Affiliate marketing is a cornerstone of Zyro’s rapid success, and Vilius Sakutis is one of the specialists who makes sure we have strong partnerships with the best publishers.
We spoke to him about his experience working at Zyro, how he’s been entrusted to manage important partnerships, and how the company has motivated him to keep learning.
What’s your role at Zyro?
I’m an affiliate marketing specialist. I joined Zyro about one year ago and since then it’s been a great ride. The main task of my team is to get Zyro featured on domains other than Zyro.com.
When making purchasing decisions, people tend to go on Google and research the subject. If they need a website builder, chances are they will go on Google and search, “what is the best website builder?”
They’ll land on a domain which has some authority on this topic, and maybe has a listing of top 10 best website builders. My responsibility is to get Zyro placed in that listing, or maybe agree to have a blog post written to say, “Hey, this is a great website builder. It’s perfect for people who want to have a website.”
So I’m responsible for content placed outside Zyro.com which could be found by our potential customers.
I studied marketing at university and in my previous workplace had an opportunity to work as an affiliate marketing assistant. I thought it would be great to try marketing with a bit of sales, because you still have to present your brand to a partner.
Later, an HR manager from Zyro got in touch with me and invited me to talk. Now I’m working not as an assistant, but as an affiliate marketing specialist.
Is your job performance marketing or increasing the public image of Zyro?
I think it’s a bit of both.
It is performance marketing, because we act on results and we make decisions based on data. If a partnership doesn’t work for us, we will not keep it.
On the other hand, my work is raising the brand’s profile, because popular websites talking about Zyro, like PCMag and TechRadar, carry a lot of authority.
Before you start any kind of relationship, you have to do research to check domains in that niche and how they perform.
After this analysis is done, the relationship management kicks in. We’re doing outreach, trying to set up the calls, or trying to find some narrative on which we could build our relationship.
What I like about affiliate marketing is that it’s not very transactional. In this relationship, both parties are invested in working together. For us, the more content our partner publishes about us, the better. It’s brand awareness, more traffic, more customers.
For the partner, if they push more content and put more effort into our relationship, they can receive more money.
Have you faced any challenges here at Zyro?
The most challenging part of this position is getting noticed by the partners.
The website building market is super competitive and there are just thousands of brands who say that they are the best, the fastest, and the cheapest. The main task for us is to help Zyro stand out from the competition.
It becomes a game of creativity; how to position yourself, how to write the most engaging email, how to conduct the best call that you can.
In our team, we have actually success stories where partners first reply only after a year, when we’ve sent around 50 emails. Those partners don’t want to put everyone on their sites. They also look for quality partnerships. They want their readers to be happy with the website builder they’re referred to.
Do you feel you’re trusted to negotiate deals and work independently?
Of course! This is a great benefit of working in this team. I have all the freedom and responsibility to plan my own tasks.
Every week we have Monday calls where we discuss our team focus, but at the end of the day, we all have our own portfolios, our partners list that we are outreaching, and we are outreaching them in our own way.
Zyro pays one of the highest commissions on the website builder market, which is up to 70% from revenue share. So the deal is actually quite good, and the partners have every possibility, to earn revenue with our affiliate program.
Then we have a really good product, which has one of the best prices on the market; to have a website for $1.89 is just unbelievable.
So we have a product, we have resources, we have management that frees our hands and allows us to do what we have to do.
You don’t hire a great artist and tell them what to do. You just let them do their job.
You mentioned freedom and responsibility being one of Zyro’s values. Which other Zyro values do you feel are most relevant to your job?
We have about ten values that we work by, but I would say for me, ‘freedom or responsibility’ comes first because we are all independent specialists.
I also love the ‘courage and candidness’ value, because it is important to recognise your mistakes and your colleagues’ mistakes, because you learn from mistakes. Our affiliate team is very close; we share our victories, we share, and we ask what we can do better.
My third top value is ‘learning to be curious’, because I want a workplace where I can constantly learn. If I stop learning, I feel like I’m stuck in a place. For almost a year, I’ve never felt that I’m wasting my time. Colleagues motivate me to read books, to take courses, or to attend conferences.
What has been your experience of working remotely?
It was a bit of a worry when I joined Zyro because it was the middle of the pandemic. In Lithuania the numbers were super high and we were working remotely.
The idea was I would start working remotely, but we were not sure about the future, whether we’d go back to the office. I always wanted a remote job but it was still a challenge because I was starting at a new company and working in a new market.
What surprised me was that Zyro had a really good onboarding process. I had specific tasks to do; what I had to learn, what I had to read, to whom I should chat, when I should have a call.
I had a nice to-do list, and it actually felt less like onboarding, but more like some kind of a little game.
After that, I really enjoyed and still do enjoy working remotely. I love that we still do have offices I can always go to, but I can work from where I want.
Do you think that your experience at Zyro is different from a similar position elsewhere?
Definitely, yeah.
I think we still have this cliched image of a boss who doesn’t allow you to use your phone during work, who has their own plans in the company, and where the strategy is based only on their mindset without other input. That’s kind of what I’d come to expect from employers.
When I joined Zyro, for the first few months I had the usual honeymoon period, when I always think it’s a great company and I love everything, but I expected to start noticing some negatives. I’m one year into the company and I still haven’t felt that way.
The amazing thing is that I don’t feel that I’m just a small part in a big company. All the strategic decisions are made and discussed openly. I can critique anyone in the company. I can discuss anything with anbody.
I always know where the company is heading and I can influence where the company goes if I have great ideas.
So I love how Zyro and also Hostinger have crushed this image of a boss in my mind.
If there’s a moment in my life and I’m going to leave Zyro, it’s going to be very hard to find a company that will live up to Zyro.
What are your plans for your future at Zyro?
During this year, we gained a lot of market knowledge on which we can now build and scale every single activity in the affiliates team.
Zyro is always growing, and we have plans to become not just the best website builder, but the best success builder for our customers, which will be more than just website building.
I think there will be great new opportunities, but for now, I’m just trying to do as much as I can to help my team reach its goals, like unlocking new locales and gaining new partnerships.
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