Guest · Retail and commerce media
Michael McNerney
Publisher, Martech Record
Michael McNerney, Publisher of Martech Record, is the rare person who had both a trade publishing background and a front-row seat to affiliate marketing’s evolution before starting an independent publication to cover it. His philosophy for building a trusted B2B media brand is the same as his advice for brand marketing: target audience, positioning statement, reach, frequency, rinse and repeat.
About
Michael McNerney is the Publisher and Founder of Martech Record, a trade publication covering the intersection of commerce, media, and affiliate marketing. He founded it in 2019, applying his two decades of experience in trade publishing and B2B partnership marketing to a market he believed was about to grow significantly as the things people buy online got more expensive and more complex. The community now numbers 9,000 newsletter subscribers, a 4,000-person Slack group, and five live events a year.
Michael began his career in advertising at FCB Global and Ogilvy and Mather in New York before going to business school and spending a decade at McGraw-Hill, eventually as Senior Director of Digital Media for their trade publications. He was then part of the McGraw-Hill Management Development Program, a leadership programme placing MBA graduates in three rotations before a full-time leadership role. He moved to Yodle as Director of Business Development and Channel Sales before shifting to affiliate and partnership marketing at Partnerize.
Watching the affiliate industry from inside Partnerize, he noticed what he recognised from his trade publishing years: a market that needed a trusted independent publication. Nobody else was covering affiliate marketing in a serious, consistent, non-promotional way. He was also probably, he notes, the only person in the world who knew both how to run a trade publication and something about affiliate marketing. Martech Record was the result. His view is that quality, independent, targeted content is the only media strategy that compounds over time.
Career27 years
- 2019 to now Martech Record Publisher and Founder
- 2017 to 2019 Partnerize Head of Strategic Partnerships
- 2015 to 2017 Digital Prism Advisors Senior Consultant
- 2013 to 2015 Yodle Director, Business Development and Channel Sales
Show earlier roles: McGraw-Hill Construction, Ogilvy and Mather, FCB Global
- 2006 to 2013 McGraw-Hill Construction Senior Director, Digital Media
- 2001 to 2004 Ogilvy and Mather Account Supervisor
- 1999 to 2001 FCB Global Account Executive
How Michael thinks3 convictions
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Never put the CEO on the panel. Get the VP.
Michael’s founding editorial policy was to keep CEOs off his panels. Not as a provocation, but because the VP is the person who will tell you the truth. They have enough seniority to have an opinion worth hearing and enough proximity to the day-to-day to make it concrete. The insight compounds: if your brand marketing wants to get in front of the right people at a trade publisher’s event, stop sending the CEO. Send the person who actually runs the thing.
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Affiliate marketing is relationship-based, not transactional
The mistake most brands make when approaching affiliate marketing is treating it like search or social: high frequency, low relationship, optimise toward last click. Affiliate is the opposite. Building a productive affiliate relationship takes months of education, incentive alignment, and trust. Michael’s advice for anyone new to the channel is to hire someone who knows what they are doing, commit six months to building and failing, and understand that the brands who have built this patiently are seeing compounding returns that paid search cannot replicate at current costs.
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Be present before you pitch
Michael’s advice to Connecto, a client he used as a case study, was to resist the instinct to explain everything at once. Presence before positioning. Consistency before conversion. The strategy was to show up in the newsletter weekly for three months, saying nothing complicated, just establishing that the brand existed and was part of the community. Then send the sales team to the relevant events. Then start talking about specific benefits. Then turn on lead capture. It sounds obvious. Almost nobody does it in that order.
