S1 Ep19: Industry Interviews with Miya Knights from Eagle Eye Solutions and Chris Johnson from Smarter Click

03/18/20 • 45 min

With the onset of Covid-19 already causing huge disruption to the high street retail sector and underlining the need for businesses to embrace digital technology, this month’s interview with Miya Knights came at an opportune time. Miya’s role as Head of Industry Insight at Eagle Eye Solutions, a technology platform that helps brands engage customers across multiple channels – both online and offline, meant she was able to offer some incisive insights on the convergence of these two experiences. It’s a theme that Miya discussed at length in her featured article in this year’s Awin Report and she was able to elaborate on many of the points she made in that editorial during our conversation, as well as speculating about the potential implications that the coronavirus might have on the brick & mortar retail world. Our guest co-host, Luisa Richardson from our UK New Business team, then spoke to Chris Johnson, Operations Director at Smarter Click, to discuss his extensive experiences working in the affiliate industry and what the technology solution’s brand new Smarter Codes product can offer its brand partners. In addition to all that, Kevin, Rob and Luisa discuss the impact that coronavirus has already had on some of the consumer trends that Awin’s platform has been tracking in recent weeks. And, in conjunction with a recent Awin Thoughts piece published by the team, they also discuss the importance of trust and transparency in the affiliate world at a time when an overabundance of information has led the World Health Organization to label the phenomenon an ‘infodemic’ and something that has made battling the coronavirus that much more difficult.

Previous Episode

S1 Ep18: Referral Marketing with Soreto, Awin Report 2020 Launch and Bounceless Tracking Discussion

On the February episode of Awin Talks we speak to Ricki Jones, Chief Commercial Officer at referral marketing solution Soreto, an Awin affiliate.

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S1 Ep20: Coronavirus and its Impact on The Affiliate Industry, Awin Access Discussion, and an Interview with Furloughed Foodies

The global lockdown has had a profound influence upon how people are shopping, accelerating the adoption of ecommerce, and introducing huge swathes of new users to online consumer options. At Awin we’ve been tracking some substantial changes across specific sectors and verticals in the last month and Craig interviews our Client Partner Team to find out more about these on this month’s episode. Joelle Hillman and Alex Parmar-Yee join him to reveal some of the top trends and what they tell us about changing consumer habits. Kevin then speaks to Awin’s Global Operations Director, Peter Jack, to quiz him on Awin’s newAccess initiative. Access was launched initially in the UK at the start of the year as a means of providing smaller businesses and entrepreneurs with a low-cost, low hurdle means of starting an affiliate programme. In the wake of the pandemic and recognising that small businesses were particularly exposed during the lockdown, Awin made the decision to scrap set-up fees for the service and make it even easier for businesses to embrace affiliate marketing. With the facility soon being rolled out into our DACH and Benelux markets too, this has the potential to provide invaluable support to smaller businesses across Europe at a time of great difficulty. Finally, Rob spoke to Chloe Hall, usually RevLifter’s Marketing Manager, but currently throwing her efforts into the new initiative Furloughed Foodies London. The organisation’s aim is to provide a means of furloughed workers in the UK supporting hospital workers with homecooked food during a time when many of them don’t have the time or energy to feed themselves properly. It’s a great initiative and one that is helping fuel key workers in their fight against the coronavirus. In addition to all that Rob, Kevin and Craig discussed the implications of Amazon’s latest changesto its own affiliate programme* and also highlighted some of the great insights and content that currently features on the Awin coronavirus hub. *A link to the record of Amazon’s changes to its affiliate commissions, as mentioned on the podcast, is available here: https://geniuslink.com/blog/amazon-com-affiliate-commission-rates-a-historical-guide/