Need Inspiration?
Then listen to this…
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If you didn’t have the privilege of being at Affiliate Summit East earlier this month and need a kick in the pants to get you moving, this is a must listen. Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, NJ, gave a riveting and inspiring keynote address at the summit. Tears welled up, and people were moved to reach the highest they could – then reach 3 inches farther.
Mayor Booker has a real penchant for the uplifting, and while the speach was not directly related to marketing it did touch on some sales and marketing themes and was generically motivating to anyone. So whatever industry you’re in, this is a great listen. My summary doesn’t give justice to the actual recording, so please give it a listen!
Read MoreSocial Media: The Marketing Summit
That’s right all you conference junkies, there’s a new kid at school. From the people who bring you Revenue Magazine, Social Media: The Marketing Summit will be taking place locally here in October. Some of the brightest folks in social media will be there:
- Lisa Picarille, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Revenue Magazine
- Brian Solis, Principal, FutureWorks and PR2.0
- Charlene Li, Independent Analyst (formerly of Forrester Research)
- Tara Hunt, Co-Founder, Citizen Agency
- Chris Trayhorn, Founder & CEO, PERFORM and Montgomery Research
I’m excited that there’s a new conference on the block, especially one that’s close enough to just commute to! Unfortunately I won’t be able to afford this on my own and, given my recent changes at work, don’t think the company will send me.
Early bird pricing ends August 30th. The early bird price is $895, a whopping $400 savings! As well, I’m officially taking sponsors if someone wants to send me on their behalf. No travel expenses, just the registration of the conference itself. If you’re interested in being my BFF, contact me.
Read MoreAffsum Session: Performance Marketing Association Q&A
Well, I think many people attending this session were expecting the topic to be heated, but l’m not sure they were expecting some of the venom that seemed to be in the room. Speaking for myself, I certainly didn’t. Originally there was only supposed to be one panelist fielding questions, but since 4 out of 5 working group leaders were in attendance, they were also recruited to speak. So ultimately the panel consisted of:
- Rebecca Madigan, Performance Marketing Association
- Sam Harrelson, Publisher, Cost Per News
- Brook Schaaf, Schaaf Consulting
- Brad Waller, VP Business Development, AdJungle.com
- Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust
Guns were slinging! Unfortunately there’s not many bullet points to be had, but here you go.
Bullet Point Review!
- PMA is in germination phase – not a real entity yet.
- Why start now?
- Misinformation & lack of representation.
- Legislation.
- Lack of transparency.
- Maturity of industry.
- Formation process still underway.
- Interviewed over 60 industry leaders, Formation Advisory Board voted in by 100 peers.
- Working groups of 45 volunteers.
- Working groups make recommendations on formation.
- FAB 11 ratifies formation proposals (click here to see members).
- The working group committees are Scope/Objectives (headed by Sam Harrelson), Governance (Brook Schaaf), Fundraising (Peter Bordes), Membership (Durk Price), and Operations (Brad Waller).
Points (or other observations in this case) brought up during the Q&A
- Right off the bat the questions were hostile. There’s animosity about the PMA using the NY Tax situation as a launching point for formation despite the fact that they can’t do anything to help.
- Essentially there’s nothing the PMA can do since they’re NOT a fully formed organization, no matter how much they want to help.
- Rebecca acted as moderator and moved the conversation on after almost 20 minutes of hostile banter.
- The PMA blog as been quiet because the people in working groups have had their heads down working on things without much to report at this point.
- The term “Performance” has been used over “affiliate” because it is more inclusive of the larger base of members within the industry. Inclusive of a lot more relationships than just the affiliate – merchant relation.
- The PMA has a very similar model as a chamber of commerce but the scope is still being set up. They are looking at the chamber model in forming things. Mostly they want to improve visibility & credibility.
- Rebecca was questioned as to why she didn’t attend the meetings in Albany that the NY affiliates had since she’s actually the only paid member. It was decided that there was no reason because it would have been redundant and she can’t represent an organization that isn’t formed and doesn’t officially exist.
- They were asked why they divorced themselves from ABestWeb after the controversy, to which they responded that they didn’t divorce from it BUT once a particular few threads got ugly and became increasingly unprofessional they just stopped participating in those threads.
- There’s no conspiracy regarding Rebecca’s involvement – Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom generously donated her salary for a year and she’s just being paid to “corral cats” and help form the organization. Her comment was that if she weren’t paid for this she’d have bailed long ago based on the assumptions about her involvement and what she’s had to deal with.
- An affiliate asked how they can be assured that the PMA won’t be overtaken by large company sponsorhips and forget the little affiliate? The affiliate industry is it’s own little ecosystem and the heart of it is the average affiliate. They’ve been very hypersensitive to the issue to ensure that affiliates are included.
It seems that there’s lots of confusion about the organization – or lack thereof – and hopefully the Q&A has taken things in the right direction. Perhaps Q&A wasn’t the right moniker. Maybe Suggestion Session or Feedback Forum might have worked better. It was disappointing to see one of the most vocal critics of the PMA – ABestWeb founder Haiko de Poel Jr – leave the session half way through in apparently disgust. I hope that future discussions going forward will be a bit more productive than the session in Boston.
Read MoreCribbed Content for August 15th
it’s been a crazy week, but a lot has been going on in the business world (not to mention my world lol)
- CVS Pharmacy bought small California chain Longs Drugs this week for $2.9 billion. Growing up with Longs, I’ll miss seeing the name around but they’re not one of the better stores so I don’t see it as a loss.
- AOL jumped into life streaming with their acquisition of Social Thing this week as well. I’ve never used Social Thing much, but I definitely won’t use it if it just gets pulled into their system.
- Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston wrapped up – I’m slowly getting all of my coverage posted. The next time I go to the show I hope to have a better laptop with a better battery and better wireless card so I can blog from the sessions instead of taking notes and blogging later. So much for live & current coverage!
That’s really about it this week since I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to antyhing outside of the summit. I did pick up some good tools, so the Free Toolsday column should be back soon!
Read MoreAffsum Session: Affiliate Marketing Basics for Merchants
Apparently this same session has been given for awhile now, and is usually referred to as Developing the Right Merchant Mindset. The speaker was:
- Andy Rodriguez, President, Andy Rodriguez Consulting Inc.
Overall there were some good basics here… but I guess I’ve graduated to where the basics are too basic for me.
Bullet Point Review!
- Lots of merchants don’t understand how affiliate marketing works and hence end up abusing the system.
- Affiliates work when they want and for whom they want – once you understand this you’re going in the right direction.
- Affiliates cannot be fired – they’re not your employees.
- Affiliates don’t work for you, they work with you.
- Affiliates have no fixed work hours and no time requirements.
- Affiliates have no fear of loss of compensation or sick days.
- Affiliates have more work than hours in the day.
- Affiliates don’t need you, you need them.
- Affiliates’ most important asset & ROI is TIME.
- Merchant’s most important & ROI is TRUST.
- Build the relationships and the sales will follow.
- Be sure your commissions are comparable.
- Most sales happen in the first 24-48 hours, but long cookies are still appealing to affiliates.
- Affiliates talk – so make sure it’s good.
- Important to notify affiliates of any downtime ahead of time.
- What does it take?
- Merchant mindset
- Affiliate’s first impression
- Program information
- Registration/Application
- Approval Letter – make sure all letters are genuinely personalized
- Rejection Letter
- Creating links – make it simple for affiliates to get links
- What’s in it for the affiliate?
- Commission rates
- Return days
- Creative inventory
- Clear call to action
- Deep linking
- Tools of the trade
- Link options
- Commission structure is flexible
- Affiliate relationship
- Trust
Points brought up during the Q&A
- Goldencan, popshops – some tools that are easy to help affiliates.
- Successful merchant/AM has 1st hand experience as an affiliate & is able to help partners to improve conversions, drive traffic, & motivate them.
- Just search for your top key words + affiliate to do a vertical analysis.
- There are pros & cons to direct linking that are based on the merchant – in general direct linking will have higher conversion rates.
- Stronger brands = not so good idea to allow TM bidding
- Smaller, weaker brands = might be good.
- Should have a program on one network
- There are problems with different networks and compatibility (adware).
- Transitioning is different – just be open & clear.
- How do you find niche affiliates to recruit?
- Tools Aurelius, visit forums like ABestWeb.
- .5% – 1% – 25% of affiliates in a program are active usually. 8-12% is about average.
- Don’t remove affiliates unless they’re doing something unethical or against terms – many will apply with an idea in mind but may not get them in gear right away.
- Continue to reach out to inactive affiliates offering assistance.
- Is everything okay?
- Can I help?
- Have you had a problem with this merchant?
- Is there anything I can do to help you?
- Remember to include links, promotions, CAB (Cash Activation Bonus) and incentives
- Merchants that have their program across multiple networks with different offers are probably looking to switch networks & are offer better terms on the network they’re moving to as an incentive to get affiliates switched faster.
- If you need contact information that your network doesn’t share, there are tools that will help you go around the network to get information – the network is more of a software application.
- Have contests – it’s a great motivator to get a non-performing affiliate active.
- A low percentage of active affiliates are usually due to bad activation emails or poor merchant support.
- Banners are becomming passe, articles are great, and data feeds are here to stay.
Days 2 and 3 of Affiliate Summit East 2008
Well, while I’d intended to recap each day… that didn’t exactly happen as you can tell. I do intend to post the notes I took from the sessions and the impressions to help everyone learn the great stuff I learned. Some of the more hot button sessions can’t be covered in mere bullet points, so it will take me a day or so longer to get my thoughts together for those.
I covered Saturday & Sunday (mostly… the ShareASale party was nice although I didn’t stay long), so let’s jump right into Monday & Tuesday, the busiest days of the conference.
Day 2 – Divide & Conquer
- In many ways this is the day that the summit starts. In the past the breakout sessions have only been on Monday & Tuesday, however this year they were extended to Sunday. Regardless, the keynote was given on Monday by Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker. If you didn’t want to jump up ready to go, you didn’t listen to what Mayor Booker had to say. It was a great speech, and I already posted my thoughts about it.
- The blogger’s lounge helped save my sanity. It was nice to be able to go in there in the 30 minute breaks between sessions & chat with people and do a little bit of work. Had the wifi worked out better for me (not sure if it was my ancient laptop or the actual connection that was the issue) I would have been able to get more posts up during the actual conference. I hope to have a better laptop by the next show I go to so I can just live blog it!
- Of the 3 sessions I attended, the best was Content That Kills. It was informative, had great tips and information, and there were good questions asked by the audience. I may be biased being a writer by heart, but it was good stuff.
- The other sessions I attended that day were the Performance Marketing Alliance Q&A, which turned more into a witch hunt filled with personal issues unfortunately, and How is Social Media Changing Affiliate Marketing, which apparently it isn’t because that question was never really answered. More on those in their own posts.
- The Great Affiliate Road Rally was a slaughterhouse win! With just three cars in it this time, the first place car took off like a shot and left the others in their dust! Congrats to them & to the others? Well remember the entry fee went to charity & you won’t feel so bad 🙂
- Monday night I had dinner with a lovely group of new friends & colleagues and then headed over to the LinkShare event at Tia’s. The event was a whole new group of people to talk to and had a great time talking some shop and reminiscing over Police Academy flicks with Wil Reynolds & Jim Kukral.
- Oh no, that wasn’t the end! After that we headed back to the hotel where we shut down the bar there and moved across the street to a small bar by the water & had a great time chatting with people and generally schmoozing before rolling into bed.
Day 3 – Epic Games
- It was a matter of sleep vs. sessions I wasn’t overly excited about attending, so I missed the Ask the Experts table discussions & The Future of Affiliate Marketing to sleep in & get refreshed for the Copywriting Clinic, which I very much wanted to attend. I hear I didn’t miss much.
- Speaking of the Copywriting Clinic, Lisa Riolo did an excellent job moderating and the panelists were excellent. I took 3 full pages of notes on this session, so you’re in for a huge post later on!
- The Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing session turned into the biggest fail session of the conference for me. The moderator Haiko de Poel Jr was doing a pretty bad job… usually when you’re the moderator of a panel of “experts” your job is to pass questions to the best suited panel member, not challenge the question back to the audience member who asked it. I have much more to say, so I’ll save it for later.
- The un-keynote was very relaxed and I actually got up & talked…which was big for me knowing that it was being video taped! I just hope when I look back at it that I don’t look like a fool lol.
- Luckily I was able to attend the Red Sox vs. Rangers game at Fenway with some fellow baseball loving conference attendees. Being a moderate baseball fan I was really thrilled to be there & the game was crazy! The Red Sox almost blew a 10-0 lead in the 1st but came back in the last inning to tie it up and then ultimately overtake the Rangers with an epic score of 17-19 Red Sox. We only spent a few innings in the stands before the rain started, but I got some great pictures and we continued watching the game from inside near the concessions so it wasn’t a waste.
- More bar shenanigans, then some piano playing until late kept me up long enough to decide not to go to bed before my early flight out of town. Overall what a great end to a great conference.
Final Thought – Springer Style
Overall I had the best time at this conference – not just because it was fun and I met a lot of terrific people who I’ve had the chance to get to know online and now have had the opportunity to meet in person – but because I just learned so much that I “get it” now. I remember back in February going to the Affiliate Summit West and having a conversation with my husband that I was actually starting to understand more and more about the industry and that I really felt like this was an industry I could get excited about.
And I have… and this reinforced so much for me how much I really like this industry! I’m back to the “real world” here and ready to conquer it!
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