Show #204 – Michael Filletti of Routy on the Knup Sports Show

RYAN KNUPPEL

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Ryan Knuppel here, Episode 204 of the Knup Sports Show. Hope you’re all doing super well, I’m excited to be back. I’ve been on a…I would call it a month hiatus where I was traveling the United States. I went to Nashville, I went to St Louis, I spent a lot of time in Lake of the Ozarks, I went to Charlotte, went to Illinois for a while, been all over the place, and I had a good time, but now I’m back, and I’m back at podcasting and bringing you some amazing guests within iGaming, sports betting, sports business, anyone in this space, I love bringing their story to you, and hopefully you’re enjoying the show as well. Really appreciate you all tuning in and increasing the show listens every now and then. That gives me a little more motivation as we continue to go. Hopefully, you’re enjoying the sports season, it’s the kind of the slow season in the United States, MLB winding down, but we know it’s the calm before the storm as we have football season coming in a month or so and then we’ll be with basketball, hockey, and all of the above coming after that, so, It’s coming. We’re excited here at Knup Sports, and hopefully, you are too. All right, without further ado, I’m going to bring on my guest for today. If you’re an affiliate or into affiliate marketing at all, which probably many listeners on this show are, you’re going to want to listen to our next guest. Today I have Michael Filletti of Routy. Michael, how are you, my friend?

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Hey, all good, all good, thank you how are you?

RYAN KNUPPEL

Good, good. Doing well, doing well. Man, what’s new, Michael? You doing okay?

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, yeah, all good, all good. I was at iGB, actually, a couple of weeks ago, which was fun, a lot of fun, it’s very interesting to meet affiliates, see how the space is progressing, and yeah, surviving the heat as well, so…[Laughs].

RYAN KNUPPEL

Very cool. Well I’m excited to dive in here I’ve been to Routy and learn all about what you’re doing with Routy, but first, Michael, I want to learn about you, and your pat,h and your, you know, what you’ve been up to in your career to kind of lead you to where you are today. So, what makes you tick?

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, so my background, or my passion, at least career-wise, has always been numbers, you know, I’m, I love numbers, I’ve loved numbers since I was a young boy, so it’s maths, statistics, that was actually what I graduated in, um, and kind of started off as a data list, and actually fell into the affiliate gaming space back in 2018, so five years ago. I was working with a big affiliate back then, and yeah, that introduced me to the space, was ready to learn a lot about the space and I was shocked to see that data in the space was maybe not as I expected it. But it’s, you know, it kind of fascinated me at the same time because it feels like affiliation is 10-20 years behind as opposed to your Netflix, Facebook, I would say even more behind. And that kind of made me, it got me into, “Hey, how can we problem solve, how can we solve this issue?” And that then led me on to realty to working with different affiliates, meeting you, meeting all these different people, and yeah, here I am, and now I’m on the Knup Sports Show, you know?

RYAN KNUPPEL

There you go, here you are, you are Guest 204, so that’s exciting, well I’m excited to learn more about Routy, and I know, you know, a lot of the, I’ve been in the affiliate space for a long time in some sense or the other, through content or whatever, creating my own sites, things of that nature, and so I would like to think that some of the audience, or a majority of the audience are probably affiliates or interested in the affiliate space, as they relate with what we talk about, and so I think Routy and what you guys are doing with Routy really is going to relate to the audience today and the listener, so I’m excited to dive in, I’m excited for them to learn about this product, so why don’t you give us the thousand foot view of what Routy is, and we’ll go from there.

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, so, basically, Routy is a business intelligence tool for affiliates. If anyone doesn’t know what business intelligence is, it’s basically like it’s kind of like a superpower that you can, where you can grab data and convert it into insights into your business to know essentially how to improve your business or use your data and, basically, using that you can say “Okay, these pages on my website are converting, or this campaign is working”, and what we do is we provide this deep level data, which allows affiliates to essentially know what areas of their business to to optimize so we’re a tracking solution and data segregation solution merged into one holistic solution. I try to keep it super, super simple hopefully not to lose anyone before I get technical. [Laughs].

RYAN KNUPPEL

Well, no, but I mean that’s super [inaudible], yet it’s needed.

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, it is.

RYAN KNUPPEL

And that’s the thing with affiliate programs and tracking stats and all the above; it’s such a cumbersome process to have to go out to their platform, you know. Let’s kind of dive into the stats side because I think that’s one of the biggest pieces of just pure [inaudible] to go out and then go out and find the right reports to go out and bet. You’re bringing it all in here, you are combining it into one view or a few views that just make it super simple for the affiliate to see how they perform so they don’t have to waste time with that.

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Exactly.

RYAN KNUPPEL

I’m into that stats side a little bit more.

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, so basically, I think that the the inherent problem that affiliates struggle with is that all of the interesting stuff doesn’t happen on their side, you know, the player comes in and clicks on a link on the website, and they lose him, that’s it, you know? That’s the only bit of data they capture, so then everything happens on the operator side, so you need to kind of login to that operator, pull the data, then you, obviously, you’re not working with one operator, but it could be working with 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, you know, it’s like it’s ridiculous, and pulling all those stats, I mean, that’s impossible. In 2023, it’s a bit of a shame that we still have people who do that, you know? And to be honest with what I felt as long as I’ve been in the space is that people have actually honestly they’re just happy to just have the stats in one place you know no matter, even massive affiliates, they’re like, “Okay, at least we know how much money we made,” which is crazy, you know? Someone like Netflix isn’t going to just be happy to know how much money they made, you know, they know they know everything, and maybe it will never be at the point for affiliates just because of the nature of the space, but we feel like as an as an industry we need to, you know, demand tomorrow of our data, and the stats is the first part, you know? Automating that bit is just step one. Then it’s about enriching those information, and that’s where, kind of, the tracking side of things comes in. Aside from that, in terms of stats, it’s not just as easy as just pulling the data, you know? They’re all…you have all these different software, some people don’t have software, some people work with [inaudible], some people, you know, for some reason they don’t want to show you certain bits of information, so it’s massively complex, it’s not easy to, you know, it’s not easy to deal with. I would say a hunch is that probably, like, 90% of affiliates leave money on the table, and they don’t optimize. I mean, I expect it, you know, I expect that a business is not optimized. It’s honestly a surprise When I find an affiliate that is actually using their data, like “We know what works, we know what doesn’t work, we AB test,” and all these different things, so it’s, I love this space, it’s so cool. [Laughs].

RYAN KNUPPEL

I think you touched on a point that, you know, a lot of affiliates can probably relate with, right? I mean, okay, it’s one thing to admire our stats, or just “Oh, yeah, what did we make this month?” But you guys are kind of taking it another step level, because, at the end of the day, you want to help affiliates get better. You want to help affiliation optimize what their currently doing, and if something is not working, change it, fix it. If it is working, let’s replicate that and do it again, and I think Routy can show you some of that detail in a super cool way that, you know, by page and different things of that nature. Let’s dive into how it can help affiliates, I know you mentioned it in the high level, but some of the things that can help them with the optimization side. Let’s dive into that side a little, because I think it’s super important, and I think it’s something affiliates struggle with understanding, like “I have to sign up, but I don’t know where it came from.”

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Exactly, exactly. So that, I would say, actually what you mentioned about the pages is probably one of the most, like, one of the features that gets, whenever I’m doing a demo or speaking to affiliates, that’s really something which catches their attention, you know, they always give me a look like, “Ooh, that’s good to know.” There’s so many different affiliates, and they are all kind of working in different ways, but generally we work with SEO affiliates, and you have your PPC affiliates. For SEO affiliates, I would say that being able to know which page is generating conversions, or, yeah, exactly, where a conversion is coming from, is so, so vital. Like we have a client of ours who, kind of, every so often, messages us and tells us “I had this page, it was generating 10 clicks, so I just ignored it, I just left it there, and now I’ve realized that I actually have quite a few conversions from there. Now I’m scaling it up and we’re actually getting more…we’re scaling up with it.” That’s something they had no idea about, you know, they just used [inaudible] so they know how much traffic, and they just ignore it. So that’s something for me which is, again, super cool to see, and that’s definitely how we can help SEO affiliates. When it comes to PPC, Just even these basic things like Integrations you know the fact that we can integrate with Google ads and and Facebook ads and send your conversions back into them so that the PPC campaign can get optimized automatically with their own algorithm is something unheard of previously, or else they would do it manually. This happens all automatically, which is, those are the two of the key selling points, aside from, obviously, you know, saving time, but again, what we try to push is, don’t just be happy by saving your time. Actually, you know, improve your business and improve your product. It makes the space better, and also the space is getting more competitive, and you’re getting people that get more switched on to competitors, people are starting to accept this more, so it’s really important, I think, for affiliates to make you use of this. One more thing as well, which I think is valuable that you have in [inaudible] is player level of stats, you know, seeing which players are generating [inaudible] the value of the different players, is it traffic that’s [inaudible] now which is generating more of my revshare, or is it traffic that came two years ago, you know? These are things that previously would be totally, totally alien to people [inaudible] you know, a data analyst like me, full time, checking all these different programs and this stuff, which is, it’s needed, and it’s really, really important. I just want to open your eyes, it will surprise you. I think every single client of ours always had that moment where they were like “Ah”, you know? I didn’t expect that, which is nice, you know, it’s nice to see.

RYAN KNUPPEL

Well, I love all of this, I mean, I’m a numbers geek at heart, I love everything about what’s going on here, and you’re clearly getting some traction, let’s talk a little bit about the business side and kinda where you guys are at with the product and the product development. I can say you’re clearly getting traction because I talk to a lot of people, I see a lot of people, I go to a lot of events, and it’s a common, Routy’s a common conversation now that I have. There’s a lot of my friends that are using it, a lot of them that are talking about it, inquiring about it, so you’re doing something right to get out in the market, but talk a little bit about where you’re at in the product life cycle. I’m assuming looking for new affiliates to come on board. Just talk about where you’re at a little bit from a business side.

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, so I pretty much kind of joined the project, I would say, end of last year, because this was originally built by Haim about, I would say, a year or two ago, where he kind of built the product up, and then I joined, and, let’s say, my background is data, so what my task was essentially to, “Okay, we have the data, but how do we make it digestible for clients?” And that’s when the new dashboards came in, so that’s, that was kind of like step one. We’re giving the data to affiliates, but they didn’t know what to do with it. For them, it’s just a data table. So that was kind of, that’s step one, which is to make the product easier to use for affiliates to kind of give them this easy way to say “Okay, this brand is working, this brand has good player value, this page is generating conversions, etc.” So that’s where we’re at right now. I feel like we’re at a good stage where affiliates can easily use it. Um, and that’s why now we’re trying to onboard more affiliates, we’re reaching out to more affiliates, again, finding these different marketing channels. I think that, for me, the key marketing channel is referrals. That’s, like, something which is, again, the space is so small, and you know this guy who knows this guy who knows this who knows this guy, like we’re talking about before, and I think that a channel like that, for us, has been key so far. Because it gives you that early element of trust, and that’s something which has been nice. But in terms of what the future holds for the product, I think, again, kind of making these easy, giving affiliates these easy insights where we can tell them “Hey, look. In Germany you’ve got this brand which is doing really well for you. You should push it more.” Things, you know, almost like an automated data analyst in a way so they have this little data and always working with them. That’s definitely the area that we’d like to go to, you know? A recommendation engine. Things like this are, I think, you know, part of our future. AI is obviously, everyone talks about AI. I think that, I wouldn’t say that we’re ready for it right now because it still feels like we need to nail the BI part of things, but we have the data, and for AI, the key thing is data, you know, you have to have huge amounts of data for AI to work. Otherwise, it’s pointless, to be honest.

RYAN KNUPPEL

Yep, yep. Very, very, very true. One of the questions that comes up to me when I’m mentioning Routy is, well, will it work with my sportsbook, or will it work with my operator. Talk a little bit about the partners you have on the backend and, I guess, how that works from an integration side. Not necessarily the technical side of that, but, is there gonna be a problem with affiliates and their partners not being part of Routy?

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, so, so in terms of coverage, I’d say that we have a pretty nice amount of coverage right now. We’re at, like, almost 700 affiliate programs that we cover, so we have very nice coverage. I think, for me, I speak in terms of affiliate programs with affiliates, but the reality is how many softwares do you cover, because you have, for example, income access, for these guys they’re huge, and if you cover them, you cover most of the affiliate programs. In general, we haven’t had the problem where an affiliate came to us, and they’re like “You don’t cover the affiliate programs”, and so I feel like our coverage is already very, very good, but when it comes to someone needs to add an affiliate program, usually they can just raise a ticket. We have a live chat with all our clients. That is something that, as well, is really, really important. You know, customer support, particularly for affiliates where data for affiliates is all about the setup, you know? It’s all about the organization, you know, what’s coming from where, you have to really have a good level of organization, and we feel like have this live chat is a really really nice way to have a good level of customer support, affiliates feel comfortable with us when it comes to data, you know, especially when it comes to data, you know, affiliates are very sensitive with data even though the space is like, data’s a problem, they’re very very sensitive with it, so it’s good to have the live connection with them. So, yeah. Affiliate programs, thankfully, has been no problem so far.

RYAN KNUPPEL

Well, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask, I mean, you know, now that you bring up sensitivity of data, yeah, that is one thing that I can see some affiliates, like “Ooh, I don’t wanna put my password in somewhere, I don’t wanna give Michael access to all my accounts,” right? All of that. Just talk a little bit about the security side and put everyone’s mind at peace, a little bit, at how this works from a security side.

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, so in terms of security, we have multiple layers of security where we kind of protect our customer’s [inaudible] with, like, a separate layer of protection, which is something totally separate, so like, we have this, I cannot think of the word exactly, but essentially, there are these multiple layers of security. Why? Because every single affiliate that I’ve spoken to has always asked me about security. “Is this safe? Can I trust you guys?” So, in terms of security, everything is obviously encrypted, which is key, but also, what we do for all of our clients is an NDA, so we also offer them, like “Guys, if you want we can also do an NDA”. It’s not something that everyone has taken up, but I always recommend it to them, so that it’s like, again, I want you to make sure that you are 100% at peace with this, that there’s nothing to worry about, and yeah, we do all we can from that side to make sure that everyone’s comfortable with us having their data.

RYAN KNUPPEL

Amazing. Awesome. Well, Michael, I could talk about this forever, but for sake of time, we’re gonna wrap this thing up here shortly. I’m gonna pull up Routy again, just on the side. Tell people how they can get to your site, how they can get ahold of you, looks like you can schedule a demo right here and all of the above, but tell them the best way to get ahold of you or Routy in general.

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Yeah, so, basically, you can check us out on our website, Routy.app, and always recommend that you schedule a demo so you can just easily schedule a demo so we can talk about your use case and how Routy can help you guys out. Yeah, all affiliates have their own specific way of working, I know everyone thinks that their way is the most complicated, but so far we haven’t had any issues with those sort of things. So yeah, go ahead and schedule a demo, and we can talk about Routy and how you can use your data.

RYAN KNUPPEL

Well, I’m gonna be on a demo with you later today with some of my friends already, so I guess I’ll, I took you up on the “Schedule a Demo”, so I’m excited to jump in and do that. Michael, any last words for the crowd, anything that we missed or you wanted to talk about or share that we forgot?

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Uh, no, I mean, thanks for having me on. It’s been a pleasure. Again, really, really cool to see the development of interest in data and affiliation. It’s really cool to see the people I was talking to switch on, you know, more to it. I think it’s something which is really, really nice, especially for a nerd like me, so it’s great. And, again, thanks a lot for having me on.

RYAN KNUPPEL

Awesome. Thank you for being here. Hopefully, I can have you back with an update in a few years and see where it’s at. Thank you for your time, my friends.

MICHAEL FILLETTI

Cheers. Thank you so much. Thanks, Ryan.

RYAN KNUPPEL

Alright, that was Michael Filletti of Routy. One of the great guys in the industry. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know him, and really getting to know the app as well. Like I said, I’ve had a demo myself, looked at it, several of my friends use the product in the affiliate space and having a demo later today with another company that I’m working with, so really excited to continue to see where Routy goes. And if you’re an affiliate, man, it’s just, like, it’s needed, right? It’s something that can help you become a better affiliate and not just be the standard, because as Michael mentioned, the space is becoming very competitive. The affiliate marketing space and becoming an affiliate is very tough. And so any edge you can have above other affiliates or above other of these big affiliate group is gonna be beneficial to you in the long run, and I think Routy helps you get that stuff done, so that’s it for today. Really appreciate you being here. That’s Episode 204, I’m Ryan Knuppel, you can find me out on LinkedIn or any of the social media platforms. Until next time, stay safe, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

Relevant Links:

• Learn more about Routy on their site.

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