International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women, who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.

Hamza Afifi from SiGMA TV sits with the Managing Director at MyAffiliates, Clemence Dujardin, to share her extraordinary journey with the world.

• What was her motivation to start working in the gaming industry? And what additional challenges did she face as a woman in the industry?
• How did she make it from a Customer Support Representative to the Managing Director at MyAffiliates?
• Who are My Affiliates? And what makes them unique?

Watch the inteview below:

It is closely tied to the rest of the business, and it can have a considerable impact on the way the affiliate marketing program runs in the future. Software packages such as MyAffiliates receives data from the gaming provider. We are then able to display new players and their related activity, trigger CPAs, calculate Net Revenue for revenue share and hybrid deals, and calculate earnings for all affiliates.

Besides the fact that affiliate marketing is a major contributor to the traffic generation and revenue to most gaming operators, operators leave the choice of the affiliate marketing tool they will be using to the end when their choice of gaming provider has already been made.

Operators do not realize how closely these systems work together and what impact the choice of the gaming provider may have in the way their affiliate program may or may not work in the future.

As we all know, transparency is a determining factor in the choice affiliates make for an affiliate program. Therefore, it is crucial for operators to understand their data providers’ capabilities to send granular data for them to display full transparency to their partners. It is also key for the operator to understand what data is available to build their business model.

An affiliate program’s net gaming formula is the key element that will ensure the affiliate program’s success for both the affiliates and the affiliate program. When operators do not understand the data provider’s capabilities to provide every element the affiliate program needs to build their business model in the affiliate marketing software, they sometimes need to make compromises on transparency and profitability for both the affiliates and the affiliate program.

The frequency at which the data can be sent is also crucial. Most affiliate companies need frequent data updates to make quick decisions with the optimization of their campaigns. If the gaming operator cannot provide the data at least hourly, affiliates’ and operator’s costs increase, as it would take 24hours for affiliates to understand conversion from click to FTD.

The operators’ business model should also factor in the cost of affiliate marketing, including the cost of running on a reputable, reliable, strong software. Often, gaming operators would have invested a lot of money in engaging gaming content providers’ services to offer the best available gaming options to their players, disregarding the fact that affiliate marketing will be their primary way of getting these players to register and play.

The cheapest option, which offers basic functionalities, will often turn out to be the more expensive decision. One needs to remember that most of the biggest affiliates have been around for years. Their choice of promoting an affiliate program or not would also be based on the affiliate marketing software the operator would have chosen.

On the other hand, the operator needs to rely on the software provider’s support to tackle in a timely manner, issues that may occur with the data, the reporting, or any issues they may be encountering. For example, it is a common problem to have a gaming provider sending data late or incompletely. The operator needs to be able to rely on the affiliate marketing software to be able to react and re-import the data as soon as it is made available for affiliates if they are to trust the gaming operator.

Choose wisely, then. As with most things, cheaper is not necessarily better. And don’t leave your choice of affiliate management software for when it’s already too late for your business to make the most of that decision.

An interview with Clemence Dujardin of MyAffiliates detailing the company’s choices for rebranding and the factors that help differentiate their offering in the marketplace.

What developments/thought processes have led to your recent rebranding?

MyAffiliates has been on the market since 2007 and we’ve had the same branding since inception. Of course, when it was first rolled out at the time it reflected the product as it was. As one may imagine, after 12 years on the market and an exponential growth since 2012, the branding did not reflect anymore the image we wanted to portray to our customers and potential customers. In February 2019, we engaged Growth Gurus to help us make the changes we wanted to see in our brand image. We needed a few months to look back at our past and present and plot our short- and long-term goals.

It was a great opportunity to restate the company’s values and to take a fresh look at what our competitors were doing and their positioning on the market. We reset our forecasts for our own position for the next five years. It was a very refreshing experience. The rebirth of our brand came naturally, as we took the time to think about our past, our growth and how we see the future. We are very happy with the results, which can be seen through our new logo and website that portray a modern company that is striving to help their customer grow through transparent values.

What factors have cemented your reputation as an industry-leading affiliate marketing software?

The core values of MyAffiliates are flexibility, transparency and reliability – and these are not just buzzwords that have been thrown there as a marketing gimmick.

Anyone that has used MyAffiliates can witness the flexibility of the product. MyAffiliates is the only affiliate marketing software on the market that allows gaming operators to decide what data to send to the system and the KPIs displayed to the affiliates. It is also the only software on the market that allows the operator to custom-build the revenue formula. But the flexibility is not only reflected within the software. It is also reflected in the support and the relationships we have with our clients. Our clients have access to our support team through different channels and our staff is always available to discuss anything the client may need.

Another factor is transparency. We all know that is key to any affiliate programme, as every operator needs to be able to gain a deep understanding of each of their affiliate partners in order to be able to grow their partners’ business, increasing the revenue for the affiliate programme itself. Of course, this is reflected in the reporting through the platform from the operator and affiliates, but we also pursue transparency through our billing model which is based on a full system available to all, and a clear pricing model with no hidden costs.

Reliability is again a value that is carried by both the product and the MyAffiliates team. The product is hosted on Amazon cloud which has built its own reputation, and the product has been designed to provide the gaming operators and their affiliate partners with the data they need, in a consistent and reliable way so that backed with the right data and information, the right decisions can be taken. The MyAffiliates team takes pride in what they do, and our best marketing agents are our clients who keep recommending us to other operators.

How do you view a successful affiliate programme?

Some would say size is everything. We don’t. We value all our clients in the same way, whether they are small, medium or large. Successful affiliate programmes should not be measured by their size – but by the knowledge and professionalism of the people that actually manage that affiliate programme, their ability to understand their affiliate’s partners’ needs and to communicate and make deals that are mutually beneficial for both.

What trends are currently occurring and how are you positioned to respond to the demands of your operators throughout 2019 and beyond?

We all know that the gaming industry is a very dynamic one and affiliate marketing is not exempt for this. When we built the software, affiliate marketing was centred mostly around the affiliate and their ability to deliver players and revenue. The rewarding models were simple and little was done in terms of understanding how the revenue was generated. As years passed, the affiliate marketing industry has matured and shifted progressively around the players, understanding how they convert, they journey, their lifetime and their values. And of course, one cannot omit the fact that the market regulation has had a big impact in the way that affiliate marketing programmes are being managed.

In order to cater for this, we have been doing some major changes in the core product so to be able to reshift the focus of the products on being able to give reporting for earnings per player, per player per country, and so on. In the next few months, our clients will be able to see the fruit of the work we have been preparing, and we are very excited to show what we have managed to achieve to cater for these changes.