In a recent article by John Chow; super affiliate and blogger. He talks about a great offer from http://www.floristone.com which allows you the ability to have a full fledged ecommerce store on *YOUR* site. This is a pretty smart twist considering that regular affiliate marketing sends clicks to another site to complete the transaction. In this process the user/buyer could potentially click away or get scared off and the affiliate would lose the commission. Gotta love that transparency!
What I would like to see more of in performace marketing is a way for the publishers to create a legitimate website where visitors feel like they are buying from that website/brand. This is a great example of transparency. You handle marketing and traffic and they handle the sale/customer service and fullfilment. It’s a no brainer and the enduser does not leave your website.
Some retailers which come to mind: Amazon, newegg and others (are you listening)?
I would like to see more of these options in some of the larger etailers which would be a win-win for both the etailer and the affiliate.
LeadMedia, the European online performance marketing company acquired Sao Paulo, Brazil-based MediaFactory.
With emerging markets strengthening in performance marketing companies are being acquired to shore up the playing field. LeadMedia provides clients with Internet marketing solutions, including qualified traffic generation, lead and traffic re-targeting, online customer relationship management (CRM), lead generation and technology solutions for “behavioral and semantic targeting”. Founded by Stephane Darracq (a French serial technology entrepreneur) and backed by private equity firm Truffle Capital,
The acquisition of MediaFactory, which is actually being billed as a merger, could see LeadMedia group reach a turnover in excess of $25 million in 2011 with its expanded team of 100 specialists based in Paris, Sao Paulo and Los Angeles. Interestingly, prior to soaking up MediaFactory’s operations, the company already had a presence in Brazil since 2009. Stéphane Darracq, Chairman, LeadMedia, talks up the “economic vigor” of the sector, while Truffle Capital co-founder describes Brazil as now representing LeadMedia’s “second home market.”
So what is hot for 2011 in performance marketing?
- Retargeting
- Better collaboration between Affiliate managers/networks & publishers?
- PPC
- PPV
- SEO/SEM
- Social marketing
- Outsourcing
Feel free to predict the future in our comment box below!
Thanks to all who helped make Performance Marketing Expo a success! This year we combined some of the greatest minds in performance marketing industry in one central location. Let’s strive to make next year even better! As always we value your comments and honest feedback so make sure to write them down below so we can put it into account for next year. Here are some recaps from some of the Performance Marketing Expo speakers. Enjoy!
The panel opened up with Murray Newlands asking What are your tips in growing an audience to the other panel members. Here are some of their responses below.
Murray
Interview different bloggers in your niche. They then retweet content, like it on facebook, and share it on various other networks.
Connect with RSS readers from your blog on LinkedIn
Attend conferences to network with people.
John
Invite webmasters to parties, take pictures and send it to them so they can link to it.
Face to face contact with bloggers are super important.
Establish your authority and your niche in your first email communication with your readers.
Instead of just asking “Do you accept guest posts?” to bloggers, make sure to include the blog post in the message. It simplifies things.
Ian
Maintain blogger relationships past email and phone. At the end it’s about building and maintaining relationships.
Eric
Don’t just self promote but look at what other people are doing and try to involve your community members. No one wants to build a relationship with someone who practices one-way conversation.
Inform people on what they are looking to learn about and actually listen to conversations in multiple communities like forums and messageboards.
Capitalize on other peoples’ communities and blogs with informative posts. It’s also a great way to link back to your site.
Here’s a quick clip of the panel discussion below:
Stephan Spencer is a noted authority on SEO strategy, and he began his keynote presentation by giving a live SEO demo of wordpress.com. He mentioned that they have missed opportunities for higher SEO rankings. Relevancy of links on the page is very important for search engines to sink their teeth and know exactly what is on a page.
Natural organic clickthroughs from 1-4 go in this order from 41%, to 11%, 9%, and 5%. Yahoo does a great job with their links, they even rank #1 for Personals, higher than big players like match.com and eHarmony. Companies need to rethink link texts and title navigation to rank high for appropriate keywords.
Dan Siroker, Former Director of Analytics, Obama Presidential Campaign
Dan Siroker raised $656 million for the Obama campaign online which was higher than any presidential campaign ran before. He was able to do this by split testing different texts, images, and placement to optimize the campaign. Here are some lessons learned during his trial.
Define quantifiable success metrics – it was clear to Dan’s team that they had to increase email signups in order to achieve success. That is a quantifiable metric
Question assumptions – test images and videos to see what performs best. Running the experiment they were able to have a signup rate of 11.6 percent. By question assumptions Dan was able to raise $57 million more than if he hadn’t run the experiment.
Divide and conquer – know you’re audience by segmenting different images for different people. People who have previously signed up react different than those who haven’t.
Take advantage of circumstances
Start today
Make sure to check out his optimizing tool: Optimizely.com
Jessica Kornacki, Endless Vacation Rentals by Wyndham Worldwide
Jessica Kornacki mentioned in the beginning of her presentation that companies should not just launch a facebook fan page and create a twitter account just because everyone else is doing it. Instead, when launching a social media campaign on a shoestring budget first focus on coming up with a goal, and then thinking of tools and tactics to help deliver that goal. Wyndham’s goal was to create buzz about the brand, and so the “fat chance” contest which was promoted through facebook was a tool/tactic that they used to help achieve that goal.
Users were able to hand in applications detailing their fun experiences using Wyndham Worldwide’s services, and the best 2 family entries were given an all-expense paid vacation. This literally cost Wyndham Worldwide almost nothing, but the results were significant. Wyndham Worldwide was able to drive brand awareness and increase site traffic and brand loyalty at the launch of the social media campaigns.
There is a lot of history and the marketplace changes so quick. What are some of the best practices and basics in order to run a successful affiliate program and network?
Eddie – Effective communication is key. You need to work with the merchants and hear what they want. At the end of the day affiliates want to promote and have merchant offers on their sites.
Zac – It’s all about targeting and not just sending any traffic back to their websites.
Matthew – Talk to merchants & advertisers at least once a week.
What are some out of the box practices that is not a standard practice?
Eddie – MarketAmerica launched a cashback program and it has been a lot more transparent than before. It is starting to become more accepted to have loyalty programs on your website where consumers can invite their friends to get paid to shop.
How does a merchant get prime placement? Is there anything a merchant can do?
Eddie – Once you have success with a merchant, you can go back to that merchant and offer them better placement on the homepage. Increased revshare and a great relationship is important.
What are your tips on how to manage and prioritize the networks out there?
Zac – If you’re not talking to Zac through instant messenger or email then it’s not going to happen. You have to be able to keep communication simple.
Matthew – Inboxes can be completed full at times so instant messenger can ease communication.
Eddie – Phone conversations are vital to keep relationships and solving problems with customer service reps.
Do you prefer working with networks or deal directly with merchants?
Zac – Networks are always a good choice because you can get an answer right away from representatives.
Eddie – MarketAmerica works with a mix including Pepperjam, Google, LinkShare. It can be difficult to work across many networks though.
How do you use social best to improve programs?
Matthew – Matt was pretty reluctant to accepting social programs but judging from incoming traffic in a recently launched program it can become increasingly popular.
Eddie – The amplification effect in sharing a hot deal to the masses is the next frontier. You need to incorporate Facebook like buttons and share buttons on your deals.
Here’s a short clip of the panel presentation below:
Presenter: Paul Rosenblum, VP of Products and Strategy, Co-Founder, MyBuys
Paul started his presentation with a story of when his 17 year old niece shopped online for an iPod case. She typed in “iPod case” in shopzilla (a shopping search site), and executive leather cases and hi-tech cases automatically came up. His niece’s favorite color is pink, and due to her age none of these cases would be what she wants.
Consumers know what they want and how they want it. Another principle he discusses is make interruptions worthwhile, so if you’re going to interrupt make sure it has some value to it. Make sure to make ads relevant. Don’t offer someone a car rental in San Francisco if they live in Miami! We need to stop guessing and bucketing, and we need to start listening and paying attention.
E-commerce companies should cross-sell but not blindly. Instead, use the context of previous searches to create relevant recommendations that improve click rates and makes for a better experience that will drive consumers to come back and buy again. When users surf your website, you’re able to make targeted personalizations as opposed to newsletters and emails that hit a big target.
When creating a personalized mobile website, developers need to stay away from creating big, splashy pages and focus on putting what users want front and center. Use personalization to help consumers navigate through the site.
Great closing comments from the presentation: Listen to your consumers, pay attention to what they like, and then give them what they like.
In a recent article by John Chow; super affiliate and blogger. He talks about a great offer from http://www.floristone.com which allows you the ability to have a full fledged ecommerce store on *YOUR* site. This is a pretty smart twist considering that regular affiliate marketing sends clicks to another site to complete the transaction. In this process the user/buyer could potentially click away or get scared off and the affiliate would lose the commission. Gotta love that transparency!
