At first glance when starting to compile this week’s Cribbed Content, it didn’t look like much was going on.  My Google Reader was kind of light, as were the other scoops and news coming across my desk.  But then when I really started to dig, I found some cool stuff!  Including a really easy Twitter Contest from DIY SEO to win a Kindle!

• Last week I reported that Affiliate Summit East 2009 was all sold out of booths.  They’re now all sold out of Meet Market tables as well, the first time for them that they’ve sold out of exhibitor space before Early Bird pricing was done.  Congrats to the ASE09 team!
• Speaking of Affiliate Summit, co-founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins were in Dallas at the Inbound Marketing Summit speaking about monetizing blogs.  Missy was kind enough to share their slides from the presentation.
• Affiliate network ShareASale is toying with an Affiliate API and has released the initial sections for use.
• Google recently changed their trademarks policy in regards to AdWords paid search ads.  Search Engine Land wrote an article on how to protect your brand under Google’s new trademark policy, and Geno Prussakov also wrote an article on how this applies to affiliate marketing.
• Apparently Google mucked around with PageRank… AGAIN… and devalued Twitter profiles.  Which is fine with me since I realized awhile back my twitter page was  PR9 when this here blog was only PR2 (currently my twitter page is a PR3).  What really irritated me was that, out of nowhere, this blog went down to PR0 out of nowhere with no real changes other than a redesign (that, if anything, should have HELPED SEO).  So in my opinion Google can shove with with their PageRank racket anyway.  Anyway, Andy Beard explains a few things about the change.
• I’ve seen a certain someone from a certain CPA network tweeting a lot in the last two days about making money from Twitter with CPA ads.  That seems to be ALL this person is tweeting about and it’s getting on my anti-spam nerves.  So instead of calling this person out, I’ll be passive-aggressive and just pass on this article for everyone: 10 Irritating Mistakes that People Make with Twitter. Thanks Nikki Pilkington for a good article right when I was thinking about it!
• I’m a big fan of to-do lists.  There’s been some talk about different apps recently (I was turned onto Toodledoo and love its integration with iGoogle homepage).  Nate Moller wrote a great article on why to-do lists are key to entrepreneur success that any slightly unmotivated or scattered entrepreneur should read!

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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.

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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:

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When I was in college, I was the queen of this tool.  Websites sprung up everywhere with pages and pages of listings.  I ended up with some pretty neat schwag out of the deal.

You guessed it.  Free Samples.  Most of the time free samples are for toiletries and personal care products, but you can usually get free samples from any business you use before ordering as well.

Printing companies like PsPrint often send free samples to customers who request them.  Magnets USA sends out clever magnet samples with their seasonal mailings.  Many websites for personal care products like shampoos or body wash offer free samples, which can save you a bit when traveling to take free samples instead of shelling out dough for travel kits.  There are still blogs out there that host a wide range of freebies.

The best way to get a free sample is to ask for it.  If you want to try out a company’s product, it never hurts to ask if they offer free samples.  Most companies can make arrangements to send you a sample even if they don’t have a formal sample program in place.  It’s important to see a sample of custom products especially before you purchase high volumes.

On the affiliate end of things, offer free stuff is a surefire promotion.  Many CPA offers are based entirely on this concept – the visitor clicks on the ad and fills out a form to get their free sample, while the advertiser is holding onto their data to market to them again later – and you the affiliate get paid for that lead.  All in all, it’s a win-win situation.

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Cost per Action (CPA):

• The cost metric for each time a commissionable action takes place.

CPA is a blanket term that describes most of the affiliate structure. There are more specific models with their own descriptions that fall under this term.

____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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It’s official! Google has closed the deal and purchased online marketing agency DoubleClick, who also run affiliate network DoubleClick Performics. There are already graphics up on the DoubleClick and Performics homepages announcing the merger. According to Performics it’s business as usual and the two companies will work independently for now.

There’s no word yet on how this merger will affect Google’s amazingly successful AdWords or the ever growing Performics, both tools of the successful affiliate. It’s easy to speculate that eventually both will be rolled into one mega-monster network offering PPC, CPA, and CPC opportunities for affiliates. Truth is that we just don’t know. While that seems it would be the obvious long term goal, Google is known for innovation and could completely knock our socks off with something else in store. Only time will tell!

More blogs on the Google acquisition of DoubleClick:

• Shawn Collins at Affiliate Tip
• Heather Paulson at ReveNews
• Om Malik at Gigaom
• Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim

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No, I didn’t get the saying wrong. That’s how I feel today. I’ve got a ton of energy physically speaking… got a great night’s sleep last night. But after even a short week of overloading my brain with end of month reporting, more reporting, affiliate network shopping, and more late nights at the office, my brain has decided to stage a sit in.

Actually, before about 11:30am this morning the brain was active too. However after sitting in various conference calls from then until about 2:15pm, my brain revolted from overload. First we heard all about LinkShare and their merchant platform. Then all about Widemile’s optimization services. Then talked to a couple cats at Clickbooth since we haven’t ventured into CPA marketing here at PsPrint yet.

Is it a bad thing that during our conference call I surfed over to MarketingTerms.com and had to look up CPA? I was pretty embarrassed with Anne sitting behind me… although I guess she actually didn’t notice until I mentioned it after the meeting. Oh well.

The last week I’ve been making sure our mailing services don’t break, which is nice for a change. At the end of August the mailing went crazy… it seemed like while I was on vacation everyone and their mother decided to place a mailing order. Which is great… but left me a lot of work to catch up on. We’ve been really focused on the affiliate program and it’s future. Which is great too. We’re looking at new features, better affiliate acquisition, possibly a new network, new creative, new campaigns… heck new everything. It’s an exciting time for me, especially since Anne confirmed that we’ll be attending Affiliate Summit 2008 West in Las Vegas in February. That means between my personal vacation, the National Association of Realtors show in November, and AS West I’ll be heading to Sin City three times in 6 months. Not too shabby for this California girl.

I’m also semi-addicted to del.icio.us now. Last night I imported all my bookmarks from home into it so now I can access them anywhere… and that’s half the point, right? It’s really actually pretty interesting to see how many other people have some of my favorite places bookmarked. I’m also surprised in some cases how few people have some websites bookmarked. For example, the View Askew Productions Message Board has over 10,000 registered members. But only 2 other people on del.icio.us have it bookmarked…one of which I even recognize (and promptly added to my network).

Time for my Friday ritual of trying to see the wood grain of my desk. Wish me luck.

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