Sales expert Sam McKenna, Founder of Sam Sales, shares her journey from solo consultant to a thriving 20-person team with 250+ clients. The podcast discusses her unique sales strategies, including the "Expand the Sandbox" method for LinkedIn prospecting, which landed her a deal with Equifax. Key takeaways include the importance of building genuine rapport with clients (even discussing breakfast!), prioritizing consistent outreach, and investing in employee growth. McKenna emphasizes the critical...
Jul 08, 2025•26 min•Ep. 92
This Always Be Testing podcast features James Little, a UK affiliate marketing legend and key figure at TopCashback. The episode covers TopCashback's 20-year history, its unique 100% cashback model, and its global success without venture capital. Little discusses the challenges and rewards of operating in various markets, the importance of clear customer education around cashback, and the evolving relationship between cashback sites and brands. He highlights the crucial role of accurate tracking...
Jul 01, 2025•40 min•Ep. 91
The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) released its third triennial affiliate marketing survey, revealing a booming industry. Data from eight networks, 53 publishers, and over 20,000 brands showed ad spend skyrocketing from $6 billion to $13.63 billion (a 14.42% CAGR), exceeding e-commerce growth and contributing 10% to overall US e-commerce revenue. While cashback and coupon sites remain significant, their market share decreased, likely due to the rise of card-linked offers and buy now, pa...
Jun 23, 2025•22 min•Ep. 90
This podcast features Ryan Fitzgerald, an affiliate industry expert at AWIN, discussing various aspects of affiliate marketing. Key takeaways include the importance of initially working with all publisher types to build brand equity, AWIN's global reach and commitment to a publisher-centric approach, and Fitzgerald's sales leadership focusing on educating and mentoring SMBs. He emphasizes the need for transparency and data-driven decision-making in affiliate marketing, particularly for convincin...
Jun 16, 2025•41 min•Ep. 89
This podcast episode features Vinod Varma, founder and CEO of Creator Co., discussing the evolving landscape of social commerce. Varma defines social commerce as the next wave of influencer marketing, enabled by expired Amazon patents, and highlights TikTok Shop's leading role due to its seamless user experience. Creator Co. helps brands navigate this space by providing technical setup and access to a vast influencer network. The conversation touches upon the potential of other platforms like Yo...
Jun 09, 2025•24 min•Ep. 88
Jordan Koene , CEO & Founder of Previsible.io, breaks down how AI is reshaping the SEO landscape. As tools like ChatGPT provide direct answers, many websites are seeing noticeable drops in organic traffic—ranging from 10% to as much as 90%, depending on the industry and keyword. This shift is happening quickly and requires a thoughtful response. Jordan explains why it's important for brands to focus on becoming trustworthy sources within AI ecosystems, addressing inaccuracies in AI-generated...
Jun 04, 2025•35 min•Ep. 87
This podcast features a conversation between two performance marketing experts with 20+ years of experience, discussing the evolving landscape of digital marketing. Svet, with a background at Stanford, McKinsey, and Nextag, shares his insights on leveraging first-principle thinking and algorithmic understanding to optimize marketing campaigns across B2B, e-commerce, and local service businesses. Key themes include the importance of rigorous testing, overcoming common data measurement mistakes (l...
May 27, 2025•38 min•Ep. 86
In this episode, Brendan Regan, Senior Director of Lifestyle/Lifecycle Marketing at Smartsheet, shares his strategic, multi-channel approach to engaging both enterprise and SaaS customers. He explains how Smartsheet blends digital programs with human touchpoints—such as customer success reps and account executives—to optimize acquisition, retention, and monetization. Brendan discusses key growth levers they’ve tested, including freemium conversion, upgrades, seat expansion, and cross-sell/upsell...
May 20, 2025•37 min•Ep. 85
This podcast features Kayla Hamilton, who is the affiliate marketing manager of Sage. The discussion centers on Sage's B2B SaaS affiliate marketing strategy within the FinTech vertical. Key topics include the challenges and successes of building a year-old affiliate program, targeting high-value executives, the importance of internal collaboration between marketing, sales, and PR teams, leveraging AI for forecasting, content creation, and data analysis, and the crucial role of data-driven decisi...
May 13, 2025•31 min•Ep. 84
This podcast features Vanessa Lawrence, Chief Content Officer at Linkby, an ad tech platform connecting brands with premium publishers using a CPC model. Linkby operates globally and has recently expanded into Europe. The platform's success is attributed to its measurable approach, fast turnaround, and no upfront costs for brands. Linkbee complements existing publisher revenue streams (CPA, flat fee) rather than replacing them, emphasizing diversification and experimentation. The platform offers...
May 06, 2025•37 min•Ep. 83
In this episode, fintech affiliate marketing expert Lawrence Sarpong shares insights from years of hands-on experience in the space. He breaks down how fintech affiliate marketing stands apart from the broader industry — with a stronger focus on customer education and solving very specific financial needs. Lawrence dives into best practices for building a strong affiliate program, from choosing the right platform (he gives a big nod to Impact ) to cultivating genuine, long-term relationships wit...
Apr 29, 2025•33 min•Ep. 82
This episode features Jason Fuentes, a seasoned affiliate marketer and active member of the Austin tech community, now working with Wildfire. Wildfire specializes in white-labeling loyalty and rewards platforms for businesses, particularly within the financial sector, helping them boost revenue and engagement through shopping companions like Capital One Shopping. These tools offer cashback, rewards, and coupons while preserving user privacy by avoiding predictive advertising. Instead, Wildfire f...
Apr 22, 2025•39 min•Ep. 81
In this episode, Tye DeGrange is joined by Udi Ledergor to dive into Udi’s new book, "Courageous Marketing: The B2B Marketer's Playbook for Career Success," released on April 10th. Drawing from two decades of experience and insights from top CMOs, the book challenges traditional B2B marketing practices and encourages a bold, strategic mindset. The conversation covers key themes like overcoming “death by committee,” prioritizing product-market fit over blindly following so-called best practices, ...
Apr 15, 2025•28 min•Ep. 80
In this episode, I sit down with Ryan Pitylak, VP of Growth at NinjaTrader, to talk about the evolving world of performance marketing and how AI is changing the game. We dive into the rise of Google Performance Max and how AI is reshaping ad platforms, why the creator economy and authentic influencer marketing are gaining momentum, and the biggest mistakes growth marketers make—especially when they focus too much on advertising over product fundamentals. Ryan shares why a full-funnel, product-fi...
Apr 08, 2025•51 min•Ep. 79
In this episode, Nancy Harnett, Head of HubSpot’s Affiliate Marketing Program, shares how they transformed their strategy to achieve 2x ROI . By shifting from a broad partnership model to a highly personalized, one-on-one approach, HubSpot was able to build stronger collaborations and drive better performance. She highlights the importance of prioritizing key partners, offering tailored support, and using data-driven testing and rapid iteration to optimize the program. Instead of flat-fee struct...
Mar 31, 2025•45 min•Ep. 78
In this episode, we talk with Sid Nagpal , Director, Customer & Field Marketing at PartnerStack, about the power of community in B2B SaaS marketing. Sid breaks down PartnerStack’s four pillars of customer marketing—expansion, engagement, education, and advocacy—highlighting how their thriving community drives success. He discusses the impact of the Stacked Conference and various meetups, emphasizing how community plays a role in every stage of the customer journey. The conversation also expl...
Mar 24, 2025•30 min•Ep. 77
This podcast features Jennifer Rhima , Apollo's Partnerships Lead, discussing strategies for building and scaling B2B SaaS partner programs. She emphasizes enabling partners beyond acquisition, tracking activation metrics, fostering internal collaboration, and leveraging PRM tools like PartnerStack for scalability. Rhima highlights the value of different partner types, the importance of data analysis in measuring partner success, and the challenges of attribution modeling. She also explores the ...
Mar 18, 2025•31 min•Ep. 76
In this podcast episode, Pranav Piyush joins the conversation to discuss marketing measurement and incrementality, with a focus on affiliate and influencer marketing. The discussion highlights Media Mix Modeling (MMM) and its growing accessibility through open-source tools and lower costs, positioning it as a key attribution method in the coming decade. The episode explains the difference between attribution and incrementality, contrasting the limitations of multi-touch attribution (MTA) with MM...
Mar 11, 2025•46 min•Ep. 75
🚀 In this episode of Always Be Testing , host Tye DeGrange sits down with Matt Hunter from impact.com and Philip Qiu from Henry Social to explore the future of AI, blockchain, and Web3 in partner marketing. Matt, a 25-year industry veteran, shares insights on innovations at impact.com, while Philip discusses his transition from VC to affiliate marketing and how Henry Social’s AI agents simplify shopping and booking. They dive into AI’s role in decision-making, blockchain’s potential to reduce f...
Mar 04, 2025•36 min•Ep. 74
In this episode of Always Be Testing , host Tye DeGrange welcomes Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified, for a deep dive into growth, performance marketing, and the evolving role of AI in sales and marketing. Dan shares insights from his time at Salesforce and how Qualified has transformed from a live chat tool into an AI-powered platform helping marketers convert website visitors into leads. The conversation explores how Piper, an AI Sales Development Representative, is automating and ...
Feb 24, 2025•45 min•Ep. 73
We had an incredible conversation with Cornelius from Opinary, now part of Affinity, about the transformative power of AI in affiliate operations and the future of content monetization.
Feb 18, 2025•35 min•Ep. 72
In this episode of Always Be Testing , Ian Martins, Managing Director of Zenith, explores marketing fragmentation and the need for integrated, client-focused strategies. He discusses balancing brand building with performance marketing, the rise of D2C, and the shift toward hybrid in-housing models. Ian also highlights media trust, influencer marketing, and the challenge of attracting top talent. The episode wraps up with his personal insights on media, technology, and industry trends....
Feb 11, 2025•45 min•Ep. 71
In this episode of Always Be Testing , I sit down with Nate Ivey from Impact to talk about what’s working in partner marketing today. We cover why diversifying partners is key, how trust and authenticity drive better results, and what brands need to know about Google’s crackdown on-site reputation abuse. Nate also shares insights on the shift to performance-based influencer models and why consistent recruitment keeps programs strong. We wrap up with some personal stories—including sports, family...
Feb 04, 2025•46 min•Ep. 70
Ely Lerner delves into his role as an advisor, distinguishing it from consulting by emphasizing his focus on advising rather than delivery. He works closely with founders in software verticals such as consumer marketplace, fintech, SMB SaaS, enterprise SaaS, AI, and dev tools, but avoids hardware, DTC, biotech, and crypto sectors. Lerner highlights the importance of integrating product strategy, growth strategy, and go-to-market strategy, spending an hour weekly with each CEO to focus on key pri...
Jan 28, 2025•43 min•Ep. 69
In this episode of Always Be Testing , I talked with my longtime friend and Round Bar Labs COO Mike McElhaney. We explore affiliate influencer marketing, Meta ads, algorithmic machine learning, and B2B lead optimization. Mike highlights leadership traits like low ego, high empathy, and continuous learning, inspired by books like The Captain’s Class and Extreme Ownership . The discussion blends marketing insights, personal anecdotes, and fun topics like family vacations, favorite TV shows, and Gi...
Jan 13, 2025•32 min•Ep. 68
In this episode, Ty DeGrange sits down with Zoe Mackay, the strategic partnerships lead at TechnologyAdvice, to dive deep into the world of B2B tech guidance and affiliate marketing.
Jan 06, 2025•40 min•Ep. 67
Udi Ledergor's journey at GONG is a testament to the power of innovative marketing, human-centric strategies, and the importance of experimentation. His insights offer valuable lessons for marketers looking to make a significant impact in the B2B SaaS space.
Dec 17, 2024•39 min•Ep. 66
In this episode of the Always Be Testing podcast, Tye DeGrange introduces the show and its focus on growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing. The episode features a panel discussion on leveraging AI for better marketing results, with insights from industry experts Alexis Contos (CMO of NEA), Cory Treffiletti (CMO of Rembrandt), Jennifer Barkley (VP of Commercial Marketing for Visa), and Tye DeGrange (CEO of Round Barn Labs).
Dec 10, 2024•45 min•Ep. 65
Guiding you through the world of growth, performance marketing, and partner marketing. We sit down with growth and marketing leaders to share tests and lessons learned in business and life. Host: Tye DeGrange Guest: Tyler Calder Hype man & Announcer: John Potito
Dec 04, 2024•48 min•Ep. 64
Guiding you through the world of growth, performance marketing, and partner marketing. We sit down with growth and marketing leaders to share tests and lessons learned in business and life. Host: Tye DeGrange Guest: Tyler Calder Hype man & Announcer: John Potito
Nov 26, 2024•42 min•Ep. 63
