. Markosyan and Pickard continued the talk by illustrating the ripple effect these changes will have on the leadgen space moving forward.

“It will create changes within the industry – whether you’re a ping-tree model with direct post or a ping-post model, it will affect the way you gather consent and process leads,” said Markosyan. “We’re working on creating something ourselves to provide to our affiliates…we know a lot of people are looking at Zero Parallel, Profitise, and Phonexa to [create] a model that everybody can use…and help people navigate through a challenging time.”

“We’re pretty much used to regulation changes here in the UK with GDPR coming in 2018…what it gives us is a rulebook, essentially,” said Pickard. “We’re looking at this as a consultancy thing. We’re sitting down and coming up with strategies to launch something that can solve this problem.”

Lead Optimisation, CPC, CPL, and CPA

Weber highlighted the critical role of lead optimisation platforms, stressing, “It’s really important to emphasise how an actual algorithm is involved in distributing leads and how that benefits both the publishers and the advertisers on the front end driving the traffic.”

Pickard echoed this sentiment, emphasising the importance of visibility and tracking throughout the lead generation journey.

“Something that we encourage at Phonexa is visibility…from start to finish, first impression all the way through to final conversion,” said Pickard. “Essentially, the key use case for Phonexa is building an automation system to distribute those [leads]. Then, when they are distributed, and they’ve converted, automating your communications back to the media buying platforms – back to Facebook, back to Google – using all of their tips and tricks as well in terms of their automation tools.”

Pickard also emphasised the importance of first-party data for marketers to thrive in the post-cookie landscape.

“We’re encouraging people to take control of their data – use that data to influence their advertising – even if you’re just buying leads from your publishers,” said Pickard. “Feed that information back to your publishers so they know which campaigns are working and which customers are converting, and go and do more of what works. That’s Phonexa in a nutshell.”

Optimising on a Niche by Niche Scale

Markosyan underscored the importance of flexibility in lead generation models, stating, “It’s important that you have software that allows you to use whichever model you need to.”

He also highlighted Phonexa’s capability to support various payout structures within a single platform, enabling networks to cater to diverse advertiser and affiliate preferences.

“As a network, when we’re working with affiliates, we also have to be flexible [with] how we’re going to pay our affiliates – some affiliates will only work with you if you’re able to pay on a cost-per-click [basis], and some advertisers will only pay you based on a cost per acquisition,” said Markosyan.

“Phonexa allows us [to mostly] do cost-per-lead, which is the model we’re generating, and we’re paying our affiliates on earnings per lead…but we also have affiliates that we test with cost-per-click [and] cost-per-acquisition, and we have that logic built in, too. So, within one platform within the same niche and the same ping tree, we can operate all three different models and allow ourselves to be flexible to get the most volume and quality from our affiliates [while also] servicing our advertisers.”

Markosyan stressed that the right platform could efficiently handle all those payout models.

“If you’re interested in a platform that can take care of all those payout structures with the right ping-tree model and do it all within one niche, Phonexa can definitely satisfy all of that.”

Strategies for Lowering Cost-Per-Lead & Cost-Per-Acquisition

The in-depth conversation shifted toward actionable tactics for reducing costs and increasing profitability.

Affiliates strategically target consumers and optimise lead generation by focusing on specific days and times, cutting costs during off-peak periods for increased profitability. By analysing the detailed analytics networks provide, affiliates identify the most lucrative states and parameters, such as pay frequency and zip codes, to refine their targeting efforts. These tactics enable affiliates to maintain volume while reducing expenses, offering valuable insights applicable to new and existing affiliates looking to enhance cost-effectiveness in lead generation.

“A good way to do it is to collaborate with the networks that you’re working with to see what type of tools they have available to increase your click-through rate,” said Markosyan.

He also emphasised the importance of leveraging technology and data to optimise campaigns, citing Phonexa’s lookup functionality feature that allows consumers to avoid repeatedly filling out long, tedious forms.

“Consumers will be able to provide our form to our affiliate and still use it on their website, or they can use one of our offers, and the consumer can [enter] three bits of information – date of birth, social security number, and email address – and we’ll be able to do a lookup within our database to see if we have that consumer’s information already,” said Markosyan. “If we do, we can provide a verification page for the consumer to click through and verify it is the same information. Then we can process that lead without necessarily having them complete the entire application from start to finish.”

The end result, according to Markosyan, is a streamlined process that ensures a smooth customer experience and ultimately allows affiliate networks to track certain campaign metrics to ensure they allocate the right amount of funds for the best-performing campaigns.

Suggestions for New Publishers and Advertisers

The trio wrapped up the discussion by advising newcomers to the lead generation space to establish their identity and leverage existing platforms for optimal results. The key is specialisation and collaboration.

Markosyan affirmed that there are two things to consider when entering the leadgen space. The first is to determine your identity by establishing your role in the affiliate network ecosystem. Are you a publisher or an advertiser? Are you an affiliate manager?

“When you try to be everything for everybody, you end up being mediocre in all of those areas,” said Markosyan.

Markosyan encouraged new affiliates to focus on their strengths and leverage established platforms like Phonexa for streamlined operations.

“I agree…we give our clients access to all of the data and allow them to split test things and do what the numbers tell them. [By doing so] every day, you’re going to get incrementally better and incrementally closer to taking up margin or market share away from your competitors,” said Pickard. “Make sure you’re reporting on first impression all the way through to final conversion as a way of identifying each traffic type, split test it – source by source, campaign by campaign – and do more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff and you’re going to end up in a better place.”

Stay tuned for more in our ongoing Amplify webinar series, and stay connected for the latest updates.

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, the dynamics of the buyer’s journey have undergone a profound shift.

Harnessing the power of review sites has become a crucial element for businesses navigating the buyer’s journey. 

The intricacies of generating consumer demand were the subject of the recent episode of Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series, “How to Leverage Review Sites to Create and Capture Demand with G2,” featuring Michael Pannone, G2’s Director of Global Demand Generation.

Along with Amplify host and Phonexa CMO Talar Malakian, Pannone delved into the nuanced strategies for review site owners and advertisers alike.

You can watch the webinar in its entirety here.

From unravelling the secrets of leveraging buyer intent data to building a brand that resonates with both advertisers and users, the webinar left no stone unturned. The real gem, however, was the art of driving in-market buyers straight to you, achieved by skillfully leveraging authentic reviews and user-generated content. 

Understanding the Evolving Buyer’s Journey & Navigating Diversified Search Platforms

The buyer’s journey has undergone significant changes. 

Malakian and Pannone kicked off the conversation by sharing insights on how the average person needs to be exposed to a brand anywhere between 11 to 15 on average before engaging in a demo. The discussion highlighted the extended buying cycles, the involvement of more stakeholders, and the growing importance of reviews in decision-making.

“We’re seeing longer buying cycles – I know for us at G2, our buying cycle has almost doubled on average from what it was last year,” said Pannone. “There are more stakeholders now … buying committees are definitely growing, and the other [trend] that we’ve seen explode for sure in the last couple of years is the prominence and importance of reviews.”

While Google remains a dominant force in search, trends indicate a diversification in search platforms. Pannone emphasised that people don’t just rely on Google but also explore forums, communities, and social media platforms. The key takeaway is the need for marketers to expand their horizons to different types of search platforms to align with changing user behaviour.

“People are not just searching on Google. People are searching on forums, communities, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube, and they’re certainly searching for what current customers have to say,” said Pannone. “What marketers [must do] is make sure that they’re expanding their horizons to different types of search platforms because they’re growing much faster than Google has been.”

Harnessing the Power of Reviews & User-Generated Content

Reviews and user-generated content are pivotal in shaping purchasing decisions, mirroring trends seen in B2C spaces. Pannone discussed how B2B tech buying now reflects the consumer space, emphasising the importance of reviews in the decision-making process. 

“I always tell people to think about any big purchase [they’ve] made recently … [they] probably did a lot of research and read reviews on those things. Software is becoming no different,” said Pannone. “With thousands and up to millions of dollars in contracts on the line, nobody wants to be the person who made a bad call or onboarded a bad provider. So, in that way, some of the trends in the B2B tech buying space actually mirror some of the things we’ve seen happen in the B2C shopping space.”

The conversation also explored effective strategies for generating reviews, including running review campaigns, offering incentives, and strategically placing prompts.

“Make sure that you have those prompts in the right places – even if it’s in your newsletter or maybe if you ask for reviews on social media … asking for reviews as part of your communication strategy is something that really helps,” said Pannone. “And then when you get to those points where you need an extra little bump, or it’s been a while since you had reviews, using gift cards or donations to incentivise people really helps, too.”

Regarding bad reviews, Pannone suggested viewing them as a chance to showcase responsiveness and improvement. Addressing negative feedback transparently and using it to enhance products or services can turn a potentially detrimental situation into a positive one.

“There’s no such thing as a bad review … bad reviews can give you credibility and authenticity. Shoppers are more likely to believe reviews when they see a range of responses – some good, some bad, some glowing, some not so good,” said Pannone.

Optimising Intent Data for Marketing Campaigns & Monetising Reviews

Buyer intent data, generated through platforms like G2, provides valuable insights into user behaviour. Pannone shared how G2 utilises over 50 million intent data signals annually, emphasising the importance of understanding and using different intent data sources at various funnel stages. The discussion covered integrating intent data into awareness, consideration, and decision phases for effective marketing campaigns.

“We have integrations set up for people who are looking at the intent data category on G2, so every hour, we get new companies who are looking for intent data on G2,” said Pannone.

The conversation then delved into the multiple layers of leveraging review sites for marketing. 

Pannone highlighted the wealth of intent data created, emphasising its value for marketers. He discussed how G2 uses intent data signals to reach potential customers based on their activity, providing a unique opportunity for advertisers to target in-market buyers more effectively.

“There are more than 80 million people a year who come shop on G2, and I think that’s how most people think of G2 reviews and research. What demand gen marketers like you and I think about is what level of intent data is created by 80 million people shopping a year,” said Pannone. “You should have several different sources of intent data, but you have to figure out how to use them correctly at different stages of the funnel.”

Best Practises for Leveraging Reviews

Pannone concluded the conversation by sharing four golden rules for leveraging reviews as part of a winning marketing strategy. 

First, optimise your profile on review sites, treating it as an extension of your website. Second, actively gather reviews to build credibility and attract more reviews over time. Third, use reviews strategically, leveraging them as content for specific marketing goals. Finally, once your profile gains traffic, explore ways to use intent data for more targeted and cost-effective marketing campaigns.

“Once you’re generating reviews, start thinking about how you can make your reviews work for you,” said Pannone. “If you’re struggling to grow or struggling with adoption, or you want to break into a new segment or a new location, use your reviews. Leverage your reviews as content.”

Stay tuned for more in our ongoing Amplify webinar series, and stay connected for the latest updates.

To learn more about upcoming Amplify webinars, connect with Malakian on LinkedIn.