Chief Operating Officer at Podia
"Mandi has two of the most valuable superpowers in marketing: an instinct for running toward hard problems and a high quality bar for getting every last detail right. This makes her exceptional at both figuring out how to solve problems and doing the hands-on work of solving them. "
As a strategist, I love to step back and look at the whole picture — seeing how different pieces fit together, understanding existing data, exploring the issue cross-functionally, and learning from experts — before crafting a strategy that allows us to hit all of our goals.
But I also thrive in digging down to the next level of implementation to anticipate areas of friction or confusion for various stakeholders so that we can address and prevent those ahead of time.
Podia's affiliate program was running on autopilot when I joined the team. I was tasked with identifying the opportunities available for scaling and redefining the program.
In the end, we increased the margin on affiliate referrals by more than 7% while also growing referrals from ~10% of new MRR to 19% of new MRR.
After talking to our existing affiliates, exploring other SaaS affiliate programs, and evaluating numerous platforms, I proposed a two-pronged strategy for affiliates:
A tiered affiliate program for professional affiliate marketers, creator educators, and technology reviewers hosted on the Impact.com platform.
A flat-rate Refer-a-Creator program for Podia users hosted on Rewardful.
The relaunch of these programs proved to be enormously successful!
I served as the interim Head of Marketing at Podia for 6 weeks. During that time, I worked closely with the Senior Growth Marketer and Content Marketer to develop and implement a four-part strategy related to content, sponsorships, activation, and upgrades.
Through this strategy, we saw 13% revenue growth in the first six weeks.
This strategy included a balance of short-term activities — including paid media tests, the launch of a new lead magnet, an in-app welcome video, and a new onboarding series — alongside longer-term plays such as an updated approach to content, an ongoing sponsorships program, and continued customer research.
For several years, Podia had been looking for a solution for users who need more handholding while building their Podia site and products. As a small team, Support didn't have the bandwidth to work with users 1-on-1 beyond answering tickets, and we only knew of a couple people offering Podia-specific services.
I set out to learn more about other SaaS expert programs as well as the services our users were looking for and developed a plan for the Podia Pros program.
We launched in phase one with Fiverr Certified before moving the project in-house. Over the past year, the Podia Pros have become some of Podia's most trusted advisors, offering feedback and feature requests that the leadership team knows they can trust.
In addition, they are active on social media and in the Podia community, interacting with and answering questions from Podia users, sharing their successes building and launching Podia sites, and sharing tips and training.