Introduction:
In this interview, Jotform affiliate account manager Yaren Büyükdere talked with Andre Fisher, founder of the business automation services company Elevature about how a Jotform partnership has helped grow his business — both in terms of revenue and in relationships with clients. They also covered the future of affiliate marketing and the importance of being an expert on solutions you recommend.
If you’re a Jotform partner and would like to share your experience in this interview series, please fill out this form.
Yaren Büyükdere: Can you start by telling us about Elevature, its mission and vision, and its industry focus?
Andre Fisher: Yeah, definitely. So Elevature is an Australia-based firm. We primarily provide API integration and business automation services. We are based in Brisbane in Australia, but a lot of our clients that we work with are mostly interstate in Sydney and Melbourne. Our mission is to help our clients elevate their enterprise and discover a better way, and look boundless to any particular industry. Our most recent clients operate within the financial, legal, construction, and manufacturing sectors.
Yaren: How did you decide on which products or services to promote to your clients?
Andre: When initially starting the business, I spent the first five months researching organizational digital adoption. It became clear that open API functionality amongst SaaS platforms has become a benchmark as a standard feature. This new movement, it’s kind of paved the way to a whole new world of automation capabilities. So when I really sat down to look at what platforms I wanted to focus on, you know, API functionality was definitely one of the key factors.
Yaren: Perfect. So, how did you get started with affiliate marketing, and how long have you been involved in it? How much importance does affiliate marketing have for your company and for your company’s revenue?
Andre: I was originally introduced to affiliate marketing when running a growth agency in 2020. We were constantly advising organizations to consider various platforms within their tech stack. And we discovered most of these platforms had partner programs. So, affiliate marketing is vital to Elevature.
Although the upside of revenue is an important factor, the relationships we build with these platforms are most valued. Being able to have direct communication with the team makes it quite useful when we have unique questions that we don’t really have the answers to.
Yaren: Yes, being a partner with companies is great. I’ve learned so many things about other companies as well and it’s great to have those conversations. So, how much does your blog contribute to your conversion rates and attracting and retaining traffic?
Andre: Absolutely. Our blog and digital content is a strong contributor to driving authority. Most of our clients are based interstate and internationally, as I mentioned before, so it does positively influence validation for conversion. And we found most of our clients who have researched our website have already spent the time understanding who we are and what we do, via the content that we’ve posted on our website.
I’ve spent a lot of time building the content that we have on our website to really help drive our authority and knowledge within specific industries on a vertical-based approach.
Yaren: Yeah, content is everything. Can you tell us about one of your greatest successes in affiliate marketing?
Andre: I think the best way I can answer this question is the continued revenue that’s generated once the ball begins to roll. Obviously, it doesn’t happen straight away. But once you’ve invested the time with a platform, to truly prove yourself, it builds credibility for them to confidently share leads. And this provides a solid flow of new business and revenue for our company, which we value.
Yaren: How do you determine which affiliate programs would be best to work with? I mean, what have you learned about selecting the ideal affiliate programs for your company?
Andre: Available support and resources within the program, consistent activity and engagement with the platform. If the platform has industry-specific features and content, that really helps when you’re speaking to a business and you’re able to use that content within our sales content.
And also, I think free access for partners to use the platform is quite important. For us to be able to push a platform, you know, we want to know that system inside and out and being able to have access to that platform and also relevant resources into the back end is super useful, and a key feature that we look for.
Yaren: After choosing the ideal affiliate program, what are the elements and features that enable you to be successful at affiliate marketing?
Andre: Vertical-based sales and marketing content, to help introduce prospecting clients is super useful. And fast support and access to technical FAQs are also very helpful. Offering lots of resources.
Obviously, there are always a lot of technical questions that aren’t readily available on a lot of the platforms. So having those questions answered for us is very useful. And also strong API documentation is definitely a key, a valuable piece of content that we look for within a platform to help us sell.
Yaren: Alright, so let’s talk about your partnership with Jotform. What steps do you take to be successful when marketing Jotform? In other words, how do you promote Jotform right now?
Andre: Yeah, so demonstrating sample forms that we’ve developed for specific verticals is always useful. And then showing those prospecting clients how easy Jotform is to use from a self-management point of view.
Obviously, building the architecture around the entire solution is important. But capturing that data is generally one of the first steps of a lot of the workflows that we build. So, you know, building out a couple of samples to show them what’s relevant to their business, and then showing them exactly how they can self-manage to create additional forms or even amend or update the forms that they have themselves is quite a useful technique that we use.
And then also the integration possibilities with their current tech stack. So actually showing them how we can integrate Jotform within that, not only within their current business processes, but also within the current tech stack that they use.
Yaren: Perfect. While showing Jotform to your clients, how easy was it for you to use?
Andre: It’s a fantastic tool. It provides a very simplistic front end for consumer-style use, as well as providing powerful developer functionality on the advanced design side.
So whether you’re looking to create a simple form or a highly customized backend with multiple conditional-based functions, Jotform’s UI is super clean and straightforward.
Andre Fisher
Yaren: Thank you, we really appreciate your feedback. So how did Jotform help your business grow?
Andre: Being listed on Jotform’s Partner Directory has definitely helped us gain a consistent flow of leads, ultimately generating new business. I think it’s important to note that showing Jotform that we’ve been invested in their platform has definitely given confidence for them to do the same for us.
Yaren: How do Jotform services, products, and strategies fit with your audience?
Jotform directly aligns with all of our client’s needs, capturing data through powerful, intuitive, and beautifully designed forms, all within a user-friendly platform is exactly what our clients look for.
Andre Fisher
Yaren: You said that Jotform is what your clients are looking for, but who do you think your ideal customers are when marketing Jotform on your website?
Andre: Companies that are looking to capture data are probably one of their key areas. For instance, in the legal sector, capturing information traditionally has been based on sending out a PDF form with a list of questions where they would go and then take that data and then input it into their ERP system or LMS — legal management system. In that sector, capturing information is quite a time-consuming and tedious process. So, being able to use a digital form solution, like Jotform, really does help the legal sector with their processes that they do day-to-day.
Yaren: Yeah, actually, we could say that Jotform is useful for all industries, right?
Andre: Definitely. It doesn’t matter the size of the business, whether it’s a small business or enterprise, Jotform literally fits within all types of businesses.
Yaren: So to finish up, we are going to do some rapid-fire questions with short answers. First, what do you think the affiliate marketing industry will look like in the next five years?
Andre: I think there’ll be a lot more organizations providing services that focus on specific SaaS platforms. Software implementation support as their primary core service. Contrary, I think SaaS platforms will increase their investment or heavily rely on their partners to take care of the implementation and support services.
I think we’ve seen a lot of big players in the market really ramp up their partner network, and really offload their implementation and support services off to them to partners that are locally based, which really provide that face-to-face, personalized level of service to organizations that are in their area geographically.
Yaren: Yeah, I totally agree with you. What do you think are the top three qualities a good affiliate marketer should have?
Andre: Strong communication is definitely a big one. Good relationship-building is definitely important. And also, we believe, technically driven, you know, if you’re going to be pushing the platform, you need to know that system back to front. So you can actually provide the customers that you’re working with the entire solution.
Yaren: You’re right. What could be the biggest piece of advice you could give to people or companies just starting out in affiliate marketing?
Andre: Leaving back to the technical side, you definitely want to become an expert in the system. And you truly want to understand the front end as well as the backend. If you focus on a series or specific industries, really understand what are the types of solutions that the platform can provide.
Yaren: What affiliate marketing skills did you learn most recently?
Andre: It really increases your competitive advantage, especially when you are a preferred or listed partner on the platform’s directory. When prospective clients are deciding whether to choose you if you’re listed on there, and they reach out to you and you’re able to show that you understand the system, I think it definitely gives you a solid competitive advantage.
Yaren: Lastly, can you give us any good examples of websites or people who are successful at affiliate marketing that you look up to?
Andre: One website that stands out to me recently is probably Website Tool Tester. They’ve got quite a strong lead-generation 24-page e-book that’s become quite popular. It’s like an e-book for website beginners. So they’re obviously driving quite high traffic to their website, and they’re using sidebars and banners to promote affiliate offers, which obviously using their link is able to generate quite a lot of revenue for them.
Yaren: So you’re saying that not only blog posts, but sidebars and banners are also effective ways to promote an affiliate partnership, right?
Andre: Yeah, definitely. I think it is relative to your business model. For a business like ours, we wouldn’t probably use sidebars or banners on our standard pages, maybe on article-based posts, but if you’re a website promoting articles or online content, definitely leveraging those types of media to promote affiliate offers is definitely something I would recommend.
Yaren: OK then, that’s the end of our interview, and I hope that it will influence other partners and other companies. It was a pleasure talking with you and thank you for your time.
You can learn more about Jotform’s affiliate marketing program and apply here.
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