Episode #23 – The Performance Marketing Spotlight with Jeremy Aaronson

Marshall Nyman [00:00:03]:
Hello and welcome to the performance marketing Spotlight. I’m your host, Marshall Nyman, founder and CEO of Nymo Co. Each episode, I will be bringing you someone with deep experience in the performance marketing space where they will highlight their experiences within the industry. Today I have Jeremy Aronson, who is chief revenue officer at Upsell.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:22]:
Welcome to the podcast, Jeremy.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:00:23]:
Hey Marshall, thanks for having me.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:25]:
Well, very excited to have you on today. Longtime industry friend, veteran of the space. Let’s get right to it. We’d love for you to introduce yourself to the audience.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:00:33]:
Hey, everyone, I am Jeremy Aronson. I am the chief revenue officer of Upsolute.com. I have been, gosh, in the space now since different forms since about 1999. So I kind of used to be young buck now. Kind of an old hat.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:48]:
Yes, SoCal based too. Been here forever. And would love to know how you got your start in the performance marketing space.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:00:55]:
So it’s kind of interesting. I kind of started more just in Internet marketing and worked my way into the performance marketing space. So I’ve kind of touched a lot of different parts of the industry. When I started in 99, I worked for a company called Internet Fuel where we did a lot of, gosh, original search and pops and toolbars and this wild, wild west. There’s a lot going on during those days, but worked with a lot of originals like Overture, eventually became essentially Google and some of the other search engines. So yeah, I’ve seen a lot of variants of this space.

Marshall Nyman [00:01:31]:
And then you ended up in Buenos Aires somehow. Would love to know what you were doing out there.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:01:36]:
Yeah, it’s quite a story. A lot of, I think, my life kind of right place, right time. But I was invited down there to see their facilities and essentially asked if I wanted to come work for them. So I went down there after my honeymoon and worked down there for about a year and a half and did what’s called, at least what was called, I’m not even sure if it’s around anymore, but selling rich media essentially, remember old ads kind of going across your screen like hamburgers or french fries or cars racing across. We did a lot of that with a lot of the big agencies out there. So it was an interesting space. I worked not only with the merchants, but on the agency side as well as publisher side. So I worked with just about everyone.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:02:20]:
So it was kind of an interesting segue into the affiliate marketing space, kind of learning the whole pub space.

Marshall Nyman [00:02:27]:
And then almost 18 years ago, you started with Upsell. It what led you to join the company?

Jeremy Aaronson [00:02:33]:
Yeah. Again, some people that I had worked for when I was or worked with at started, one of them had started upsell it and he had hired another former employee at Internet fuel. So we were all kind of industry friends and colleagues, and they kept pushing me, even when I was working down Argentina, if I wanted to come work for them. And I kept pushing them off and pushing them off, and then kind of timing was right and said, hey, I’m kind of looking for something now. And they said, we’d love to have you. And here I am and 18 years later, still love what I’m doing.

Marshall Nyman [00:03:06]:
No regrets there. Sounds like a great decision. Would love for you to tell us a little bit about what upsell it does.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:03:13]:
Yeah, so upsell it. Jeez. There’s other history there, too. Right? When we first started, we were in the AI chat space. We’ve come a long way, and that’s kind of one of the things I love about working here is that we’ve kind of evolved and we evolve when we need to and we evolve with the market. So we’ve kind of always started it. We’ve always been the conversion optimization, meaning we help merchants drive more revenue. Back when we first started, it was all about eyeballs to the website.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:03:42]:
Nobody really focused on conversion rates and whatever. And we kind of took this AI chat that we had and said, well, why don’t we use it for exit and use it to help drive more revenue? And as the industry started catching up with us and realizing they can’t just pay for eyeballs, they actually have to convert and have revenue coming through the website and produce sales, people started realizing our solutions and what we did wasn’t as necessary. So we’ve evolved from there and have a whole suite of solutions. And as I said, we’re always adding to it. And I love the ever changing landscape.

Marshall Nyman [00:04:16]:
So tell us about the different roles you’ve had there and what you’re currently working on.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:04:20]:
Yeah, so when I first came in, I was just general sales was really one of their only salespeople, driving sales for us in the infancy stages. And as we started becoming more of a real, quote unquote, air quotes, can’t see real company in terms of really just getting more serious about what we’ve done. I’ve been able to take other sales roles and help developing teams and then becoming a global sales leader. And what I do now in managing multiple teams across multiple geos, but yeah, now I manage everything. Revenue.

Marshall Nyman [00:05:02]:
Amazing. And what does that look like going from just a few people to now a global team in multiple countries.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:05:09]:
Yeah, it was quite interesting. We’d been wanting to do it for a while. Some different things that were happening internally to kind of expand didn’t allow me to necessarily go global as soon as I wanted to. Then a pandemic hit. So just before the pandemic, it was kind of a blessing in disguise as well. We were able to kind of get it going before the pandemic hit, so we were able to really get our footing into the region during a time that we actually were needed there even more. But now that we’ve come out of the pandemic on the other side, we’ve been able to really take off and grow it internationally. We’ve always been international, but as I learned from the years doing it, sometimes in certain regions, it’s easier and better to have boots on the ground.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:05:56]:
People want to be able to go down and have a drink or be able to go into the office and have a meeting. And it’s really helped us expand quite a bit the last few years.

Marshall Nyman [00:06:06]:
What are some things that brands or agencies should take into consideration when looking to work with upsell it?

Jeremy Aaronson [00:06:11]:
Well, one, what are they currently doing us as a company where we don’t want to come in and just start taking things over? We really want to work with the brand to understand what are they currently doing, where are their holes and how can we help them fill those holes, if they will, right? In terms of how are people leaving the site, where are they going, what are they doing, what were they looking at before they left? How do we take all this information and help them build the right mousetrap, if you will, to keep people purchasing on their website and more importantly, coming.

Marshall Nyman [00:06:45]:
Back, what makes upsell it unique?

Jeremy Aaronson [00:06:48]:
I think it’s a good question. I was thinking about that when we were talking about it. I laugh about it, but it’s us as a company, right? I think what we bring to the table, our years of experience, we were the longest doing this, right? We come to the table with a lot of ideas. We’ve worked with every brand or every type of brand, every geo. We have so much experience that we can really help clients get off the ground quicker with that experience. And I think that goes a long way. Right. We’re in a relationship business.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:07:19]:
I think we hear that quite a bit the last couple of years and our relationships as well, and who we’ve known each other for a long time, right? Being able to put you in touch with people that we’ve been working with and vice versa. It goes beyond just our scope of conversion optimization, being able to help people across their entire platform.

Marshall Nyman [00:07:40]:
And a quick message from PI Live USA coming to your podcast ears. We want to let you know that tickets are currently on sale and if you don’t already know, PI Live USA is the leading event for those working in affiliate influencer and partner marketing, and it’s taking place in Miami April 16 to 18th this year. If you’re a retailer, agency, tech platform, affiliate, publisher or creator, PI Live USA is the place for you to connect with like minded individuals, learn from other leaders in the industry and ignite profitable partnerships. Head to performancein live Slash USA to get your ticket and join us at the new home of partnership marketing. I think it’s safe to say I’ll see you in Miami for PI Live, Jeremy.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:08:27]:
You sure will. I’m quite excited about it.

Marshall Nyman [00:08:29]:
Awesome. And congratulations. I see upsell, it has been shortlisted for seven Us partnership awards this year.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:08:37]:
Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. We’re pretty excited about it. I think it really shows the strength of our team, how much we’ve really grown as a company and it makes me very proud of what we’ve done and accomplished and being recognized for it.

Marshall Nyman [00:08:56]:
Amazing. Congrats to the team and best of luck on those awards. And I see that you’re also participating in the AM leaders event the day leading up to PI live.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:09:07]:
I am. I’m very excited about that as well. I told myself a couple years ago, I’m really working on getting out there more, start doing a lot more interviews and panels and all that good stuff. So I’m excited to get back at it again.

Marshall Nyman [00:09:23]:
And what topic are you covering?

Jeremy Aaronson [00:09:26]:
I think it’s a general session, really just about affiliate marketing. I think it’s kind of, I don’t say shoot at the hip approach, but just really just talking about what’s going on right now, what are people facing? Just kind of see where things lead in the conversation. I think it’s a really good panel of people who have been doing this for quite a while. So I think the content that’s going to come out of there be should pretty incredible.

Marshall Nyman [00:09:49]:
Awesome. What do you see as some of the biggest challenges working as a publisher in the performance marketing industry?

Jeremy Aaronson [00:09:56]:
Yeah, it’s interesting. We’re a bit different than most in that we’re a technology publisher. Our challenges aren’t necessarily the same as everyone else. But I think one thing that comes up that I hear from all publishers and what we face too, is really incrementality in our space and how is that proven? What do we do about that? Affiliate, I think during COVID and during lockdowns got a lot more attention because people were looking for new ways to kind of expand. And I think it’s really put a good spotlight on us in that, hey, there’s this other section of Internet marketing that can really drive a lot of sales. Right. And so I think that continuing to work altogether and trying to figure out a way to show kind of incrementality and how we can drive great revenue is going to be important, not just now, but moving forward. And I think that’s definitely going to be one of our challenges to keep up with that.

Marshall Nyman [00:10:58]:
What is another challenge that you’re seeing as a nontraditional publisher for us is.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:11:07]:
A lot of publishers have to prove, you know, how they, how they can drive sales quick. Right. And people want what are you going to do for me now, right. And showing kind of that gradual increase where for us we’re kind of on the opposite end where we start driving sales right away because we are engaging on site in all traffic. So kind of balancing that out across all publishers and how we need to set expectations. I think that’s a big one, right. Is exciting expectations and getting the merchants to actually understand, especially as new people are coming into affiliate marketing and continuing to learn about it.

Marshall Nyman [00:11:45]:
And final question, what has been your favorite part of working in the performance marketing industry?

Jeremy Aaronson [00:11:50]:
I say it all the time. The people that we have, it’s just such a good space. People are just generally good people. We’re very lucky to do what we do and to be able to interact and work with people like yourself, both professionally and personally. I think it really says a lot about our industry.

Marshall Nyman [00:12:15]:
I can’t disagree to that. It’s been an honor to work with you over the years. Big thank you to Jeremy from upsellit for joining the podcast this week. Some really great insights into his background and how you can best work with upsellit. What is the best way for listeners to connect with you?

Jeremy Aaronson [00:12:33]:
Email me. Seems to be the easiest way working remote these days. Just Jeremy. Jeremy@upsell.com easy enough.

Marshall Nyman [00:12:41]:
Again, thank you to Jeremy, our guest today, and to our producer Leon Sonkin. If you’ve enjoyed this content, please give us a like and follow. Thank you for joining.

Jeremy Aaronson [00:12:51]:
Thanks, Marshall.

Marshall Nyman [00:12:52]:
I am Marshall Nyman, host of the performance marketing spotlight and founder and CEO of Naimoneco, signing off. Thank you and have a great day.