After a year of overall uncertainty, one thing is certain: digital isn’t going anywhere. Our devices have become an extension of ourselves. Using them to work from home, virtual learning, connecting with our loved ones, and even shopping for groceries. As our screen time increases, so does the opportunity for marketers to grab our attention. Enter: Everflow.
Everflow is a smarter Partner Marketing platform: Helping marketers track their performance channels, manage all performance partnerships (affiliates, influencers, etc.), and analyze the results each channel delivers.
SourceForge sat down with Michael Cole, VP of Marketing at Everflow, to discuss some of the biggest challenges in the digital marketing space today and gain some insight into how marketers should drive better performance while navigating the impacts from recent industry changes. Michael provided plenty of context to reassure us that despite new hurdles, success is up for the taking by marketers that are willing to take the steps to adapt and earn it.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about Everflow and its origin story? What does the company do and who are the brains behind it?
Of course. Our founders experienced the need for a better tracking platform when they were running their previous company, Moolah Media.
Moolah was one of the first mobile affiliate networks during the early days of that space, and growing that company gave the founders plenty of experience with the pain points that needed to be addressed by a tracking platform. After their company was acquired by Opera Mediaworks/AdColony, they looked around the market and saw that none of the competitor solutions really ‘nailed it’ at addressing these challenges, so they gave it a go themselves by launching Everflow.
Everflow provides a platform for marketers to manage all of their performance. Whether by way of partnerships with traditional affiliates, influencers, referral partners or through in-house or external media buying relationships, each and every one of those channels needs to be tracked. Everflow allows you to track and manage the spend and performance so you have insights into what’s working and what’s not.
Everflow has seen incredible growth since its inception in Nov 2016 – we’re up to more than 600 clients now. Besides the genuine understanding the founders have regarding the feature and infrastructure needs of the market, one of the secrets to our rapid success is that we take client feedback to heart. We’ve incorporated it into our culture and truly focus on building what our customers actually need. So, we’ve really found a way to bridge the gap between mobile, desktop, and all of the different performance verticals within those spaces.
Q: What industries do you serve and who are your current customers?
Our span is actually pretty vast in terms of the markets we cover. In the beginning, we focused primarily on addressing the needs of mobile ad networks and agencies. In the last year and a half or so, we’ve seen a huge spike from direct brands and affiliate networks associated with desktop and eCommerce traffic. Fortunately, our platform is very flexible enough that it works just as well for managing mobile programs as it does for eComm or lead gen programs.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges in digital marketing today? How is Everflow addressing these challenges?
Typically, the first thing you’ll hear a lot of CMOs in this space bring up in terms of challenges, is attribution. It’s paramount because if you can attribute proper credit for all of your performance channels, you can spend budgets effectively. Everflow really shows up where it matters, especially as it relates to attribution.
Additionally, granularity in reporting is a huge advantage when you have all of your performance channels managed in one place. It allows you to see where you should scale and where you might want to cut back. There’s a balance around understanding where you’re getting the best bang for your buck. The best way to find it is to manage everything in one place.
Q: What’s all this talk about Apple’s new SKAdNetwork release? Are your clients prepared to deal with these changes?
So, this release is essentially going to change the way attribution is done for iOS apps. Traditionally, a click would be sent to an MMP (a Mobile Measurement Provider, like Adjust or Appsflyer). The MMP would see that click from inside the app, and if an install happened, they’d see that, too. In the end, they’d fire a postback to the publisher or simply record it in their database on behalf of the publisher.
With this upcoming release in March 2021, each iOS user is going to have the opportunity to opt in or out of sharing their device ID data. Since the aforementioned methodology relies heavily on the device ID data and experts expect only about 10-15% opt-in, this means we can no longer rely on it for attribution.
Moving forward, Apple is going to provide attribution themselves. Enter: “SKAdNetwork.” It used to be that when an ad was shown and a user clicked on it, there would be a chain of redirects the click would touch on the way to the App Store. Now, that chain will be prohibited, so the click will go directly from the ad to the App Store. The ad will have a “signature” that collects a bunch of information about who presented that ad, when it was clicked, etc. Then, Apple will send the postback data directly back to the publisher that’s associated with said “signature.”
So, if the publisher is an Everflow client, they can receive that postback data in our platform. We’ve already updated our system in beta to handle the required SKAdNetwork parameters so that we are fully compliant. We can also pass this info to advertisers, MMPs, or any other partners involved in the process to keep everyone in the loop.
Q: Fraud seems to be a prevalent topic as it relates to digital advertising. How does Everflow help their clients navigate issues related to fraud?
We provide a ton of solutions for preventing different types of fraudulent activity, which can vary vastly between mobile, lead gen and eComm. One thing we provide that can be a game changer for any program is powerful reporting. Breaking down performance at a granular level can make all the difference. Knowing what your “normal” is for each placement can help you identify outliers. This way, you nip them in the bud before they cause significant issues.
We also offer super dynamic targeting capabilities that help ensure you’re only allowing traffic that suits the types of products you’re offering. Additionally, there are a bunch of defenses available built into our targeting controls. Things like blocking proxy traffic, blocking traffic from specific IP addresses, blocking duplicate clicks or duplicate conversions – all of this can help prevent common types of fraud.
Lastly, we have developed an amazing feature called SmartSwitch. With SmartSwitch, you can set rules that define what is acceptable and what is not. For example, if you say it’s normal to see a conversion rate between .5% and 1.5%, then you can automatically shut off a channel or simply be notified when you’re getting results outside of that range.
The nuance between different use cases can be significant, so it’s really important to understand your traffic sources. With high conversion rates, for example, you might have incentivized traffic with generally low quality as it relates to any further engagement. On the other hand, you might have a partner using a review site. In this case, a high conversion rate is associated with well-intended users who are highly engaged. You need to have deep reporting, and a way to be notified so that you can stay on top of red flags, to be able to further investigate and understand what is really happening with your campaigns.
Q: Why would someone choose Everflow over a competitor’s tracking platform?
We’re the up-and-comer in our field. Many of our clients have come to us after spending years on competitor platforms, and quickly start singing our praises about how much it makes their lives easier.
There is just a massive difference in the way Everflow is designed. For one, we’re built on the Google Cloud since the get go, so all of our data is accessible in real time for comparisons. Since our system is built to handle data in this way, you always have the ability to get deep, insightful reporting. Being able to quickly break down each partner’s performance by placement, city, or device, massively simplifies the process of finding your best and work performing placements and optimizing with partners accordingly.
Our strongest differentiator, though, is probably our undying devotion to customer success. Since we know our platform is significantly more advanced than our competitors, we provide our clients with extensive training to set everyone up for success. We offer as much hand holding as you need for a pain-free launch or migration. Best of all, we’ve got a team of industry veterans who are available through an in-platform live chat that are ready to answer your questions around the clock.
Q: Anything else you want to share about the Everflow platform? Perhaps some favorite features or key capabilities?
Everflow is an extremely powerful, and better yet, extremely flexible platform. Older platforms weren’t designed to handle multiple different channels and use cases. Our reporting is vastly in-depth, but still simple to understand. Simplicity is key because it allows you to make decisions faster, which means your team can regularly optimize on the placement level without burning through their workdays. When the tools are built to let you make decisions quickly, you can stay ahead of the important stuff.
Furthermore, we offer a superior marketplace functionality. We’ve built out a market discovery tool where you can find key partners who can easily become the backbone of your affiliate program. Rather than offering a marketplace of 5M majority low quality affiliates and leaving the endless sifting up to you, we focus on curating a selection of high-quality affiliates that can really drive meaningful value. The discovery and connection processes are super easy and best of all, the partnerships require absolutely no technical integration from either side.
Q: What’s on the horizon for Everflow in 2021?
First and foremost, we’ll be continuing to iterate on the SKAdNetwork functionality. If you’re doing anything with iOS mobile apps, this is likely to be a significant challenge. And if we’ve learned anything from the past, we’re going to assume that Google will likely follow suit with Android in due time. So, we want to continue to improve and, if possible, stay ahead of the industry’s evolution.
Secondly, we’re working on a major advancement in user state management. This is primarily going to affect desktop and lead gen clients. For context, we currently have the concepts of first click attribution and last click attribution, which essentially refer to who deserves credit when multiple channels touch the same user before they convert. User state management will introduce the concept of a permanent user. You’ll be able to see where each channel contributed to that user’s journey to conversion in terms of impressions or clicks. This is something we’re really looking forward to, as it will make a huge difference for measuring things like deposits, lifetime value and other meaningful analytics. We’re hoping to see this launched around mid-2021.
Lastly, we’re continuing to build out as many integrations as possible with outside technology platforms. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to work with any essential technology platforms and tools that you need to run your business smoothly. So, seamless integrations with CRMs, payment tools, anti-fraud solutions, etc. We already have a bunch of key integrations live, such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Tipalti, PayPal, etc., but we will continue to expand here so that Everflow can be your core solution for all things performance.
About Everflow
Everflow is a smart Partner Marketing platform that allows your company to track, manage and understand their affiliates, influencers, apps and every media buying channel. The Everflow platform allows you to take your Partner Marketing to the next level with clickless tracking, real-time analytics, partner discovery, optimization, fraud detection and more.
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