Why personalised affiliate recruitment still outperforms automation (and what the best affiliate managers do differently)

If your affiliate recruitment is generating lists but not conversations, this episode is your reset. Frederic Jean-Bart, founder of Performance Partners, has spent 17 years building relationships across every side of this industry: affiliate networks, brand-side program management, and as an affiliate himself. Lee-Ann and Fred get into why the era of AI-generated outreach is actually making human connection more valuable, not less, how deal making with high-quality affiliates is where real program growth happens, and what separates elite affiliate managers from everyone else hitting send on the same mass email.

Listen to Find Out More About:

• The exact communication gap between what affiliate managers send and what top publishers actually need to see before they say yes
• Why media buyers are among the best affiliates for scale but require a completely different recruitment and relationship strategy than any other partner type
• How AEO and brand citation are starting to change where affiliate influence happens in the customer journey, and what that means for program strategy
• Why Fred's advice to his 2009 self comes down to one word and what that means practically for anyone building a career in this industry
• The rapid fire breakdown on CPA versus revenue share, the one book Fred says every agency owner should read, and why boring operations beat exciting chaos every single time
• What trust actually looks like in practice with high-value affiliate partners, and why paying on time is as much a relationship signal as any personal outreach
  
  

Key Segments of This Podcast and Where You Can Tune In to Go Direct:

[01:51] Fred introduces his 17-year career spanning network, brand, and affiliate sides of the industry and why building Performance Partners came out of working with nine-figure e-commerce brands

[05:05] Lee-Ann shares the exact outreach emails she receives that get deleted instantly, and what three pieces of information every affiliate needs before they'll respond

[09:35] The case for getting on video calls with key partners and why the human ability to convey excitement and credibility over a call still closes deals that email cannot

[15:30] Why media buyers are the most powerful affiliate type for scale but also the most burnt out by programs that overpromise, and what building genuine trust with them requires

[17:40] Partner diversification as risk management, why brands default to influencers and coupon sites, and how Fred approaches segmentation from day one of a new program

Call to Action
A huge thank you to Frederic Jean-Bart for joining us this week. If this episode has made you rethink how you're recruiting affiliates and managing partner relationships, KonverJ works with brands at exactly this level, building programs that are built on strategy, not spray and pray. Find out how we work with brands here.

And if you want conversations like this one landing in your feed every week, subscribe to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast so you never miss an episode. Share this one with an affiliate manager you know who's still relying on volume over quality. It might be the nudge they need.

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Why tracking everything your affiliates do matters more now than ever before (and what conversion protection tells us about lost revenue)

If your affiliate program isn't tracking properly, you could be losing millions without realising it. Adam Ross, CEO of Awin and 21-year industry veteran, reveals exactly how AI-powered search is fragmenting the customer journey, why deterministic tracking alone won't survive the next five years, and how Awin's Conversion Protection Initiative has already recovered over $250 million in previously untracked revenue. Lee-Ann and Adam discuss his leadership approach, why probabilistic tracking methods are becoming essential, and what the convergence of influencer and affiliate marketing means for program growth.

Talking Points Include:

• The seismic shift happening in content attribution – how LLMs are citing publisher content to answer consumer queries, why this value currently goes unrewarded, and the new tracking signals needed to expose it
• Why different traffic deserves different tracking methods – different traffic has different value and possibly needs different tracking methods and different reward mechanisms, ending the era of treating all affiliate partnerships equally
• The conversion protection wake-up call – how forcing tracking upgrades revealed $16 million in additional commission and what this tells us about invisible program value

Listen to Find Out More About:

• Why Awin does quarterly seasonal product releases to bring meaningful improvements to advertiser and publisher experiences, with the winter release focused on simplifying what is still an incredibly complex channel to help everyone get much more value out of the space
• How the new platform aims to get smaller advertisers to money-making partnerships as quickly as possible without needing account management support, using 25 years of data to know which partnerships work, what rates to pay, and how to increase active partnerships
• Why Adam is extremely bullish about affiliate's future, noting that while this disruption is probably going to be much bigger than past changes, affiliate is a wonderful monetisation infrastructure that can be quite agnostic about how end user experiences evolve
• The exciting new influx of AI startups connecting at scale with multiple brands looking for ways to monetise, where the CPA model works very well for AI recommendations based on personalisation
• Why the convergence of influencer and affiliate marketing continues accelerating and why people will always want to buy from other people, even when using AI for research
• What it means that there's got to be an acceptance that in a lot of cases, the old ways of tracking from a technical perspective are no longer going to work, whilst deterministic tracking remains super important as the base
  
  

Key Segments of This Podcast and Where You Can Tune In to Go Direct:

[01:15] The unlikely journey from dentistry student to affiliate marketing through a recruiter who saw potential beyond experience

[18:55] Why different affiliate traffic has different value and needs different tracking methods and reward mechanisms

[27:00] How Awin's seasonal product releases bring quarterly improvements and what the winter release means for platform simplification

Call to Action

Master the tracking evolution that's reshaping affiliate marketing success. Adam's insights into probabilistic measurement, AI disruption, and conversion protection reveal exactly why upgrading your technical infrastructure isn't optional anymore. [Subscribe to the Affilia

Send me a text with your questions

If you're running an affiliate program based purely on last-click attribution, you're missing the complete picture of how customers actually buy. Phil Thompson, Partnerships Manager at fintech publisher Zilch, shares insights from their platform's 5 million UK customers to reveal shopping behaviours that challenge everything affiliate managers assume about consumer loyalty, price sensitivity, and partner value. Lee-Ann and Phil discuss why traditional cookie tracking leaves critical gaps, how to leverage first-party data without expensive integrations, and why the grocery shopper who seems loyal to one brand is simultaneously spending three times more with competitors.

Talking Points Include:

• The affiliate channel's unique negotiation problem that happens after the sale instead of before, and why payment processing data fills gaps that cookie consent leaves behind
• How Zilch's fee-free credit model converts competitor customers by offsetting the cost of interest-free installments through merchant commissions rather than charging consumers late fees or interest
• Why price-led marketing is lazy marketing and what Valentine's Day dinner-for-two campaigns teach us about emotional storytelling that actually changes consumer behavior.

Listen to Find Out More About:

• The exact moment UK consumers became willing to abandon brand loyalty for fee-free payment flexibility, and what this reveals about post-peak shopping psychology
• Why Phil refuses to position Zilch campaigns as integration-heavy when they run on standard Visa rails, and how this changes the barrier to entry for testing new publisher types
• How Intelligent Commerce tracking uses merchant ID data to close attribution gaps that cookie-based models leave wide open
• The demographic shift that took Zilch from Gen Z fintech app to cross-generational payment tool, and why cost-of-living pressures create opportunities for value-focused affiliate partnerships
• Why diversification matters more than ever when clicks still exist but shopping behavior fragments across devices, apps, and privacy-conscious browsing

Key Segments of This Podcast and Where You Can Tune In to Go Direct:

[09:05] How Intelligent Commerce works: using merchant ID and payment processing data to fill attribution gaps that traditional cookie tracking misses

[13:16] The consistent age-group patterns Zilch sees in 2025 spending data, and why everyone hunts for value right now, not just younger demographics

[22:22] Why one-month campaigns don't typically move consumer behaviour needles, and the longer timeline required to shift shopping habits permanently

[25:07] Phil's call for affiliate managers to stay open to testing and learning, even after being burned by publisher types in the past

Call to Action

The affiliate programs that thrive this year won't be the ones clinging to 2019 playbooks. They'll be the managers who embrace data partnerships, extend attribution visibility beyond cookie tracking, and recognize that publishers deliver value across the entire funnel, not just at conversion. Ready to build a program that leverages first-party shopping intelligence? Work with the KonverJ team to audit your current partner mix and identify the data gaps costing you revenue. We'll help you move beyond last-click thinking and build partnerships that capture the complete customer journey.

Send me a text with your questions