We sat down with Andrei Baloleanu, Growth Manager for 123FormBuilder, to discuss how Avangate Affiliate Network has helped the 12-year-old company respond to their digital affiliate strategic challenges.
Q1. Could you please briefly describe the company you are working for, 123FormBuilder, for our readers?
Although the name says “Form Builder”, we are much more than a simple platform where you can build a form. It all indeed starts with a form, but it ends up being much more than that. We can automate processes in multiple ways and multiple departments for a company, from HR people who can use us for approval chains to salespeople who need help in the lead collection part of their job.
To put it short – we’re the one-stop-shop for your data collection needs.
Q2.123FormBuilder is a global company providing top-notch digital solutions. What were the steps the company had to take in its journey from local to global?
It’s been a real rollercoaster for the founders – it all started as a bootstrapped business with steady growth that got the attention of a VC fund, which accelerated their journey to the point of an international company with over 70 employees that helps people all around the world.
We were always a global company, since day one, as the interest for the product came from the biggest software markets like the US, Canada, or Australia. Those were the countries that brought us the first big clients, the first prominent partnerships, and helped us get off the ground. The US is still our largest market even today, but we are a truly global company, with sales in more than 100 countries!
Q3. According to the 123FormBuilder company mission and values statement, you empower your customers to collect, manage, and communicate their data. While the data privacy and protection environment continues to evolve, how is 123FormBuilder responding to keep its service relevant as well as compliant in today’s privacy landscape?
I have to admit that the privacy landscape has been a real challenge for us in the last few years, with a lot of changes going around, both in Europe and the US. Thus, we immediately decided to outsource our data hosting to industry leaders such as AWS. It was a no-brainer to go with someone that is always up to speed with the latest changes in the industry, especially in this dynamic, ever-changing landscape.
We did this because we are a tech company at heart and we want to focus on what we do best – provide a stellar experience for our customers. With this setup, we get the best of both worlds, as we are able to ensure that our customers are protected, something vital in a business like ours.
Q4. You recently started working with 2Checkout’s Avangate Affiliate Network. Can you please share a few words about the challenges and opportunities you saw by working with this channel?
We’ve been working with you guys for a long time for our direct B2B online sales, but it’s true, we started working with the affiliate platform and network only recently. We realized this was low-hanging fruit and wanted to try it out, especially since we have the possibility of bringing our own affiliates into the network and use the management platform the same as any other affiliate. After working with the network for xx months, we realized that we needed to put more effort into it.
So we decided to work with your Enterprise Avangate Affiliate Network promo package – which was perfect to increase all KPIs across the board and give us the boost we needed to reach the affiliate revenue targets in Q3 and Q4. Essentially, we increased affiliate sales by 40% and were able to easily recruit new affiliates into our program.
The whole team at 2Checkout was really helpful across all stages, so we knew what we had to do, and the rollout was pretty easy. The main challenge was handling the incoming volume and making sure everybody had their needs met, and things have been working flawlessly on our end, from a technical point of view.
The biggest opportunity is still ahead of us, cultivating the relationships we have created during this promo and transforming those into real, long-term partnerships. But we know we have two excellent teams (123FormBuilder and 2Checkout) working together on this goal, so I’m sure we will be able to meet the targets.
Q5. What are your marketing goals for the rest of the 2020, on the performance-based channels? Have you had to adapt your marketing strategy, given today’s context?
Like everybody else in the world, we were taken by surprise by the events of the last months.
We’re keeping a very close eye on the KPIs, but so far we can happily say that we haven’t been affected by COVID-19. We’ve seen some ups and downs but nothing out of the ordinary compared to the seasonal trends we see each year.
Even so, we made a slight adjustment in our marketing strategy, and we’re focusing on creating content for those people who were forced to move their businesses online and are only now discovering the full potential of the online world.
Here are two examples:
https://www.123formbuilder.com/blog/how-to-set-up-an-online-booking-system/
https://www.123formbuilder.com/blog/how-to-sell-tickets-online-using-online-forms/
At the same time, we’ve turned our attention to what’s happening with our current users, looking at usage data and trying to come up with new ways to help our customers get more out of the platform. It’s a tough time for a lot of people out there, and we’re just trying our best to help as much as we can, as we all go through this together.
