Our Chief Product Officer Matt Simmonds was recently interviewed by AiThority. The interview covers a wide rand of AI-related topics, including how Partnerize uses AI to solve real business problems. He says, “We want our brands to make wiser choices, and do so faster, with access to real-time data and insights coupled with powerful AI-driven tools to help sift through all the signals and find the right courses of action.” Read more from Matt’s interview:
Tell us about your journey into Affiliate and Partner Marketing? What made you join Partnerize?
Partnerize is my first foray into affiliate and partner marketing. Prior to Partnerize, I led product management teams for a broad range of companies including Oracle, GroupM, Yahoo and the BBC. What intrigued me about this role is the opportunity to lead product development for a company that’s trying to fundamentally change how partnerships are conducted, and to apply the principles of data-driven marketing to one of the fastest growing categories of marketing investment.
So much about the partnership is ripe for disruption. Much of the “solutions” in the space are service providers rather than technologies, and those tech platforms that do exist are often focused on a single sector of partnership. Our goal is to be the one platform from which companies form and manage all of their partnerships, be they influencers, channel partners, loyalty communities, other brands, or digital affiliates.
Tell us specifically about the AI products at Partnerize?
We’re the pioneers of AI in our space – we have always set out to use AI to solve real business problems for our brands, not just to have AI for the sake of it. We recognized early on that AI and machine-learning can help drive automation and help our brands optimize their partner marketing programs. We want our brands to make wiser choices, and do so faster, with access to real-time data and insights coupled with powerful AI-driven tools to help sift through all the signals and find the right courses of action.
Our first AI-powered offerings were launched in 2017. Specifically, we created a toolset designed to predict future purchase, revenue and commission results for our brands’ partner programs. This enables better forecasting and helps our brands understand where they can optimize their partner strategies.
At that time we also launched AI-powered “smart alerts” that tell brands when changes in their data warrant attention. That may sound like a little thing but in our industry small errors can lead to large revenue shortfalls. Something like a tagging error or a competitor action can have an immediate impact on sales and profitability. By constantly monitoring a client’s data, we can use AI to point out when data anomalies signal that something has happened and needs focus. That means clients can make real-time changes to their partner programs without putting hours or days of revenue at risk.
Our most recent AI-powered offering is called Intelligent Partner Discovery as our brands and partners were telling us that a priority for them was to find and form new relationships to grow revenue. The thing is, not all partners are the right fit for that bran or are capable of delivering the scale necessary to warrant the effort. Our technology uses machine learning to identify the “best next” partners for a brand based on a host of data on their effectiveness, vertical relevance, and ability to launch and scale new partnerships effectively.
All three of these AI-powered offerings are about providing very practical solutions to real business problems or opportunities that can really move the needle for a client’s business.
Read the rest of Matt’s interview in AiThority.
