Taking New York City by Storm
I’m excited. First of all, because I’ve never been to New York before (a layover on my way to Orlando hardly counts). Second of all, because it’s that time again – time for Affiliate Summit! We’re flying JetBlue, which I LOVE! So comfortable on a cross country flight! Last week on Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 12, Mike and I did a pre-show review of the sessions we’re thinking of going to. I can’t wait, but there’s other things I’ll be doing while in NYC!
- Seeing Avenue Q
- Eating New York pizza at Famous Original Ray’s Pizza
- Walking through Central Park
- Hopefully seeing the Empire State Building
- Wandering Times Square
- Trying to survive on the NYC Subway
And more – Dominic and I have tacked on two extra days to sight see. I can’t wait! We’re leaving today and will get in LATE tonight and then brave the subway to get to the hotel if we’re feeling adventurous – if not, swallowing cab fare. Of course come Sunday, it’s all business. Affiliate Summit East 2009 starts off with a bang – my panel on Getting Noticed FAST! I know I’ve shamelessly promoted this panel, but seriously, you’ll learn a good deal if you’re looking to make a name for yourself. It’s in Classroom C at 12pm so stop by – you’ll get an awesome sticker courtesy of Sticker Giant!
After that, Dominic and I will split the difference so we can cover the most sessions for you here. I’m also going to encourage Dominic to write up a post of his views of Affiliate Summit as an outsider/newbie, so stay tuned for that. I’ll try to post them as timely as possible – some of that will involve reading Dominic’s writing 🙂 I’m sure there will be plenty of time for me to wander around and talk to folks so if you see either of us walking around, stop us and say hi! And feel free to badger Dominic about his model railroad or school!
Read MoreCribbed Content for March 6th
I haven’t had the chance to do very many of these during February… the month was filled with birthday celebrations, a vacation, and a lot of Wii in the evening since I’ve been strangely obsessed with Guitar Hero and Animal Crossing: City Folk. But since I’ve been back from vacation I’ve seen some great stuff, so I want to share.
Forgive me, some of it will be a bit out of date.
- Geno Prussakov put together a great list of affiliate marketing events in 2009.
- California is looking into a tax for online sales. Scott Jangro has written an open letter to the California outlining why it’s a bad idea. I am going to take his advice and grab the letter to send myself as a resident of California.
- Read the full California Assembly Bill 178 and contact your representatives to explain why this is a bad idea for affiliate marketers in California!
- 20/20 contacted the Performance Marketing Alliance for some background on affiliate marketing for a series they’re doing on the proliferation of work-at-home schemes. It’s good to see that they’re able to do some positive PR for the industry already… very promising since they’re off to a slow start.
- I wrote another guest post for Marketing Pilgrim, this time on The Search Engine Known as Twitter.
- If you’re at all interested in reading about my rambles about my Caribbean cruise vacation, check out my Posterous blog.
Ball: Dropped Stress: High
I have good news, and I have bad news. Hopefully this will explain why I’ve been asleep at the wheel here.
First, the good!
- TrishaLyn.com is now available as a mobile compatible site! Just point your smartphone browser to www.trishalyn.com! Thanks to Shawn Collins & the Geek Cast crew for mentioning this nifty plugin in the last episode and Shawn specifically for sending me the link.
- Speaking of Geek Cast, I was mentioned two weeks running. Apparently Scott Jangro and I will be the only audience members for their Geek Cast Live show from Affiliate Summit, and Lisa’s counting on me to help keep the boys in line. Ah, good times will be had I can FEEL it!
- Affiliate Summit East 2008 is SOLD OUT and takes place in a little over a week. I’m excited to be hitting Boston again and finally meeting some of these people I’ve been networkin’ with online since the last summit.
- Affiliate Classroom Live! is also in about a week, so I really REALLY need to get my act together and formulate some talking points for the round-table discussion I’ll be leading.
Now, the not so great.
I’m sad to say that after almost 2 years my beloved supervisor is leaving our company. I’m going to miss her tremendously as she’s been a complete pleasure and joy to work for! To be honest, I’m taking the change harder than I should because of….- I’m moving! Just from one city here in the East San Francisco Bay Area to another, nothing major. It’s just that I absolutely detest packing and moving. Luckily my husband acknowledges that I’m a weakling and useless in the actual heavy lifting, so I’m on packing and unpacking duty.
- With the change in my supervisor leaving, my job responsibilities are changing as well. I don’t think I can say much right now, but involves some shifting in terms of my focused projects within the marketing department.
Obviously the combined changes of job responsibilities, moving, taking a long weekend vacation to celebrate my 5th wedding anniversary, and taking off for several days to attend Affiliate Summit East are all a bit overwhelming. I hope to be rejuvenated after my vacation and be able to jump back into the swing of things with some excellent coverage of Affiliate Summit!
If you’re giving away stress balls at the summit, save one for me!!
Read MoreEffective Email Case Study – Expedia
Checking my email last night I noticed some ingenious, personalized email marketing campaigns that I think more businesses should consider (including my own). I felt the need to share these as case studies. There’s a lot to cover, so I’ll split them up. Hopefully I can continue to do these case studies to give props to what works in marketing and why.
The Company: Expedia.com: I’ve always had great service and luck with Expedia
, so they’re my go-to travel site when referencing flight prices, hotels, etc.
The User History: a few days ago I booked a cruise vacation with some friends out of Port Canaveral, 60 minutes or so outside of Orlando. The trip isn’t for almost a full year, so I wanted to just get an idea of flight prices from Oakland to Orlando. I headed over to Expedia to just check out the price ranges and get a feel for how much I’ll have to put aside for a flight. Since the trip is next February, I don’t plan on actually making this purchase until sometime this summer or next fall.
The Subject Line: Find your flight to Orlando backed by our Best Price Guarantee.
The E-Mail:
The Effectiveness: It’s directing a sale that they’re already running to me, a person who has already shown that they are interested in this particular destination. The email contains just enough text to show that it’s paid attention to my user habits and is offering it’s help without trying to make a super hard sale. The links are targeted and there’s not much in the email that’s off topic (see the Seattle to San Francisco rates in the yellow box – unrelated but I don’t blame them for throwing it out there). I do acknowledge that this may be a total coincidence that I happened to be in the market for a flight to Orlando and this routine email may just be perfectly timed, but at least it shows that they do know their audience.
The Result: I honestly think that I may be a bit more likely to make this purchase sooner than I had anticipated because of this email. I am a little bummed that the sale advertised doestn’t lower the price any more than I’d already found on the website (which was probably a sale price in the first place). I will definitely keep an eye out in regards to their Best Price Guarantee, a service that I never realized they offered until receiving the email.
So in conclusion, email marketing can be effective, even when sending to other marketers. It’s always a great learning experience to pay attention to the emails you get and think to yourself, “What can I learn from this?” and apply what you’ve learned to your own job. It’ll improve your performance and you’ll be better off.
Read MoreTurning Gray at 26?
While brushing my hair this morning I found not one but three gray hairs. It’s hard to tell the color of a single hair, it almost looked blond… but considering that my hair is naturally a dark brown, I sorta doubt they were blond.
Has the stress gotten to me already? My coworkers have joked that I’m no longer allowed to take Vacations because the rely on my being here so much (although this is something they joke about every time I take some time off for any reason…) And since returning from Sin City, the work load on my desk has been seemingly endless. I’ve been here two and a half extra hours each night trying to catch up before Labor Day, and with it also being the end of the month I have EOM reporting coming up to worry about as well.
What happened to the days when I just came in, did my job, and went home? I guess in the days of mailing services, marketing, advertising, sales, social media, the affiliate program, and email marketing there’s no sleep for the weary. It took me half a day just to catch up on Twitter posts and all the blogs I subscribe to through Google Reader. I’ve perhaps spent more time here at PsPrint than home in the last few days.
In case you’re wondering, I did enjoy my vacation. Some of the highlights included a helicopter tour over the strip at night, seeing Penn & Teller live and getting photos with them and their autographs, seeing lots of animals, going very high up at the top of the Stratosphere tower and the Paris Las Vegas Eiffel Tower, and traipsing all over Las Vegas Blvd. My travel friend and I basically saw everything we went to Vegas wanting to see, except we missed out on the Tournament of Kings dinner show at Excalibur. I think when I go back to Vegas in November to attend the National Association of Realtors’ conference, I might take an evening to head over there. I wasn’t quite ready to re-join reality!
Going to Vegas. BRB
So in less than 48 hours, this is where I will be… chilling with (hopefully) a fruity drink in my hand rearing to go and enjoy beautiful Las Vegas. I’ve needed a vacation for awhile now, and it’s good to go on a real vacation.
Of course, trying to get a bunch of projects done in time to go without worrying about work is almost impossible. It’s like the fates align to send every new project possible right into your inbox the day before you’re set to leave. Today was my last day in the office until next Tuesday, so of course new affiliate projects came across my desk, problems with mailing services customers happened, a new email marketing campaign launched, and I was IMed about a thousand times.
If only my vacation started tomorrow! While I won’t be in the office, I’ll instead be down in San Jose attending the Search Engine Strategies Expo at the Convention Center. They have a Social Media track of educational sessions that should be very informative and give me some good ideas for that task here at PsPrint in the coming months. I’ll be there in classes until about 2, then I’m going to walk around the expo and check it out a bit.
Afterward, that’s when my vacation starts! First I’ll be meeting up with a friend from out of town in San Jose to go to the Winchester Mystery House. It’s amazing how terrible of a tourist one can be in their own area… I’ve never been there, despite being fascinated by it’s history since 3rd grade. So going there, then Friday morning flying to Las Vegas. I can’t wait.
So, I bid this blog adieu until the 28th when I get back. I leave you with a question: what did you do on YOUR summer vacation? 😛
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