Each month, industry news media organization XBIZ spotlights the career accomplishments and outstanding contributions of Women in Adult. WIA profiles offer an intimate look at the professional lives of the industry's most influential female executives.
Marie-Hélène Doyle Poirier is proud of her role as head of communications at CrakRevenue, one of the biggest CPA network platforms.
We watch the competition and the evolution of performance marketing closely, and we’re always really surprised to see how so many of the other networks don’t offer a fraction of the support that we provide to our affiliates.
At CrakRevenue, not only does Doyle Poirier field queries from the media while leading the company’s communications department, but she’s also in charge of its social media efforts and its official blog, where she writes under the pen name Papa Whale. (CrakRevenue in the past year came up with a marketing campaign called “Follow the Whale,” hence Doyle Poirier’s pen name.)
Doyle Poirier takes her job seriously and is a big believer in the power of education. She points out that over the years that education has transformed new affiliates into those with full-fledged “whale status.”
XBIZ recently sat down with Doyle Poirier, this month’s WIA Woman of the Month, to learn more about her position at CrakRevenue and how she helps provide industry knowledge to the network’s many clients.
XBIZ: What’s your official role at CrakRevenue?
Doyle Poirier: I’m in charge of all CrakRevenue’s communications, which includes our blog, our knowledge base, our social media presence and every public appearance of our brand from award applications to public relations with the press.
I’ve been contributing on the CrakRevenue blog and our knowledge base under the name Papa Whale for nearly four years now and this is probably the part I love most about my job.
Being paid to search the latest trends and share CrakRevenue-related news and market and industry knowledge to up to 50,000 people every month has been really gratifying. Of course, being surrounded by some of the most skilled affiliate marketers, media buyers and IT developers in the biz certainly helps a lot, too!
As of late, I’m been doing more consulting work related to business development and related campaigns for both the adult and mainstream markets. I like to see myself as a specialist of B2B communications.
Leading the communications department, I’ve been fortunate to work with two additional members and collaborators of this team only adding to our number of resources. Therefore, both advertisers and affiliates alike will be pleased to know that we fully expect to deliver more great content and knowledge on a larger scale in the coming months.
Indeed, we’ve always believed in the power of education. For example, over the years we’ve seen dozens of new affiliates make the transition from beginner affiliate to full-fledged whale status by working closely with us and following our support and advice!
Of course, communication alone can only be as effective as the terrific sales and support team that goes hand in hand with our efforts to help affiliates succeed.
XBIZ: What in your background prepared you for what you are doing now?
Doyle Poirier: I have more than a decade of experience in B2B relations that I’ve acquired all around the world. After being employed in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Spain, I worked in France for a little more than five years as a B2B consultant for a world-renowned French business school.
Afterwards, I decided to focus my career on a more web-oriented path. I went back to school to get a bachelor degree in information and communication technology management at the University of Strasbourg.
This is when I really started to gain more experience in communications and marketing. I’ve worked for a few magazines as a journalist and then started my own music festival in the North of France. This entrepreneurial experience taught me a lot about web marketing and e-commerce.
After a while, I decided to move back to my home country, Canada, and quickly got hired at CrakRevenue. My international background and the fact that I’m trilingual (I speak French, English and Spanish) has been a real asset in the always evolving environment of performance marketing.
XBIZ: What’s the company culture like at CrakRevenue?
Doyle Poirier: It’s heaven. The CrakRevenue family is composed of amazing people with amazing skills: designers, product owners, marketers, affiliate managers and many others. And it shows! Since 2011, our revenue has increased by 2,000 percent. We continue to evolve, while being motivated to continue offering you only the best of the best, by the best.
But the best part is that we are more than just a team: we really enjoy the company of our colleagues — even outside of CrakRevenue’s office.
We frequently participate in a wide array of company-sponsored activities in the heart of Quebec City, whether it’s hockey, soccer, paintball, softball or even karting. One thing’s for sure … our team definitely knows how to have fun!
XBIZ: CrakRevenue is one of the biggest CPA network platforms. What distinguishes CrakRevenue from the competitors?
Doyle Poirier: First, I think it just comes down to the sheer number of exclusive offers that we made readily available to our affiliates, all under one user-friendly platform and all specifically tailored to the adult market. Since the very beginning, we have managed to generate more conversions than all our competitors in every major adult vertical, from dating to cams to video-on-demand.
Our reputation and work ethic is what started getting the attention of bigger partners. They saw our commitment and passion.
At the end of the day this is what really led to some of our most exclusive and popular partnerships over the years — the kind of partnerships that really benefited our affiliates.
So, without question, becoming known for having the largest adult network of webmasters and affiliates has allowed us to negotiate better payouts for our publishers.
We then spent nearly two years perfecting our current platform, what we now call CrakRevenue 2.0. We’re very proud of what we accomplished so far with this.
It might just be the best and most user-friendly CPA network on the market today — and the best part is that it’s not even finished yet!
We still have quite a few improvements and innovative features up our sleeves that are planned for release in the coming months. So, stay tuned!
And, finally, one huge distinction I believe that sets us apart from our competitors is the level of unparalleled support we offer to our affiliates at CrakRevenue. It’s one of our biggest assets.
As professionals, we watch the competition and the evolution of performance marketing closely, and we’re always really surprised to see how so many of the other networks don’t offer a fraction of the support that we provide to our affiliates.
This astonishment is rooted in the fact that we always feel like we could be doing even more for our affiliates, whether it’s developing custom new ad tools or perfecting the ultimate landing page.
XBIZ: What’s in store for CrakRevenue this year?
Doyle Poirier: One of our main focuses this year is to cover more verticals in the mainstream market while remaining the biggest CPA network of the adult industry.
As I said earlier, we will continue to work toward developing innovative new tools for our publishers and advertisers.
As for me, I’ll be working on brand new exclusive content for perhaps — you guessed it — Papa Whale’s very first book!
I really want to provide a useful guide for people looking to get started in the affiliate marketing industry. You know, after having assessed what’s actually out there and not out there right now on the market, I really think something like this could be an invaluable tool for someone who would like to get started generating revenue online.
XBIZ: What’s a typical workday like?
Doyle Poirier: I wake up late, and then rush to work (not even a joke - I’m not an early bird AT ALL). I grab a few cups of coffee, and then start my day — this is actually the only part of the workday that I find “typical.”
One thing that I really love about working at CrakRevenue is that there is no such thing as a typical day at the office.
Indeed, the performance marketing industry is evolving at an incredible pace and this means researching new technologies and working on different projects every week … which really impacts the pace of my days of work as well.
Meeting with experts, planning new projects and tradeshow appearances, writing articles, engaging with affiliates on social media and answering press requests are just a few of the things that I can almost expect.
Although, there is one other thing that typically happens, now that I think about it — time goes by really, really fast!
XBIZ: Outside of work, what do you like to do?
Doyle Poirier: I am a crazy dog lady. I have three dogs of my own and also have a dog boarding house so I usually have at least five dogs at home at all time. This means that I spend most of my time off outside, which is something that I really enjoy a lot. I also love gardening, for example.
Overall, I would say that I’m really lucky: I’m always surrounded by family, friends and a lot of dogs (which is my own little recipe for happiness).
