Blexr on its plans to dominate egaming affiliation

Any visitors to Blexr’s homepage are greeted with a rather unusual message: ‘Your performance marketing heroes – boldly going where very few dare to go’. It’s quite a claim to make for an egaming affiliate that has only been in the game for little more than two years – but its growth in such a short space of time suggests Blexr could well be on the path to success.

The brainchild of poker players Ian McDonnell and Paudie Reilly, the affiliate marketing company was founded in 2015 with a significant focus on SEO. Since this time, Blexr has grown from a business with just a few staffers to a headcount of approximately 50, expanded into dozens of new markets and completed an acquisition in the form of Nettrekker.

A major turning point for the business came last year when Blexr upped sticks in Ireland and moved to new digs in sunny Malta. This helped lay the foundations for a company which has major growth ambitions in the egaming affiliate market and for the first time last year secured a spot in EGR’s Power Affiliates rankings.

And there is clearly far more still to come from the company. EGR Marketing spoke to Blexr’s co-founders, McDonnell and Reilly, to find out more about how the business started out and where they plan to take the firm from here.

EGR Marketing: Tell us about Blexr and what makes you guys different to other egaming affiliate companies?

Ian McDonnell (IM): Blexr is a performance marketing company that focuses almost exclusively on egaming and has a strong background in SEO. We are unique in our values. We actually share knowledge, give responsibility and empower our team members to grow. Every member of our team loves their job and this is very important to us.

EGR Marketing: Why did you decide to enter the egaming affiliate marketing space in the first place?

Paudie Reilly (PR): We were both professional poker players for several years. At the time we had access to some huge rakeback deals on the iPoker network. The agent we had these deals through offered us a commission if we signed up other players we knew. So without knowing it we’d become poker affiliates.

EGR Marketing: How has the egaming affiliate market changed since you first got involved?

IM: In the last three years, changes in the affiliate market have been substantial. With market regulation (New Jersey, Romania, Greece, where you require an ‘affiliate licence’) the loss of markets like Australia, the string of acquisitions that pretty much validated the whole market as a stable business model and increased operator competition giving way to even higher margins and more leverage on the hands of companies like ours.

EGR Marketing: You’ve said previously you’re focused more on internal innovation than acquisition. What do you mean by that and why is this the case?

PR: Given the current environment for acquisitions, the multipliers are far too high. And this doesn’t leave much room for big returns, given that we are a private company and not subjected to a share price. Our focus is on profitability and to grow what we consider is a stable model in a scalable way. With the potential acquisitions out there you’re mostly looking at sites and businesses with an SEO footprint.
We’ve been quite fortunate in building a highly authoritative network of sites and believe that growing said network organically presents a far higher ROI than the inorganic growth presented by an acquisition. We also find that usually the process of integration takes almost as much time and effort as if you would build said properties from scratch, something we learned with the acquisition of the MrGamez.com. Hence our focus for internal innovation and development.

EGR Marketing: Are you focused on specific geographical markets?

IM: We have quite an international footprint, tackling about 40 markets at the moment. Our focus is to grow in regulated markets and leverage our unique products like VegasSlotsOnline.com – the site with the largest collection of free slot games in the world. Stable markets with mature legislation, great operator partners and not a clear “winner” in the affiliate space would be the ones we’re most interested in pursuing.

EGR Marketing: Do you feel like you excel in any particular egaming verticals?

PR: Casino is by far our clear focus, consisting on a large section of our portfolio.

EGR Marketing: Are there any you’re not focused on?

PR: We’ve been divesting out of poker as of late, given the current environment in the vertical.

“If we find an interesting opportunity that aligns with our current goals, we’ll be more than happy to take a stab at it”

EGR Marketing: Why was the decision made to relocate the firm from Ireland to Malta in 2015?

IM: At the time, we were both living in different parts of the world and all our staff were working remotely in different time zones. It was becoming more and more difficult to coordinate projects as everyone was online at different times. There was a discussion about centralising operations and Malta was the option chosen after considering various other egaming hubs including Cyprus, Gibraltar, the Caribbean and even the Philippines.

We realised that in Malta you’re able to attract some of the best experienced talent in egaming plus having established relationships with several of our top partners that happen to have physical offices here, makes it an ideal environment. The weather doesn’t hurt either.

EGR Marketing: How big is the company now and how is it broadly structured?

PR: We currently have about 50 located in our Malta HQ with a big part of our operation still working from all corners of the world. From Argentina to the Philippines, Luxembourg and Australia, we are truly a reflection of an international company that is possible thanks to the internet. A fun stat is that in Malta we are 20 different nationalities, which gives an insight into our working environment.

Our core departments are product operations, digital marketing, commercial, finance and human resources. We are structured in such a way that we can take care of every single aspect of our business in-house, yet are able to leverage external contractors for scalability.

EGR Marketing: You are recruiting quite heavily at the moment. In what areas of the business are you most focused on hiring for?

PR: Yes we are and as you will see on our careers page, this year we have been diversifying our marketing mix, taking a more product-orientated approach and entering new markets. With this in mind, we’ve had to increase our knowledge and manpower in several different areas, such as social media and market research. We also have begun to lay foundations by developing our in-house tech to assist with scalability.

The Blexr team goes paintballing as part of team building event

EGR Marketing: Can you tell us more about Blexr’s digital marketing/acquisition strategy? Are you predominantly focused on SEO?

PR: As part of our expansion, our core focus lies in SEO, where our goal is to leverage our existing scale and properties into diverse and regulated markets where there is plenty of low-hanging fruit. We continue to dip our toes in new, potential acquisition channels and emerging markets/trends. Yet for the foreseeable future our core goals have more to do with improving execution and our time to market.

EGR Marketing: What online marketing trends are you seeing at the minute and how has Blexr adapted to these trends?

IM: I think the acceptance of a mobile-
first reality and the usage of machine learning and better tracking allows us to retarget and understand user behaviour deeper. Another trend we’ve seen is affiliates focusing more on the creation of brands and leveraging operator’s knowledge in markets as they mature.

EGR Marketing: How important is forex to the company? Is this a big part of the business?

IM: Financial sites are a tiny part of the business and came as part of an acquisition, rather than being in-house projects. The egaming sector is still our bread and butter and we intend to focus all our resources in this area for the foreseeable future.

EGR Marketing: What do you think is driving most of the consolidation in the affiliate space now? Does Blexr have any desire to get involved in this?

PR: Share price, bullish financing and an appetite for growth is what has been driving this consolidation race, where most super affiliates find themselves in a position where you’re either acquiring these properties, or your competitor will. This drives valuations and multipliers through the roof. We have been quite active on the acquisition side in the past and if we find an interesting opportunity that aligns with our current goals, we’ll be more than happy to take a stab at it.

EGR Marketing: What are Blexr’s main priorities for the rest of the year?

IM: Our focus is on cementing our culture and making sure we’re growing the way we should be, focusing on attracting and keeping the right talent and ramping up on our product-orientated approach. v