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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Well, I think many people attending this session were expecting the topic to be heated, but l’m not sure they were expecting some of the venom that seemed to be in the room.  Speaking for myself, I certainly didn’t.  Originally there was only supposed to be one panelist fielding questions, but since 4 out of 5 working group leaders were in attendance, they were also recruited to speak.  So ultimately the panel consisted of:

• Rebecca Madigan, Performance Marketing Alliance
• Sam Harrelson, Publisher, Cost Per News
• Brook Schaaf, Schaaf Consulting
• Brad Waller, VP Business Development, AdJungle.com
• Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust

Guns were slinging!  Unfortunately there’s not many bullet points to be had, but here you go.

Bullet Point Review!

• PMA is in germination phase – not a real entity yet.
• Why start now?
  • Misinformation & lack of representation.
  • Legislation.
  • Lack of transparency.
  • Maturity of industry.
• Formation process still underway.
  • Interviewed over 60 industry leaders, Formation Advisory Board voted in by 100 peers.
  • Working groups of 45 volunteers.
  • Working groups make recommendations on formation.
  • FAB 11 ratifies formation proposals (click here to see members).
• The working group committees are Scope/Objectives (headed by Sam Harrelson), Governance (Brook Schaaf), Fundraising (Peter Bordes), Membership (Durk Price), and Operations (Brad Waller).

Points (or other observations in this case) brought up during the Q&A

• Right off the bat the questions were hostile.  There’s animosity about the PMA using the NY Tax situation as a launching point for formation despite the fact that they can’t do anything to help.
  • Essentially there’s nothing the PMA can do since they’re NOT a fully formed organization, no matter how much they want to help.
• Rebecca acted as moderator and moved the conversation on after almost 20 minutes of hostile banter.
• The PMA blog as been quiet because the people in working groups have had their heads down working on things without much to report at this point.
• The term “Performance” has been used over “affiliate” because it is more inclusive of the larger base of members within the industry.  Inclusive of a lot more relationships than just the affiliate – merchant relation.
• The PMA has a very similar model as a chamber of commerce but the scope is still being set up.  They are looking at the chamber model in forming things.  Mostly they want to improve visibility & credibility.
• Rebecca was questioned as to why she didn’t attend the meetings in Albany that the NY affiliates had since she’s actually the only paid member.  It was decided that there was no reason because it would have been redundant and she can’t represent an organization that isn’t formed and doesn’t officially exist.
• They were asked why they divorced themselves from ABestWeb after the controversy, to which they responded that they didn’t divorce from it BUT once a particular few threads got ugly and became increasingly unprofessional they just stopped participating in those threads.
• There’s no conspiracy regarding Rebecca’s involvement – Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom generously donated her salary for a year and she’s just being paid to “corral cats” and help form the organization.  Her comment was that if she weren’t paid for this she’d have bailed long ago based on the assumptions about her involvement and what she’s had to deal with.
• An affiliate asked how they can be assured that the PMA won’t be overtaken by large company sponsorhips and forget the little affiliate?  The affiliate industry is it’s own little ecosystem and the heart of it is the average affiliate.  They’ve been very hypersensitive to the issue to ensure that affiliates are included.

It seems that there’s lots of confusion about the organization – or lack thereof – and hopefully the Q&A has taken things in the right direction.  Perhaps Q&A wasn’t the right moniker.  Maybe Suggestion Session or Feedback Forum might have worked better.  It was disappointing to see one of the most vocal critics of the PMA – ABestWeb founder Haiko de Poel Jr – leave the session half way through in apparently disgust.  I hope that future discussions going forward will be a bit more productive than the session in Boston.

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