Affiliate Marketing Fanatics #6: ad:tech, Cafepress, and Hootsuite

Posted on May 4, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Fanatics |

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!

We’re back after two weeks away. Here’s a rundown of what we ramble about this time around.   In in this episode we discuss:

• Trisha is the newest member of Paulson Management Group.
• TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, Digsby, and Hootsuite.
• ad:tech San Francisco Recap.
• The enormity of the Affiliate Summit Beer Garden.
• Cafepress changing pricing structure to standardize pricing.
• CA tax development.
• Shout outs: Shawn Collins, Lisa Picarille, Todd Farmer, Angie Seaman, Brian Caldwell, Teresa Caldwell

ad:tech San Francisco: Performance Marketing – Getting the Most from Your Marketing Dollar in a Tough Economy

Posted on May 4, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: How can marketers get the most from their budgets in a difficult economic climate?  We’ll explore how to attain more from a smaller budget via performance marketing with practical, tactical solutions.  We’ll look at the pros and cons of allocating dollars to performance marketing and we’ll discuss what technological innovations are coming to the performance marketing space that will maximize budgets and minimize challenges.

This session took place Wednesday, April 22, 2009. The speakers:

• Neil Strother, Analyst, Forrester Research (Moderator)
• Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust
• Steve Schaffer, Founder and CEO, Vertive
• Jarvis Mak, Senior VP, Global Research and Insights Director, Havas Digital
• Kelly Powers, Senior Manager, Customer Acquisition, Zazzle

This session was definitely geared towards those marketing and advertising professionals that are not already in the performance marketing game.  It was very insightful to watch from that point of view in mind.

Bullet Point Review!

• Neil asks “What is performance marketing?”
  • Paying only for results, whether those results are leads, referrals, a percentage of the sale.  Advertisers get to determine how much they pay.
• You can leverage your affiliates to assist with your paid search efforts.
• You need to have good landing pages.
• What’s the real value of the actions being driven?
• What you’re paying for is marketing.
• Affiliates have more incentive to drive more qualified traffic and customers.
• Affiliates drive higher conversions, average orders.
• There’s three types of advertising, CPM, CPC, and CPA.
• Merchants only want to pay one touch point for the sale.
• There’s a mentality that affiliates are frowned upon; CEOs will be wary of the methods but CFOs will be excited about the value and efficiency of the channel.
• AM is very data driven – more money is shifted towards traceable marketing.
• Executives need to understand affiliate marketing; the whole industry is misunderstood.
• Industry is starting to get the data out and break through the black box and lack of transparency.
• Peter briefly explained what’s going on with the #advertisingtax to the crowd.
• A couple of states have been able to stop the #advertisingtax but it’s moving fast.
• Fraud has grown exponentially, especially in lead gen.
• Paying for leads welcomes fraud in som,e industries, ask yourself if you can pay for a different action.
• A major player will soon announce a ranking system (Peter couldn’t divulge who).

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Is there a metric to show brand safety?  No.  It’d be nice to take the focus off the brand.
• Yes you need brand awareness, but that’s not going to drive a sale.  The best offer is.
• It’s not infinitely scalable; you can always throw more money at search, etc. but throwing more money at affiliate marketing doesn’t work because the core is the relationships.
• Amazing how much more some merchants pay on other marketing methods and channels over affiliate marketing.
• Advertisers need to do a better job at attribution to track the sales to the correct channels.
• Feel free to launch new products with affiliate marketing; it has worked in the past when done right.
• What are some practical takeaways?
  • Continue to optimized
  • Work on attribution
  • Look at marketing channels as a holistic portfolio.
  • Focus on better, fewer networks and don’t spread your program too think.

The Q&A portion wasn’t so much a traditional Q&A as it was a case study like discussion.  The panel really wanted to help with real examples, and only one gentleman in consumer finance was willing to ask for assistance.

Commission Junction University Registration Open

Posted on May 1, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

That’s right, registration is now open for 2009’s Commission Junction University, September 15-17 in Santa Barbara, CA.  This network-hosted event is a prime opportunity to meet your colleagues in the affiliate marketing space and to network with affiliate managers and affiliates.  I attended last year’s CJU and had a great time meeting some great people.

Early bird registration is open through June 30th, giving you $100 off the $995 price tag.  In this economy, saving anything is better than nothing so book early!  Once again, CJ will be hosting the event at the beautiful Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort, right there on the ocean.  The view is simply stunning, I have to admit.  And while staying at the Fess Parker might not be in your reasonable budget, be sure to stay nearby and don’t make the mistake I did last year.  I figured staying at a lower cost motel just 7 miles away would be okay, and in terms of the motel it was fine, but the cab ride to the Fess Parker was a painful $25.  So staying nearby will definitely help your sanity and pocket book!

I believe I’ll be in attendance, though I don’t want to make any plans just yet.  After last year’s plane issues (flying from OAK to LAX to SBA, then from SBA to PHX to OAK) I think I might take the opportunity to drive down this time.  Hope to see you there!

My ad:tech San Francisco Experience

Posted on May 1, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 1 comment

So ad:tech has come and gone, and for my first experience at ad:tech is was pretty good.  The first day I spent most of my time connecting with some industry friends in the very cool Affiliate Summit sponsored Beer Garden.  I was surprised how much it looked like the conceptual drawing that Shawn Collins had posted on his blog when he first announced the beer garden.

For those faithful listeners of Affiliate Thing, you’ll be happy to know that there were no snuggies involved.  Unfortunately that first day I didn’t make it to any sessions, but I did take a quick glance at the exhibit hall.  I think this might be the first time I’ve seen two floors of exhibit hall.  Can you tell I’m not an old hat at ad:tech?

That evening I joined some affiliate marketing folks at AT&T Park for a Giants vs. Padres game.  Shawn was quite perturbed that he could not get a signal on his AT&T serviced cell phone at AT&T Park.  I can’t say that I blame him.  There were some great moments in the game, including the closest I’ve ever seen two runners together when rounding the bases.  The Giants won and our seats were pretty good.  Luckily it was a nice balmy night and I didn’t need a jacket, but I did get blisters on my feet walking from Moscone Center to the park in bad dress shoes.  Nonetheless, I have to send a big thanks to Shawn for the game invite!

The second day I was able to attend some sessions, notes from which will appear here next week.  They were hit and miss… I got a lot out of some of them and almost nothing from others, except for some entertainment value.

That evening I had a nice dinner with the folks from eBay, Linda Woods of PartnerCentric, Shawn Collins from Affiliate Summit, Peter Bordes of Media Trust, and a couple folks from Red Anchor Media.  We had a nice discussion on quality in Affiliate Marketing.  I was honored to be invited and had a terrific time.  Any fellow creme brulee fans will be pleased to hear about the lovely Butterscotch variation at Anchor & Hope on Minna in San Francisco!

I didn’t make it over for the 3rd day of ad:tech, but overall it was a good experience and I’m looking forward to attending more in the future and getting some more done once I’m more firmly established with my new clients and with Paulson Management Group.

IAB Revising Interactive Ad Units

Posted on Apr 30, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing |

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced that it has held its first meeting of the Re-Imagining Interactive Advertising Task Force, comprised of top online publishers, media agencies and, for the first time, creative officers from the nation’s leading advertising agencies. Their purpose is to examine the current standards and update them, taking into consideration the evolution of online advertising.

“We believe we can make interactive advertising far more hospitable to the craft and practice of persuasion by putting creativity front and center in the development of advertising standards,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “By bringing creative agency leaders into the discussion of the standards, we highlight our industry-wide mission to showcase brands and engaging consumers in meaningful ways.”

The IAB first established a set of standards for interactive advertising in 2002.  These standards have become the golden rule in online advertising, be it traditional CPM or affiliate advertising.  The board includes players from heavy hitters like Cars.com, Disney Interactive Media Group, Google, Platform-A, Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo, and Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

Also coming out of the IAB today is their Impression Exchange Solution.  This document sheds light on impression data and makes it easy to convert to a single standard that all publishers will recognize.

The document identifies the key functional requirements necessary for the automated exchange of impression data between publishers and third-party ad servers, which will allow publishers and agencies to detect and address discrepancies in near real-time.

Their goal is to minimize discrepancies in online data.  Good luck to the IAB!

Web 2.0 Expo: my.barackobama.com: The Secrets of Obama’s New Media Juggernaut

Posted on Apr 30, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: Marketers and activists alike have taken notice of the strategies and tactics that helped put Barack Obama in the White House. Jascha will discuss the tools and techniques used by the presidential campaign’s record breaking online efforts. In addition to telling the inside story of the campaign’s online engagement efforts, he will also discuss how these strategies and tools can be applied to a variety of other sectors beyond politics.

This session took place Friday, April 3, 2009. The speaker:

• Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Blue State Digital

This was a great session and was packed to the gills with people, of course!  The My.BarackObama.com site has been hailed as one of the chief reasons Obama won.  It was great to hear the creator of this site speak.

Bullet Point Review!

• Blue State Digital – design, technology, strategy.
• Obama 2008 By The Numbers
  • 1 billion emails to 13 million email addresses.
  • Over 1 million SMS subscribers.
  • 200,000 offline events planned via the website (non-official).
  • 35,000 local volunteer groups.
  • 14.5 million YouTube viewing hours (this is a conservative estimate; it doesn’t include embedded or UGC.). This would have cost $40-50 million had it been traditional, purchased air time.
  • $770,000,000 raised (35% offline, 65% online).
• Professionals tapped into the grass roots efforts.
• How we did it?
  • Drive Action
    • No such thing as too much email, just too much unwanted emails.
    • Match the action to the medium.
      • Doesn’t work to just shoehorn your existing web experience to every medium.
    • Set high expectations.
  • Be Authentic
    • No Press Releases and people don’t read newsletters.
    • Personalize communications
      • Example: personal note from Al Franken after donation.
    • Go behind the scenes.
  • Create Ownership
    • Turn users into advocates.
    • Traditional donation matching is one wealthy donor <-> existing + new donors.
    • Grassroots donation matching is existing <-> new donors.
    • It’s not about me + large organization; it’s about all of us together.
    • Recognize your leaders and engage them.
    • Invite people to participate.
    • Create user content and share the best.
    • Solicit ideas from people and use the ones that make sense.
    • Connect people with each other.
  • Be Relevant
    • #1 Obama fundraiser: Sarah Palin.
    • Within 24 hours after the end of her first speech, campaigned raised $11 million via email and some organic donations.
    • Don’t just react, anticipate.
  • Build a Strong, Open Brand
    • Brand professionally
    • Brand consistently (don’t forget your plane!).
    • Empower people to do interesting things.
      • They might paint their barn.
      • Or illuminate their bike.
      • Or create iconic artwork (Shepherd Ferry HOPE Poster).
  • Measure Everything
    • Emails, online advertising, engagement, fund raising, persuasions, election activities.
    • Do at least A/B Testing, if not multivariate.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Have you considered a grass roots tool kit for local organizations?
  • As a business, Blue State Digital isn’t at the point where they can do that.
• 1 or 2 most unexpected lessons?
  • How important it is not to underestimate people.
• Was there also traditional marketing to drive people to the website?
  • Not really, but there were Google PPC ads.
• What one thing would you have fixed retrospectively?
  • Start earlier and work on scalability. Build with a longer term vision in mind.
• If the other side level the tech playing field and catch up, will Democrats keep an advantage?
  • Yes, Republican’s challenge isn’t the tech, it’s their culture.
  • They need to recognize this cultural gap before they can keep up.
  • Democrats will keep innovating to keep an advantage.
• Did you measure demographics?
  • Yes, average age of website user was 37. Surprised by age diversity.
  • Bounced ideas of his own mom to make sure they appealed to a broad audience.

Overall this was a great session to end the conference on.