June 19, 2023 • 34 mins
Covid was a time of flux for every business. While some businesses flourished and scaled to new heights, others were landlocked (literally) by lockdowns. So how do you future proof a business, when the future is unclear?
In this inspiring episode of Flex Your Hustle, Michelle Lomas speaks to Dave Simmons, Strategic Advisor at Jucy. Jucy was founded in New Zealand in 2001 by Tim and Dan Alpe, two brothers on a mission to make traveling and adventure accessible to everyone. JUCY is a car and campervan hire business, iconic for their green vans and fun brand. But when Covid hit, the borders shut down, our doors closed to the outside world, and the devastation to the tourism industry started. And that’s where our next guest Dave Simmons comes in. The founders knew that they were in a unique situation, and needed to think fast. So Dave was brought onto the business to make sense of their current situation, drive necessary organisational change and help Jucy come through the other side. And that they did.
Flex Your Hustle is proudly brought to you by Commission Factory. If you’re tired of paying for clicks and impressions, Commission Factory is a pay-on-performance marketing platform where you pay only when tangible sales are generated, not just eyes on the page. Reach out to find out more.
Flex Your Hustle is proudly produced by the team at Ampel. Ampel is an audio content agency specialising in podcast, radio, and audio content creation. For more information, head to www.ampel.com.au or reach out to us at hearhere@ampel.com.au
Host: Michelle Lomas.
Executive Producer: Josh Butt
Head of Strategy & Development: Michelle Lomas
Audio Editor: Carter Quinn
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:01):
Commission factory.
S2 (00:05):
Hey there, hustlers. Welcome back to the show. Today's episode
is not the usual success story that we often hear
on the show. It's fair to say that for most
of our guests, their pivotal moment of growth that vaulted
them to success was during Covid. Buoyed by customer demand
and increased online spending, most brands with an e-commerce strategy
were able to ride the wave and vault them to
(00:26):
the next stage of business. But my next guest, sadly,
was the opposite. Juicy was founded in New Zealand in
2001 by Chris and Dan ALP two brothers on a
mission to make traveling and adventure accessible to everyone. Juicy
is a car and campervan hire business iconic for their fun,
green vans and very fun brand. But when Covid hit,
(00:48):
the border shut down, our doors closed to the outside
world and the devastation to the tourism industry began. And
that's where the next guest, Dave Simmons, comes in. The
founders knew that they were in a unique situation and
needed to think fast, So Dave was brought onto the
business to make sense of their current situation, drive necessary
organisational change and help Juicy come through the other side
(01:11):
and that they did listen on for their unique story
of transformation. Normally we have on the show a lot
of founders and you are not a founder, so how
about you introduce yourself and your background, where you've come
from and what you're doing at Juicy?
S3 (01:31):
Yeah. Thanks, Michel. So, yeah, you're right. I'm not a founder.
In the case of Juicy, I'm certainly an imposter. Think
I'm the gray haired guy who supposed to kind of
add a bit of maturity, perhaps to to the business.
But my background's a sort of travel and tourism largely
in various marketplaces as well as outside of that, but
(01:53):
help work with companies to help drive growth, you know,
fundamentally understanding the customer and then connecting distribution channels with
those customers. I've got involved with Juicy nearly three years
ago is that the business has had some challenges as
weed has had Covid has many, many tourism businesses and
(02:14):
got involved with some investors who put money in and
had the opportunity to join this really super iconic tourism
brand to help support a growth strategy or recovery and
then growth strategy coming out of the back of Covid.
S2 (02:27):
Let's talk about recovery. We've had a lot of brands
on the show, a lot of retailers who, you know,
stepped into Covid, like everybody a little bit unsure, stepped
out really, really well. E-retailers. ET cetera. We're going to
be interviewing a couch company soon who absolutely killed it
during Covid because everybody just wanted their comfy couches because
what else are they doing? Right? But you're in the
(02:49):
travel industry and it really hurt. That's when you joined
to help with the recovery, What was going on at
the time? Yeah.
S3 (02:56):
So let me give you a bit of context for it.
Michel Juices, 21 years old. You know, the two brothers
who founded the business, done an amazing job building a
really strong, iconic brand. The business had been through growth
year and year out, which enabled them to get involved
in all sorts of new innovation, had expanded the business
and to America we were juicy, was involved in accommodation,
(03:18):
had a cruise operation, so the brand had really grown
and massively and the momentum of growth had enabled them
to get involved in all sorts of things. Covid came
along and literally overnight the business came to a standstill. 95%
of the business is international and cash flow stopped and
that created some challenges. So it certainly put a huge
(03:40):
weight on the business, let's say, and it was super,
super painful. Lots of great people had to be let
go from the business. Huge amounts of uncertainty in terms
of what they would look like. And ultimately it needed
to be recapitalized to drive growth out. What it provided
was a really interesting opportunity to to actually take a
fresh look at how we wanted to grow back. As
(04:02):
with any growth story, often you kind of keep saying
yes to things and you're not necessarily focused on process
and you just kind of layer more people and to
manage different processes and whilst it's growing and the businesses
make money, it actually doesn't matter that much. And it's
only when things stopped that actually a lot of that
inefficiency and I guess yeah, an efficiency both from a
(04:24):
process perspective and from a cost of distribution perspective starts
getting exposed. And so Covid really gave the business the
opportunity to take a step back and go, how do
we want to drive the business moving forward? And let's
use this opportunity to reshape the platform to position ourselves
for really sustainable, profitable growth as we come out the
(04:45):
other side. And what that involves is a number of
things that started we started looking at how what our
product is and how we distribute the product, how we
price the product particularly. And pre-COVID, we had nine different
price structures in place to cater for different channels and
different markets, etcetera, etcetera. We said, Listen, let's start by
simplifying this. And so we simplified it right down to
(05:06):
one price point. We said, let's brace technology and drive
dynamic pricing. And that meant that actually for a lot
of our distribution partners, our traditional distribution partners in Europe,
they weren't able to work with us on that basis
because they didn't have the ability to integrate our technology.
They didn't have the ability to embrace dynamic pricing, but
(05:26):
with the strength of the juicy brand, we said, Let's
do it anyway, because actually fundamentally let's back ourselves that
we can drive direct business if need be and work
to drive that alongside the trade business. And let's kind
of focus on that simplification and the efficiency. And so
then brought our focus back to going, okay, that's cool.
How do we then drive that growth on the direct
(05:48):
business and how do we do it in a really
cost effective, targeted way, which created the opportunity for us
to look at affiliate marketing.
S2 (05:55):
It's a real measure of a business. I think how
they work through a time like that, isn't it? You know,
it's all great when things are going successfully and you've
got great success globally, but when the chips are down
and there's no end in sight, I mean, Covid really,
there was no end in sight. Travel restrictions really hurt.
It's real testament that you guys have come out the
other side with kind of this kind of revamped product
(06:16):
and I guess new look and feel a new way
of working. What was some of the things that you
implemented during that time that were maybe a little novel?
You know, maybe the team were like, wait, what? What tech.
How's that going to work? Like, I know there's quite
a few, right? You really had that time to sort
of think about the things that you could experiment on
and try.
S3 (06:34):
Yeah, and listen, I can't stress enough how painful it
was as a business people. It was a long time.
Like we can look back now and it kind of
feels like it all went by in a flash. But
when you're in the middle of it and you didn't
know when the end was, it was really tough for
people that had been in the business for a long
time to remain motivated and kind of to see what
a long term could look like. But to your point,
like juices are really and it's always been built on innovation.
(06:56):
It's always been built on energy and entrepreneurial spirit. And
we were able to kind of harness that a little
bit and kind of challenge ourselves to go, What do
things look like? You know, as one example, probably the
biggest single change was this idea of embracing technology for distribution.
And that might sound like an obvious thing, but actually
in the travel industry, technology through distribution channels has been
(07:16):
pretty clunky for a very long time, almost 100% of
our bookings that were sold through trade partners were touched
by humans at some point in time, travel partners in
Denmark or Germany, they would see our product on on
a on a website on one of our websites. They'd
see a rate that email us overnight and to to
(07:37):
the call center and say, guys, can we make this
booking for these dates? At this rate, someone in our
call center would email them back and go, Actually, that
vehicle's not available on those dates. Can you can do
these days.
S2 (07:48):
It sounds so inefficient. Yeah.
S3 (07:50):
And this is only three years ago, right? And this
was not juicy. It was across the industry.
S2 (07:55):
I thought that the industry must be far more advanced
than that and centralized booking systems and still pretty clunky.
S3 (08:01):
And so what we said is, listen, we're going to
go first and foremost, we're going to move you're going
to work with distribution partners that are willing to integrate
the API and book on either online through our online
booking engine that we've developed for trade agents all through
the API. And we went from having 100% of our
bookings being booked offline through trade partners to 97% of
(08:23):
our bookings are now being booked through the API, which
is seismic. From an efficiency perspective. We're back doing similar
sorts of volumes that we were doing pre-COVID, but with
about a third of the staff within a head office environment.
And actually it's a far better experience for our trade partners.
It's a far better experience for their customers and everyone's winning.
So that's been huge. And we did that with really
(08:46):
limited development resource within head office, but just really good,
innovative sort of New Zealand. We have the same sort
of number eight wire mentality. It's like let's just get
it fixed and get it sorted. And we had a
couple of guys who just rolled their sleeves up and
worked really hard to ensure that that technology platform was
fit for purpose and could meet the needs of those
(09:06):
travel partners and market that had embraced more of a
digital kind of distribution ideology, let's say.
S2 (09:11):
So smart. What were some of the things you did
away with apart from the clunky booking system? You know,
was there a moment where you went, You know what? Well,
obviously you're looking at the whole business and going, this
is our time, this is our chance. So what else
was there that you kind of went, this has got
to go.
S3 (09:27):
Probably the biggest thing in there, Michelle, was was the
differential rate structures having lots of different rates, going to
different travel agents and to different markets. We'd have a
you know, you might have that vehicle behind me there.
For example, our GC chaser. You know, that product would
be one price in Germany at one time of the year.
It'd be a different price in Australia, would be a
different price on our website. It would be a different
(09:48):
price whether you booked through a wholesaler in Germany versus
a travel agent in Australia. So there's a huge amount
of complexity that had been built up over time. And
probably the biggest single thing we did was just rip
that all up and say we're going to have one rate.
It's a dynamic rate. If we've got it on our website,
you can have it as a trade partner through your website,
but you have to book it online. So those two
(10:09):
key things were really fundamental around simplifying the rate structure
and then really driving this idea of of digital first
and first. And that's really been a big game changer
for us for sure.
S2 (10:21):
That simplification changes so much in terms of resourcing of
structure and the simplification, I should say, for customers as well.
S3 (10:27):
Right, Without doubt. And probably one of the biggest challenges
is we went through that. Michelle is a having confidence
in the brand and the strategy, but also having the
discipline to say no. And that's super, super hard in
any growth environment. But you know, like we had a
lot of old historical partners who came to us and said,
You're only kidding about this kind of thing, aren't you?
(10:48):
You are going to enable us to book offline again.
It's like, Nope. And they'll go, You'll change your mind, surely, right? Nope.
And so saying no was really hard, you know, because
some of these these partners had been giving us big
seven figure sums of business pre-COVID, and we were like going, No,
it's not how we want to build back. So having
(11:10):
that confidence and the strategy and the real kind of
belief that it had the ability to deliver for us
then gave us a confidence and discipline to say no. So.
That was probably for me the really and getting the
I had 100% confidence we could deliver it, getting confidence
around the business to kind of join us on that journey.
That was an interesting kind of exercise. But yeah, to
(11:31):
the point where in Berlin last week we were sitting
down with some very, very large distribution channels, let's say,
Who were some of these guys saying, You'll change your mind?
And they now know that we're not. And kind of
we're now actually saying to them, it's you guys that
now need to change. And if you don't, then you're
probably staring at another Kodak moment, perhaps.
S2 (11:51):
Yes.
S3 (11:52):
Yeah. So kind of a lot of fun in that regard.
S2 (11:57):
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(13:00):
are simply enabled. I have to dig in. You said
that the kind of internal education and getting people on
board was challenging. I have no doubt organizational change, whether
you're moving to a data driven organization, a tech driven
organization from one that feels a little bit more, dare
(13:21):
I say, analog can be challenging. There's people who don't
get it, don't understand it, can't see the value. People
get scared that they might lose their jobs. And in
this case, maybe some people did. What was that like
and how is it today?
S3 (13:35):
Yeah, really interesting question, Michel. And this was a really
unusual situation because, I mean, when I came into the business,
it almost being like a nuclear bomb had been dropped
on it. You know, a lot of people had been
made redundant. Premier over there were people in the organization
that didn't have any reporting lines because their boss had
been made or had done and their boss's boss had
(13:55):
been promoted. So there was an element of shell shock,
to be honest. Yeah, but again, there was this real
kind of commitment to want to bring the business back stronger.
And whilst there wasn't any international trade, it was really
easy to make these changes and and get alignment about it.
Everyone wanted internally to work simply because we didn't have
the people to actually do some of the clunky processes.
(14:18):
Actually simplifying the processes was almost a matter of need
to fit in with the amount of limited resource. And
because business wasn't coming back strongly, we couldn't bring back
people anyway. So there was a natural constraint that enabled
us to embed that change. I think there was probably
always a question mark around whether we could hold that line.
As Borders reopened and we started looking to reach out
(14:40):
to our international partners and say no to some of
those guys. But what I think we'd seen in the
meantime was a real growth from some of our more
digital orientated partners who had filled the gap anyway that
had been left by sort of the bigger analogue partners,
to use your phrase. And we'd also had huge success
in growing our direct business in a really cost effective
(15:01):
and controlled way, which had also given us that confidence.
If you like, to stay focused on the road ahead.
S2 (15:08):
Yeah, it's like simplicity for necessities sake. And so, you know,
if there's no other option and this is how you
have to operate moving forward, I guess it does make
it a lot easier.
S3 (15:17):
It was the ultimate burning platform, like it's in many ways,
so it was far easier to drive change with those
circumstances versus a large established business that's going well and
trying to kind of drive change within that. Certainly a lot.
S2 (15:30):
Harder. Glad to hear you guys are doing well today.
And obviously you pulled through that period. A lot of
other travel companies obviously didn't. So real testament to you
guys just knuckling down and like, okay, how do we
just do this? How do we figure this out? You've
obviously made a lot of changes from a booking perspective,
from a customer experience perspective, but I know a really
big thing that you brought into the business as well
(15:50):
was affiliate marketing and in general performance marketing and how
do we get smarter about the dollars that we're using?
I know this is your passion place, so I wanted
to get the business conversation down first. And now let's
talk about performance marketing side.
S3 (16:03):
Without doubt, affiliate marketing has been a huge part of
our sort of recovery strategy. My journey with affiliate marketing
goes back probably 25 years in the UK, and some
of those early affiliate platforms started kind of coming into
the travel market and they were very, very quickly embraced.
And obviously in the northern hemisphere, in those markets you've
got big scale. I then moved back to New Zealand ten,
(16:24):
15 years ago I guess, and was involved with a
national carrier based in New Zealand, let's say. At that
time we started looking at exploring affiliate marketing, but they
just wasn't frankly, they weren't in really any sort of
maturity or scale in the market in this part of
the world. And I'd lost touch with a little bit
when I joined Jucy with just started having conversations with
(16:46):
Commission Factory at that point in time and it was like,
Holy smoke, this is great. There is now a matured
kind of environment that we can grab hold of. And
so we embraced it with a view of really treating
it as a distribution channel as opposed to a marketing channel.
You know, the thing I love about affiliate marketing is it's,
you know, for us in the travel sector, it's a
(17:06):
straight commission based model which is very consistent with our
traditional trade channels, let's say. And when you start treating
affiliate in that way and that same sort of mindset,
then it sort of just it's an open ended kind
of pathway. And so that's how we kind of embedded it.
We brought it into the business initially in December 2020,
(17:27):
I think it was, and it was a big learning curve.
It was a really steep learning curve in terms of going, okay,
so we've got it in here. How do we now
optimize it? To that point, we actually brought in some
external support, a dedicated agency based stateside actually that we'd
happen to run across who were really awesome in terms
of helping us accelerate our growth. You know, real quick,
(17:49):
kind of embedding it, I guess, the whole kind of
strategy of affiliate into the business on our side as
well as helping to leverage into wider networks. But again,
it took us six months to start really getting some momentum.
As you'd expect, I guess, with any kind of program.
But then as soon as we'd started getting a couple
of things in place, it really took off and the
(18:11):
ability for us to treat it as a cost of
sale and embed it as a cost of sale above
the line, if you like, just changed the mindset forever.
And it took a little while to get the finance
guys to understand that it was okay to put this
marketing thing, you know, through an above a line cost
of sale and to treat it in the same way
we'd treat a travel agent. And then once we got
(18:33):
that in place and we haven't looked back and it's
now without doubt our single largest source of traffic from
a business turnover from a distribution channel perspective.
S2 (18:43):
You just said something so interesting there that, you know,
I sometimes raise this with different business owners and they
they never think of affiliate as a cost of sale.
They always sort of think about it in their marketing mix.
And yes, it operates in a very similar way of marketing.
You know, there's messaging, there's brand, there's sort of like
(19:05):
your positioning, etcetera, partnership, but it's only coming off your
bottom line. So it is a cost of goods sold
and therefore should be treated differently in a different budget.
How did you do that? So for the people listening,
if they have to go through that same conversation with
their finance team, what's the trick?
S3 (19:24):
Apart from bullying the finance people to kind of just
do it? The listen, I think it's just understanding the model, right,
in terms of, you know, for us, it's a straight
commission based model. There's a very ality sort of variable
component to it, obviously based upon the various publishing platforms
that we hook into. But fundamentally, it's a straight commission
that you can forecast on a fairly accurate basis on
(19:46):
a monthly play in terms of what that percentage is
going to be. So, so long as you can have
real confidence about the attribution, which clearly, you know, platforms
like Commission Factory enable you to get really, really tight
on attribution anyway, then then say, Hey, listen, here's a
direct cost of variable cost associated with this transaction. Therefore
(20:07):
it's highly justifiable to put it above the line in
that cost of sale. It's it's, it's a no brainer conversation. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And,
you know, without any shadow of a doubt at all,
you know, if you treat it as a marketing expense,
you're probably only going to get 20, 30% of the
value out of affiliate activity. There's no question in my
mind if we treated this like an affiliate as a
(20:28):
marketing cost and go this month we're going to spend
$5,000 on it, why would we cap it if we're
still selling? Like, Yeah. And so we wouldn't do it
with a travel agent, you know, or an online travel agent.
If they're selling and we're paying them more commission, we're going, Hey, fantastic.
These guys have had a record month and we've paid
them more money. Embrace the same thought process for affiliate.
Treat it like a distribution channel and celebrate when revenue
(20:52):
is coming in and if that means you're paying a
little bit more, great. But it's it's a whole lot
more cost effective than a lot of other performance marketing
environments where there's a lot more variability and you're less
control over that cost of sale.
S2 (21:05):
And to your point as well, like you said, it
does take time. You know, there's a there's learning that
is involved with, you know, affiliate marketing. And if you
do cap it, you sort of say, oh, I'll only
I'll only dip my toe in the water every month
with like, you know, a certain small budget, you're not
really you're limiting yourself really. You're not allowing yourself to
test and learn and try new things 100%.
S3 (21:25):
And there's no downside in testing, right? There's not like
there's a heavy fixed costs associated with putting in a
new program and it's all a variable cost. So there's
no downside of having it uncapped because you're only going
to pay more if you've got more revenue coming through. Yeah,
I would love to have a conversation with the CFO
if if they said no to that. In terms of, yeah,
(21:48):
we want to grow the business and drive sales here
or not.
S2 (21:52):
Well, it could be, to your point, maybe a lack
of understanding of just how far and wide affiliate marketing goes.
And you mentioned something earlier which was so, so healthy
and so smart in terms of, you know, it's just
a channel with untapped ability and you need to think
of it more like, you know, the transactional aspect rather
than the things that go in and the things that
people constantly think of first when they think of affiliate
(22:14):
marketing like influencer marketing or rewards or cashback. So why
don't you tell us a little bit about some of
the areas in which you're leveraging affiliate marketing, because I
know you guys really have sort of tapped that for,
you know, all the great resources and tech that you can.
S3 (22:28):
Yeah, and it's still a journey of discovery. I kind
of keep being amazed. You know, I like to think
I know a little bit about the environment, but keep
getting amazed at sort of new partners that come to
the surface that keep bringing new things to the table.
So I mean, we start in a very traditional sense,
I guess, in terms of looking at platforms that could
deliver eyeballs that were aligned with our kind of notion
(22:51):
of kind of our target customer. And there was certainly
a pile of environments, platforms that we partnered with. None
of us actually knew who they were, but we were
recommended to do it. And sure enough, they started driving volume.
And us and you go, Hey, that's cool. And subsequently
learnt more about it. So in the first instance used
in a very traditional sense and then as we started
kind of exploring further opportunities and again working really closely
(23:15):
in partnership with our advisory guys, they started actually bringing
other ideas to the table around sort of onsite optimization technology,
and that was just a massive eye opener for me.
I'd never really thought about technology solutions being delivered through
an affiliate framework and it was just a massive, massive
sort of light bulb moment where we went, you know what,
(23:37):
there's a pile of things in here that we'd love
to trial, but we just don't have the bandwidth within
our technology environment or indeed traditional SAS models where you'd
pay a subscription fee to get access to some of
that technology. And as a result, we hadn't been doing them.
And then we started discovering these things through the affiliate
environment chat bot being a really interesting one. You know,
we had a traditional kind of SAS based live chat
(23:58):
model on the site and that particular technology provider was
trying to upsell us to sort of additional functionality on that.
And then we discovered, you know, a solution through commission
factory that said, Hey, listen, we'll develop a chatbot for
you and be focused purely on helping you drive sales
and we'll pay you a commission of sales charge. Your
(24:20):
commission based upon sales, generated off the chat bot as
the last point of contact on the on the on
site journey. And it was almost like there was nothing
to lose. In fact, there wasn't anything to lose. So
we went, yeah, let's give it a go. And it
just took off. And this is an environment, this is
a time when we had really limited cash flows. You know,
borders were still closed. We didn't have a lot of
(24:40):
resource internally. And, you know, within the space of about
three months, this chat bot that we put onto the
site became a massive contributor of revenue and it was
something that we'd never have been able to do if
we were looking at it through a traditional lens of,
you know, let's go and do an evaluation of different
platforms and let's or develop tools internally and let's justify
(25:01):
a monthly budget or whatever to support a chat bot.
This just changed the whole game in terms of it's like, well,
there is no downside. The partner is going to do
the set up and we can learn and so much
so it was such it was a massive, massive success
for us within a fairly short space of time. And
then there were other sort of tools like on site
(25:21):
optimization where again, if we had more bandwidth within the
dev team, we might have done some of the things internally.
But there were bigger issues that we had to have
the limited tech resource that we had internally we needed
to have them focused on. So the ability to bring
site exit carts and a number of other little triggers
that we were able to play with to drive optimization
(25:42):
on site was just awesome. Like, and again, we gathered
heaps of learnings from from that. You know, as we've
worked with more of these partners, they've begun been able
to bring more things to the table as well. So
we've used it both in terms of bringing traffic into
the business as well as helping us to optimize the
traffic that we get onto the platform. And again, all
the while on a variable cost basis, it's been a
(26:05):
it's a super exciting environment to be involved with.
S2 (26:08):
Incredible to hear just how one relationship as well can
sort of really stretch the gamut of your business. It's
not just about marketing and the pool of customers. It's
about that conversion as well. And there's so many tools
and technology out there that, you know, these these affiliate
marketing companies like Commission Factory work with that can really
help accelerate that conversion because that's what they focused on.
(26:28):
They focused on sales, they focused on conversion, like how
do we get these customers in? How do we convert?
That's the only way that the businesses make money. So
it makes sense to be leaning into that, you know,
and just going, Well, let's try it. There's no real risk.
You know, there's probably a bit of work involved. But also,
like if it doesn't work, we can try something else.
But you know, these guys, if they're so focused on
(26:49):
making those conversions happen because that's their remuneration model, it
makes sense because you're all in the game together, right?
S3 (26:55):
Without doubt. And and I think there's a real internal
benefit or cultural kind of benefit from embedding that affiliate
kind of thinking, if you like. And again, it cost
of sale thinking to the business is no doubt that
people within the juicy team have benefited enormously from engaging
with some of the various partners that we've brought on
and the real sharpness that they've brought around conversion and optimization,
(27:17):
which because that's what they live and breathe and their
their whole revenue models are based upon that. There's a
real sharpness to the thinking that you don't often get,
let's say, from internal teams. So that exposure to those
sort of engagements is definitely helped kind of bring a
real edge to other work that we do across the business,
(27:37):
particularly in other performance marketing areas, bringing a real sharpness
and edge to how we critique what we're doing and
paid search or SEO or social, for example. That's definitely
flowed back from what we've been doing in the affiliate space,
no question about that.
S2 (27:52):
From an affiliate marketing perspective, how does that fit into
your marketing teams or your agency structures? How does it
all work even from a reporting perspective?
S3 (28:02):
So it's really, really tough one to. Honest, Michelle, because
there's just not people in the market who understand affiliate marketing. Yeah,
we've had some really good internal research that's been really
keen to learn and they did a great job. You know,
I think we've supported them really well. They've been out
to various conferences internationally and affiliate conferences to learn more
about opportunities, etcetera, etcetera. So we've been through a bit
(28:25):
of an upskilling process internally. Our existing marketing agencies, again,
they've been learning from what we've been.
S2 (28:32):
Doing, love that.
S3 (28:34):
We actually found some specialist resource based out of the
US that worked, has worked with us for the last
two and a half years and have become a really
tight strategic partner to help us optimize and to accelerate
those learnings fundamentally in the affiliate space. So that was
certainly probably a big reminder or a learning, if you like,
(28:56):
for me was going actually the maturity of affiliate marketing
in this part of the world, certainly in New Zealand,
probably a little further ahead in Australia, we just don't
have the capability and the knowledge. And so as a result,
those sort of conversations about positioning it as cost of
sale versus marketing budget, there's not the maturity and the
confidence to actually understand what those conversations look like and
(29:16):
the potential of it. Yeah, it's something that we're kind
of confronting at the moment in terms of if we
want to continue to kind of really ramp this up
to another level, how do we actually get resource internally
to help drive that further? And do we need to
look offshore to recruit people with that specialist knowledge because
there's not a big market of of affiliate marketers in
New Zealand looking for jobs at the moment. It'd be
(29:36):
fair to say.
S2 (29:37):
I worked in the States for a while and their
affiliate marketing, like you said, is much more mature over there.
I was working in a digital performance marketing agency and
it was always part of the mix. There was a
separate team, you know, there was, without a doubt, no
question that affiliate marketing was part of our brand success story.
Where I do think here there's maybe still trepidation or
(29:58):
just think people are unclear and what they don't quite understand,
they're hesitant to sort of step into or they step
into the things that are familiar coupons and things like that, which,
you know, there's so much more to affiliate marketing and
so much more to be leveraged. So we need young
people getting excited about it so they start becoming the
experts and leading the next generation of really smart marketing
(30:19):
leaders to to really embrace it, because every business needs
to grow. And if you're only paying on a sale,
it's just a no brainer.
S3 (30:27):
Honestly, couldn't agree more. Michelle And if you talk to
marketing managers, everyone knows the phrase affiliate marketing, but if
you then scratch behind that and go, So talk me
through some of the various platforms and the opportunities you
get these blank looks on your face like.
S4 (30:43):
Oh yeah, maybe, maybe not.
S3 (30:46):
That is without doubt the biggest challenge and the biggest
opportunity for for affiliate marketing platforms like Commission Factory to
actually build an awareness and an understanding of the opportunity.
And it's got to start kind of with the young
marketers coming through and making it part of the normal
kind of conversation.
S2 (31:03):
Certainly I like that thinking that you say around thinking
about it in the context of how it's run, how
it's measured from a colleague's perspective, really thinking about it
more as the platform itself and not, you know, all
the different places we can be in, not influencer marketing,
not publisher marketing, etcetera, but just thinking about it as
a new way of running business and what are all
(31:24):
the things within our business, be it our customer experience,
our website where affiliate marketing can really impact the business.
So it's a refreshing way of looking at it and
definitely something I think that most businesses need to be
looking at in the future.
S3 (31:37):
The one thing you got to promise me is that
you don't share this with any of our competitors because
I'd hate for them to learn the secret of.
S5 (31:42):
How awesome.
S3 (31:43):
Affiliate marketing is.
S2 (31:45):
It's in the can. It's free. We're going to send
it everywhere. No, I mean, look.
S5 (31:50):
They probably.
S2 (31:50):
Will listen. Will they have the speed and the tenacity
like you guys did? You know, you obviously really knuckled
down and you really embrace change. And it doesn't matter
how many good ideas you have on the table, it's
the mindset. Right? I'm really happy to hear you guys
are doing well. And what a tremendous change and a
tremendous story.
S3 (32:08):
We're really, really, I guess, in a privileged position to
have such a strong, iconic brand. Juice is such a strong,
iconic brand and camper van space. So the ability to
leverage that and particularly with the audience that it reaches
and connects into, it's certainly given us a really strong
platform to deliver good outcomes in the space for sure.
S2 (32:29):
All I have to say is the green van and
everyone should get a visual in their head of, Oh,
I know those guys, The green van guys. Yes, they're
the green van guys. So yeah, very iconic brand. I'm
going to plan my New Zealand road trip soon and
it's going to be juicy or nothing because there's no
way I can get shots of my car that I hire.
And it's, you know, with beautiful New Zealand backdrop and
(32:51):
not have a juicy van. It's just iconic.
S3 (32:53):
That would be absolute disgrace. Michelle But I know someone
who can probably help you.
S2 (32:58):
How is the business going today?
S3 (32:59):
It's been amazing. We've had a huge summer season. We've
welcomed back. Your thousands of international guests into Australia and
New Zealand. We've had record months in terms of trading.
Even from October, November, we were experiencing kind of record
sales and pick ups and certainly created some challenges for
our operational guys. No doubt about that. Kept them on
(33:22):
their toes. But it's just neat to be in a
position where we can welcome international visitors back and and
enable them to explore all things that are awesome about
Australia and New Zealand. So businesses are really, really good
shape at the moment and you've got a great platform
now to continue to drive robust, sustainable, profitable growth as
we move forward.
S2 (33:42):
I'm really, really happy to hear it. Onwards and upwards
to great tourism season next year as well.
S5 (33:48):
Absolutely. Dave.
S2 (33:49):
Thank you so much. Appreciate your openness and sharing all
that great info and inspiration.
S3 (33:54):
Great to have the opportunity to chat with you, Michelle,
and anything to help spread the word of the joys
of affiliate marketing.
S2 (34:02):
We have another exciting episode coming up. Here's a sneak peek.
S6 (34:06):
We're really fortunate that we've got two people who can
understand the commercial side of the business. Obviously translate that
into our performance media. And then quite frankly, the rarest
part of that skill set and the one that both
of them have is being able to communicate that back
to the non digital marketers within the business.
S2 (34:22):
If you aren't already, don't forget to follow so you
don't miss a net. And while you're there, why not
drop us a rating and review? We'd love to hear
what you think. Flex Your hustle is made possible by
the great team at Commission Factory and produced by Ampol.
I'm Michelle Lomas. Keep hustling and bye for now.
S1 (34:41):
Commission factory.
S7 (34:45):
Ample. Hehe.
S8 (34:47):
This thing on? Yeah, that one. Don't have to.
Commission factory.
S2 (00:05):
Hey there, hustlers. Welcome back to the show. Today's episode
is not the usual success story that we often hear
on the show. It's fair to say that for most
of our guests, their pivotal moment of growth that vaulted
them to success was during Covid. Buoyed by customer demand
and increased online spending, most brands with an e-commerce strategy
were able to ride the wave and vault them to
(00:26):
the next stage of business. But my next guest, sadly,
was the opposite. Juicy was founded in New Zealand in
2001 by Chris and Dan ALP two brothers on a
mission to make traveling and adventure accessible to everyone. Juicy
is a car and campervan hire business iconic for their fun,
green vans and very fun brand. But when Covid hit,
(00:48):
the border shut down, our doors closed to the outside
world and the devastation to the tourism industry began. And
that's where the next guest, Dave Simmons, comes in. The
founders knew that they were in a unique situation and
needed to think fast, So Dave was brought onto the
business to make sense of their current situation, drive necessary
organisational change and help Juicy come through the other side
(01:11):
and that they did listen on for their unique story
of transformation. Normally we have on the show a lot
of founders and you are not a founder, so how
about you introduce yourself and your background, where you've come
from and what you're doing at Juicy?
S3 (01:31):
Yeah. Thanks, Michel. So, yeah, you're right. I'm not a founder.
In the case of Juicy, I'm certainly an imposter. Think
I'm the gray haired guy who supposed to kind of
add a bit of maturity, perhaps to to the business.
But my background's a sort of travel and tourism largely
in various marketplaces as well as outside of that, but
(01:53):
help work with companies to help drive growth, you know,
fundamentally understanding the customer and then connecting distribution channels with
those customers. I've got involved with Juicy nearly three years
ago is that the business has had some challenges as
weed has had Covid has many, many tourism businesses and
(02:14):
got involved with some investors who put money in and
had the opportunity to join this really super iconic tourism
brand to help support a growth strategy or recovery and
then growth strategy coming out of the back of Covid.
S2 (02:27):
Let's talk about recovery. We've had a lot of brands
on the show, a lot of retailers who, you know,
stepped into Covid, like everybody a little bit unsure, stepped
out really, really well. E-retailers. ET cetera. We're going to
be interviewing a couch company soon who absolutely killed it
during Covid because everybody just wanted their comfy couches because
what else are they doing? Right? But you're in the
(02:49):
travel industry and it really hurt. That's when you joined
to help with the recovery, What was going on at
the time? Yeah.
S3 (02:56):
So let me give you a bit of context for it.
Michel Juices, 21 years old. You know, the two brothers
who founded the business, done an amazing job building a
really strong, iconic brand. The business had been through growth
year and year out, which enabled them to get involved
in all sorts of new innovation, had expanded the business
and to America we were juicy, was involved in accommodation,
(03:18):
had a cruise operation, so the brand had really grown
and massively and the momentum of growth had enabled them
to get involved in all sorts of things. Covid came
along and literally overnight the business came to a standstill. 95%
of the business is international and cash flow stopped and
that created some challenges. So it certainly put a huge
(03:40):
weight on the business, let's say, and it was super,
super painful. Lots of great people had to be let
go from the business. Huge amounts of uncertainty in terms
of what they would look like. And ultimately it needed
to be recapitalized to drive growth out. What it provided
was a really interesting opportunity to to actually take a
fresh look at how we wanted to grow back. As
(04:02):
with any growth story, often you kind of keep saying
yes to things and you're not necessarily focused on process
and you just kind of layer more people and to
manage different processes and whilst it's growing and the businesses
make money, it actually doesn't matter that much. And it's
only when things stopped that actually a lot of that
inefficiency and I guess yeah, an efficiency both from a
(04:24):
process perspective and from a cost of distribution perspective starts
getting exposed. And so Covid really gave the business the
opportunity to take a step back and go, how do
we want to drive the business moving forward? And let's
use this opportunity to reshape the platform to position ourselves
for really sustainable, profitable growth as we come out the
(04:45):
other side. And what that involves is a number of
things that started we started looking at how what our
product is and how we distribute the product, how we
price the product particularly. And pre-COVID, we had nine different
price structures in place to cater for different channels and
different markets, etcetera, etcetera. We said, Listen, let's start by
simplifying this. And so we simplified it right down to
(05:06):
one price point. We said, let's brace technology and drive
dynamic pricing. And that meant that actually for a lot
of our distribution partners, our traditional distribution partners in Europe,
they weren't able to work with us on that basis
because they didn't have the ability to integrate our technology.
They didn't have the ability to embrace dynamic pricing, but
(05:26):
with the strength of the juicy brand, we said, Let's
do it anyway, because actually fundamentally let's back ourselves that
we can drive direct business if need be and work
to drive that alongside the trade business. And let's kind
of focus on that simplification and the efficiency. And so
then brought our focus back to going, okay, that's cool.
How do we then drive that growth on the direct
(05:48):
business and how do we do it in a really
cost effective, targeted way, which created the opportunity for us
to look at affiliate marketing.
S2 (05:55):
It's a real measure of a business. I think how
they work through a time like that, isn't it? You know,
it's all great when things are going successfully and you've
got great success globally, but when the chips are down
and there's no end in sight, I mean, Covid really,
there was no end in sight. Travel restrictions really hurt.
It's real testament that you guys have come out the
other side with kind of this kind of revamped product
(06:16):
and I guess new look and feel a new way
of working. What was some of the things that you
implemented during that time that were maybe a little novel?
You know, maybe the team were like, wait, what? What tech.
How's that going to work? Like, I know there's quite
a few, right? You really had that time to sort
of think about the things that you could experiment on
and try.
S3 (06:34):
Yeah, and listen, I can't stress enough how painful it
was as a business people. It was a long time.
Like we can look back now and it kind of
feels like it all went by in a flash. But
when you're in the middle of it and you didn't
know when the end was, it was really tough for
people that had been in the business for a long
time to remain motivated and kind of to see what
a long term could look like. But to your point,
like juices are really and it's always been built on innovation.
(06:56):
It's always been built on energy and entrepreneurial spirit. And
we were able to kind of harness that a little
bit and kind of challenge ourselves to go, What do
things look like? You know, as one example, probably the
biggest single change was this idea of embracing technology for distribution.
And that might sound like an obvious thing, but actually
in the travel industry, technology through distribution channels has been
(07:16):
pretty clunky for a very long time, almost 100% of
our bookings that were sold through trade partners were touched
by humans at some point in time, travel partners in
Denmark or Germany, they would see our product on on
a on a website on one of our websites. They'd
see a rate that email us overnight and to to
(07:37):
the call center and say, guys, can we make this
booking for these dates? At this rate, someone in our
call center would email them back and go, Actually, that
vehicle's not available on those dates. Can you can do
these days.
S2 (07:48):
It sounds so inefficient. Yeah.
S3 (07:50):
And this is only three years ago, right? And this
was not juicy. It was across the industry.
S2 (07:55):
I thought that the industry must be far more advanced
than that and centralized booking systems and still pretty clunky.
S3 (08:01):
And so what we said is, listen, we're going to
go first and foremost, we're going to move you're going
to work with distribution partners that are willing to integrate
the API and book on either online through our online
booking engine that we've developed for trade agents all through
the API. And we went from having 100% of our
bookings being booked offline through trade partners to 97% of
(08:23):
our bookings are now being booked through the API, which
is seismic. From an efficiency perspective. We're back doing similar
sorts of volumes that we were doing pre-COVID, but with
about a third of the staff within a head office environment.
And actually it's a far better experience for our trade partners.
It's a far better experience for their customers and everyone's winning.
So that's been huge. And we did that with really
(08:46):
limited development resource within head office, but just really good,
innovative sort of New Zealand. We have the same sort
of number eight wire mentality. It's like let's just get
it fixed and get it sorted. And we had a
couple of guys who just rolled their sleeves up and
worked really hard to ensure that that technology platform was
fit for purpose and could meet the needs of those
(09:06):
travel partners and market that had embraced more of a
digital kind of distribution ideology, let's say.
S2 (09:11):
So smart. What were some of the things you did
away with apart from the clunky booking system? You know,
was there a moment where you went, You know what? Well,
obviously you're looking at the whole business and going, this
is our time, this is our chance. So what else
was there that you kind of went, this has got
to go.
S3 (09:27):
Probably the biggest thing in there, Michelle, was was the
differential rate structures having lots of different rates, going to
different travel agents and to different markets. We'd have a
you know, you might have that vehicle behind me there.
For example, our GC chaser. You know, that product would
be one price in Germany at one time of the year.
It'd be a different price in Australia, would be a
different price on our website. It would be a different
(09:48):
price whether you booked through a wholesaler in Germany versus
a travel agent in Australia. So there's a huge amount
of complexity that had been built up over time. And
probably the biggest single thing we did was just rip
that all up and say we're going to have one rate.
It's a dynamic rate. If we've got it on our website,
you can have it as a trade partner through your website,
but you have to book it online. So those two
(10:09):
key things were really fundamental around simplifying the rate structure
and then really driving this idea of of digital first
and first. And that's really been a big game changer
for us for sure.
S2 (10:21):
That simplification changes so much in terms of resourcing of
structure and the simplification, I should say, for customers as well.
S3 (10:27):
Right, Without doubt. And probably one of the biggest challenges
is we went through that. Michelle is a having confidence
in the brand and the strategy, but also having the
discipline to say no. And that's super, super hard in
any growth environment. But you know, like we had a
lot of old historical partners who came to us and said,
You're only kidding about this kind of thing, aren't you?
(10:48):
You are going to enable us to book offline again.
It's like, Nope. And they'll go, You'll change your mind, surely, right? Nope.
And so saying no was really hard, you know, because
some of these these partners had been giving us big
seven figure sums of business pre-COVID, and we were like going, No,
it's not how we want to build back. So having
(11:10):
that confidence and the strategy and the real kind of
belief that it had the ability to deliver for us
then gave us a confidence and discipline to say no. So.
That was probably for me the really and getting the
I had 100% confidence we could deliver it, getting confidence
around the business to kind of join us on that journey.
That was an interesting kind of exercise. But yeah, to
(11:31):
the point where in Berlin last week we were sitting
down with some very, very large distribution channels, let's say,
Who were some of these guys saying, You'll change your mind?
And they now know that we're not. And kind of
we're now actually saying to them, it's you guys that
now need to change. And if you don't, then you're
probably staring at another Kodak moment, perhaps.
S2 (11:51):
Yes.
S3 (11:52):
Yeah. So kind of a lot of fun in that regard.
S2 (11:57):
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at Commission Factory. Mission Factory is the largest performance and
partner marketing network in Asia Pacific, powering tens of thousands
of meaningful and scalable partnerships. If you're listening to this show,
you might be looking for ways to find and activate
successful connections that drive revenue for your business. Well, Commission
(12:18):
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(12:38):
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(13:00):
are simply enabled. I have to dig in. You said
that the kind of internal education and getting people on
board was challenging. I have no doubt organizational change, whether
you're moving to a data driven organization, a tech driven
organization from one that feels a little bit more, dare
(13:21):
I say, analog can be challenging. There's people who don't
get it, don't understand it, can't see the value. People
get scared that they might lose their jobs. And in
this case, maybe some people did. What was that like
and how is it today?
S3 (13:35):
Yeah, really interesting question, Michel. And this was a really
unusual situation because, I mean, when I came into the business,
it almost being like a nuclear bomb had been dropped
on it. You know, a lot of people had been
made redundant. Premier over there were people in the organization
that didn't have any reporting lines because their boss had
been made or had done and their boss's boss had
(13:55):
been promoted. So there was an element of shell shock,
to be honest. Yeah, but again, there was this real
kind of commitment to want to bring the business back stronger.
And whilst there wasn't any international trade, it was really
easy to make these changes and and get alignment about it.
Everyone wanted internally to work simply because we didn't have
the people to actually do some of the clunky processes.
(14:18):
Actually simplifying the processes was almost a matter of need
to fit in with the amount of limited resource. And
because business wasn't coming back strongly, we couldn't bring back
people anyway. So there was a natural constraint that enabled
us to embed that change. I think there was probably
always a question mark around whether we could hold that line.
As Borders reopened and we started looking to reach out
(14:40):
to our international partners and say no to some of
those guys. But what I think we'd seen in the
meantime was a real growth from some of our more
digital orientated partners who had filled the gap anyway that
had been left by sort of the bigger analogue partners,
to use your phrase. And we'd also had huge success
in growing our direct business in a really cost effective
(15:01):
and controlled way, which had also given us that confidence.
If you like, to stay focused on the road ahead.
S2 (15:08):
Yeah, it's like simplicity for necessities sake. And so, you know,
if there's no other option and this is how you
have to operate moving forward, I guess it does make
it a lot easier.
S3 (15:17):
It was the ultimate burning platform, like it's in many ways,
so it was far easier to drive change with those
circumstances versus a large established business that's going well and
trying to kind of drive change within that. Certainly a lot.
S2 (15:30):
Harder. Glad to hear you guys are doing well today.
And obviously you pulled through that period. A lot of
other travel companies obviously didn't. So real testament to you
guys just knuckling down and like, okay, how do we
just do this? How do we figure this out? You've
obviously made a lot of changes from a booking perspective,
from a customer experience perspective, but I know a really
big thing that you brought into the business as well
(15:50):
was affiliate marketing and in general performance marketing and how
do we get smarter about the dollars that we're using?
I know this is your passion place, so I wanted
to get the business conversation down first. And now let's
talk about performance marketing side.
S3 (16:03):
Without doubt, affiliate marketing has been a huge part of
our sort of recovery strategy. My journey with affiliate marketing
goes back probably 25 years in the UK, and some
of those early affiliate platforms started kind of coming into
the travel market and they were very, very quickly embraced.
And obviously in the northern hemisphere, in those markets you've
got big scale. I then moved back to New Zealand ten,
(16:24):
15 years ago I guess, and was involved with a
national carrier based in New Zealand, let's say. At that
time we started looking at exploring affiliate marketing, but they
just wasn't frankly, they weren't in really any sort of
maturity or scale in the market in this part of
the world. And I'd lost touch with a little bit
when I joined Jucy with just started having conversations with
(16:46):
Commission Factory at that point in time and it was like,
Holy smoke, this is great. There is now a matured
kind of environment that we can grab hold of. And
so we embraced it with a view of really treating
it as a distribution channel as opposed to a marketing channel.
You know, the thing I love about affiliate marketing is it's,
you know, for us in the travel sector, it's a
(17:06):
straight commission based model which is very consistent with our
traditional trade channels, let's say. And when you start treating
affiliate in that way and that same sort of mindset,
then it sort of just it's an open ended kind
of pathway. And so that's how we kind of embedded it.
We brought it into the business initially in December 2020,
(17:27):
I think it was, and it was a big learning curve.
It was a really steep learning curve in terms of going, okay,
so we've got it in here. How do we now
optimize it? To that point, we actually brought in some
external support, a dedicated agency based stateside actually that we'd
happen to run across who were really awesome in terms
of helping us accelerate our growth. You know, real quick,
(17:49):
kind of embedding it, I guess, the whole kind of
strategy of affiliate into the business on our side as
well as helping to leverage into wider networks. But again,
it took us six months to start really getting some momentum.
As you'd expect, I guess, with any kind of program.
But then as soon as we'd started getting a couple
of things in place, it really took off and the
(18:11):
ability for us to treat it as a cost of
sale and embed it as a cost of sale above
the line, if you like, just changed the mindset forever.
And it took a little while to get the finance
guys to understand that it was okay to put this
marketing thing, you know, through an above a line cost
of sale and to treat it in the same way
we'd treat a travel agent. And then once we got
(18:33):
that in place and we haven't looked back and it's
now without doubt our single largest source of traffic from
a business turnover from a distribution channel perspective.
S2 (18:43):
You just said something so interesting there that, you know,
I sometimes raise this with different business owners and they
they never think of affiliate as a cost of sale.
They always sort of think about it in their marketing mix.
And yes, it operates in a very similar way of marketing.
You know, there's messaging, there's brand, there's sort of like
(19:05):
your positioning, etcetera, partnership, but it's only coming off your
bottom line. So it is a cost of goods sold
and therefore should be treated differently in a different budget.
How did you do that? So for the people listening,
if they have to go through that same conversation with
their finance team, what's the trick?
S3 (19:24):
Apart from bullying the finance people to kind of just
do it? The listen, I think it's just understanding the model, right,
in terms of, you know, for us, it's a straight
commission based model. There's a very ality sort of variable
component to it, obviously based upon the various publishing platforms
that we hook into. But fundamentally, it's a straight commission
that you can forecast on a fairly accurate basis on
(19:46):
a monthly play in terms of what that percentage is
going to be. So, so long as you can have
real confidence about the attribution, which clearly, you know, platforms
like Commission Factory enable you to get really, really tight
on attribution anyway, then then say, Hey, listen, here's a
direct cost of variable cost associated with this transaction. Therefore
(20:07):
it's highly justifiable to put it above the line in
that cost of sale. It's it's, it's a no brainer conversation. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And,
you know, without any shadow of a doubt at all,
you know, if you treat it as a marketing expense,
you're probably only going to get 20, 30% of the
value out of affiliate activity. There's no question in my
mind if we treated this like an affiliate as a
(20:28):
marketing cost and go this month we're going to spend
$5,000 on it, why would we cap it if we're
still selling? Like, Yeah. And so we wouldn't do it
with a travel agent, you know, or an online travel agent.
If they're selling and we're paying them more commission, we're going, Hey, fantastic.
These guys have had a record month and we've paid
them more money. Embrace the same thought process for affiliate.
Treat it like a distribution channel and celebrate when revenue
(20:52):
is coming in and if that means you're paying a
little bit more, great. But it's it's a whole lot
more cost effective than a lot of other performance marketing
environments where there's a lot more variability and you're less
control over that cost of sale.
S2 (21:05):
And to your point as well, like you said, it
does take time. You know, there's a there's learning that
is involved with, you know, affiliate marketing. And if you
do cap it, you sort of say, oh, I'll only
I'll only dip my toe in the water every month
with like, you know, a certain small budget, you're not
really you're limiting yourself really. You're not allowing yourself to
test and learn and try new things 100%.
S3 (21:25):
And there's no downside in testing, right? There's not like
there's a heavy fixed costs associated with putting in a
new program and it's all a variable cost. So there's
no downside of having it uncapped because you're only going
to pay more if you've got more revenue coming through. Yeah,
I would love to have a conversation with the CFO
if if they said no to that. In terms of, yeah,
(21:48):
we want to grow the business and drive sales here
or not.
S2 (21:52):
Well, it could be, to your point, maybe a lack
of understanding of just how far and wide affiliate marketing goes.
And you mentioned something earlier which was so, so healthy
and so smart in terms of, you know, it's just
a channel with untapped ability and you need to think
of it more like, you know, the transactional aspect rather
than the things that go in and the things that
people constantly think of first when they think of affiliate
(22:14):
marketing like influencer marketing or rewards or cashback. So why
don't you tell us a little bit about some of
the areas in which you're leveraging affiliate marketing, because I
know you guys really have sort of tapped that for,
you know, all the great resources and tech that you can.
S3 (22:28):
Yeah, and it's still a journey of discovery. I kind
of keep being amazed. You know, I like to think
I know a little bit about the environment, but keep
getting amazed at sort of new partners that come to
the surface that keep bringing new things to the table.
So I mean, we start in a very traditional sense,
I guess, in terms of looking at platforms that could
deliver eyeballs that were aligned with our kind of notion
(22:51):
of kind of our target customer. And there was certainly
a pile of environments, platforms that we partnered with. None
of us actually knew who they were, but we were
recommended to do it. And sure enough, they started driving volume.
And us and you go, Hey, that's cool. And subsequently
learnt more about it. So in the first instance used
in a very traditional sense and then as we started
kind of exploring further opportunities and again working really closely
(23:15):
in partnership with our advisory guys, they started actually bringing
other ideas to the table around sort of onsite optimization technology,
and that was just a massive eye opener for me.
I'd never really thought about technology solutions being delivered through
an affiliate framework and it was just a massive, massive
sort of light bulb moment where we went, you know what,
(23:37):
there's a pile of things in here that we'd love
to trial, but we just don't have the bandwidth within
our technology environment or indeed traditional SAS models where you'd
pay a subscription fee to get access to some of
that technology. And as a result, we hadn't been doing them.
And then we started discovering these things through the affiliate
environment chat bot being a really interesting one. You know,
we had a traditional kind of SAS based live chat
(23:58):
model on the site and that particular technology provider was
trying to upsell us to sort of additional functionality on that.
And then we discovered, you know, a solution through commission
factory that said, Hey, listen, we'll develop a chatbot for
you and be focused purely on helping you drive sales
and we'll pay you a commission of sales charge. Your
(24:20):
commission based upon sales, generated off the chat bot as
the last point of contact on the on the on
site journey. And it was almost like there was nothing
to lose. In fact, there wasn't anything to lose. So
we went, yeah, let's give it a go. And it
just took off. And this is an environment, this is
a time when we had really limited cash flows. You know,
borders were still closed. We didn't have a lot of
(24:40):
resource internally. And, you know, within the space of about
three months, this chat bot that we put onto the
site became a massive contributor of revenue and it was
something that we'd never have been able to do if
we were looking at it through a traditional lens of,
you know, let's go and do an evaluation of different
platforms and let's or develop tools internally and let's justify
(25:01):
a monthly budget or whatever to support a chat bot.
This just changed the whole game in terms of it's like, well,
there is no downside. The partner is going to do
the set up and we can learn and so much
so it was such it was a massive, massive success
for us within a fairly short space of time. And
then there were other sort of tools like on site
(25:21):
optimization where again, if we had more bandwidth within the
dev team, we might have done some of the things internally.
But there were bigger issues that we had to have
the limited tech resource that we had internally we needed
to have them focused on. So the ability to bring
site exit carts and a number of other little triggers
that we were able to play with to drive optimization
(25:42):
on site was just awesome. Like, and again, we gathered
heaps of learnings from from that. You know, as we've
worked with more of these partners, they've begun been able
to bring more things to the table as well. So
we've used it both in terms of bringing traffic into
the business as well as helping us to optimize the
traffic that we get onto the platform. And again, all
the while on a variable cost basis, it's been a
(26:05):
it's a super exciting environment to be involved with.
S2 (26:08):
Incredible to hear just how one relationship as well can
sort of really stretch the gamut of your business. It's
not just about marketing and the pool of customers. It's
about that conversion as well. And there's so many tools
and technology out there that, you know, these these affiliate
marketing companies like Commission Factory work with that can really
help accelerate that conversion because that's what they focused on.
(26:28):
They focused on sales, they focused on conversion, like how
do we get these customers in? How do we convert?
That's the only way that the businesses make money. So
it makes sense to be leaning into that, you know,
and just going, Well, let's try it. There's no real risk.
You know, there's probably a bit of work involved. But also,
like if it doesn't work, we can try something else.
But you know, these guys, if they're so focused on
(26:49):
making those conversions happen because that's their remuneration model, it
makes sense because you're all in the game together, right?
S3 (26:55):
Without doubt. And and I think there's a real internal
benefit or cultural kind of benefit from embedding that affiliate
kind of thinking, if you like. And again, it cost
of sale thinking to the business is no doubt that
people within the juicy team have benefited enormously from engaging
with some of the various partners that we've brought on
and the real sharpness that they've brought around conversion and optimization,
(27:17):
which because that's what they live and breathe and their
their whole revenue models are based upon that. There's a
real sharpness to the thinking that you don't often get,
let's say, from internal teams. So that exposure to those
sort of engagements is definitely helped kind of bring a
real edge to other work that we do across the business,
(27:37):
particularly in other performance marketing areas, bringing a real sharpness
and edge to how we critique what we're doing and
paid search or SEO or social, for example. That's definitely
flowed back from what we've been doing in the affiliate space,
no question about that.
S2 (27:52):
From an affiliate marketing perspective, how does that fit into
your marketing teams or your agency structures? How does it
all work even from a reporting perspective?
S3 (28:02):
So it's really, really tough one to. Honest, Michelle, because
there's just not people in the market who understand affiliate marketing. Yeah,
we've had some really good internal research that's been really
keen to learn and they did a great job. You know,
I think we've supported them really well. They've been out
to various conferences internationally and affiliate conferences to learn more
about opportunities, etcetera, etcetera. So we've been through a bit
(28:25):
of an upskilling process internally. Our existing marketing agencies, again,
they've been learning from what we've been.
S2 (28:32):
Doing, love that.
S3 (28:34):
We actually found some specialist resource based out of the
US that worked, has worked with us for the last
two and a half years and have become a really
tight strategic partner to help us optimize and to accelerate
those learnings fundamentally in the affiliate space. So that was
certainly probably a big reminder or a learning, if you like,
(28:56):
for me was going actually the maturity of affiliate marketing
in this part of the world, certainly in New Zealand,
probably a little further ahead in Australia, we just don't
have the capability and the knowledge. And so as a result,
those sort of conversations about positioning it as cost of
sale versus marketing budget, there's not the maturity and the
confidence to actually understand what those conversations look like and
(29:16):
the potential of it. Yeah, it's something that we're kind
of confronting at the moment in terms of if we
want to continue to kind of really ramp this up
to another level, how do we actually get resource internally
to help drive that further? And do we need to
look offshore to recruit people with that specialist knowledge because
there's not a big market of of affiliate marketers in
New Zealand looking for jobs at the moment. It'd be
(29:36):
fair to say.
S2 (29:37):
I worked in the States for a while and their
affiliate marketing, like you said, is much more mature over there.
I was working in a digital performance marketing agency and
it was always part of the mix. There was a
separate team, you know, there was, without a doubt, no
question that affiliate marketing was part of our brand success story.
Where I do think here there's maybe still trepidation or
(29:58):
just think people are unclear and what they don't quite understand,
they're hesitant to sort of step into or they step
into the things that are familiar coupons and things like that, which,
you know, there's so much more to affiliate marketing and
so much more to be leveraged. So we need young
people getting excited about it so they start becoming the
experts and leading the next generation of really smart marketing
(30:19):
leaders to to really embrace it, because every business needs
to grow. And if you're only paying on a sale,
it's just a no brainer.
S3 (30:27):
Honestly, couldn't agree more. Michelle And if you talk to
marketing managers, everyone knows the phrase affiliate marketing, but if
you then scratch behind that and go, So talk me
through some of the various platforms and the opportunities you
get these blank looks on your face like.
S4 (30:43):
Oh yeah, maybe, maybe not.
S3 (30:46):
That is without doubt the biggest challenge and the biggest
opportunity for for affiliate marketing platforms like Commission Factory to
actually build an awareness and an understanding of the opportunity.
And it's got to start kind of with the young
marketers coming through and making it part of the normal
kind of conversation.
S2 (31:03):
Certainly I like that thinking that you say around thinking
about it in the context of how it's run, how
it's measured from a colleague's perspective, really thinking about it
more as the platform itself and not, you know, all
the different places we can be in, not influencer marketing,
not publisher marketing, etcetera, but just thinking about it as
a new way of running business and what are all
(31:24):
the things within our business, be it our customer experience,
our website where affiliate marketing can really impact the business.
So it's a refreshing way of looking at it and
definitely something I think that most businesses need to be
looking at in the future.
S3 (31:37):
The one thing you got to promise me is that
you don't share this with any of our competitors because
I'd hate for them to learn the secret of.
S5 (31:42):
How awesome.
S3 (31:43):
Affiliate marketing is.
S2 (31:45):
It's in the can. It's free. We're going to send
it everywhere. No, I mean, look.
S5 (31:50):
They probably.
S2 (31:50):
Will listen. Will they have the speed and the tenacity
like you guys did? You know, you obviously really knuckled
down and you really embrace change. And it doesn't matter
how many good ideas you have on the table, it's
the mindset. Right? I'm really happy to hear you guys
are doing well. And what a tremendous change and a
tremendous story.
S3 (32:08):
We're really, really, I guess, in a privileged position to
have such a strong, iconic brand. Juice is such a strong,
iconic brand and camper van space. So the ability to
leverage that and particularly with the audience that it reaches
and connects into, it's certainly given us a really strong
platform to deliver good outcomes in the space for sure.
S2 (32:29):
All I have to say is the green van and
everyone should get a visual in their head of, Oh,
I know those guys, The green van guys. Yes, they're
the green van guys. So yeah, very iconic brand. I'm
going to plan my New Zealand road trip soon and
it's going to be juicy or nothing because there's no
way I can get shots of my car that I hire.
And it's, you know, with beautiful New Zealand backdrop and
(32:51):
not have a juicy van. It's just iconic.
S3 (32:53):
That would be absolute disgrace. Michelle But I know someone
who can probably help you.
S2 (32:58):
How is the business going today?
S3 (32:59):
It's been amazing. We've had a huge summer season. We've
welcomed back. Your thousands of international guests into Australia and
New Zealand. We've had record months in terms of trading.
Even from October, November, we were experiencing kind of record
sales and pick ups and certainly created some challenges for
our operational guys. No doubt about that. Kept them on
(33:22):
their toes. But it's just neat to be in a
position where we can welcome international visitors back and and
enable them to explore all things that are awesome about
Australia and New Zealand. So businesses are really, really good
shape at the moment and you've got a great platform
now to continue to drive robust, sustainable, profitable growth as
we move forward.
S2 (33:42):
I'm really, really happy to hear it. Onwards and upwards
to great tourism season next year as well.
S5 (33:48):
Absolutely. Dave.
S2 (33:49):
Thank you so much. Appreciate your openness and sharing all
that great info and inspiration.
S3 (33:54):
Great to have the opportunity to chat with you, Michelle,
and anything to help spread the word of the joys
of affiliate marketing.
S2 (34:02):
We have another exciting episode coming up. Here's a sneak peek.
S6 (34:06):
We're really fortunate that we've got two people who can
understand the commercial side of the business. Obviously translate that
into our performance media. And then quite frankly, the rarest
part of that skill set and the one that both
of them have is being able to communicate that back
to the non digital marketers within the business.
S2 (34:22):
If you aren't already, don't forget to follow so you
don't miss a net. And while you're there, why not
drop us a rating and review? We'd love to hear
what you think. Flex Your hustle is made possible by
the great team at Commission Factory and produced by Ampol.
I'm Michelle Lomas. Keep hustling and bye for now.
S1 (34:41):
Commission factory.
S7 (34:45):
Ample. Hehe.
S8 (34:47):
This thing on? Yeah, that one. Don't have to.
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