Session Description: Presenting actionable items for 7 main topics, including social media, negotiating, points of sale opportunities, content that pulls, partnerships, prioritization, and the expense of inefficiency. The panel consisted of:

• Lisa Riolo, Consultant, LisaRiolo.com (Twitter @lisariolo) (Moderator)
• Jason Oates, VP Media Services, Datran Media
• Durk Price, President, eAccountable OPM LLC
• Chuck Hamrick, Affiliate Manager, AffiliateCrew.com

This session was a perfect mix of business 101 and affiliate marketing.  I think a lot of affiliates get into this thinking they’re going to get rich quick and don’t really consider that they’re really creating a business.  So this little business intro and how it applies to performance marketing was a nice session.

Bullet Point Review!

• Top line thinkers focus on revenue, whereas bottom line thinkers focus on profit.
• You might think you can, but you can’t do it all.  Learn to delegate.
• Develop tools and methodologies to do more with less.
• Think long term and potentially sacrifice short term gains.
• You should be spending less than 50% of your time putting out fires.
• Prioritization
  • 1st Priority -> High growth & unknown costs
  • 2nd Priority -> Highly profitable growth
  • 3rd Priority -> Profitable with limited growth
  • 4th Priority -> Undetermined growth and costs
• Coupons are one of the best performing verticals.
• Affiliate marketing is not a brand meter.
• 6-12 month curve; don’t expect overnight results or a 90 day ROI.
• Everything is negotiable; evaluate other programs.
  • It doesn’t hurt to ask but remember it’s a business relationship.
  • Make sure to negotiate with 2-3 partners at once – and that they know you’re exploring other options.
• Be data driven and use data to your advantage.
• Find someone that’s going to vouch for the vendor you’re negotiating with and ask for referrals.
• Be more available and transparent.
• Three uses of email
  • Acquisition
  • Retention
  • Monetization
• Many people using feedback loops and opening dialog in order to improve.
• Find ESP that will work on a performance basis – they will help you weed out non-responders.
• Synchronize your email expertise.
• Use employees in the smartest way possible for maximum operational efficiency.
• You need metrics before you negotiate either internally or externally.
• Points of Sale
  • Up-selling
  • Add-on Products and Services
  • Continuity Programs
  • 2nd Sale and Renewals
• Providing valuable, free content is a good way to capture emails to market to.
• To decrease unsubscribers, offer other subscriber options with different frequencies or options.
• Positions 3-5 on the SERPs are the secret sauce of SEO.
• Calling a customer to confirm a sale will encourage return business.
• Know key metrics – average order value, conversion rates, lifetime order value (that one is tricky).
• You can’t just be an OPM, you have to be a consultant.
• Doing more targeting is effective.
• A monthly affiliate newsletter isn’t that effective.
• Just keep the parasites out.

Overall I got a lot out of this, and I hope others did too.  I wished the panelists had had a bit more fun with the topic to liven things up, but I understand there’s only so much you can spice up such a dry topic. Here’s the presentation, though this is clearly an older version since Karen White didn’t end up making it and Durk & Chuck stepped in:

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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, Freecause (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.

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