Profile of a Growth Marketer: Adam McLane, True Botanicals

Profile of a Growth Marketer is an ongoing series where we feature partner marketing industry leaders from around the globe.

We sat down with Adam McLane, Vice President of Growth at True Botanicals, to learn more about how True Botanicals is utilizing affiliate marketing to drive scalable incremental demand.

As the Vice President of Growth, how would you describe your role at True Botanicals?

My role is to manage our growth marketing stack, which includes customer acquisition, retention and analytics. I manage a team of world-class growth marketers, analytics, product managers that help deliver our message in an effective way to provide the most value we can for our customers.

From your experience, how has the affiliate marketing model added value to True Botanicals?

Affiliate marketing has been a driver of scalable incremental demand beyond the core of our other paid channels (paid social, SEM).

We have found that having a good mix of different types of affiliates has been most effective at driving scale. In concert with a diversified mix on the affiliate side, a strong commission structure that enables the channel to drive core company KPIs (ROAS, LTV).

What has surprised you most about the affiliate marketing model?

I have been surprised by the complexity of different types of affiliates and how much it can scale. The blue-chip publishers, networks, coupon sites all have a fit in our marketing funnel.

I come from a performance marketing background, so having an affiliate channel with a nice mix of programmatic vs human touch has been really compelling to navigate.

What do you believe has changed the most since you first started in the industry?

The amount of data we have to leverage for targeting and creative testing has exploded in the last decade. It is no surprise that the major players that have the most access to the richest data have carved out the strongest position in the market.

The corporate infrastructure built around unlocking data has also been a huge change. Before Snowflake, Looker, Fivetran were scaled businesses, you had to have very large teams to glean insights to make decisions as a marketer, which is less so the case now.

What do you see as some of the biggest challenges in online marketing today?

Deriving incrementality from marketing performance data.

This will be a problem as long as there are different marketing channels that are not integrated with a singular reporting structure. Facebook, Google and others are providing solutions to this problem, but there is still a long way to go.

What are some advantages to working with Acceleration Partners, compared to managing your affiliate program in-house?

The breadth of their network. The number of active affiliates in our program has scaled incredibly well since they took over.

Professionalism. This is one of the most buttoned-up agencies I have ever worked with. From leadership down to our day-to-day contacts, I feel like AP is an extension of our team.

Optimization and Efficiency. Any marketer can throw investment at a channel and watch it scale, but to do so and maintain a high degree of efficiency is what separates successful companies.