Affiliate marketing is often underestimated in B2B software.
As Sage has discovered this year, that’s a mistake.
In the interview below, Head of Affiliate Marketing, Alexander Feist, explains why 2025 has been a breakthrough year for Sage’s affiliate programme, how partnership-led models outperform transactional ones, and how the company’s “Authentic Intelligence” strategy is shaping both AI innovation and long-term growth.
Sol Wilkinson: How has 2025 been for Sage?
Alexander Feist: It’s been a breakthrough year, not just in terms of our affiliate programme launch metrics, but in proving a thesis we've held for some time: Affiliate marketing in B2B software is fundamentally undervalued, when it's done right.
In January, we launched Sage's affiliate programme in the UK with the support of Affiverse, our incumbent Agency.
Within months, our account management team brought hundreds of partners on board to deliver incremental results.
What's really validated our approach is the quality of the partner activations we're seeing.
Performance has been efficient across the entire funnel, from awareness through to customer acquisition, and we're tracking retention metrics that tell us these aren't just quick conversions, they're quality customers who stick around because our product is market-leading.
The commitment from our partners has genuinely exceeded expectations, which is why we've grown the affiliate team and doubled our resourcing within this year and invested heavily in the global team infrastructure.
SW: What makes your programme stand out in the market?
AF: I've watched a lot of B2B affiliate programmes treat partners as distribution endpoints rather than strategic relationships, and frankly, that's where most of them fail.
We build human-based partnerships that deliver real outcomes, not just clicks or form fills, but revenue and retention. We work shoulder-to-shoulder with them through transparent tracking, clear reward structures, and content ecosystems that genuinely help business owners make confident choices.
It's performance-based, so we pay for results, and there's mutual accountability built into the model. But it's also partnership-led, which means we invest in onboarding, co-creation, and ongoing enablement that set affiliates up for long-term success.
We've developed tiered commission structures that reward not just volume but quality and intent events based on value metrics we monitor internally across all channels, so everyone's incentivised around the same outcomes.
We also run quarterly business reviews with our strategic partners, sharing data on what's working and where we can optimise together. That level of transparency and connection is often rare in larger affiliate programmes, but it's how you build partnerships that compound over time rather than churn out after a campaign cycle.
SW: Can you explain "Authentic Intelligence" and how it's shaping Sage's approach to AI?
AF: Authentic Intelligence is Sage's articulation of what I'd call the "trust gap" in enterprise AI, the distance between what the technology can do and what customers are willing to let it do.
It's our human-first approach to AI: practical, transparent, and built on four decades of finance domain expertise. Too many companies are racing to bolt AI onto products without considering whether it actually earns the user's trust. We're taking a different path.
In practice, this manifests through a layered architecture. Customers interact with Sage Copilot, which is the conversational experience layer. Think of it as the interface between human intent and machine capability.
Underneath that sits Sage AI, the intelligence engine that's been trained on real financial data, anonymised and aggregated from millions of small businesses.
Then, there are AI Agents, which handle defined, routine tasks within clear permission boundaries. They're not making strategic decisions; they're automating the admin that drains time.
All of this runs on the Sage Platform, where data and workflows are connected in a way that maintains security and auditability.
Transparency at that level isn't just good ethics, it's good business. When SME owners understand how the technology works and why they can rely on it, adoption accelerates and retention follows.
SW: How is Sage using AI to enhance the experience for affiliates and customers alike?
AF: Our partnerships are fundamentally human-based. Trust is built person-to-person, and no amount of automation will change that.
AI helps those relationships move faster and perform better. On the affiliate side, we've used AI to streamline recruitment and onboarding.
We've cut the average time from signup to first conversion by 40% this year alone – largely because partners can self-serve insights that used to require manual reporting.
For customers, Sage Copilot is reducing the administrative burden that typically consumes 10-15 hours a week for small business owners. It simplifies complex tasks like VAT submissions, cash flow forecasting, and invoice reconciliation, giving owners back time to focus on growth initiatives.
We’re also the official partner for HMRC’s Making Tax Digital initiative, which is a focus in the UK to help SMB’s make their tax returns online.
Affiliates are also SMB’s so we’re right in the thick of serving our own customer base across the program too.
Everyone wins when the product actually solves the problem.
SW: How are you working with different kinds of partners? Where are you seeing success?
There isn't a standard playbook in B2B affiliate marketing, and anyone who tells you there is hasn't scaled a programme across diverse partner types, products and regions alike.
Our team reviews what is required through regular feedback loops with our partners. We let them lead, and we support.
We've deliberately built a segmentation model that tailors our approach for each of our partner types, because each has different economics, different audience dynamics, and different definitions of success.
Content publishers, for example, respond well to co-created editorial, long-form comparison content, and SEO-driven strategies where we collaborate on keyword targeting and content calendars.
Accountants and advisors need a different approach: they're relationship-driven, so we provide them with client enablement tools, co-branded resources, and a referral model that preserves their advisory role while generating recurring revenue.
Creators and community builders thrive when we give them authentic stories and early access to product developments they can genuinely recommend.
You can learn more about Sage's leading global affiliate programme here.
