I won big while in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit, but not at the tables or slots.  For someone who rarely wins anything, I’ve had great luck lately winning some goodies in the last three weeks, from three different affiliate networks!  I managed to win some cool prizes that will most definitely help me out in my blogging and social endeavors!

So with that, thank you SO MUCH and here’s what I won so far this year and from who.  2009 has turned out pretty awesome so far!  I apologize in advance, dear readers, as this will be a long post!

Flip Mino Video Camera from MarketLeverage

Last month, several bloggers I read hosted a contest by MarketLeverage, the “Share Your Secret” contest.  The rules were simple – share your marketing secret via blog comment and you can only use MarketLeverage as the example network.  I entered on a couple of blogs, and was chosen to be the winner from 11|15 Media’s blog!  So thanks Mike!  Here’s what I shared:

As I said there, my secret isn’t really a secret – work smarter, not harder. I picked up the saying from one of my college roommates and I’m sure some genius generations before me coined the phrase, but I apply that mantra to everything. I try to make things more efficient and do things better so that my time is more effectively used and I can work smart without necessarily making things harder on myself.

To apply that to the affiliate example, I use MaxBannerAds on my blog. When I label the ads, not only do I add the merchant name but I also add the network name, i.e. MarketLeverage, to help me to group them together when I go to look at reporting so I can easily group things for myself. That’s just one small example of how I work smarter, not harder.

There were a lot of great contenders, so I was surprised to have won!  I was given the choice between a 4th generation iPod Nano or a Flip Mino, and since I had just bought an iPod for my husband for Christmas and have my own classic iPod, I chose the Flip.  I have to give MarketLeverage extra thanks for such a good prize because I just realized that my Aiptek HD camera is on it’s way to death.  So yay!  I hope as soon as I receive it and check out the cool content they’re going to preload onto it that I’ll have the guts to video blog more

A new service from marketing master Joel Comm was launched at Affiliate Summit.  The service, called TextCastLive, is a SMS messaging service that texted updates to opt-ins about the conference, like when sessions were starting and other events.  They also peppered in some contests in.  During the tail end of a session, a text went out announcing that the 7th person to show their phone the good folks at the oneNetworkDirect booth would receive $500 in network credit.  So I wandered over and with the good fortune of being with some other people who showed their phones (or, their phones were immediately more visible I might say) I was number 7!  I was actually surprised to see that they have a lot of tech offers on their network, including Lavasoft which makes the awesome anti-spyware program Ad-Aware that I love and swear by!  So thank you to TextCastLive and oneNetworkDirect!

Merchant Bag from buy.at

When you see those bowls on booth tables that say “drop your business card here to win”, DO IT!  This is how I was the lucky recipient of the merchant bag from buy.at.  The bag was a veritable treasure trove of swag, all provided by the merchants on their network.  At face value, it was an awesome Patagonia backpack, designed to comfortably pad a laptop.  It’s nice a slim, which is a benefit since the current backpack case I have is huge and bulky.  They also handed me a $100 Ticketmaster gift card, and said there was a Bonobos gift card designated for me as well.  I shook hands and hugged those I knew, took a picture with the guys decked out for the Affiliate Triathalon (Kim & Ayako – I WANT THAT PIC!)  and wandered off.

I was stoked to get that, and later when I went to open the bag to consolidate some of the other swag I’d received at the show I found that there was even MORE inside!  A cool track jacket, which I unfortunately had to give away since it was much smaller than what I wear, a $5 Starbucks gift card, a nifty gel stress ball, a cool pleather (plastic+leather) & metal USB thumb drive, some nifty ear warmer headphones, and… oh I know I’m forgetting something!  So HUGE thanks to the people I know from buy.at, Kim Salvino, Ayako Bingham, Amy Ely and everyone else there!

So once again, thank you to MarketLeverage, oneNetworkDirect, and buy.at for their awesome generosity and great prizes!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

The topic set forth is mobile marketing and social media’s impact.  Unfortunately, through no fault of the organizers, the panelists fell way short of linking mobile marketing to social media at all.  My laptop battery died at the beginning of this last session, so I was unable to post it right away like all of the other panels today.

• Amielle Lake, Co-Founder & CEO, Tagga.com
• Ben Bajarin, Director of Consumer Technology Practice, Creative Strategies.

One of the first things that Amielle said is that neither of them have very much experience with mobile marketing, and she tried to use this as an example of how new a medium this is.  Sorry, that just discredits you right away as not knowing what you’re talking about.  There were a few points, but I was less than impressed.

They were very clearly unprepared and ended what they were talking about (which had nothing to do with social media) rather quickly and opened up for audience questions and anecdotes.  Some of the audience members even seemed just as qualified to speak about mobile marketing as the panelists, and the panelists looked like the questions confused them at times.  To their credit, some of the questions were incredibly detailed and long winded, so perhaps they just didn’t know how to approach them right away.

Bullet Point Review!

• Advertising industry as a whole has been looking to just re-purpose current content for mobile instead of doing something innovative.
• There’s been a rise in the number of people who own smart phones.
• Smart phone advertising needs to be contextual.
• Devices are using the web as a common feature.
• We are very far behind globally in mobile technology in general – Asia is in the lead, and Europe is even significantly more advanced than the US.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Does the 45+ crowd just not get it?  They’re learning; there’s definitely a slower adoption process.
• How do you serve ads with any quality?  Amielle answered with a plug for her company.
• What are the challenges in dealing with various carriers?  They will eventually want a piece of the action, but right now the biggest hurdles are technology – you need to use an SMS aggregator who’ll set you up with the short code and do the wheeling and dealing with the carrier for you.  They cost a lot of money up front, take 4-6 months to get set up, and then charge a monthly fee on top of that.
• Mobile marketing has incredible potential to be highly targeted and sophistically geotargeted.
• US carrier structure is very different from Europe and Asia’s.
• SMS content is definitely more appreciated by consumers, so you have to give good content for any kind of advertising along side it to be acceptable.
• Hard to satisfy broad interests – some interfaces will be more appreciated than others by various groups and individuals.  Can’t please everyone.
• Is there a tool that will aggregate campaigns and marketing across different channels like mobile, social media, email, and possibly integrate them? Nope, but that would be great (thank you for that stunning report, Cpt. Obvious).
• Are there standard tools to filter the incredible amount of user data?  Actually, data being collected now is limited to carrier, type of phone, time of interaction, click-through if there’s a mobile site, very basic stuff.  There are ad platforms that can assist in targeting your ads to the right audience.
• It will get better, but more precise data with demographics and geographics isn’t there yet.

Ultimately this session turned from a panel into more of a loose discussion and plug fest, and really, aside from a throw away mention of a Facebook app on phones, had nothing to do with social media.  Had they introduced it like a “clinic” type open forum discussion, it wouldn’t have been so awkward but the expectation of panel experts was already set.  It was a disappointing end to an otherwise good conference, although through no fault of mThink.  I hope for these speakers’ sakes that they brush up their power point skills and general professionalism and come a bit more prepared for their next speaking gig.

 Powered by Max Banner Ads