Career

Affsum Session: Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?

Posted on Jan 25, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 4 comments

Date: Monday, January 12th, 2009.  Session 5d, 2:00pm.
Session Description: How are videos being used by affiliates and merchants?  A detailed look into how and where they are performing best with suggested hints and tips to drive better click through and conversions. The panel consisted of:

• Marty M. Fahncke, President, FawnKey & Associates (Moderator)
• Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage
• Melissa Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com
• Jonathan Stefansky, EVP Sales and Marketing, Qoof

This wasn’t the panel I had planned on going to, but I’m glad I went and checked it out.  There was some interesting factoids dropped and I enjoyed the Twitter going in the background with the anonymous admirer of Melissa asking if she was in the videos.

Bullet Point Review!

• There’s tremendous potential.
• Consider your site when trying to figure out what will work.
• Besides person to person, video is the second highest sales driver.
• ML looked at 2008 as the year of infrastructure.
• Big marketers have taken note of online video.
• In 2007, 59% of internet users watched video online.  In 2008 that skyrocketed to 77%.
• With banner blindness there’s a need for a new type of creative.
• Banners are the lowest performing; video overcomes even the success of text links.
• Give the affiliate a better way to convert.
• Low cost for affiliates – no streaming costs, no hosting costs, widgets are interactive.
• Attention spans are around 3 minutes.
• Content must be engaging and capture the user within 15 seconds.
• Networks and merchants wouldn’t invest in video if it didn’t work.
• Affiliates are very eager to receive the best content for the least work.
• People who are in video now are in it for it’s potential, not the actual of today.
• 77 million unique visitors on YouTube (my notes might be wrong on that, and I didn’t write down if that was per day or per month, but I think it was per day.)
• MLTV raises brand awareness, bloggers talk about it.
• Companies are very sensitive to UCG (User Generated Content).
• DO: think about the shelf life of a video.  Videos about how to do something instead of a hot trend or product will be relevant longer.
• DON’T: set your videos to auto play with sound.  It’s incredibly intrusive, especially if someone’s at work, which is where most people view videos due to faster broadband connections.
• DON’T: go over 3 minutes.
• DO: grab attention within the first 15 seconds.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Where are things with .tv domains?  They’re increasing in popularity, but they still don’t get near the traffic a .com domain does.
• How do you track this?  Qoof embeds links with the AID and PID for tracking.  Others use view time, page views, how long people stay on the page, etc. to track success.

Once again, Michael Buechele of 11|15 Media blogged about this session for the official Affiliate Summit Blog.  Check out his recap for anything I may have missed while tweeting ;): Affiliate Summit West 2009 Session Recap – Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?

Affsum Session: Reaching Aggressive Goals without Monetary Incentives

Posted on Jan 23, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

Date: Monday, January 12th, 2009.  Session 4c, 11:30am.
Session Description:  This session outlines how to best manage affiliate relationships to reach major revenue goals without additional budget. Tactics focus on non-monetary incentives to increase affiliate performance. The panel consisted of:

• Chris Kramer, Co-Founder & Media Director, NETexponent (Moderator)
• Darren Eilers, Founder & CEO, DME Media, LLC
• David Lewis, CEO & Founder, Cashbaq
• Kevin Smith, Affiliate Marketing and Business Development Manager, Brown Shoe Co. – Shoes.com

OK, this session wasn’t what I expected it to be.  It seemed more like a session on how to treat or work well with super affiliates, which I’ve attended before and got kind of the same tips from.  Maybe I perceived this wrong, but I expected some tactics on how to creatively promote affiliate programs without money, but it turned out to be how to fire up your top affiliates, and still mentioned money.

Bullet Point Review!

• The majority of affiliates say they make most their money from less than 5% of the merchants they promote.
• David says: compensation does matter.  We’re willing to promote products and brands with zero compensation up front.
• David says: if you know our business, we’ll talk to you.  Without knowing that basic fact, all of the other things you can say don’t matter.
• Darren says, to managers: relationships matter.  Keep in mind that everyone does things differently.  They do expect a better relationship than any other affiliate.
• Darren says, to fellow affiliates: You can’t expect a merchant to call you back unless they have an incentive to.  So the affiliate has to sell you on themselves.  Pitch you.
• David says: the compensation has to sometimes be different for loyalty sites.  Get datafeeds cleaned up.  Better sales will come from that and the creativity affiliates use with datafeeds.
• Darren acknowledges: we know that it’s sometimes an uphill battle for merchants to get the datafeeds fixed by their IT departments, but if the affiliate doesn’t get the datafeed that’s clean, they have to go with someone else.
• David notes that he’s personally working hard to create a standard taxonomy that everyone uses for datafeeds to make that portion of the industry more uniform.
• The key is keeping it updated.
• Chris noted that the number 1 thing affiliates wanted from them are custom landing pages.  The second was product feeds, third promotions and incentives, and fourth was coupon code offers.
• Kevin wants affiliates to know that they can get help when they need it.  The more information we as merchants can give the affiliate, the more money they make, more sales for us.
• David warns that the conversions really have to be solid.  It’s better for the merchant and the affiliate.
• Kevin includes information about the products and company in their newsletter.  He tosses out as much information as he can that will help the affiliates.
• It’s hit & miss in terms of the merchant giving information to the affiliate in terms of what they’ll use.
• A lot of the money they make is reinvested.
• David uses an analogy of a bobsled team for the merchant.  They’re the head of the team and just need the push from the merchant to get rolling down the track.
• Darren advises that you take your top affiliates and let them help you test landing pages.  He’s usually willing to work with merchants that ask for that kind of help since he’ll ultimately receive the benefit.
• Chris warns though that a lot of affiliates don’t want to be guinea pigs and how often are you willing to take the risk?  Darren responded that it depended on how long he’s worked with and trusts the merchant.  He doesn’t mind being a guinea pig if it means he can make more money.
• David warned against merchants making knee-jerk reactions.  Use the data and make decisions based on that.
• Darren says if you know them and spend the time to get to know their business and form a partnership, merchants are usually more willing to give them inside data to help them out.
• Are there three different teams compensated separately?  Many merchants have the SEO team, SEM team, and Affiliate team.  If the program is run correctly the affiliates help all three teams.  it’s all of our sales, not my sales or your sales.
• Kevin says more affiliates looking at CPM than CPA – with the economy there’s not as much money out there for CPA offers anymore since they don’t return like sales do.
• David relayed something he read that said 73,000 stores will close in the US this year (estimate).  If someone comes to them and says they’re cutting their commissions, it’s a mistake but OK, they’ll look at your competitors more.  Someone has something similar and will boldly raise their commissions to stand out.
• Darren warns that before you lower commissions across the board, take a look at your top affiliates.  Weed them out and tier your structure.  Maybe increase compensation for the top affiliates and lower it for the others.
• David says to reward those meeting your goals.
• Kevin notes that they did that and it worked great.
• Kevin adds not to be knee-jerk reactionary.  Try to look at a monthly picture.  For them the 2nd Saturday of every month is their big Saturday Sale, and affiliates know that.  Being transparent helps them stand out.  Allow them to lean on the merchant.  Brand equity is very important.
• Kevin has seen more volume with coupons and loyalty sites.
• Chris shares more poll results amongst affiliates: What matters most before joining?  1. Commissions 2. Product being sold 3. Brand 4. Tracking platform 5. Terms and conditions 6. EPC 7. Affiliate manager/outsourced program managers 8. Return days 9. Action occurrences
• Darren says to look at your affiliate manager very closely to analyze the relationship.  When the AM gets to know what the affiliate does, they can customize incentives specifically for them.
• Darren also says to give your top affiliates your true top performing keywords.
• Chris asks if a big brand can get away with paying less commissions.  Darren says they can if their conversion rates are higher.
• Chris asks how much competitive research do you do?  Darren says they know what the published commission rate is.  They also look at the EPC but that doesn’t really tell them too much.
• David notes that they’re big and kind of already have the big brands, so they ask different questions before they join a new program.  Are you making our life easy?  Do you have an 88×31 non-animated gif?  Do you link to the homepage or deep link?  Is it something we think our members will see as quality?  Does it look like it’ll convert?
• Darren says he’ll try to get a hold of the affiliate manager to work with them to improve their site, but there’s only so much they can do so sometimes it’s hard to do that.
• Kevin creates banners on a daily basis.  They’ll accommodate different sizes if asked.
• Although David says he doesn’t look at banners.  Darren advises that they have to meet the challenges of Google changing, so they need to change.  Banners have been around so long and they’re surprised that there’s still so much emphasis on banners. They do their own creative because it’s faster and they know what will work with their visitors.  If the merchant won’t allow that, it’ll hurt them.  They’ll work within their guidelines for sure.

There was a lot of good information and wasn’t much time for a Q&A session, so there was none.  Despite it not being what I was going in for, it was still a good session and dropped some handy tips from some top affiliates.  There was also some good data points in the slides, so here they are for your viewing pleasure as well:

Affsum West 09 Keynote Gary Vaynerchuk

Posted on Jan 22, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking, Marketing |

This was a great keynote, given by Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV.  He killed it in terms of getting the crowd riled up and rearing to go for the rest of the show.  He also did something I haven’t seen from other keynote speakers – he actually opened it up for questions. Gary has a very real, conversational style of speaking, which I appreciate.  He curses, and beware I have republished some things verbatim so there’s some choice words below.

The show organizers did something else cool and different – they streamed the keynote speech live on Ustream.

Bullet Point Review!

• More emphasis is needed on community.
• Content is king, but marketing is the queen and she runs the house.
• Be authentic – he never does double takes or edits out stray bits for WLTV.
• 45-60 minutes spent on content, the rest is on monetization.
• If you’re not doing vanity searches for your name or your brand, you’re a monumental clown.
• Too many people preach to this crowd.
• We’ve been aiming to hit singles but we all have the talent to hit home runs.
• Sink your teeth into your passion.
• Why can’t we be artists AND entrepreneurs?
• If you want to make money, then you should.  Don’t feel bad for it.
• If you have cockroaches in the back of your pizza place, clean that shit up!  (i.e. anything you do that’s wrong or shady WILL come out).
• People don’t want to see ROI numbers.
• People are not creating multiple channels and should.
• Create more angles and more opportunity to make money.
• ROI will be much more important with the economic situation we’re in.
• Social Media is bullshit – it’s just the extension of business.
• Watch a 13 year old interact – they’re not going to be reading the newspapers or watching the nightly news.
• Details are what really build business.
• When you build brand equity, you’re always able to make money.
• If you think Twitter is your main play for the rest of your life, you’re an asshole.
• When you care, you win.
• We all now go direct to consumer.
• Twitter is word of mouth on steroids.
• If you leave here with nothing else, ask yourself this: Where the hell am I going?  What do I want to do?

Points brought up during the Q&A

• How do you build multiple brands?  There are no tactics, just be who you are.
• How do you cross pollinate across different brands and networks?  It’s like fishing in other ponds.  Your message carries.  When you step outside this space, you sound like fucking yoda!  Focus your message across multiple channels.
• How has PleaseDressMe.com not fizzled?  They said from the beginning that the goal was affiliate marketing to make money.  People took them more seriously.  They created the hype to leverage the hype.

All in all, a good way to start the conference!  Getting people riled up at 9:45am on a Monday morning isn’t an easy task!

Affsum Session: Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing

Posted on Jan 21, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

Date: Sunday, January 11th, 2009.  Session 3d, 3:00pm.
Session Description: There are two sides to ethical issues in affiliate marketing, and we will entertain audience questions for a panel of industry leaders.  The panel consisted of:

• Haiko de Poel Jr., Managing Partner, dp internet services LLC, DBA ABestWeb (Moderator)
• Connie Berg, CEO, FlamingoWorld.com LLC
• Chuck Hamrick, Affiliate Manager, affiliateCREW.com
• Brian Littleton, President/CEO, ShareASale.com
• Alex Butin, Rakuten Rewards (Alex stood in for Paul Nichols from Ebates, who had to bow out last minute)

With Alex on the panel and the latest big issue facing affiliate ethics being toolbars overwriting affiliate cookies, I think that swayed the tide of the questions asked by both Haiko as moderator and Q&A portion.  I would have liked to hear more questions asked by audience members, but admittedly, I didn’t have any to ask myself since I’m still learning about all the different issues that eat at the ethics of the industry.

Bullet Point Review!

• Haiko made a good analogy to Las Vegas and asked: is the soul of the industry gone?
• Online marketing is becoming the default medium for high ROI.
• From your unique vantage point, where do you draw the line?
  • Chuck, as an OPM, said: Knowingly doing something that’s unethical.  Working with adware and parasites knowing that’s wrong.  Allowing PPC tactics you know affect other department’s performance.  Being an affiliate of your own program.  Playing favorites.
  • Connie, as a coupon affiliate, said: Coupon sites that have a toolbar that overwrites other cookies.  Auto load cookies.  Social media apps. Networks owning competing affiliate sites.  As new technology comes out there are new ways to cheat.
  • Alex, as a technology provider, said: Be clear with your motives, evolve your business models.  It’s up to merchants to decide what’s unethical, as a company they don’t want to create a tool that doesn’t do exactly what it says it does, so they’re not interested in shady features that aren’t advertised.
  • Brian, as a network, said: They see “interference” to tracking as a problem period, and since parasites, toolbars, etc. interfere with tracking, they’re out.  They’ve also seen a total disregard for other company’s policies (affiliates breaking Google rules was his example) and they have no interest working with those people.  Don’t turn the other cheek to practices you know are unethical.
• There’s a whole movement of squeaky clean networks and businesses.
• We need to take charge because the networks won’t.
• People are pushing the term “affiliate” under the rug and re-branding as “performance” marketing.  Performance is all inclusive and too broad to represent affiliates.
• Network compliance teams are a joke.
• The industry needs more disclosure and transparency, not division and separation that some organizations are actually providing (seemed to hint at the PMA).

Points brought up during the Q&A

• One question asker made the statement that “cookies are dead”, referencing the new browser technology recently coming out that has been blocking affiliate ad displays and blocking cookies.  Brian respectfully disagreed with the statement that cookies are dead, but said his network is looking at ways to track without cookies, but couldn’t get into specifics for obvious reasons.  Other panelists agreed that the cookie issue isn’t too big yet.
• Brook Schaaf asked about the negative thoughts associated with coupon sites, and Connie and the other panelists agreed that “one bad apple spoils the bunch”, so to speak.  There are shady coupon sites running toolbars that overwrite cookies, stealing non-affiliate coupon codes from the merchant’s website, and stealing exclusive codes from other affiliates that have given legitimate coupon sites a bad name.

Based solely on the description of this session, I was hoping for more of a discussion, but despite the room being packed, the panel was over 20 minutes early with just two questions asked.  I’m glad that it seems they took the feedback from Boston and toned the emotion of the session down a bit, and I hope to see further discussion at future Summits, or perhaps even a jam session type event to just address ethics.  It seems like a discussion bigger than an hour long panel can accommodate.

There’s also a recap from Michael Buechele’s point of view on the Affiliate Summit Blog:  Affiliate Summit West 2009 Session Recap – Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing. Check out a different perspective.

Affsum Session: The Ultimate Pitching Guide

Posted on Jan 20, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 2 comments

Date: Sunday, January 11th, 2009.  Session 2d, 1:30pm.
Session Description:  Experts share their best (and most outrageous) secrets for getting attention from merchants, media and the masses. You’ll learn the tips, tricks and techniques to get the attention you seek. The panel consisted of:

• Lisa Picarille, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Revenue Magazine (Moderator)
• Anita Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, SmallBizTrends.com
• Jim Kukral, Owner, TheBizWebCoach.com
• Peter Shankman, Founder, Help a Reporter (HARO)

I was looking forward to this panel, and it didn’t disappoint.  I also learned that Peter Shankman never needs more coffee – he’s animated enough as it is!

Bullet Point Review!

• A good pitch solves a problem.
• This might be common sense, but DON’T PLAGIARIZE!
  • Make sure you have a discussion with young PR people that plagiarizing is NOT ok.
• Know who you’re pitching to!  It will help determine the angle of your pitch.
• Resource: The Bad Pitch Blog
• Take 5 seconds and read what a reporter wants & oblige – that will get you in the door to just follow submission directions.
• No attachments – filters often delete those emails.
• A reporter must be able to get the point of your pitch in 7 seconds.
• Getting attention from a blogger is different than getting attention from traditional media.
  • Leave comments consistently to get noticed.
• If you develop a personal relationship, it’ll help.
• Use the reporter’s name in blog posts.
• Make your pitch sound like a scoop, like you’re an industry insider.
• Do something timely and a little different to get noticed.
• Book: Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them
• Some reporters now will only accept pitches via Twitter.
  • If you can’t pitch in 140 characters, you need to work on brevity anyway.
• Try live streaming and letting people interact with you in real time.
• Twitter has replaced focus groups with the use of search.
• Publish your news wherever you can, like blogs.
• Book: Marketing Outrageously: How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts!
• Press releases will be obsolete very soon.
• Resource: Twittering Journalists Wiki

I don’t remember there actually being a Q&A in this session.  If there was, I think I included any good points in my notes already.

Overall this was an excellent session.  They really didn’t use any slides, so I can’t share any.  But with a session like this, it was more about their past experience and real-world knowledge than any special slides or data.

Affsum Session: Advanced Approaches To Affiliate Recruiting, Training, and Management

Posted on Jan 19, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 2 comments

Date: Sunday, January 11th, 2009.  Session 1b, 12:00pm.
Session Description: Dual presentation on advanced techniques, strategies and ideas for affiliate training and management. This enlightening, and entertaining session will help you improve and grow your affiliate program. The panel consisted of:

• Heather Paulson, President, Paulson Management Group
• Geno Prussakov, CEO & President, AM Navigator LLC

Bullet Point Review!

• Affiliate Managers = ones called to manage the unmanageable ones.
• Don’t think of it as Affiliate Management – think of it as Affiliate Leadership + Affiliate Program Management.
• Affiliates are normally intolerant of bogged down management, so you can’t actually manage them, just the program.
• Affiliate managers deal with different affiliates at different maturity levels.
• Use a contingent management style and strategies that are situational.
• More than 350 of the Fortune 500 companies use a contingent approach.
• There are tools to use to find affiliates: Syntryx, DomainTools, manual research, Email Analyst.
• iSpionage is a great tool to monitor keywords and find affiliates that way.
• If your program is on Commission Junction, ask them for a Push Offer – request recruiting function is turned on for your account.

Unfortunately the Q&A was a bit useless since no one bothered to go up to the microphones that were provided, so the questions were unintelligible.  And judging by the answers they gave that I could hear, they must have been really specific because I didn’t really get much from the answers.

I admit, this session was a bit of a let down for me.  It started late due to some technical difficulties with the presentation and so they were rather rushed.  I’ve heard Heather speak before, and while she really knows what she’s talking about, she talked about the same tools she’s been talking about since I first heard her speak.  Geno was refreshing since I’ve never heard him speak before but his data was a bit hard to grasp.  This session definitely needed the help of the slides, so I’m including them.

All in all I think Heather has good things to share for affiliate managers just starting out, but I’ll be passing on her sessions from now on since it’s clear she’ll be sharing the same things.  Definitely recommended though if you’ve never heard her talk about Syntryx (she has to be their biggest cheerleader, hands down) or Affiliate Relationship Management.

Here are the slides from the presentation, courtesy of Affiliate Summit: