Live from CJU 2011
So far, CJU 2011: THE Network Effect is great. Their new CJUniverse, powered by Pathable.com.com, was a fantastic new way to connect with partners and schedule meetings. I wish every trade show had this. It’s been incredibly productive for me and, of course, good to see familiar faces.
Huge thanks to RingRevenue, who Invited me to their 3rd Annual Golf Tourney & Wine Tour on Monday. It was fabulous, and I’ll definitely blog more about it in detail later, with some great pictures.
Yesterday my schedule was busy with meetings and session, and more of the same today (except I actually remembered to eat lunch)! THE Beach Party yesterday was incredibly well done, though i wasn’t prepared enough and left early due to being barefoot in the sand hurt my already aching back. If they do this next year I’ll be sure to pack flip flops and shorts! Tonight are THE CJYou Awards – For Me To Coupon’s sister company Schaaf-PartnerCentric is nominated for Agency of the Year, so everyone cross your fingers for them!
Well right mow I’m missing THE Cocktail Hour and 1/2, so I better run. I hope to get more great pictures and live tweet the winners, so be sure to follow me at @TrishaLyn
Read MoreAffiliate Summit East 2011 Photo Recap
I’ve been back from New York since Thursday and I can easily say I’m still not fully recovered. I’m always surprised at how exhausted I am after one of these shows, but given the fact that I work at home in relative calm and sedation, 3-4 days of getting up early, talking all day, walking all day, and going to bed late can really take it’s toll.
I finally just got all 250+ photos I took from Affiliate Summit and the surrounding events I attended up onto Flickr today. So for now, instead of writing a long recap of words, I’ll share with you a recap in pictures. You can see all the pictures in my Affiliate Summit East 2011 Set on Flickr.
Day 1
How to Pitch Your Company Panel: Tricia Meyer, Kim Rowley, Ad Hustler, & Robert Adler
Dominic Fawver at the For Me To Coupon Meet Market Table
Mike Allen on the mechanical bull at the ShareASale Barn Dance
Brook Schaaf on the mechanical bull at the ShareASale Barn Dance
Day 2
Wil Reynolds’ Keynote
Dominic & I at the For Me To Coupon Booth
The Performance Marketing Association Networking Event
Tricia Meyer & Eric Nagel Singing “Summer Lovin'” at Affiliate Karaoke
Daniel Feinberg Singing an AC/DC Song at Affiliate Karaoke
Day 3
Yankee Stadium
The Luxury Suite Seats at Yankee Stadium
Oakland Athletics’ Brandon Allen at 1st Base helping to achieve the A’s 6-5 win over the Yankees!
And one more just because it’s pretty… the friendly skies, somewhere over Chicago
If you really are in the mood to read, here’s some other good recaps that came through my Google Reader these last few days:
- Affiliate Summit East 2011 Day 1 Recap – Shawn Collins
- Affiliate Summit East 2011 Day 2 Recap – Shawn Collins
- Affiliate Summit East 2011 Day 3 Recap – Shawn Collins
- Affiliate Summit East 2011 – Quick Recap and Pictures – Geno Prussakov
- Affiliate Summit East Raves and Regrets – Tricia Meyer
- Affiliate Summit East 2011 Recap – Joe Sousa
- Affiliate Summit East 2011 Recap – Adam Riemer
ad:tech San Francisco: Advanced Affiliate Optimization
Session Description: Affiliate marketing best practices are not “one size fits all.” Optimization tactics that work for online retailers could prove disastrous for subscription marketers (and vice versa). This session examines popular affiliate strategies from both the retail and subscription marketing perspectives to identify how both types of marketers can grow sales/subs, manage quality, protect their brand and ultimately get the most from this channel. Learn from Peter Figueredo’s, Co-Founder and Brainstorm Chaser of Netx, 11 years of experience running successful affiliate and search campaigns for large retail and subscription advertisers.
This session took place Wednesday, April 13, 2011. The speakers:
- Peter Figueredo, Founding Partner and Brainstorm Chaser, Netx (Moderator)
- Vinny Lingham, CEO, Yola.com
And you thought I was done posing about ad:tech? Pshaw! I really enjoyed this session because it gave me great actionable items to help improve and better understand the For Me To Coupon leads program I manage!
Bullet Point Review!
- Retail Programs
- Product focused
- Paradox of choice
- New customers
- Short term ROI
- Minimize returns
- Subscription/Service Programs
- Service focused
- Fear of commitment
- Wants qualified customers
- Long term ROI
- Minimize churn
- Advanced Techniques for Retail
- Product driven: Shopping comparison, coupon, loyalty (Peter suggested brands create orphan coupon page to rank higher than affiliates on brand + coupon).
- Paradox of choice: feed optimization, advanced creative.
- New customers: new customer bounty, recruit new & growing affiliates.
- Short term ROI: offers to increase AOV, only pay more to get more (don’t just give higher commissions, negotiate what kind of placement you’re getting).
- Minimize returns: commissions on shipped, reverse returns.
- Advanced Techniques for Subscription
- Service focused: review sites, vertical content sites, blogs.
- Fear of commitment: affiliate education (one sheets, webinars, networking, etc), consumer education.
- Qualified customers: manage consumer incentives, clear consumer messaging (you know the lifetime value, so you can offer a higher bounty).
- Long term ROI: sites with a loyal user base, track retention by affiliate.
- Minimize churn: retention based commissions, retention rate bonus.
- Key takeaways
- Retail: optimize your feed.
- Subscription: optimize on retention.
- Subscription: educate your affiliates.
- Yola Case Study
- Focus on purchasing actions, not sign ups.
- Run promos for multiple year subscriptions.
- Test different discounts on promos.
- Keep promos fresh by varying messaging & theme, keep discounts constant.
- Align creatives with affiliate pay our structure.
Points brought up during the Q&A
Drive engagement with top tier affiliates. Look at the research. Look at how they prefer to be engaged & engage them that way.- Do you provide materials an influencing person can take to a meeting to convince the decision maker? One sheet, stats, other educational materials.
What #ASE11 Sessions I’m Voting For
Let the games begin! Voting has opened up for Affiliate Summit East 2011. While some people have not been happy with this voting system, I think it evens the playing field nicely. As well, it clears any conspiracy theories about how sessions are chosen.
Before I begin, I will say I have a horse in this game. I’ve submitted a panel, The Future of Coupons in Affiliate Marketing, for consideration. If picked, I’ll be moderating this panel with industry coupon veterans Mike Allen (Shopping-Bargains.com), Connie Berg (FlamingoWorld.com), Carolyn Tang Kmet (Groupon.com), and Kim Rowley (ShoppingBookmarks.com). Please take a moment to register, confirm, then vote for our panel!
Okay, that being said, these are the panels I’m voting for. All of them have very intelligent speakers, well thought out ideas, and will offer merchants and affiliates great insight into the topics.
- It’s Not Your Mother’s Affiliate Program
- Creatives Deliver Success
- Evolution of Local Search
- Do-Not-Track? Not-So-Fast
- Killing the Affiliate Nexus Tax Dead!
- Got an Idea? Make it a Reality.
- 10 Questions for a Prospective Affiliate Manager
- A World Without Cookie Tracking
- How to Convince Online Shoppers You’re Real
- Learn to Create a Likeworthy Facebook Page
- Social Media in Niche Markets
- Merchant ABCs – Launching a New Merchant Program
- How to Avoid FTC Scrutiny in Advertising
- Affiliate Improv!
- Are Your Affiliates Adding Value?
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 50: #ASW11 Recap
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
It’s been a couple of weeks since Affiliate Summit West 2011 was over & done with, and it’s taken us this long to recuperate, follow up with all our leads, jot our ideas for improvement down in notebooks and on whiteboards, and had the time to breathe and record our recap! We had different experiences at this show than some of the others in the recent past, so we share it all with you in a super sized episode this week. For 1 hour & 14 minutes we babble on about:
- Saturday pre-registration ease & the lightly sponsored conference tote bag.
- The short, but sweet, buy.at party and the drinks, view, and having to interact with the “public”. And a brief insight into Trisha’s bath.
- The packed sessions, Mike’s session went well, and our Sunday in meetings and the insanity of the Meet Market.
- Elvis costumes, Marilyn Monroe impersonators, and legend Warren Moon.
- The lovely ShareASale 10 year anniversary party & the Strike Out Breast Cancer bowling party.
- Our quick review of the Drew Eric Whitman keynote, yet neither of us attended the Brian Solis presentation.
- Mike finally met Lewis Howes & they talked about Lewis’ book, LinkedWorking: Generating Success on LinkedIn the Worlds Largest Professional Networking Website
.
- Affiliate Summit Forum is now live, so go sign up!
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! Leave us a comment!
Special thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Affiliate Marketing Fanatics.
Read MoreASE10 Experience Extravaganza: Monday
Expo Hall Booth Duty, The Best Steak Ever, & Trivia Tweet-Up
After going to bed at a relatively decent time considering I was still battling with a 3 hour time difference, I got up in time to get ready, rush up to grab a little breakfast, and make it into the ballroom for Frank Luntz’s keynote. I have his book, Words That Work, though I haven’t yet sat down to read it. I’ll spare you the details here, as I plan on writing another post with the notes I took, so let’s skip ahead to the FMTC booth. We had a sparse set up, but simplicity worked. Despite issues I had working with PromoPeddler.com, the notepads we ordered came out looking great. And the flyers we ordered from PsPrint were awesome as well. I was sweating bullets for weeks because we had the pieces shipped directly to the hotel, sight unseen, so if they were messed up, so were we. Everything at the booth went swimmingly, and after a long day I was headed out with the Schaaf-PartnerCentric crew for dinner.
This is the part where the food lover in me comes out. Of course, I’m a big girl, so I must love food of all shapes and sizes, right? In reality, I’m actually a very finicky eater with an almost ironic love for Food Network. The night before, I’d passed on going out with the team as they were going to a Greek place, and that’s not for me. So a steakhouse sounded much better. Let me tell you, we went to Rothmann’s Steakhouse and I had a fabulous fillet Mignon. It was, hands down, the best steak of my life. That’s not really saying a whole lot considering I’m just 29 and am accustomed to steak places such as Texas Roadhouse and Black Angus.
After said fabulous dinner, the crew went to a party thrown by Google and I opted to go back to the hotel for some Trivia. Unfortunately, someone forgot to send the Trivial Pursuit disk down from their room, so Drew Bennett came to the rescue with some Mario Kart he had brought with him. Not being the biggest Mario Kart fan, I opted to utilize the room for the free conference WiFi and get some work done. For whatever reason the wifi in my hotel room wasn’t working, so I hadn’t been online and checked emails since the previous Thursday! I was able to get some work done, have a nice impromptu meeting, and even play a couple of heats of Mario Kart before the evening was through. And by the end of the evening, Trivial Pursuit was brought down and extended the evening from 12 am to 1 am. I stayed until the bitter end when they kicked me out… utilizing as much free wifi time as I could before getting back to the grindstone of booth duty the next day.
Please feel free to view all the photos I took in New York: Affiliate Summit East 2010 on Flickr
Read More
