Episode #51 – The Performance Marketing Spotlight with Colby Saenz

Marshall Nyman [00:00:02]:
Hello and welcome to the performance Marketing Spotlight. I’m your host, Marshall nyman, founder and CEO of Nymo & Company. Each episode I will be bringing you someone with deep experience in the performance marketing space where they share their career journey and insights about the industry. Today I have Colby Sands from lovevery. Welcome to the podcast, Colby.

Colby Saenz [00:00:22]:
Thanks Marshall. I appreciate you having me.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:25]:
Of course. Excited to have you on today. And let’s get right to it. Can you briefly introduce yourself to the audience?

Colby Saenz [00:00:31]:
Yes. So. So my name is Colby Saenz. I actually oversee the affiliates and partnerships cipher lovevery and I obviously lovevery is for those who don’t know, is a playthings play things for early development for children and especially between the ages of 0 to 5. So I’ve been running the program for two years now and excited to share more.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:55]:
As a dad, it definitely resonates and we’ve definitely used a few of those in our house. So definitely very familiar with the company and excited to dive in a little bit deeper with you today. But how did you get your start in digital marketing?

Colby Saenz [00:01:08]:
Good question. So it goes back to around the time when I was in my early 20s, I actually went door to door selling Facebook pages to local businesses. I was based in Arizona, born and raised in Arizona and was able to be able to in Scottsdale with a couple of buddies of mine. We would just go to the local burger shops or just the local businesses that were just in some of these subdivision, these local areas and just sell them on Facebook pages and we would custom build them with HTML and trying to customize them with giveaways and things like that to drive local awareness. So that was my start.

Marshall Nyman [00:01:45]:
And then how did you crack into the DTC side of digital marketing?

Colby Saenz [00:01:49]:
Yeah, so honestly it was, I think it was around 2012, maybe I maybe 20, maybe a little bit later than that. But I worked at Sportsman’s Warehouse and for those who don’t know, Sportsman’s Warehouse is pretty much like Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops of the West. They were predominantly the main retailer for outdoor for outdoor gear and stuff on the west coast compared to Cabela’s and Bass kind of taking up that, you know, east of the Mississippi. And they brought me in to help their e commerce marketing and that that was kind of my first ju at being able to really take D2C by the horns and before things kind of really took off on the D2C landscape.

Marshall Nyman [00:02:30]:
And then you ended up Purple the mattress company. How did that come to be?

Colby Saenz [00:02:35]:
Well, it was around the time I was Transitioning out of like just Sportsman’s Warehouse. And I was like, you know what? I’m ready for my next opportunity. And there was actually a role that came up and I saw with Purple, and I was like, you know what? Like, Purple at that point in time had already started gaining some momentum as that bigger brand, that brand in Utah that just kind really was taking off. And I just. I happened to apply and it made sense for them to bring me on to be able to help kind of manage some projects for. For them on their creator and their performance team. And that was kind of my. My segue into the Purple life and kind of grew beyond there.

Marshall Nyman [00:03:13]:
And you weren’t originally on the affiliate side of things, but what pushed you into becoming an affiliate manager there?

Colby Saenz [00:03:20]:
So it’s funny because at that time, Purple was in this just very podunk office, just in one of the more upper echelon towns in Utah. So it was kind of crazy. And at that time, we were in a crappy office and I was going back and forth to teams, and the affiliate program was really not being managed by anybody. And I got that feedback from the directors and just kind of understanding just where the business was going. And they kept on asking for feedback as far as to how we can improve the affiliate program. And I just kept on making suggestions. And then one of the. The people on the team, the one of the directors was like, you, you’re on the wrong team.

Colby Saenz [00:04:01]:
You need to be over here. And he kind of talked to some leaders on my team and then within the company, and they were like, absolutely, Colby would be a great fit for this. And they kind of put me on the affiliate side, and I kind of took that over and was able to grow it over a couple of years.

Marshall Nyman [00:04:16]:
And that was in the COVID time. So probably a good catalyst for everything. And we all know how competitive mattress is probably one of the most competitive verticals I’ve personally worked in. So tell us a little bit about that time, man.

Colby Saenz [00:04:30]:
That was, like you said, Covid times. Obviously the transition for me from one team to the other to oversee the affiliate program happened like, I think about like six, maybe actually just a little bit under a year before COVID happened. But right around the time Covid happened, we were all like, everybody kind of like trying to understand, like, how is this going to play out? Like, what is the world going to look like? And literally around that April, like a couple of weeks after it happened, we were just like, why don’t we just like, really pick things up here? Because we really saw the opportunity. And then on the affiliate side, like you said, it was super competitive. Casper was a main competitor for the brand and for us it was really just about differentiating, finding partners that we felt like would really communicate the value of the product. And I think what we did before that was really fortunate for us on the affiliate side was a lot of the storytelling had been identified. For the months prior before COVID happened, we were really leaning into why our product is different from every other mattress product, you know, mattress product on the market. And that kind of helped us that allow us to go to a lot of these major publishers, you know, the red ventures of the likes.

Colby Saenz [00:05:37]:
I know we had actually really leaned into some red ventures, partners like My Move, Apartment Therapy, things like that, for us to really kind of get the word and some of this messaging out there. And it just so happened it aligned very well with people being stuck at home and hating their mattress. And I think for us, the, the uniqueness of our product and the, the creativity in our ads just kind of really took us off.

Marshall Nyman [00:06:02]:
And now you’ve been at lovevery for two years and as I mentioned, fellow dad and following the company for a while, would love to hear a little bit about what made you want to take the leap over there.

Colby Saenz [00:06:14]:
Yeah, well, to be honest, it was, it was a time I was transitioning away from the solo, which was a sustainable shoe company, and lovevery was just happened to be at the right place at the right time. And you know, the, the funny thing for, for us on lovevery, when I came in, I actually didn’t even. I didn’t realize until I got into the mix that this, the affiliate program was primarily being managed by an agency that was overseen internally by the senior VP of growth and the senior VP of brand like. So two high level executives who had a bunch of direct reports were overseeing the program themselves. Instead of having somebody who was directly focused to affiliate and they were like, we needed somebody to come in and manage this. So that was the selling point was, you know, obviously being able to get in, having the freedom to kind of really mold the program the way that they, that I wanted and what they kind of hoped that we would get it to. And since then it’s been awesome just to be able to get in, really understand over the past few years, adapt with what the markets transition to and obviously take on partnerships. In the same vein, tell us a.

Marshall Nyman [00:07:19]:
Little bit more about lovevery and what they do.

Colby Saenz [00:07:22]:
Yeah, so. So our products are really geared towards early childhood development. I think that there’s definitely a Montessori inspired theme with our products. The quality of our products are unquestionably one of the main differentiators between our products and just the market in general. But like our goal is to really be a huge support for par parents and really guaranteeing that you have the means to be able to help your child develop. I have, I have a 2 year old and a 5 year old and I see firsthand just kind of how these products really kind of help you as a parent kind of check the box of knowing that hey, my kid is actually doing well. And even for kids who, you know, maybe take a little bit of time to be honest, it’s great because it just shows you the milestones to be able to check the boxes. But my five year old uses my two year old stuff and my two year old uses my five year old stuff.

Colby Saenz [00:08:09]:
So it’s a beautiful thing.

Marshall Nyman [00:08:11]:
Yep, I’m swimming in a similar boat as you. I got two, five and six. So I know just like me, you’re probably busy all the time.

Colby Saenz [00:08:19]:
All the time.

Marshall Nyman [00:08:20]:
So when you’re not busy, what did the affiliate program look like when you took it over?

Colby Saenz [00:08:25]:
It was honestly I would say that for us the program was primarily a lot of, I would say content publishers, but low, low efficiency publishers. If I just, and just to clarify on that, you know, I think over the past like few years there were this uptick of content publishers, some of which were valid, some of which were not, that were creating content around specific, specific industries and niches. And I think we went really heavy on that. I think what we’ve seen over the past few years is a, a narrowing down. I think you saw a lot of the people who were hyped up in the peak blog period kind of start whittling away and stop being consistent. So that kind of trickled about. But like we, we had of inactive publishers that had not posted in a long time. I think honestly from when I took it over, a lot of them hadn’t posted in six to nine months prior to me coming in.

Colby Saenz [00:09:18]:
So we started seeing that kind of carry over into the new year, which at that time it’s 25. So I think that was like going into 2024 we started seeing like there just wasn’t as much activity. And especially with some of the activations I was able to do for like Black Friday Summer Monday and 23, we just didn’t get as much engagement as we previously had. So my job was obviously after that Black Friday Cyber Monday period waned away and we started in 2024. I really just had to like clean the program up and really start from ground zero as far as the new publishers and partners to bring into the program.

Marshall Nyman [00:09:53]:
Yeah, with the changes with Google and some of the performance people were seeing from the pandemic in 21, 22 and the beginning of 23, it definitely made a little bit of challenge the last few years.

Colby Saenz [00:10:03]:
Oh man, tell me about it.

Marshall Nyman [00:10:06]:
So what type of strategy do you take now with your affiliate program?

Colby Saenz [00:10:09]:
So I think for us, I mean to be honest, Marshall, I got to speak to you because I love your content on LinkedIn and I think I love following you and just a lot of the tidbits that you drop because to be honest, it kind of is like you’re speaking to my soul half the time when it comes to your content. But I think for us we realize obviously 80% of your program comes from 20% of your publishers. And I think for us we really narrow down on those 20%. I think for us we’ve done a lot of like tests over the past year and a half. As far as the lift analysis, I think rather than just general quote unquote incrementality tests, it’s just more of if we do a placement or if we’re really leveraging a partner, how do we kind of see that, see that expand out? We’ve tried car linked offers with partners like Carlytics and some we’ve seen some quality trade offs and value pieces there. But also like we just needed to have better, a better offer for us to be able to really kind of see the value there. Content publishers, we still leverage the them. We have quite a few of our pro of our top 20% that are like YouTube and bloggers who still get a lot of traffic from parents because they trust those publications.

Colby Saenz [00:11:16]:
And then we’ve been leaning more into a lot of these major publishers especially now with AI getting a lot of pull from these publishers. Like who is it that our parents are going to as far as to whether it’s a baby registry, whether it’s trying to learn which products make sense for them to purchase for their children. Where do moms or parents spend their time trying to understand like how to be a better parent? That’s kind of where it is. A lot of those my time has been spent is figuring that out. And like you said, the past year and a half has been quite interesting to see the ups and downs of which works and what doesn’t.

Marshall Nyman [00:11:51]:
You kind of alluded to what my next question is, is how has a brand been impacted by some of the changes in the industry over the last few years?

Colby Saenz [00:11:58]:
Well, kind of like I said with coming into 2024, trying to start with some of those inactive publishers. I mean, I think every. A lot of us in the affiliate space saw the first like gut punch in that FE update in 2024, which I think really killed a lot of those content publishers traffic. That was quite a bummer to start the year. You know, you kind of had this optimistic view of what, you know, that first like punch to the kidney kind of hurt you. Then you go into the summer and then you had the, the coupons and just a lot of the deal sites that got those changes and that really kind of, you know, I would say for us was. Was kind of like the perfect storm because we already were transitioning away from that because again, back to your content. I know you’ve alluded to this.

Colby Saenz [00:12:38]:
A lot of. We’re one of the really is not promotional at all. We don’t, we don’t do much. Maybe one Black Friday Cyber Monday offer a year is what we get. But for the most part it’s very much a controlled sticking to our guns type of push from our side. But like for us, it really just came down to just waiting through that storm. Seeing those sites that were kind of trying to pitch coupons from, taking either from our welcome series or just some other areas where maybe coupons have been found, seeing those dwindle away and really kind of putting more of our value into partners like Ebates and really kind of leveraging them. Because like I, I’m a personal fan just because I have seen the value of incre.

Colby Saenz [00:13:16]:
The incremental value from them and just kind of writing those type of partners through to do that. And obviously this year, how are you.

Marshall Nyman [00:13:22]:
Expanding your partnership program outside of the normal type of affiliates?

Colby Saenz [00:13:26]:
This has been the, this has been this year’s challenge. I mean, obviously I, I don’t know about a lot of other D2C brands that maybe you’ve worked with and. No, but like a lot of the plans that we have were kind of, you know, nipped in the bud with the tariff situation this year, but I think once we kind of got out of that in late summer, I think what we was a lot of the areas where we really wanted to focus our time were the places where we knew parents of how higher household incomes really kind of have the opportunity to be introduced to lovevery. And I think for us, some avenues that we’ve gone down or we’ve looked at nanny agencies, really trying to partner with some key agencies to get our products as well as offer unique offers in front of the families who do have kids at the desired age that we look for nannies. If you’re paying for a nanny, you clearly have the income for you to afford to love every subscription. So that was kind of one way for us. And then obviously for us, child care providers, educators, a lot of like speech pathologists, people who are really leaning and engaging with children at a deeper level. We get a lot of requests from those partners to work with us.

Colby Saenz [00:14:31]:
So we’ve been kind of working to navigate like a partner program so we can kind of really bring those people in, really give them the resources that they need as well as an offer for them to kind of really expand out. And fortunately we are our affiliate network allows us to kind of expand that and track that accordingly.

Marshall Nyman [00:14:47]:
What’s been your favorite part of working at lovevery?

Colby Saenz [00:14:50]:
I’ll be honest man, I think especially with the companies that I’ve worked at, I know it’s cliche to sound but I think when you like I mentioned my senior VP of growth was overseeing the program before. He has an affiliate background and I will, I think you probably can speak to this. The rarity of having somebody that high in leadership who’s got an affiliate background is like literally it’s like Where’s Waldo? And he’s got that. And I feel like that what that does has done for me and my and my program has been really the exciting thing because it’s flexible. There’s very good, there’s very good dialogue that happens with that. And between him and then my direct VP for performance marketing, we’re able to tag team it as far as to incorporating data, incorporating the long tail value of what affiliate provides as well as just being able to test things out to really see how we can expand the program.

Marshall Nyman [00:15:43]:
Advocacy at the top definitely makes it a lot easier to run an effective affiliate program. So it’s good when you have that buy in.

Colby Saenz [00:15:49]:
Totally.

Marshall Nyman [00:15:50]:
Why do you think a brand should get started in affiliate marketing?

Colby Saenz [00:15:53]:
I’m going to be a broken record, but I think you just posted about this not too long ago. I definitely do not think every brand should get into an affiliate program. I think there’s a time and a place and there’s signals that you can should identify for you to really start seeing that an affiliate program makes sense for you. But I think I’m a firm believer of what affiliate does for the for a performance or for a Marketing team is in my opinion kind of the same vein of what content does for a brand team. I think affiliate is the, it can be a foundation from a tracking in a, in a performance element for you to really see how your channels can provide. Especially now with the overlap between, you know, affiliate, PR influencer, what an affiliate. Everybody is trying to incorporate that affiliate model into their, into their business. And I think that’s where affiliate really just manifests itself as to adding value to a brand is how can you incorporate that affiliate model into these individual channels? And that I think is kind of what can help you scale.

Colby Saenz [00:16:56]:
Right? Like it can teach you a lot over the grand scheme.

Marshall Nyman [00:16:59]:
So you alluded to it a little bit. What are your thoughts on the affiliate model? I know we talked a little bit about how PR influencer and just all the channels are working together. How do you see that?

Colby Saenz [00:17:09]:
You know, I, I think when I, when I take a step back and look at just where the direction or things are going. Personally, I feel like over the next couple of years the way that I think partnerships as a whole is going to evolve into is there’s going to be some level of adjustments and cohesion that needs to happen to where partnerships needs to be at that same level as like somebody who’s overseeing growth or performance marketing. Because I feel like if you’re going to have something under one umbrella, it should be affiliate PR influencer under one bucket. Because those are partnerships, those are actual partnerships. And I know I’ve seen so many people, whether it’s LinkedIn or just, you know, whether it’s X on the marketing side, talking about what a info there’s going to is actual deep partnerships. PR always been about deep partnerships. Affiliate is about deep partnerships. And those two, those three overlap in the value that they have a lot of companies right now.

Colby Saenz [00:18:09]:
And I think that’s where you’re going to see the trend is to where you’re going to need to have somebody who’s overseeing what those partnerships from a grand level looks like versus them being, you know, influencer being on the brand team, PR being maybe on the brand team or you know, another different team and affiliate being on its own individual team or whatever that looks like. Those three need to be combined the same way that you have paid ads, Google Ads, you know, any other, you know, out of home. All of that fall underperformance. You need to kind of have partnership have its own bucket.

Marshall Nyman [00:18:39]:
I can even see where SEO and GEO are going to fall under partnerships because used to be all about what you do on your own site. And now it’s really what is your ranking is based on what other people are doing on their sites and how they’re talking about you. So how do you see AI and affiliate marketing working together?

Colby Saenz [00:18:58]:
Man, there was a good, a good video from the. I think it’s the CEO of Cloudflare that happened a couple of months ago and I think he was really hitting at some of the key weaknesses that I think exist in the market now with when it comes down to AI, and especially on the publisher side to where you do see that what happens, what’s happening with AI at some point, unless it kind of makes an adjustment, is going to really limit the value of these publishers writing new content. Right. If you’re just going to have AI come and scrape and take away the, you know, get only give an AI summary of somebody’s time invested into content, I feel like you’re going to start losing what the publisher’s value is going to be. And that’s where I think things are going to have to transition to. Right. I think you’re going to start seeing, I wouldn’t be surprised in the next like year or two where like resources like Substack and some of those other newsletter tools start integrating or kind of becoming scrapable like Reddit was. And I think Reddit obviously being a champion of what AI is going to be.

Colby Saenz [00:20:00]:
But I think how is it that your affiliate program could be able to tie into that to really help? Obviously those pub major publishers like the Dot Dash Meredith, you know, you have the Penske, how they’re able to tie in their content is going to become valuable. Affiliate links are going to be in there and you can’t tell me that there’s not going to become a shopping element that ties into these AI models. At some point in time, affiliate links are going to be put into these platforms at mass levels because let’s be honest, the name of the game right now is revenue. As much as everybody wants to talk about, you know, traffic and visibility, they all need to drive revenue at some point. What better way than affiliate.

Marshall Nyman [00:20:40]:
Affiliate content is feeding all of these LLMs at the end of the day. So they want more of that content, they’re going to have to compensate it and find ways to source revenue from it. So I think it’s only the beginning and going to be a big piece of what affiliate marketing looks like over the next few years.

Colby Saenz [00:20:57]:
Yes.

Marshall Nyman [00:20:57]:
What are some major challenges that you see the industry is trying to tackle?

Colby Saenz [00:21:01]:
I mean I think the AI one on the publisher side is definitely, I feel like has got to be top of the list. Right. I think they’re trying to navigate what that looks like. And even though it’s the publisher side that always affects the brand, I think it’s been interesting having conversations with a bunch of publishers this year. I don’t know about you, but I think a lot of them kind of speak to their numbers being numbers that worked prior to some of the recent updates and changes that have happened. And I think the common ask is like, okay, that worked at this time. Now I like, have you driven this much value consistently over the past like six months to a year? Because I don’t feel like the numbers have updated because I mean, I’ve seen the media kits, I’ve seen them pretty consistently for the years. The numbers have not changed a lot over the past few years.

Colby Saenz [00:21:51]:
So I definitely think that that’s got to be something that gets updated. I think for us as brands, I think the biggest thing has got to be kind of back to what I mentioned with Purple. Your storytelling has to become so much more locked down. I feel like this is kind of where that PR as well as that influencer side all collaborates as to where what you’re communicating needs to be cohesively aligned because you have to go to these publishers with some value for you able to get that, you know, that increased exposure. And I mean, as much as I would love for. For me to say that that’s easy for every brand to do, especially in this crowded market. And you know, I like love every. We’ve been in the business for years now.

Colby Saenz [00:22:30]:
Our products don’t change ad nauseam. We kind of are. A lot of the content that’s been written about our top products have been written over the past eight years. It’s hard for us to always try to get that refresh. So it requires our storytelling to kind of have to step.

Marshall Nyman [00:22:44]:
Any predictions on the future performance market?

Colby Saenz [00:22:47]:
Any predictions? No. I mean, I definitely feel like that overlapping value of influencer and affiliate is only going to be more heightened and you’re going to see that gradually tick up. How that navigates is going to be interesting because you know, you have an affiliate manager and an influencer manager, so there’s that toggle between who’s overseeing what. But I think that. And you can add PR into that mix as well. I think overall what you’re going to start seeing is I know you’ve mentioned performance PR in your content before. I think that’s going to become even more heavily more Relevant for what affiliated PR looks like, same as the influencer side. I think that’s going to tie in and I think influencer will gradually become its own version of PR that ties into that partnership bucket.

Marshall Nyman [00:23:34]:
And last question, what’s been your favorite part of working in the performance marketing industry?

Colby Saenz [00:23:38]:
To be honest, man, I think, I think affiliate is like, has its, it caters more towards. What I love about marketing is to where it’s, you know, we’re not a paid channel in the sense of like Google and Meta to where the algorithm changes and it throws off everything so badly that like you literally, your budget literally goes out of the, out of the, out your pockets immediately or doesn’t. But I think for us it requires you to think more creatively. You know, you can update your ads in those mar. In those channels. But for affiliate one is about thinking creatively but also the partnerships. You have to have partnerships. And I think that’s one kind of like you were saying, the support at the top makes such a difference is because they know like this is not going to be just a, you know, a quick fix.

Colby Saenz [00:24:34]:
You have to have those relationships, you have to have those partnerships and it may not manifest itself in that quarter, but you can’t tell me in the next one or two quarters there’s not an opportunity for you to leverage that. And I think for, for me, what I love about that is like I’m a personally a, a social person. I love being able to have these conversations to plant the seed to, to water it, to grow it. That’s what I love about this, this industry. It’s just different from the others. I just don’t think that there’s that level of in depth relationships which I think is kind of poetic to the world we live in. Right. Like there’s not these deep connections anymore.

Colby Saenz [00:25:12]:
Whereas I think our channels do require you to have a deep connection.

Marshall Nyman [00:25:15]:
I agree. Affiliate is absolutely a unique channel. There’s no playbook. Every affiliate program is different. And so it just requires a lot of creativity and really diving in there. And that’s really, I think a good place to end. I appreciate you joining. Thanks to Colby for coming on the podcast this week.

Marshall Nyman [00:25:35]:
Some great insights into his background and his role at lovevery. What’s the best way for listeners to connect with you so you can find.

Colby Saenz [00:25:41]:
Me on LinkedIn @Colby Saenz like I’m pretty easy to find. My last name is a pretty unique way to find me. So like you can leverage that. And I’m always open to connecting with anyone and love to talk shop, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to me again.

Marshall Nyman [00:25:56]:
Thank you to Colby for joining our podcast and to our producer, Leon Sonkin. If you’ve enjoyed this content, please give us a like and a follow. Thank you for listening in. I’m Marshall Nyman, host of the Performance Marketing Spotlight and founder and CEO of Nymo and Company, signing off. Thank you and have a great day.