Vote for “Behind the Curtain of Affiliate Management”! #ASW11
For the second conference in a row, Affiliate Summit has opened up the democracy of picking out which sessions attendees want to see on the agenda. Voting will be open through October 8th on their Slinkset page. Vote here! I don’t see that many changes since the last time, so I sincerely hope that those who attempted to game the system the last time by offering contest entries for votes have learned their lesson. Remember, the venue for Affiliate Summit West 2011 has changed this year to the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas, NV. It’ll take place January 9-11, 2010.
I’ll be a shameless shill for a moment and ask that you vote for my & Karen Garcia’s panel idea, Behind the Curtain of Affiliate Management. We will discuss tools, tricks, and processes that make being an affiliate manager more effective and efficient. Please vote as we really want to help all the new, struggling affiliate managers out there to improve even the smallest affiliate program! Karen has nearly 10 years in the business managing various retail affiliate programs, and I have 3 years managing a wide variety of both retail and leads based affiliate programs in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer verticals.
There are 91 options to choose from, and you can vote up as many panels as you’d like to see. To vote, just click the upward arrow. You will have to create a login, or retrieve your login from the last round 0f voting. Do your civic duty as an attendee of Affiliate Summit and help shape what the agenda looks like. As soon as I have a few free moments, I’ll be voting and tell you all what I’m voting for. Just in browsing through, before reading the descriptions, there are more than a few really good sessions that are jumping out at me. It makes me even more excited for January to get here!
Viva Democracy! Remember, you have no business complaining about the content presented at the conference if you don’t go vote!
CJU 2010: Daniel Pink Keynote
Well I returned from CJU on Friday, and I have notes! Unfortunately, my alarm clock failed me and I missed the vast majority of Daniel Pink’s keynote. I saw part, and I took some notes for you, and I’m grossly disappointed that I missed it.
Bullet Point Review!
- DIY performance review works best.
- People do better if they feel like what they do matters.
- Autonomy – Mastery – Purpose
- Sometimes we obsess over how people do stuff when they don’t focus on why.
- When you pair the profit motive & the purpose motive, great things happen.
- Have a purpose bigger than your product.
Social Email Marketing: Growing an Email Newsletter using Social Media #SMMSF
This presentation took place at the Social Email Marketing event, put on by Influence People with lead sponsor Constant Contact. The conference took place on Friday, September 17, 2010 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, CA. StartupDigest has grown from 22 subscribers in November 2009 to 67,000+ subscribers today. Chris discussed how social media was used to grow the subscriber base providing actionable strategies to integrate social media into sign up process, pairing blog posts with social media, and using different content types.
Chris was very energetic, and I appreciated his casual presentation. It was a loose case study of what how he grew his own business, so you know the methods work! The speaker was:
- Chris McCann, Co-Founder, StartupDigest (@mccannatron)
Bullet Point Review!
- Make it really easy and clear that you want people to sign up for a newsletter.
- We love newsletters because:
- Brand recognition.
- Only need to get the subscriber once.
- Trusted source (quickly).
- Push vs. Pull.
- Highly targeted niche audience.
- Use social proof on landing pages.
- Introduce share into sign up process.
- Simplify your landing pages.
Here’s Chris’ slide presentation:
Help Me Attend Blog World Expo 2010
I’m on my knees, people! I’m looking to raise some funds so I can attend Blog World Expo & New Media Conference this year October 14-16 in Las Vegas. It was highly valuable for me when I went in 2008, and a lot has changed since then! I’d love to go get an update on some of the trends in blogging. But I can’t do it alone. I’ve determined that I can easily cover the flight to Las Vegas to attend, but I can’t cover the $500 registration fee and the $500 it’ll take to stay in Las Vegas for the duration. So that’s where you come in.
A friend of mine clued me in today on a little thing called ChipIn. ChipIn allows anyone to raise money towards any endeavor so long as they have a PayPal address. This is excellent for charities, schools, community organizations, or poor bloggers like me to ask for donations! So my goal is to raise $1000 (or as close as possible) by 10/8/10 so I can register before the show possibly sells out. Below is my widget, and I’d be eternally grateful if you chipped in a few bucks towards my goal.
What do you get out of this, you ask? I’ll tell you!
- Better content from me on TrishaLyn.com
- Notes from all the great sessions I attend.
- A plethora of photos from the event.
- New tools you can use on your WordPress powered blogs and websites.
- A faster, more efficient TrishaLyn.com since I’ll be looking to switch hosting providers.
- My eternal gratitude and gratuitous public thank yous with links to your company or personal website on my Twitter stream, Facebook page, this blog, etc.
Social Email Marketing: Email as the Hub of your Social Media Interactions #SMMSF
This presentation took place at the Social Email Marketing event, put on by Influence People with lead sponsor Constant Contact. The conference took place on Friday, September 17, 2010 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, CA. In this session, Mark shared insights from small business owners and provided real world examples of how social media marketing delivered the best results when combined with email marketing.
I loved that real examples were used of small companies that no one on the national scene has heard of that used social media locally for their business. It was some thought-provoking stuff! These small businesses made email and social media work together to maximize their results. The speaker was:
- Mark Schmulen, Director of Social Media, Constant Contact (@mschmulen)
Bullet Point Review!
- The typical small business has less than 20 employees.
- Instead of asking “Should I be using Facebook?”, small businesses are now asking, “How do we get business results from this?”.
- Traditional marketing focuses on the acquisition. The emphasis is put on finding, then converting, then keeping.
- Interactive marketing focuses on the customer service. The emphasis is on keeping, then converting, then finding.
- There’s 5 categories of people when it relates to your business:
- Disinterested
- Suspects
- Prospects
- Customers
- Raving Fans
- Don’t waste your time on the disinterested and focus on the rest.
- 14% of people trust ads, 78% trust recommendations.
- 51% of people made a purchase based on a recommendation.
- Turn your email subscribers into Facebook fans.
- All the channels matter – it’s about the customers and their choice of how they want to interact. Be wherever they are.
- You need to collect people’s emails because that’s longer lasting than some social media sites will be.
- Putting a share feature in emails clearly increases sharing, but it also decreases people reporting your email as spam. This helps your reputation with the ESPs in the future.
Here’s Mark’s slide presentation:
Social Email Marketing: Email for the Generations #SMMSF
This presentation took place at the Social Email Marketing event, put on by Influence People with lead sponsor Constant Contact. The conference took place on Friday, September 17, 2010 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, CA. In this session, we learned how to use social tactics to trigger responses from the Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials effectively.
I loved this presentation, not only because it was packed with useful marketing information, but also because I learned a bit about myself. I had no idea that I was Generation Y and not Generation X. I enjoyed hearing the characteristics of people in these generations and thinking about people I know who follow the characteristics to a T! The speaker was:
- Jennifer Neeley Lindsay, Host of The A-List on Blog Talk Radio (@jennifered)
Bullet Point Review!
- Characteristics of Millennials (born between 1977 and 1994):
- Real Time communication is key.
- Visually oriented.
- Need immediate gratification.
- Friends=family (they make decisions in groups).
- Share information they consider valuable easily.
- Most likely brand advocates.
- Empathetic.
- Calls to Action for Millennials:
- Prefer to share via text or Twitter.
- Impulse buyers.
- Will share deals as well as valuable content.
- Internet or mobile coupons are ideal.
- If you hit a sweet spot, they’ll create content for you.
- Characteristics of Generation X (born between 1965 and 1976):
- Time considered a precious commodity.
- Actively use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter.
- Shop and price compare online.
- Use email and text interchangeably.
- Self reliant & individualistic.
- Mistrust institutions.
- Calls to Action for Gen X:
- More than 80% text or email deals.
- Reduce their pressures of everyday life.
- Communicate ways to keep kids engaged.
- Deliver quick hit info.
- Help with their work/life balance.
- Characteristics of Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964):
- They’re a squeeze generation, taking care of both their parents and their kids.
- 1/3 are actively online.
- Need to feel catered-to.
- Regular online shoppers and big spenders.
- Like spending recognition (rewards, points, etc.)
- Comfortable with email.
- Twitter is an untapped outlet.
- Calls to Action for Baby Boomers:
- Reach all of them.
- Cash back or savings programs.
- Up-sell areas of interest:
- Prescription medication
- Insurance
- Gifts for grandkids and kids
- Entertainment
- Travel
- Discount wines by the case
- Characteristics of the Greatest Generation (born before 1946):
- Value-oriented – want to discuss areas of interest.
- Spend most of their time online with email and message boards.
- Their Baby Boomer children influence their adoption of technology.
- Actually asking for more social features on their phones
- Calls to Action for the Greatest Generation:
- Emails & messages boards are good for targeted messages about senior discounts.
- Messages need to be in a large enough font size to be seen.
- Message about ways you cater to the age group.
There were some good questions after the presentation about the different email providers, such as AOL, Gmail, etc. She said that the different providers definitely cater to different generations with their levels of difficulty. Older folks tend to like the simplicity of things like AOL, wherase younger folks enjoy more optimization and personalization with Gmail. Link shorteners also matter – older generations are less likely to click a weird looking link (bit.ly, tinyurl, etc) whereas younger generations know what they are and are more likely to click.
Jennifer was kindly enough to put her awesome slideshow online, so check it out here:
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