CJU Course: Kerri Pollard – It’s All About Growth
Of course, at every CJU the general manager of the company has to give an encouraging “state of the company” type speech. This year it was all about growth.
- Kerri Pollard, General Manage, Commission Junction (@kerripollard)
I really enjoyed the statistics Kerri shared, despite her saying she wasn’t a numbers person. Neither am I, but these were very “feel good” numbers for current CJ publishers and advertisers.
Bullet Point Review!
- Unless you were a coupon publisher, growth was hard in 2009.
- $1.9 billion spent on affiliate marketing in 2009 – it’s estimated to be $4 billion in 2014.
- Online advertising has tripled.
- Affiliate marketing is growing faster than other advertising types.
- 28% of consumers’ time is spent online, but online advertising is typically only 13% of a company’s marketing budget.
- E-commerce sales are still only 3.8% of total retail sales.
- 62% of adults shopping online seek out a coupon before purchasing.
- Old Spice was the most viral campaign in 2010.
- Twitter is seeing 90 million tweets per day.
- 63% of online retailers that use a 3rd party advertising tracking solution, use CJ.
- Bed, Bath, & Beyond is the newest big-box retailer to come to CJ.
- CJ has seen a 40% increase in advertisers over the last 12 months.
- Publishers need to generate $10k/month in commissions for 3 straight months to qualify for CJ Performer status.
- Monthly income doubled on average after publishers become a CJP.
- There’s a new “Get Links” area, in beta right now.
- Advertisers supporting direct linking are clearer.
- There’s additional filtering options.
- Everyone at CJU now has access to the new “Get Links” area.
- CJ has seen a 24% increase in publisher relationships over the last 12 months.
- Affiliate marketing is now retailer’s first stop instead of their last stop.
- CJ feeds product helps advertisers fix data feeds and also works with 200+ comparison shopping engines.
- CJx beta takes care of finding advertisers, getting approved, finding products, and managing links for the publisher (name is temporary).
- CJ media is more short term campaigns (like an internal CPA network).
- 10 largest publishers on CJ experienced 50% year-over-year growth in Q2.
- 20 largest advertisers on CJ experienced 26% year-over-year growth in Q2.
Social Email Marketing: From Fans and Followers to Customers and Advocates #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. Jacob explored changes in customer demands and expectations and looked at how organizations can work with the new “social customer” via Social CRM.
Jacob’s hatred of American Airlines made the presentation pretty hilarious. I was unfamiliar with the concept of Social CRM, so this was really enlightening. The speaker was:
- Jacob Morgan, Co-Founder, Chess Media Group (@jacobm)
Bullet Point Review!
- Email is just another marketing channel.
- 43% of consumers say companies should use social media to solve customers problems.
- Only 7% of organizations understand CRM value of social media.
- #1 thing people care about when purchasing products are personal experiences.
- Traditional CRM involves marketing, sales, and service & support all leading to the customer.
- Social CRM rotates those three things around the advocacy and experience of the customer.
- Building a powerful advocate is important no matter what channel.
- Don’t bribe your customers, fix the problem.
- Download a free white paper on SCRM at the Chess Media Group website
Here’s Jacob’s’ slide presentation:
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:
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:
