Posts made in 2009

They Say It’s MY Birthday!

Posted on Feb 6, 2009 in Career, Rambles | 5 comments

Yes, I’m stepping closer and closer to the abyss.

Right now –  at this VERY MOMENT OF 12:32pm PST – I just turned 28.

What?  You didn’t hear anything?  Well, just imagine muffled screams mixed with maniacal laughter and you’ll be close.  I go back and forth between looking at some aspects of my life and wondering how I did so little by this age, but then I look at others and remember how hard I’ve worked to get that far so fast.

I’m takin’ the day off, so re-posting a meme type thing that Julie posted in her blog Julie’s Journal last month on her birthday.

Famous people who share my birthday

• Tom Brokaw, 1940 – Newscaster, NBC News
• Bob Marley, 1945 – Singer
• Babe Ruth, 1895 – Baseball Player, New York Yankees
• Axl Rose, 1962 – Singer, Guns N’ Roses
• Ronald Reagan, 1911 – Actor, 40th US President
• Rip Torn, 1933 – Actor
• Natalie Cole, 1950 – Singer, Daughter of Nat King Cole

Famous Events that happened on January 3rd:

• 1865- Robert E Lee appointed Confederate General in Chief
• 1918- Britain grants women (30 & over) vote
• 1933- 20th Amendment goes into effect: Pres term begins in Jan not March
• 1935- “Monopoly” board game goes on sale for 1st time
• 1974- US House of Reps begins determining grounds for impeachment of Nixon
• 1981- Beatles McCartney, Starr & Harrison record a tribute to John Lennon (OK, “Brady Brides” also debuted on TV the same day, but the tribute seemed more important)

Famous Capricorns

• Fredrico Fellini – Director
• Geena Davis – Actress
• John Belushi – Actor
• Wolfgang Mozart – Composer
• Opra Winfrey – TV Host
• Charles Lindbergh – Pilot
• Carl Berstein – Journalist

Bay Area Affiliate Managers – Save the Date February 19th

Posted on Jan 30, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing |

If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you’re looking for some networking and a discussion of what’s going on in the industry, come join the Bay Area Affiliate Managers Coalition.  The BAAMC is basically just a group of affiliate managers in the area that get together to discuss current industry events with the Bay Area perspective.

I’ve attended a couple meetings and really gotten a lot out of it.  It’s nice to sit around with some colleagues over lunch and discuss issues.  Unfortunately I was unable to attend the last meeting in the fall, but the next meeting will be in Menlo Park February 19th.  The group tries to meet every quarter, but since it relies on a company being able to volunteer to host the group and provide lunch, it can’t always be swung.

If I didn’t work from home, I’d try to make a case to my boss to host, but I don’t have enough chairs :p

If you’re interested in joining the group, check out the website BAAMC.org and join the Yahoo! Group.

Affiliate Summit East 2009 Resolutions

Posted on Jan 27, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 4 comments

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  So if I didn’t learn from my experience at this last affiliate summit, I’d be crazy.  I’ve had some time to think long and hard about my experience in Las Vegas and I’m resolved to learn from these experiences.  I wouldn’t say they’re mistakes, per se, but definitely opportunities for learning.  Here’s some things I’ve figured out for myself that might just help you too (see, this isn’t my being selfish!)

• Make sure to secure internet for the trip!  I had SO many problems this time around, I’m going to make sure the hotel I’m staying at has either wired or wifi connections, and bring my own Ethernet cable that I know for SURE works just in case.  Being without internet for 5 days is killer!
• Don’t get sick!  I’m going to finally try out Airborne and hopefully avoid catching germs from people.  Maybe I’ll even go semi-germaphobe and carry around some PocketBac to help reduce the chance of germs jumping on board after shaking so many hands.  I have some awesome peppermint sceneted stuff from Bath & Body Works in a tiny and manageable 1 fl. oz. size.  I can’t afford to come back sick from a conference AGAIN!
• Lighten my load.  My big backpack was too big – I didn’t need to cart around that much space.  Luckily the Buy.at backpack I won is just right to carry my laptop & the essentials (business cards, beverage, wallet, antibacterial hand gel, that kind of thing).
• Get more information from my mentee!  I don’t want to be a sourpuss and not do the mentor program again because I have even MORE stuff to tell a AS newbie, but this time I’ll be sure to find out when they’re coming to the summit, if they’ll be there all three days, and try to find out what they look like so I can spot them in a crowd to say hi!
• Attend “Ask the Experts”!  I jokingly said that I’d never attend this unless I was one of the experts, but since I don’t see that happening I need to not be lazy that second day and get up and attend.  Somehow sleep always seems to take precedent that second morning…
• EAT!  I managed to go all day Sunday having eaten just a few snacks and no real meals until a 2am bowl of cereal (thank you Las Vegas for being a 24/7 town).  This was not good.  Since the provided Continental Breakfast and Luncheons don’t kick in until Monday & Tuesday, I need to remember that Sunday isn’t just the Meet Market anymore – it’s a full fledged day of sessions, so get up and get energy!
• Get a smaller camera.  Or bring the smaller one I gave my husband, because I don’t take nearly enough photos and end up relying on the power of Flickr and Facebook tags to find photos of me at the show.  My camera that I take most my pics with is kinda bulky and not really friendly “on the fly”.  Next time I’ll have my Flip Mino (thank you MarketLeverage!) and will be sure to get video of some of the general events (not the sessions, that’s a no-no) and random people I encounter.  I’ll be video happy!
• Pimp myself out.  It’s nice to look professional, yes, but being branded like a cow gets noticed.  I had my own business cards of course, but no cards for any other departments, no nifty swag to hand people, no visible affiliation with them other than the name on my badge, not even a postcard with the equivalent of a 30 second elevator pitch.  Next time, you’ll know who I rep when you see me coming!

Affsum Session: Advanced Optimization for Landing Pages

Posted on Jan 26, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 1 comment

Date: Tuesday, January 13th, 2009.  Session 8b, 2:00pm.
Session Description: Learn how to optimize your landing pages and increase conversion rates by 50-500% using simple techniques and technologies.  Get that competitive edge by increasing margins and return on marketing spend. The panel consisted of:

• Olivier Chaine, CEO & Founder, magnify360 (Moderator)
• Trevor Claiborne, Product Marketing Manager, Google
• Lisa Crossley Hunter, Senior Director of CJ Search, Commission Junction
• Beth Kirsch, VP of Marketing and Business Development, uAmplify

I was expecting some gems in terms of site optimization, and boy was I not let down!  I’d heard Lisa and Olivier speak last September at CJU, so I knew I was in for good stuff from them.  I mentioned this session as one I planned on attending before leaving and Trevor stopped by to say hi.  I had a chance to chat with him briefly in the bloghaus after the session and let him know what a great job they did as well.

Bullet Point Review!

• 98% of your traffic is wasted.
• 2% is the average site conversion rate.
• Copy heavy pages perform better later hours.
• There isn’t one magic answer.
• Ask yourself these questions about your visitors:
  • Why are they here TODAY?
  • How do they THINK?
  • How do they BUY/STICK?
  • What kind of dialog is best?
• Google’s website optimizer is a free tool to do this for you.
• A/B testing is your friend.
• So is multivariate.
• Best practices: start now, test often.
• Resource: Google Website Optimizer
• Share search channels.
• Cooperate with other departments with
  • Ad copy
  • Natural listings
  • Trademarks
  • Display URL Usage
• After testing, what works for affiliates is often different than what works for search.
  • One page tested, search conversions went up 60% but affiliate went up 454%!
• You could be losing tremendous amounts of revenue by not optimizing.
• Don’t start without a plan.
• Don’t just copy what someone else did, it probably won’t work the same for you.  TEST!
• Don’t assume an optimized page today is going to be optimized 6 months from now.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Just make sure you’re sending the most qualified traffic to the merchant page; you can’t really optimize their site or spend your time trying to help them that much.
• How much data is needed?  Generally speaking 100 impressions per change, but really, use a tool – they’ll tell you when enough data has been collected to pick a winning optimization.
• Is there a hierarchy of what to test?  Not really, just pick a few things and go small first.  Multivariate is complicated so start with something more manageable.

In the end, I really enjoyed hearing more from Lisa and Olivier – their expertise seems to know no bounds!  Trevor also nailed it with the information about the Google Website Optimizer – my fellow attendees and I speculated that he was why most people came, to learn about the free Google tool!  Unfortunately I wasn’t impressed by Beth – her speaking was really mumbled so I couldn’t quite pick up everything she said, and most her slides related to case studies and not a lot of tactics.  Maybe at a smaller venue or had I been closer to the front I might have been able to hear her better.  Ultimately these tidbits did well, but the slides will really tell you the background behinds these notes, so here they are!

Affsum Session: Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?

Posted on Jan 25, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 4 comments

Date: Monday, January 12th, 2009.  Session 5d, 2:00pm.
Session Description: How are videos being used by affiliates and merchants?  A detailed look into how and where they are performing best with suggested hints and tips to drive better click through and conversions. The panel consisted of:

• Marty M. Fahncke, President, FawnKey & Associates (Moderator)
• Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage
• Melissa Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com
• Jonathan Stefansky, EVP Sales and Marketing, Qoof

This wasn’t the panel I had planned on going to, but I’m glad I went and checked it out.  There was some interesting factoids dropped and I enjoyed the Twitter going in the background with the anonymous admirer of Melissa asking if she was in the videos.

Bullet Point Review!

• There’s tremendous potential.
• Consider your site when trying to figure out what will work.
• Besides person to person, video is the second highest sales driver.
• ML looked at 2008 as the year of infrastructure.
• Big marketers have taken note of online video.
• In 2007, 59% of internet users watched video online.  In 2008 that skyrocketed to 77%.
• With banner blindness there’s a need for a new type of creative.
• Banners are the lowest performing; video overcomes even the success of text links.
• Give the affiliate a better way to convert.
• Low cost for affiliates – no streaming costs, no hosting costs, widgets are interactive.
• Attention spans are around 3 minutes.
• Content must be engaging and capture the user within 15 seconds.
• Networks and merchants wouldn’t invest in video if it didn’t work.
• Affiliates are very eager to receive the best content for the least work.
• People who are in video now are in it for it’s potential, not the actual of today.
• 77 million unique visitors on YouTube (my notes might be wrong on that, and I didn’t write down if that was per day or per month, but I think it was per day.)
• MLTV raises brand awareness, bloggers talk about it.
• Companies are very sensitive to UCG (User Generated Content).
• DO: think about the shelf life of a video.  Videos about how to do something instead of a hot trend or product will be relevant longer.
• DON’T: set your videos to auto play with sound.  It’s incredibly intrusive, especially if someone’s at work, which is where most people view videos due to faster broadband connections.
• DON’T: go over 3 minutes.
• DO: grab attention within the first 15 seconds.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Where are things with .tv domains?  They’re increasing in popularity, but they still don’t get near the traffic a .com domain does.
• How do you track this?  Qoof embeds links with the AID and PID for tracking.  Others use view time, page views, how long people stay on the page, etc. to track success.

Once again, Michael Buechele of 11|15 Media blogged about this session for the official Affiliate Summit Blog.  Check out his recap for anything I may have missed while tweeting ;): Affiliate Summit West 2009 Session Recap – Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?

Affsum Session: Reaching Aggressive Goals without Monetary Incentives

Posted on Jan 23, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

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: