Canadian Fintech Affiliate: Publishers search for that evergreen cash cow🐮
My thoughts on Fintel's industry report, there's never been a better time to switch banks, and pack your bags FIs are headed to Vegas♠️
Morning!
Welcome to the Canadian Fintech Affiliate newsletter, a monthly roundup of industry news, offer updates and conferences worth attending for Canadian affiliate marketers.
In today’s email:
Offer updates: It pays to open a new bank account. Airwallex launches in Canada and more.
Insights: My thoughts on Fintel’s report, why publishers are diversifying their traffic mix and how advertisers can prepare for a bumpy ride.
Best conferences in Toronto, Vegas, Budapest and Denver
Opinions expressed are my own*
Today’s reading time is 7 minutes.
🤑 Offer updates
Airwallex launches in Canada
Simplii increases their welcome bonus to $500
TD & CIBC chequing accounts bump their cash bonuses to $600
Neo Financial revamps Neo Money chequing account. The interest rate drops from 1% to 0.10% and they added a tiered cashback program based on cash in the account.
Coast Capital reactivates their signup bonuses for their Free, Unlimited and Elevate chequing accounts.
My thoughts on the industry report from Fintel Connect
Fintel Connect published an interesting report on the state of financial affiliate marketing in 2024. In it, they share findings from their survey of 110+ publishers in Canada and the US.
Full disclosure, I did complete the survey but was not part of the findings or analytics and this is newsletter also not sponsored by Fintel.
Here are my thoughts👇
Which verticals do publishers expect to see the most growth?
Winner: Credit cards & mortgages
With Canadians feeling financially stretched across the country, 29% of publishers surveyed expect the most growth in the credit card vertical with the expectation of strong consumer demand.
Next up was mortgages with 21% surveyed expecting a surge in traffic. Now that interest rates have peaked and economists placing bets on how many rate cuts the BoC will deliver over the next year, demand and traffic is expected to increase.
My take: we’ll see demand for both increase, though on the mortgage side, I’d expect it to be on renewals/refi more so than new mortgages.
Demand for credit cards doesn’t really waiver. There’s ALWAYS demand for them. Where publishers see the fluctuations is with the conversion rates as underwriting becomes tighter or looser on the bank side of the equation.
Which niches are publishers expanding to?
Winner: Bank accounts and credit cards
A whopping 40% of publishers surveyed were expanding into Savings accounts. I’m a bit surprised because rates have peaked and we’re already seeing yields drop making the offers less attractive.
On the other hand, what we’re seeing is publishers looking to build predictable revenue streams from evergreen niches that will have consistent demand.
There’s also been strong innovation on the brand side with FIs like EQ Bank, Wealthsimple and Neo Financial all launching new accounts of late.
With chequing accounts, it’s clear that everyone needs one so the mass appeal is obvious but hats off to the brands for pushing out strong sign up bonuses to help increase conversion rates.
I’m not sure we’ve ever had this many $600 cash bonuses live at the same time.
It’s a good time to be shopping around for a new bank account.
Where are publishers focusing their efforts on traffic growth?
It’s clear that the majority of publishers are diversifying their traffic mix away from Google organic search with 51% of CA publishers looking to grow email and 49% looking at video.
In my May newsletter, I wrote about the effects of the March core update Google rolled out and how it crippled organic traffic for many legit publishers like Hardbacon and Savvynewcanadians. Both saw a decrease of almost 90% of their traffic according to ahrefs.
This was shocking to most in the industry as these sites are well established with good quality content, strong backlinks and EEATS signals.
To think that your site could be wiped out in an instant is terrifying.
But, Google will do what’s best for Google.
It appears that no site was immune to the effects of that update as Nerdwallet announced in their quarterly update that they’re cutting 15% of their staff.
In his letter to shareholders, Tim Chen wrote:
”First, in Q2 we saw unexpected headwinds in organic search traffic; although we are seeing early signs of recovery here, our expectations bake in a conservative outlook in terms of the timing and magnitude of a full recovery.”
According to ahrefs, organic traffic on their US site dropped from ~26 million per month in March to ~20 million in July. Still a behemoth amount of traffic for a comparison site but a significant drop nonetheless.
It’s clear that Google is making fundamental changes to their search model that are negatively affecting the majority of organic publishers who monetize through affiliate partnerships.
What does this mean for advertisers?
Like the Mindbuster rollercoaster at Canada’s Wonderland, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Expect traffic volatility if your top affiliates are organic publishers.
Treat your top publishers like gold.
It’s getting harder than ever to push volume and quality traffic to financial brands. The last thing you want is for a pub to pause because another offer pays $25 more.
Engage with more publishers.
Sounds easy right? Not.
Work on cultivating relationships with new publishers. Listen to their feedback about your payouts, conversion rates, landing pages and funnels. With quality traffic being harder to get, payouts and conversion rates will need to increase.
Get familiar with other types of traffic.
Affiliates are expanding into new channels, which means more opportunities to test your offers on a new medium. Understand how they plan to promote your offers in email, video and social channels.
My take
Publishers are looking for consistency. Fluctuations on both the traffic and revenue sides of the business have left many reeling.
They’re looking to build owned traffic sources like email that can offset fluctuations in organic or social traffic while looking for evergreen niches with consistent consumer demand and offers like credit cards and banking.
It’s a big change since the diamond hands and dogecoin days of 2020 and 2021.
The affiliate channel has some of the most innovative marketers in the world. It’s an exciting time to be in the space and I’m looking forward to what the next 12 months brings.
🍸Conferences
Upcoming conferences worth checking out:
Finance Affiliate Summit - FAC
Finder Canada’s FAC event will be held in Toronto this September. This year will be an invite-only event. Check your inbox for an invite from me😬
Contact.io - August 28-30, 2024 | Denver, CO
Focused on pay-per-call marketing. If you’re driving leads, have a call centre or sending live transfers this is a good show at checkout.
Affiliate World Europe - AWE - 5-6 September 2024 | Budapest, Hungary
My favourite of the international shows. If you’re going to go to one conference this year, check this one out.
Rakuten Dealmaker - September 26-26 2024 | Toronto, Canada
Rakuten’s in-house conference. If you want to meet with TD/MBNA or CIBC credit cards, check this out.
Money20/20 - October 27-30 2024 | Las Vegas, NV
The heavy hitters of finance will be at this event. If you want to speak to the CMO of a major FI, this could be the conference for you. At USD $
3,799 per pass, you better close to make it worth it.
🤝 Affiliate related job openings
SkyCap Financial is looking for a marketing coordinator