Use Cases
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FastSpring’s Employee Spotlight is a Q&A series that features the hardworking, intelligent, and fun people that make FastSpring great. Get to know the fantastic team behind the ecommerce platform.
In this post, we’re featuring our Affiliate Marketing Manager, Mark Jacobs:
Q: What’s your role at FastSpring?
A: I am an affiliate marketing manager. I collaborate with FastSpring sellers to develop the appropriate marketing mix for their product offering and help them to attract the right affiliate partners for their business. To do this, I’m always looking at the impact of different marketing initiatives and constantly optimizing the affiliate strategy to drive incremental revenue for our customers.
Before this, I was a marketing manager at Skylum (formerly known as Macphun), a company that specializes in photography applications for Mac and PC.
Q: What is the best thing about your day-to-day?
A: I really enjoy how customer-facing my role is, and the best thing about my job is how I’m helping our customers grow their business. Each client has unique needs, figuring out where they should focus their efforts to grow awareness around their digital products is a mini challenge in itself and I really enjoy that. The fact that there’s a lot of trial and error when I’m testing new strategies also means that no two days are really the same.
Q: What inspired you to join FastSpring?
A: I’ve touched on this briefly but one of the biggest selling points was getting to work on a really customer-centric team. Customer success plays such an integral part in any company—I can personally attest to this after seeing this from the other side as a former FastSpring customer.
FastSpring’s team looked and felt like a cohesive unit and I really wanted to a part of that. Having the ability to make a direct impact on a business’ bottom line and again this idea of having a team mentality really spoke to me.
I’ve also had experience with partnerships, reseller models, and traditional media sites so the entire transition was pretty natural. The fact that I’ve worked with FastSpring before during my time at Skylum certainly didn’t hurt either!
Q: What advice would you give someone looking to break into affiliate marketing?
A: For new affiliate marketers:
Go slow! I know it can be both overwhelming and exciting when you’re first starting out, especially when you’re asked to quickly get involved and allowed to have your hands in everything. But if you start with what you don’t have or you think deeply about what you can enhance with performance marketing before you begin building out the complete performance marketing campaign…that’s where you’re going to find the most impact and see the most results.
For example, in your initial audit, you may find out that the business you are working with may not have invested significantly in paid search. This might be a really great area that you can immediately target and start to own. Again it’s really about taking things slow and really understanding the needs of your clients and where they currently are at, instead of maybe trying to do everything all at once.
Q: From reviewing your background, I’ve noticed that you’re also an avid photographer and videographer. Do you think this has helped you in your current role?
A: Absolutely.
When you’re doing affiliate sales in the software or SaaS space finding a “good match” between an affiliate partner and product being pushed is extremely critical. Having a partner that can really speak about the product, that’s always going to come off as more authentic.
This is especially true when you consider how photo-editing software is marketed. Each photographer has their own style and they’re naturally going to gravitate towards influencers that closely align with the software they’re promoting. Again it’s really about finding affiliate partners who not only really embody the product but also work hard to not deviate from that identity.
Q: Outside of work, what are your favorite hobbies and activities?
A: I enjoy playing ice hockey. I always thought the sport looked really cool and always found the actual game dynamics interesting. Picking up ice hockey also allowed me to try something that I knew I wasn’t initially good at and work towards getting better.
Fun fact, my team actually won our league championship back to back so I’m really proud about that!
I also do a fair bit of fishing and hiking in my free time.
The above are just a few of the highlights. We’re very fortunate to have Mark here at FastSpring and look forward to watching all of the amazing things he and the entire affiliate marketing team accomplishes.
Are you interested in joining our amazing team at FastSpring? We’re hiring! Visit our career page to see our open positions.
