Session Description: Presenting actionable items for 7 main topics, including social media, negotiating, points of sale opportunities, content that pulls, partnerships, prioritization, and the expense of inefficiency. The panel consisted of:
- Lisa Riolo, Consultant, LisaRiolo.com (Twitter @lisariolo) (Moderator)
- Jason Oates, VP Media Services, Datran Media
- Durk Price, President, eAccountable OPM LLC
- Chuck Hamrick, Affiliate Manager, AffiliateCrew.com
This session was a perfect mix of business 101 and affiliate marketing. I think a lot of affiliates get into this thinking they’re going to get rich quick and don’t really consider that they’re really creating a business. So this little business intro and how it applies to performance marketing was a nice session.
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- Top line thinkers focus on revenue, whereas bottom line thinkers focus on profit.
- You might think you can, but you can’t do it all. Learn to delegate.
- Develop tools and methodologies to do more with less.
- Think long term and potentially sacrifice short term gains.
- You should be spending less than 50% of your time putting out fires.
- Prioritization
- 1st Priority -> High growth & unknown costs
- 2nd Priority -> Highly profitable growth
- 3rd Priority -> Profitable with limited growth
- 4th Priority -> Undetermined growth and costs
- Coupons are one of the best performing verticals.
- Affiliate marketing is not a brand meter.
- 6-12 month curve; don’t expect overnight results or a 90 day ROI.
- Everything is negotiable; evaluate other programs.
- It doesn’t hurt to ask but remember it’s a business relationship.
- Make sure to negotiate with 2-3 partners at once – and that they know you’re exploring other options.
- Be data driven and use data to your advantage.
- Find someone that’s going to vouch for the vendor you’re negotiating with and ask for referrals.
- Be more available and transparent.
- Three uses of email
- Acquisition
- Retention
- Monetization
- Many people using feedback loops and opening dialog in order to improve.
- Find ESP that will work on a performance basis – they will help you weed out non-responders.
- Synchronize your email expertise.
- Use employees in the smartest way possible for maximum operational efficiency.
- You need metrics before you negotiate either internally or externally.
- Points of Sale
- Up-selling
- Add-on Products and Services
- Continuity Programs
- 2nd Sale and Renewals
- Providing valuable, free content is a good way to capture emails to market to.
- To decrease unsubscribers, offer other subscriber options with different frequencies or options.
- Positions 3-5 on the SERPs are the secret sauce of SEO.
- Calling a customer to confirm a sale will encourage return business.
- Know key metrics – average order value, conversion rates, lifetime order value (that one is tricky).
- You can’t just be an OPM, you have to be a consultant.
- Doing more targeting is effective.
- A monthly affiliate newsletter isn’t that effective.
- Just keep the parasites out.
Overall I got a lot out of this, and I hope others did too. I wished the panelists had had a bit more fun with the topic to liven things up, but I understand there’s only so much you can spice up such a dry topic. Here’s the presentation, though this is clearly an older version since Karen White didn’t end up making it and Durk & Chuck stepped in:
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