In this installment of our Cloudways Interview Series, we’re thrilled to feature Clement Labbe.

Clement Labbe is a cross-functional affiliate marketing expert serving as Head of Account Management at Pouch. With an extensive background in performance marketing and strong knowledge and experience in affiliate management, Clement has been hosting the Clubhouse series “All Things Affiliate Marketing”. We got a hold of Clement to discuss the affiliate marketing model and its strategies for aspiring affiliates.

Cloudways: Clement, it’s lovely to have you for this interview. Could you please tell our readers about yourself?

Clement: Thanks for having me! I was born and raised in France. I lived there until the age of 20 before moving to London where I started my career in affiliate marketing at Tradedoubler and held various roles in the client service team and operations a couple of years later.

Currently, I work for Global Savings Group, where I’m in charge of helping accelerate the company growth by taking Pouch’s key commercial partners related to the next level and defining the commercial strategy for Pouch’s new features.

I would like to describe myself as a driven, result-orientated, and determined individual. I have a curiosity for technology and a passion for digital marketing and developing forward-thinking.

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Cloudways: Would you like to share your journey with Pouch? How is it integrated with affiliate marketing?

Clement: Pouch was launched in 2016, and acquired by Global Savings Group in 2019. Essentially, Pouch is the UK’s No.1 browser extension for saving time and money when buying online.

Overall, Pouch is a great tool that plays a critical step in the customer journey, making the shopping experience easier and better for the consumers at every stage of the journey.

The extension features a variety of useful tools that aim to prevent users from site hopping, keep them on retailers’ pages and make purchases in a variety of ways that ensure abandonment rates are reduced.

In the UK alone we work with over +3,500 merchants. These include some of the largest and most recognized retailers. We help them to promote their best deals and discounts to their ideal customers, ultimately driving revenue through the affiliate channel.

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Cloudways: Any good examples of publishers who are using the affiliate model successfully?

Clement: Consumer behavior has greatly evolved and as such new affiliate models are on the rise with many new publishers emerging, helping advertisers increase their conversions, reducing their abandonment rates, and attracting new customers.

Onsite retargeting publishers offer advertisers the ability to re-engage with leaving customers through basket abandonment emails and on-site targeted overlays. Those publishers by using a range of performance-based tools can help advertisers drive growth across the funnel from acquisition to activation, increase retention and ultimately increase revenue.

We have also seen publishers taking advantage of machine learning and artificial intelligence to serve product bundling, cross-sell recommendations, and personalized incentives to customers in real-time, helping brands deliver more conversions and incremental sales.

Influencer marketing has also grown rapidly over the past years and is becoming more and more important in every company’s marketing strategy. In recent years, the number of influencers has risen rapidly, and many companies now provide platforms for product recommendations within premium lifestyle media or social sharing technology that leverages the power of existing customers to acquire new ones.

Finally, following Google expanding its Comparison-Shopping-Partners program, few publishers have launched comparison shopping service, allowing advertisers and agencies to take advantage of Google’s newest partnership and run more successful campaigns on the Google Shopping platform at a significantly lower cost.

Thanks to the ongoing innovation that characterizes affiliate marketing and the continued migration of marketing budgets into online, affiliate marketing as a channel continues to mature as we have seen a constant stream of new non-traditional business models and ideas entering the channel.

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Cloudways: Can you name a few examples that revolutionized the voucher space and listicles in the affiliate industry well? What’s the ingredient of their success?

Clement: Companies such as Global Savings Group have revolutionized the voucher space as they operate hundreds of digital assets and have partnered with premium media companies, including leading online newspapers, to connect brands with shoppers across different stages of the purchase journey, offering advertisers strong online visibility.

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Cloudways: What is your one prediction for affiliate marketing in 2021? What trends do you foresee in it?

Clement: While last year turned out to be somewhat different than anyone expected, with some retailers cutting budgets, the IAB UK’s Digital Ad spend Report reported that the affiliate channel grew by 10% year-on-year in 2020 to reach a total of £627 million.

With the expected growth on spending set to increase, affiliate marketing is certainly still growing and my biggest prediction is that many retailers will continue to focus on strengthening their high ticket affiliate programs by responding to consumer behavior and interests through hyper-personalization.

Over the past few years, we have also seen many traditional publishers adopting the affiliate channel in such a dominating way and I also expect the growing importance of the multi-channel approach to become more important than ever.

Overall, affiliate marketing will continue to be an attractive solution for many retailers and is likely to evolve and adapt to the changes that e-commerce throws at it with advertisers and publishers adopting a strategic mindset to drive sales and increase revenue.

Cloudways: Let’s step away from work. What do you do to relax and unwind?

Clement: My favorite thing is probably going out to grab drinks or dinner with friends but I also enjoy watching Netflix, YouTube, or something and just turn my brain off for a bit! I also really love traveling and I try to go skiing at least once a year.

Cloudways: All right, here are some rapid-fire questions to help us understand your perspective of life, happiness, and success.

• Your Motto in Life: No Pain, No Gain
• Your Favorite Book: Getting Things Done by David Allen
• Source of Motivation: Joy of Completion
• Your Inspiration: Elon Musk
• Ideal Vacation Spot: Skiing

With the rise of new affiliate models, many new advertisers are able to increase their conversions, and drive new customers while reducing their abandonment rate.

Cloudways: Thank you for your time. Lastly, who would you recommend that we should interview next?

Clement: If it’s affiliate specific, Robert Glazer if you haven’t already, or James Little or Kevin Edwards.

As for our readers, you can follow Clement through his Twitter where he often tweets @ClementLabbe or you can connect with him over his Linkedin profile: www.linkedin.com/in/labbec/

Faiza Ismail

Faiza Ismail is a Digital Marketer and handles affiliate partnerships at Cloudways – A Managed Cloud Hosting Platform. She has an extensive history of working in various facets of Digital Marketing, Community Management, and Corporate Communication. She loves to play chess. Get in touch with her at [email protected]

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