ASE10 Experience Extravaganza: Tuesday
More Booth Time, Session Fail, & Decompressing
I took the lead on managing the booth most of Tuesday while Forrest ran errands. I did attempt to head into a session, but quickly learned that it wasn’t what I’d initially thought it would be. I guess I must have read the description wrong (or, not at all, though that’s unlike me). Tuesdays, especially in the afternoon, are always slow in the exhibit hall. I had plenty of time to enter Buy.at’s twitter contest, and win a sweet gift card for DebShops.com (which I’ve already used!) and to enter into a booth war with nearby Andy Rodriguez Consulting.
I’d say they started it, but that might not be entirely accurate.
The day before, Andy Sr. loaded me down with a million tins of mints and an entire 12pk case of Oreos to lighten their shipping load. By Tuesday afternoon, they were attempting to be rid of all the beach balls and stress balls they’d brought as well. I went down to chat, and collect the Ear Pollution headphones I’d been promised (thanks again, Andy) and accused Andy Jr. of littering. He said it was branding. Potato, Potahto I guess. Stress balls were thrown at me, which I successfully caught (at least, after that first time of being pegged in the knee with one). I was also very proud of my throwing arm to return one of the balls clear past the three booths between ours and into their area (didn’t hit anyone…but honestly I was just glad I didn’t hit an innocent bystander!).
The afternoon ended after a rather disappointing lunch (I was hungry, so I still devoured it) and an early exhibit hall end time. I had wanted to go to the closing session, but since I was pulling booth duty alone, I didn’t want to leave the booth unattended for too long. The benefit is that the most colorful characters seemed to stop by the booth towards the end of Tuesday. Many New York locals that wandered over after work on Tuesday to see what this “affiliate marketing” is all about, apparently. It was interesting.
Earlier in the day, I’d gotten a text from Jen Goode trying to get a large group together for a final dinner in NYC, and of course for lack of a better decision (because it’s easy, and affordable) we headed around the corner to good old Oldcastle Pub. I think I was there almost every day I was in NYC for one reason or another… Tuesday night was at least the 3rd dinner I’d eaten there! We had a lovely dinner, and gracious Mike Nunez of AffiliateManager.com picked up the check for us – thanks again Mike! We meandered downstairs to keep drinking after they decided to close the upstairs due to lack of staff, and kicked back in a corner discussing how our conference experiences had gone.
At a certain point, a few of us wandered over to Lindy’s to get some dinner and I took care of my New York cheesecake fix (thanks Debbie of Team Loxly!). I realize that we got back to Oldcastle and then left to go back to Bridges Bar in the Hilton to see a few other people over there, so I think I owe someone a couple bucks for the ginger ale I had (if it was you, let me know, and I’ll send you a nifty craft or something in return!). It was a nice chill way to close out the summit and say goodbye to my peeps. Until we meet again in Las Vegas, folks!
Please feel free to view all the photos I took in New York: Affiliate Summit East 2010 on Flickr
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.
Early Bird Price for Affiliate Summit ENDS TODAY
Boston, MA
Want to meet me?! Of course you do! Remember that today is the last day to sign up for Affiliate Summit East 2008 and still get the cheaper Early Bird Pricing. The full conference pass – today only – is just $949 while an Expo Hall Only pass is a very affordable $99. If you’ve been waffling about going, pull the trigger and do it now while it’s still cheap!
After tomorrow, the prices go up to $199 for the expo hall only pass and a whopping $1449 for the full pass. And of course, if you sit on your lazy duff until the last minute, you have to shell out $299 for an expo hall only pass or $1949 for the full conference pass.
There are a lot of great sessions already scheduled and on the agenda for the summit. A full agenda is online already. I’ve already added several to my TripIt account so I can plan out my time, including Sam Harrelson’s Leveraging Social Media, Andy Rodriguez’s Affiliate Marketing Basics for Merchants, and Lisa Picarille’s Content that Kills sessions.
There’s no reason not to save money and really, this is a great event for affiliate marketing professionals – both publishers and advertisers – to network and learn from. So go today and register for Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston while you can still get in with the best price!
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