Reward, cashback, affiliate and creator platforms
Where does your money stand still?
Follow a transaction from the moment it happens to the moment everyone has been paid. How many times did it stop?
I investigate what's happening underneath the growth in reward, affiliate and creator platforms.
I only work with a small number of leadership teams at any one time.
Is this you
Worth a conversation
- Revenue is growing faster than the operation underneath it
- Different teams have different versions of the same number
- Money takes longer to move than anyone can quite explain
- Something has become "just how we do it" and nobody remembers deciding
- The technology is in place and the joins between it are still manual
- You're about to scale something nobody has stress-tested
You probably don't need me yet
- You can already say how long money takes to move end to end, and prove it
- Every stage has a name against it, and that person would agree it's theirs
- Nothing important depends on 1 spreadsheet or 1 person being at their desk
- You know exactly what needs fixing and you just need hands
Designed for
- Cashback, reward and voucher platforms
- Card-linked and bank-embedded loyalty
- Employee benefits and incentive platforms
- Gift card platforms, and anyone managing a float
- Creator commerce and creator payouts
- Affiliate networks and partner platforms
2 journeys, 1 business
I follow the money twice.
Most businesses have only ever mapped the first one.
The second one pays for the first. A member cannot be paid until the merchant has.
Scale = Growth − What stands still
Everyone measures the growth. Almost nobody measures what stands still.
The questions
12 questions most leadership teams never get asked.
If I asked how long it takes to get a new partner live, would 3 people in your business give me the same number?
When a transaction reverses after you have already told someone they had earned it, what happens next?
Who owns the journey from a transaction happening to everyone being paid, end to end?
Every single one is money.
In practice
What that looks like in practice.
Two platforms where nothing looked broken. In both, 1 small change took weeks out of the wait.
One of the largest programmes on the site. Tracking was clean, but nothing could be matched back to a live order, so validation was still being done by hand.
1 change to what we captured made the matching automatic.
Nothing here was broken. The brand simply refused to settle for "good enough".
A targeted cash-flow fix took a quarter off the wait, and 5-star reviews followed the same quarter.
What people say
"Nat is a pleasure to work with: friendly, proactive and highly strategic. We worked closely together on the BT programme during her time at Quidco, strengthening the partnership, improving operational efficiency and delivering strong results.
In particular, Nat helped introduce a more effective validation process, which improved both performance and the customer experience for people purchasing BT products through Quidco."
What working together looks like
Ways in.
All remote. Fixed scope and fixed price, agreed before we start.
The 1-Area Investigation
You have already spotted something. One process, one team, one number that never quite adds up. Bring me that, and I follow it from wherever it actually starts to wherever it actually ends.
What you get: where it actually begins, which is rarely where you noticed it, who else it touches, and what changing it is worth.
The 1-Journey Review
Half the machine, walked properly. You pick which half - a transaction from sale to money landed, or a partner from onboarding to first commission.
What you get: every place that journey stops, in the order of what each one is costing you.
The 2-Journey Review
A transaction from sale to money landed. A merchant from onboarding to first commission. Then where the 2 collide, usually in the payment cycle.
What you get: a written account of where value is getting stuck, why, and which bits you can actually change.
The Quarterly Seat
I come back every quarter and re-walk both - sale to payout, onboarding to first commission - before the new workarounds harden.
What you get: each quarter, what has drifted since the last time, and what is forming.
Build Support
Sometimes the answer is a change to the system rather than the process. When it is, I design it and write the spec. Your developers build it. I don't touch the code.
What you get: mock-ups and a specification your developers can build from - what the system has to check, what it has to show you, and what good looks like once it is running.
Investors and funds, and businesses about to be bought, are over here.
Where I learned the machine
Awin · Rakuten Advertising · CJ · Partnerize · Tradedoubler · Income Access · Webgains · TradeTracker · Optimise Media · Affiliate Future · Paid On Results · Silvertap
The names change by sector. The machine doesn't.
Where does your money stand still?
Let's find out. Tell me about your platform and I'll come back to you personally within 1 working day.