There’s never a dull moment when you’re an account manager at Advertise Purple during 2020! During my time here, I’ve had the unique experience of managing brands both big and small across a wide variety of verticals, with clients all over the world. Despite all of the curveballs this year (namely, a global pandemic and mandatory lockdown), one positive standout has been our proprietary software, Purply App, that launched in the beginning of the year.
At its core, technology is supposed to make things easier, so there was a lot of anticipation to get Purply App up and running in the beginning. Afterall, who doesn’t want a cool customized A.I. tech to make their job a touch more effortless? So when the beta version first launched, everyone at the company was super excited to see it in action. While it’s functionalities were limited at the time, it’s been amazing to see how developed it’s become in a relatively short amount of time since going live! Of course it was developed over a couple of long years, but since we’ve had access to it and have been able to provide feedback, there have been so many new features added to make it even more useful and intuitive.
So what does Purply even do? Basically, it aggregates all of the data from all of our clients in one centralized place, making it super quick and easy to review what’s happening in the program. However, the true value of Purply are the endless insights it can provide pretty much instantaneously! Whether it’s calculating the program’s performance changes month-over-month or year-over-year, or honing in on exactly which affiliates have improved (or declined) in performance, we can find this information on Purply in moments rather than digging through data and making manual calculations.
However, what’s even more awesome are the insights we can glean between programs. So we can see trends within a particular vertical, such as whether that vertical’s traffic or revenue is trending up or down. Furthermore, we can see which affiliates are the top producers of traffic or revenue within a particular vertical. These insights are so valuable because they permit us to make data-driven recommendations for our clients, instead of relying on instinct, and we can find this information quickly and accurately.
In addition to these, there are many other unique value adds that make the technology pretty spectacular. Here are just a few:
- Recommendations on commission rates to reduce spend without compromising performance
- Seasonal trends within particular verticals
- “Fresh Face” lists which suggested top performing vertical specific affiliates that are not in your program
- Quick referential reports on affiliates who are improving, declining or dormant in performance
- Comparables of key performance indicators so you can see how your brand stacks up compared to others in the same category
- …and more!
The really cool thing about having our own proprietary technology has been the way we’ve been able to tweak it to suit our needs as our company has grown and departments have shifted around and changed. As Purply has aggregated more and more data, it’s helped to improve it’s algorithm to make automatized recommendations. When I login to my dashboard, there are suggested opportunities to present to my clients–it’s artificial intelligence in action!
Now of course adapting to this new technology hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. There was a ton of manual labor we account managers had to contribute to get Purply to where it is today. However, the end result has been totally worth it, for both our clients and for our team. All in all, Purply ’s a data mine of truly insightful information that we would not otherwise have access to, which has enabled us to add a ton of value to our clients. Additionally, it’s been very interesting to not only be a part of an affiliate management company, but also assist in developing a unique new software. It’s a perfect representation of the wide and varied experience of working at Advertise Purple. In any case, I’m thrilled to see what new skills Purply will take on next. Hopefully it won’t get smart enough to take my job!
