Issue 37 ― January 2017
3 Ways to Love Your Work Life By Liliana Chan Ventura - Page 16
Where Influencer Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Meet By Chris Tradgett - Page 27
Affiliate Summit West 2017 Agenda Page 33
s i s s e n i s u B T he
! , l u f i t u a e B e r e H e r e W u o Y h Wis
Issue 37 · January 2017
Table of Contents
STAFF Co-Editors in Chief Missy Ward, Shawn Collins Co-Publishers Missy Ward, Shawn Collins
2
4 Lessons from Tom Brady About Business
By Missy Ward
3
Building a Life in a Bite-Sized Economy
5
3 Keys to Engaging Social Influencers
6
Bloggers: Adjust Your Mindset for Affiliate Success
7
Choosing a Network – The Most Important Step
By Jonathan Goodwin
9
High-Risk Merchant Processing Just Got Riskier
By Rachel Hirsch
By Priest Willis, Sr. By Sarah Bundy By Christen Moynihan Evans
10
Your Affiliate Program on Social Media
By Victoria Galperina
11
What is Influencer Marketing All About
By Geno Prussakov
12
25 Things About Affiliate Marketers
By Shawn Collins
14
Get Your Users into the Mobile Age
By Vadim Rogovskiy
15
Look at Multi-Channel Attribution in 2017
16
3 Ways to Love Your Work Life
17
Programmatic Marketing 101
19
What Merchants Want From Their Affiliates?
20
Reducing Chargebacks and Fraud Through Data Analytics
21
Making Your Business Sexy on Social Media
By Michelle Held
22
5 Steps to Relaunch an Affiliate Program
By Cristian Miculi
24
Smart Affiliate Recruitment: Affiliate Lifetime Value
25
Grow Your Audience and Reduce Your Opt-outs
26
Tracking Issues: When the World Is Burning
27
Where Influencer Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Meet
29
Productivity, Prioritizing Goals, and Overcoming Setbacks
30
Are You Seizing China’s E-Commerce Opportunity?
31
8 Ways to Travel Easier
33
Affiliate Summit West 2017 Agenda
50
Marty Weintraub Keynote Bio
51
Brian Massey Keynote Bio
52
Sean Dolan Keynote Bio
53
Other Speaker Bios
66
Thank You Affiliate Summit West 2017 Top Sponsors
67
Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Bally’s Maps
Contributing Writers
Cris Angelini, Sarah Bundy, Shawn Collins, Suresh Dakshina, Teodora Dobjanschi, Christen Moynihan Evans, Victoria Galperina, Joel Garcia, Rick Gardiner, Travis Glenn, Jonathan Goodwin, Michelle Held, Rachel Hirsch, Victor Lopez, Michel Cervantes Martinez, Cristian Miculi, Geno Prussakov, Vadim Rogovskiy, Chris Tradgett, Jeff Unze, Liliana Chan Ventura, Missy Ward and Priest Willis, Sr.
Graphic Design Logan Gattis Designs www.logangattis.com Magazine Coordinator Amy Rodriguez
By Rick Gardiner By Liliana Chan Ventura By Victor Lopez By Michel Cervantes Martinez By Suresh Dakshina
By Teodora Dobjanschi By Cris Angelini By Joel Garcia By Chris Tradgett By Travis Glenn By Jeff Unze By Shawn Collins
Affiliate Summit 9532 Liberia Avenue, #127 Manassas, VA 20110 tel (417)-2SUMMIT (278-6648) fax (908) 364-4627
Articles in FeedFront Magazine are the opinions of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views of the magazine, or its owners. FeedFront Magazine always welcomes opinions of an opposite nature. For more information, visit: www.FeedFront.com Interested in advertising? Please visit http://feedfront.com/advertising/ or email us at: feedfront@affiliatesummit.com © 2017 Affiliate Summit, Inc. and Individual Authors.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Editor’s Note
4 Lessons from Tom Brady
About Business by Missy Ward
Missy Ward
(Dedicated to the memory of Jon Nunez, the biggest Tom Brady fan
awards, and has led his team to more division titles than any
I know. The affiliate marketing industry still misses you very much.)
other quarterback in NFL history. On top of the $196.1 million he earned as a quarterback,
B
he’s also received $184.9 million in endorsement deals, makack in the seventies, I remember watching an episode of Sesame Street where Kermit sang, “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green.” Little did I know that the wise hand pup-
ing the “business of Tom Brady” something to be revered. Here are some lessons from Tom Brady’s story that can help you score on your own field.
pet’s song would eventually become my mantra, as a long-
Don’t Settle for What Comes First
suffering fan of the New York Jets. In as much as die-hard Jet’s fans know how difficult it is
Whether it’s a job opportunity or getting involved in a new
to remain loyal to our team, I know they’ll appreciate how hard
startup, don’t jump on the first offer that comes your way.
it is for me to write the following sentence:
Brady shows us that waiting for the right opportunity, doing
Tom Brady, of the New England Deflatriots, is undeniably
something you’re passionate about, can work out much better.
one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. (Heh, heh. I’m such a Jets fan!)
Work Hard Every Day Until You’ve Accomplished Your Goals
The Tom Brady Story
Tom Brady sweats the details. He drills for hours, on ev-
Tom Brady played baseball in high school. His skills as a
ery single skill, even during the off-season, to ensure no one
left-handed hitting catcher impressed MLB scouts, which got
surpasses him. His determination and work ethic are funda-
him drafted by the Montreal Expos.
mental to his success.
But Brady was much more passionate about football, so he passed up a future in baseball, and signed with the Uni-
Haters Gonna Hate
versity of Michigan as their quarterback. Unfortunately, he
Like other successful people, Tom Brady has haters –lots
wasn’t exactly Heisman material during his time on the Wol-
of them. Rather than letting them get in his way, he tunes out
verines, and many NFL scouts ignored him.
their noise, and then puts them all to shame by working harder
In 2000, the Patriots drafted Brady with the 199th pick
to achieve his goals.
in the 6th round. Bill Belichick, previously the Jet’s assistant coach, became the Patriot’s head coach that season and made Brady a fourth string QB.
One of the most important assets of any business is
By the end of the year, Brady, was backup, and got the start in 2001 when the Jets Mo Lewis knocked out Drew Bledsoe. Since then, he’s taken the Patriots to the Super Bowl six times with four victories. He’s won three Super Bowl MVP
2
Steer Clear of the Asterisk integrity. Compromising it goes on your permanent record. Brady will retire as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time with an everlasting asterisk by his name. Even, as a Jets fan, I take no joy in that.
Missy Ward is the Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront, and blogs on MissyWard.com.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Building a Life in a
Bite-Sized Economy by Priest Willis, Sr. Priest Willis, Sr.
I
recently interviewed author and TED speaker Damon Brown for my podcast. It was from him that I first heard the terms “bite-sized economy” and “bite-sized entrepreneur.”
Hacking your full-time job
Brown explained them as a belief among entrepreneurs
Starting something new can be frightening, but not trying
that they must sacrifice everything to succeed. Truth is, you
could be your biggest mistake. And you don’t need to quit your
can incorporate side hustles without sacrificing your liveli-
full-time job to start side hustling – you can hack it. “Hack-
hood. I’ve worked for over 20 years, and during that time, I’ve
ing” your job doesn’t mean slacking off - your company still
created different streams of income. I initially started in a des-
deserves the best from you. But you can optimize your time
perate attempt to support my family. I now understand that
during the work week. You can wake up earlier, work through
building real wealth must go beyond the 9-to-5.
lunch on projects, burn the midnight oil, and build a team
The economy is becoming more unpredictable, and peo-
along the way to support your efforts.
ple are turning to side hustles to control their futures and for-
Other tips for hacking your job to squeeze in a side hustle:
tunes. I read somewhere that a typical millionaire has around
»» Start gradually. Don’t rush to dedicate all your free time
seven sources of income. From this, many outside-the-box
to a side hustle. »» Conserve cash immediately. This money will help estab-
approaches have sprouted, including the sharing economy (think Uber, Airbnb). The internet has seriously leveled the
lish your side hustle. »» Keep your job and side hustle separate.
playground for financial redemption.
»» Make a schedule. Some people might have more time
Are you ready to hustle? Here are a few side hustles you can jump into today:
than others, but it’s there.
»» Amazon FBA or eBay. Amazon is a huge marketplace,
It can be difficult to find a side hustle that fits your life if
and eBay is still among the top cash-making sites. You
you don’t already have one in mind. Two ways to stay moti-
can sell a widget, or purchase from wholesalers and re-
vated during your search: »» Create daily action targets. Specific tasks, done regu-
sell for passive income or “horizontal money.” »» Cooking. Can you, as some say, “burn”? Use your culi-
larly, will yield results. Set goals and track your progress
nary skills and cook up some earnings by selling specialty
daily.
foods. Plenty of people can’t bake and would gladly pay
»» Maintain personal office hours. Whether you’re em-
someone for baked goods, especially during the holidays.
ployed or unemployed, set time to work on your side-
»» Freelancing. Can you write, design, or do magical things
hustle search.
in Excel or PowerPoint? Offer your services on sites such as Upwork and Fiverr.
Remember, if you want something, you must work for it. Get motivated and go after it!
Priest Willis, Sr. is a Bite Sized Entrepreneur and Global Affiliate Marketing Manager
3
· Issue 37 · January 2017
3 Keys to
Engaging Social Influencers by Sarah Bundy
I
Sarah Bundy
nfluencer Marketing” is a hot topic today, and many people are jumping on the band wagon expecting immediate results. However, working effectively with social influencers
A person might come across differently on their website
takes time, attention to detail, an understanding of the social
versus how they appear on video, or have a slightly different
atmosphere, and a dedicated personal touch.
audience depending on whether they are promoting on Insta-
Here are three keys to engaging with social influencers
gram, Pinterest, Facebook, or their blog. Understanding their
that drive reach, new customer acquisition, and top line (and
voice in the beginning, and continuing to understand their nu-
bottom line) revenue growth:
ances based on their type of content and which channel they are distributing it in, will help engage them faster, and will help
1. Know Their Audience The first step to working with the right social influencer is
position your product and brand with their audience in a more impactful way.
to understand their audience. Is it the right fit for your brand and product line? Have you spent time on their site looking through content, imagery, articles, reader comments, and social channels?
3. Understand Their Motivators Not every social influencer wants money up front. On the other hand, not every social influencer wants free product ei-
Chances are, if you haven’t spent time looking at their
ther. There is a misconception that all social influencers want
content and who they are writing for, you will have a hard time
money or products upfront to provide exposure or a content
connecting with them. Going into a conversation unprepared,
piece for your brand.
will leave them, and you, underwhelmed. Instead, prepare in
In fact, many social influencers are tired of repeatedly sell-
advance, and once you have identified they are a good fit and
ing real-estate for a flat-fee, rather than working on a perfor-
have a frame of reference with some specific posts to speak
mance based model where they keep their affiliate links up,
to, ask about their audience’s likes, dislikes, approach, and
making them money while they sleep. It’s a scalable, long-term,
what engages them most. You can then customize a cam-
passive income monetization model for them, and they like it.
paign that’s right for them, and their audience.
There are also opportunities for creating hybrid model payouts, such as a small flat-fee coupled with a percentage
2. Know Their Voice Every social influencer has a unique voice. Some are funny, some serious, some educational, some sarcastic. Some
of sales. These payout opportunities (and the tracking around them) will depend on the affiliate network or tracking platform your program is using.
influencers thrive on delivering their content via video versus
The bottom line is, know your audience and their audi-
written article versus imagery. Some influencers even have a
ence to understand emotional motivators and customize your
different voice depending on which channel they are distribut-
approach to have faster, more impactful engagement from
ing that content through.
the get-go.
Sarah Bundy is an award winning expert in digital, performance, and influencer marketing and technology.
5
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Bloggers: Adjust Your Mindset
for Affiliate Success
by Christen Moynihan Evans
Christen Moynihan Evans
W
hen the blog I manage entered the affiliate space
Bloggers often tend to focus on relationships with brands
with earnest four years ago, we saw it as a natu-
as more of a one-off, paid-up-front opportunity that, if they
ral opportunity to increase our revenue without
happen to drive enough impressions, may happen a second or
sacrificing our brand style or voice.
third time. While those dollars-first moments are wonderful,
There were a few merchants who we had actively includ-
they aren’t sustainable.
ed in our blog posts that had successful affiliate programs,
In the affiliate space, your ability to pre-sell products for a
and we took them up on their invitations to see what all the
merchant and drive sales – resulting in commission for you –
hubbub was about. And I’m glad we did, because we started
creates a sustainable, mutually beneficial relationship.
seeing conversions almost immediately.
Think at the product level vs brand level
Now, I work with bloggers who are interested in doing much
When bloggers get sponsored posts from brands, they’re
the same, but I am also seeing a problem: They are stuck in the
often promoting the brand overall, or a vertical within the
blogger headspace, as opposed to really thinking like an affiliate.
brand. When an affiliate is promoting a brand, they’re usually
What does this mean? It means that rather than planning
promoting from the product or category level – incorporating
a monetization strategy, they’re putting content first, and then
the product into posts through the use of keywords, images,
monetizing. They’re focusing on the brand, rather than the
and specific product mentions, while using deep links to direct
product. They’re relying on banner ads, as opposed to key-
readers toward a specific landing page.
words. They want to talk dollars and freebies up front, rather
This allows much more opportunity for monetization, as
than cultivate a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship
rather than just linking the merchant’s name, a blogger work-
with the merchant’s program, and reap the rewards for years
ing in the affiliate space is able to link keywords, pull images
to come. So, bloggers, it’s time to switch gears.
from the merchant’s site to feature in the post and on social
This isn’t just a one-off date.
media, and talk about the product in relevant, relatable and
The affiliate space is more of a long-term relationship. You
useful ways that will resonate with your audience… after all,
have to start out at the bottom and prove that you’re able to
you know them best!
drive traffic and conversions before you can take it to the next
With just a little bit of a tweak to your thinking, a blogger
level – which might include increased commissions or even
can easily become a successful affiliate. You just gotta put
special opportunities, like sponsored posts or free product.
your mind to it!
6
Christen Moynihan Evans is a blogger, consultant and lover of bourbon and sparkles at bourbonandsparkle.com.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Choosing a Network –
The Most Important Step by Jonathan Goodwin
Jonathan Goodwin
S
electing the right network is instrumental in the suc-
position your brand for the best success possible. Some
cess of any affiliate program. When advertisers on a
networks don’t have the ability to report on new-to-file.
particular network don’t align with their strategic val-
»» Publisher base. There are several publisher segments
ues, there’s a possibility that an affiliate program falls short of
and having the right blend will provide a diverse affiliate
its full potential.
program. Research each platform and see if they are in-
It’s important that when selecting the right network, you do your diligence and interview each platform, research the
tegrated with most of the loyalty, coupon, niche/content, and technology type affiliates.
advantages and disadvantages of each network, and negoti-
»» Technology. Research and pinpoint what tools are avail-
ate a rate that is commensurate with your monthly marketing
able and applicable to the type of affiliate program that
spend.
you want to manage for you AND your publishers.
Be sure to approach this selection process with an open
»» Usability. Making sure the interface is user friendly is an
mind and don’t rush into making a decision. You don’t want to
important aspect in your decision making. Many people
be locked into a 12-month contract, or saddled with monthly
will be logging in, and executing tasks in the platform,
minimums, and not be pleased with the platform your affiliate
and making it easier for everyone will reduce stress.
program is on.
»» Cost effective. Managing spend is highly important to a
Each affiliate network is great in their own right. All of-
pay-per-performance channel. Be sure to secure a rate
fer unique advantages over the other, so selecting the right
that is appropriate to what you are looking in terms of
tracking platform for your affiliate program can be a daunting
cost. Many networks will work with advertisers on con-
and stressful process. There are so many networks out there,
tract terms, so be open in what you are looking for.
and each one positions itself differently, so how do you know
Picking the right network needs to be in-line with your
which one is the right platform for your brand? Below are some key factors to consider when choosing the right tracking platform:
affiliate strategy. It’s important that the decision making process is not rushed, and you have multiple options. Each network is unique, and has distinct advantages over the other.
»» Strategic alignment. If your goal is to acquire new cus-
So, be sure to take the time, research your competitors,
tomers, be sure to find networks that have a similar fo-
analyze the networks, and move forward with the one plat-
cus. Research the platform to see if it fits your vertical to
form that fits what your brand is looking for.
Jonathan Goodwin is the Director of Strategy at JEBCommerce
7
· Issue 37 · January 2017
High-Risk Merchant Processing
Just Got Riskier by Rachel Hirsch
I
n September, the payment processing industry took a mas-
Rachel Hirsch
»» conducting high-dollar average monthly sales and trans-
sive, unexpected hit when the U.S. government designated
actions.
PacNet, a large Canadian payment processor, on the U.S.
For these merchants, processing solutions have always
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC) list of
been a problem, leaving many to create elaborate corporate
transactional criminal organizations (TCO) for its role in pro-
structure schemes for load balancing purposes. To the extent
cessing for direct mailer merchants alleged to have defrauded
these high-risk merchants come under scrutiny by a regulator
their customers.
like the FTC, these types of corporate structures often serve
The OFAC action was accompanied by Department of
as yet another indicia of fraud to support the regulator’s de-
Justice (DOJ) indictments, as well as civil settlements against
piction of the merchant as a “scammer” or a “fraudster” – the
direct mailers. The OFAC action is unprecedented, as it is the
FTC’s adjectives of choice.
first time that the agency has included a payment processor
So what does the OFAC action mean for high-risk mer-
on the TCO list – a designation typically reserved for criminal
chants? Well, it means that payment processors are going
organizations like Japan’s Yakuza.
to be on higher alert about the merchants they process for
The aftershocks of the OFAC action are being felt outside
because now, more than ever, their actions in assisting these
payment processing circles – namely, by merchants who al-
merchants can lead to scrutiny not only from civil regulators,
ready face hurdles in securing processing solutions that work
but potentially from criminal agencies as well. For high-risk
for their business models. Given the heightened scrutiny that
merchants, especially in the trial and continuity space, this
payment processors are now under, merchants can expect
means instituting and following a culture of compliance that
that banks will engage in a fresh round of “de-risking” of third-
focuses primarily on customer satisfaction, which, in turn,
party payment processors and their merchant clients.
means lower chargeback rates. This means:
So what makes a merchant’s business high-risk? In the past, when merchants and payments-industry professions
»» displaying important billing terms and conditions clearly and conspicuously;
were confronted with that term, certain industries immedi-
»» obtaining affirmative consent to any negative option offer;
ately came to mind: adult content, Internet gambling, and like.
»» offering truly “free” samples during an adequate trial period;
These days, however, the term “high-risk” is not confined
»» offering refunds to dissatisfied customers without any
to those industries, but can be attributed to merchants that meet a certain risk profile. Generally, the perceived risk threat
high-pressure sales tactics; and »» making claims about a product that can be substanti-
comes in the form of elevated chargebacks. Several factors
ated.
increase this risk profile, including:
While these may seem like lofty goals, they may be the
»» offering recurring billing;
reality merchants now face in the post-OFAC action world. Of
»» debiting consumer accounts;
course, retaining qualified counsel is always key to actualizing
»» engaging in high-pressure sales tactics; and
these goals.
Rachel Hirsch and Ifrah PLLC serve as counsel to merchants and payment processors, including PacNet.
9
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Your Affiliate Program
on Social Media by Victoria Galperina
Victoria Galperina
R
unning an in-house affiliate program is similar to operating a business, and most any business that has
educational videos on your YouTube channel? It is a great way
hopes and ambitions of making it big could benefit
to both share your knowledge and help your affiliates suc-
from a social media presence.
ceed, by providing them with relevant video content. Filmed
Here are five reasons why your affiliate program should
tips and how-to guides that you add to your YouTube channel
be on social media:
can also be used to enhance your blog posts and newsletters.
Leads
Brand Recognition
Finding and luring in new affiliates is one of the most dif-
This is a big deal if you are running a program under a dif-
ficult tasks an affiliate program manager faces. A great way
ferent brand, or if the main product or service you are offering
to attract potential prospects is to make yourself known and
is not very well known. Social media is a way of putting your-
available by being where your audience is present. A Facebook
self on the map. To gain recognition, you need to share valu-
page and Twitter profile allow you to list information about
able and relevant information. Become an informational filter
your program, what you offer, and how to find you. By post-
and only share what you would find interesting if you were on
ing industry-relevant content, you can establish yourself as an
the other end.
expert and attract potential affiliates, who become interested in finding out more about the brand behind the information.
Support Many businesses dread having to do this, for the fear of
Information
making themselves vulnerable to various questions and com-
Social media is an excellent channel for information shar-
ments. However, by being there, you tell your followers: “Hey!
ing. As a program, you can make posts that are relevant for
I’m here and ready to help, so ask me anything you want”,
your affiliates, including your latest updates. Did you add a
which definitely makes you stand out.
new language? Share it. Are you running a contest for affili-
Remember, social media is a two-way street. If you
ates? Let your audience know and participate. Inform your fol-
choose this path, it is not only for you to spread your news.
lowers and listen to what they say.
You are there to listen and to get involved in the issues that your followers find interesting, so like, share, and comment
Education
away – that is how you build your reputation and gain trust on
Social media can also become a great platform for onboarding. Have you thought about creating introductory and
10
social media, and that is ultimately the reason why people will or will not follow you.
Victoria Galperina is the Head of Affiliate Marketing at SEMrush. Find her on LinkedIn.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
What is Influencer Marketing
All About? by Geno Prussakov
W
hen you have a product or a service to sell, your primary marketing objective lies in finding the shortest and surest way to your customer’s
heart. For years, marketing theorists have been analyzing and
Geno Prussakov
practitioners experimenting with an array of vehicles to carry the message from the advertiser to the end-consumer. Some ways have been more effective than others. In recent years, one particular type of marketing has been
ing model which empowers brands to tap into various types
on the notable rise – influencer marketing. So much so, that
of marketing, structuring partner compensation based on
throughout 2015 and 2016 Google has been classifying the
performance (be it tied to a completion of a sale, submission
key phrase “influencer marketing” as a “Breakout” term, or one
of a lead form, request of a free trial, or any other conversion).
experiencing search growth greater than 5,000%.
Affiliate marketing works with influencer marketing, too.
In the past five years alone, more than 100 new tools, plat-
According to Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report, an af-
forms, and “influencer networks” were launched; and over 80
filiate marketing relationship is one of the top three ways in
percent of brands are either already running influencer mar-
which online influencers prefer to earn their revenue.
keting campaigns, or actively looking towards exploring this in 2017.
So, when looking at influencer marketing versus affiliate marketing, we are not talking about an “either… or…” situation,
Some call it “word-of-mouth marketing on steroids,” oth-
but a “both… and…” one. Advertisers and publishers can (and
ers believe it to be one of the forms of affiliate marketing.
should) intertwine affiliate marketing payment models into
While it is in many ways related to both, it is not fully synony-
their influencer marketing campaigns.
mous with either. Influencer marketing is a type of marketing
Finally, it is important to understand that neither influenc-
which relies on the clout of tastemakers (large and small) for
er marketing, nor affiliate marketing represent a single mar-
dissemination of marketing messages. Affiliate marketing, on
keting channel. Both are cross-channel and work with an ar-
the other hand, represents a marketing model which allows
ray of online (and offline) channels: email, mobile, paid media,
independent marketers to promote an advertiser’s product or
phone call referrals, retargeting, and this is to name but a few.
service and get paid when the action desired by the advertiser
So, there you have it: a powerful type of marketing (influ-
happens. There is a widely-spread misconception that affiliate marketing is also a “type” of marketing. It is not one. It is a market-
encer marketing) and a cost-efficient marketing model (affiliate marketing). Marry them in your marketing mix and you’ll see some outstanding offspring.
Prussakov runs AM Navigator affiliate management agency, Influencer Marketing Days and Affiliate Management Days conferences.
11
· Issue 37 · January 2017
25 Things
About Affiliate Marketers by Shawn Collins
Shawn Collins
I
started up a podcast last year called This is Affiliate Marketing, where I have a short chat with folks related to affiliate marketing for each episode. Rather than talking about their favorite plugins or where
they see the industry five years from now, I go over the social media accounts of each guest and find tidbits about their lives Here are 25 things that were revealed in past episodes of the podcast. Adam Reimer (Founder of Adam Riemer Marketing, LLC.)
W2PY) was a volunteer firefighter. Ashley Coombe (Marketing Director at Shareist) hits up In-N-Out Burger when she’s in Las Vegas. Daniel M. Clark (Chief Technology Officer of Apogee) is a little freaked out by some neighbors on NextDoor.com. 5.
David Dalka (Founder and Managing Director at Fearless Revival) is a meteorology enthusiast.
6.
David Vogelpohl (Vice President of Web Strategy at WP Engine) has a lot of owl pictures on his Flickr account.
7.
Deb Carney (Owner of the BookGoodies Network) shows cats.
8.
Eric Nagel (CTO of FMTC) ran for President of the United
Eric Church fan.
Watch International) has participated in many AVON 39 16. Priest Willis, Sr. (Global Affiliate Marketing Manager at 17. Rachel Honoway (CEO of FMTC) married her college sweetheart. 18. Rich Plakas (Founder at Connected Systems) once rescued a tarantula from a tarantula hawk. 19. Richard Young (Vice President, Advertising at ArcaMax Publishing, Inc.) was in a production of Hello Dolly. 20. Sal Conca (Owner of Sal Conca Marketing) is in a Green Day tribute band. 21. Sam Harrelson (Owner of the Harrelson Agency) was previously a school teacher. 22. Sean Steinmarc (Founder of psGive) was a semi-pro 23. Todd Farmer (Vice President of Affiliate Marketing Solu24. Tricia Meyer (Owner of Sunshine Rewards) used to be a lawyer.
10. Jim Kukral (Owner of the Author Marketing Club) is on his city council.
25. Wade Tonkin (Affiliate Manager at Fanatics.com) is a fan of Tottenham Hotspur in the English Premier League.
11. Jonathan Miller (CEO at Forge Media) once attended a
12
messed up for him by Lance Armstrong.
tions at Inuvo) enjoys Bloody Marys.
Jen Myers Ward (CEO of ebove & beyond, inc.) is a big
Zumba convention.
14. Marty Fahncke (CMO of Barton Publishing) had cycling
kickball player.
States. 9.
author, Dan Lyons
Lenovo) has a son playing football at Texas A&M.
2. Amanda Orson (Founder and Managing Partner at
4.
13. Lisa Picarille (Journalist) once worked with “Disrupted”
walks.
likes giant Gummy Bears.
3.
a personal Cards Against Humanity card.
15. Melissa Salas (Senior Director of Marketing at Swiss
outside of business.
1.
12. Kim Rowley (Founder of Key Internet Marketing, Inc.) has
You can stream the podcast at ThisIsAffiliateMarketing. com, and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, and iHeartRadio.
Shawn is Co-founder of Affiliate Summit and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine, and blogs at affiliatetip.com.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Get Your Users
into the Mobile Age
by Vadim Rogovskiy Vadim Rogovskiy
T
he race for business world dominance moves on, and
The context is the key to mobile marketing. Unlike mar-
mobile seems to be leading in it. In fact, we are ap-
keting for the PC, your mobile marketing should be dynamic
proaching a mobile tipping point, where the percent-
and should depend on what and where your audience is doing,
age of Internet access from mobile devices begins to exceed
or on a specific location and time. You should convey the right message at the right time,
that of all other devices combined. According to GlobalWebIndex, mobile may surpass all other platforms, in terms of time spent online in 2016.
based on the location and needs of your audience. To become a part of the 30 billion actions committed on mobile devices daily, integrate your strategies for mobile and desktop market-
How to adjust to the change of client’s demand? Audiences need to be reached in the environment they
ing to communicate with the audience on their (and not on your) terms.
inhabit. If your audience is app users, it is worth thinking about having such an app, since mobile apps as a medium of
Payments
interaction have a number of advantages over websites. One
Loyalty and payments in mobile are inextricably linked.
would also mention the level of interaction it delivers, the abil-
The most successful applications in this segment are created
ity to involve user with messages and notifications, a higher
by such innovative companies as Starbucks, Amazon, and
loading speed, better performance, and other benefits.
Uber. They managed to successfully link the payment system
So, how to get more users and the most out of them?
and loyalty program, making them an integral part of everyday life of their users. Progressive brands need to give their cus-
Don’t dwell on the applications
tomers the experience of using loyalty programs in relation to
Forrester notes that more time should be given to the
the payments on the go.
study of mobile subtleties, tracking all actions of users, rather than simply observing the growth of weekly app downloads
So where should you aim your marketing efforts? If businesses use technology and benefits of mobile In-
and arriving visitors to the website.
ternet in a smart way, they will be able to interact directly with
Understand mobile users
their customers, and thus leave their slower competitors be-
In an increasingly data-driven world, companies are try-
hind. Also, being able to change the content marketing strat-
ing to understand the motives of their customers. A study
egy and use third-party apps can help influence the target
conducted by Harvard Business Review showed that 60% of
audience anyplace, anytime.
mobile usage happens at home. Examining the ways to en-
So, your primary goal is to establish your presence in the
gage users via their devices can allow the company devote all
mobile segment in a way that people can find you where and
its efforts to meet the target demographic groups.
when they need it most.
14
Vadim Rogovskiy is the Founder of Clickky - a platform for mobile monetization and user acquisition.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Look at
Multi-Channel Attribution in 2017 by Rick Gardiner
C
Rick Gardiner
ompanies are still struggling with marketing attribution and the struggle is real. Last year NetElixir did
creates a fragmented experience for the customer. First-click
a study of 2,914,484 online customer interactions
or last-click attribution models work against the ideology of
(“touches”) that resulted in 522,074 conversions across eight different industry sectors.
creating a cohesive brand experience. With the affiliate channel having the flexibility to support
The average number of online interactions by custom-
customers at top-of-funnel (TOFU), middle-of-funnel (MOFU),
ers ranged from 2.4 for B2B all the way up to 7.3 for fashion
and bottom-of-funnel (BOFU), think about what kind of assets
retailers—a fascinating view into the customer journey and
and content you should make available to your affiliates for
consumer purchase behavior online.
each stage.
Attribution became a hot topic five years ago when digital
White papers, product reviews, and video are great for
marketers were trying to figure out which channel should get
TOFU affiliates. Product spec sheets, webinars, and “How To”
credit for a when a customer touched multiple channels in the
guides work well with MOFU affiliates. Free trials, coupons,
conversion path. The early days of attribution were somewhat
and exclusive offers are good for BOFU affiliates.
of a turf war between top of the funnel (social media, con-
When all marketing channels are aligned, the customer
tent marketing, display, etc.) and bottom of the funnel (direct
experience is seamless. Each channel augments the other
search, email, retargeting) marketing managers lobbying for
driving towards a shared goal. Incrementality is delivered
first-click or last-click attribution model that would give their
through a holistic multi-channel strategy that supports the
channel most credit.
customer along their journey with less focus on cross-chan-
The unique challenge we face in affiliate marketing is how
nel cannibalization.
our channel influences consumer behavior throughout the conversion funnel—yet many affiliate programs use a simpli-
Moving from Channel-Centric to Customer-
fied first-click or last-click attribution model that can create
Centric
misalignment and conflict in a marketing organization.
With the affiliate channel being able to support TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU marketing channels, we need to shift our
Create Consistency and Alignment Across All
thinking from channel-centric to customer-centric marketing.
Channels
It requires insight and understanding about how consumers
The most important component in a multi-channel marketing environment is creating a consistent customer expe-
interact with your brand before deciding to become a customer.
rience, regardless of the touchpoint. You should be thinking
Customer-centric marketing is personalized and creates
about how to best support your customer at all stages of their
a powerful customer experience that increases loyalty, reten-
journey. When marketing channels are siloed, or unaligned, it
tion, and results in a higher customer lifetime value (CLV).
Rick Gardiner is CEO of iAffiliate Management.
15
· Issue 37 · January 2017
3 Ways to
Love Your Work Life
by Liliana Chan Ventura
Liliana Chan Ventura
we do matches who we are, we begin transforming our
I
organizations positively from the inside out. n today’s fast-moving, high-stress workplace, we are
2. Reward Output. Although adults make up a majority of
plagued by the belief that we can either have the life we
the workforce, employees are often treated as children
want or the work we love, not both.
that require babysitting. We are often monitored for the
Brazilian businessman, Ricardo Semler, has challenged
quantity of time at our desks over the quality of our ef-
this notion for over 20 years. He pioneered radical business
forts on assignments.
policies that bank the growth and productivity of a company
We want to contribute our intellect and experience
on the independence and wellbeing of its members.
to our company’s progress, but can be limited by proce-
Here are three principles we can learn from Semler’s em-
dures that put our maturity and capability into question.
ployee-centric, democratic system:
One approach to overcome this is to focus on and reward
1.
Ask Why. Seduced by the hypnotic glare of 24-7 notifica-
work output instead of time input. By concentrating on
tions on our devices, and our never-ending list of action
the desired results, we are free to trust and empower
items, it’s easy to confuse what we do daily with who we
one another to make sound decisions, be flexible and ef-
are. Being mindful of who we want to be always seems
ficient, and be more autonomous, which leads to higher
to fall to the bottom of our priority list. When life comes
employee satisfaction.
to a screeching halt – due to a loss, an illness, or a trial – that’s the time to take an honest look inward.
16
3.
Band Together. Competition is frequently the norm when compensation and career advancement are at
It’s the time to examine who we are now and who
stake. However, true and lasting change for happy and
we really want to be. By doing so, we may realize that
sustainable work-life integration can happen when we
showing up for work, only to be absent in life, is not a
unite with a critical mass of like-minded individuals.
reasonable compromise. When we ask why, most of us
By working hand-in-hand with colleagues that chal-
will find that we value building and leaving a meaningful
lenge the status quo, by asking why, or foster trust and
legacy for our loved ones over meeting deliverables and
autonomy by rewarding output, we create a sweet spot,
deadlines for mere acquaintances.
where professional and personal factors intersect.
Answering the question of why we do what we do
Based on key takeaways from Semler’s lifelong innova-
can lead us to liberating self-awareness; to finding bet-
tion in the workplace, it’s possible to achieve the life we want
ter ways to align our actions with our values. When what
through the work we love.
Liliana Chan Ventura (@LilianaCVentura) serves as the Director of Global Key Accounts for AccelerationPartners.com.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Programmatic
Marketing 101 by Victor Lopez
Victor Lopez
A
ffiliates and affiliate managers are always looking for the edge when promoting an offer. In the past,
available to the independent online marketer. While some of
Google and Facebook have been a go to traffic
the major buying platforms, called DSP’s (demand side plat-
source for many, but I’m here to tell you there are other op-
forms) still have high monthly spend commitments, there are
tions out there.
options out there for the little guy - Choozle and Sitescout are
Programmatic marketing, something that started around
two that come to mind.
2007 with a few media agencies onboard, has now blown up
Among traditional media buyers, programmatic is often
and become accessible to a lot of the online marketing popu-
seen as complicated and difficult to understand. A lot of the
lation.
confusion comes from so many acronyms and terms that get
If you have not heard about programmatic, here is a quick
thrown about. When coaching people on programmatic, I of-
run down of its definition; target the right person at the right
ten liken it to using Lego blocks. Using ad tech tools you can
time for the right price. With programmatic, your focus is on
build out your campaign in order to meet your goals.
the audience rather than the media. In the past, a media buyer would usually do some research
Some things to consider before testing a programmatic campaign:
with one of the online measuring tools, such as Comscore, to
1.
find where their target demographic was. Next, he went out
2. Tag and pixel your site and funnel (affiliates should send
and purchased media buys on those sites in the hopes that it would be targeted enough to work toward their objective.
Have clear campaign objectives - ROI, CPA, etc. pixel to advertiser’s site)
3.
Be committed. You probably won’t see results immedi-
The problem with this was that it usually resulted in a lot
ately. A lot of DSP’s have algorithms that improve with
of waste, and a cumbersome approach managing so many
time and data, so, at minimum a 30-day campaign is
different insertion orders if the buy was too big.
needed to see if it’s working.
Programmatic came on the scene in large part to solve
4.
Perspective of results-programmatic may not provide
this problem and bring efficiency, as well as efficacy to the
the same ROI as a search campaign, but it can definitely
media buy. It tries to solve the biggest challenge of marketing-
help you scale.
reaching the right target.
Programmatic can scale your campaigns beyond what you
Over the years, programmatic has evolved from being almost exclusively used by major media agencies to now being Victor Lopez is the founder of coaching site programmaticacademy.com
are currently bringing in now. It takes guts to try out something new, but the rewards can be awesome when done right.
17
¡ Issue 37 ¡ January 2017
What Merchants Want
From Their Affiliates?
by Michel Cervantes Martinez
Michel Cervantes Martinez
A
ffiliates are well aware of what they want from the
3. Introduce Yourself. You cannot take for granted that
merchants they promote, but how about what the
the merchants know you. Begin a personal relationship with
merchants want from the affiliates?
the people in charge of your account. Share your goals and
Follow the next five points to integrate your work into a
bigger strategy and build a productive long-term relationship with your merchants. 1. Understand What You Do. Know the key performance indicators (KPI’s) of your digital media. You also need to understand your audience. It may seem like it is all about the purchase, but it is not, find your strengths.
understand the marketing plan of your merchant. Ask for information, materials, and become part of their strategy. Educate yourself on the terms and conditions of the program. You would not want to be terminated for violating a brand policy or a paid-search rule. 4. Be Trustworthy. Be realistic about your goals and aware of your limitations. Participate only in strategies when
You may not like labels, but categories are useful: cou-
you can bring sales. You need to be prepared to make last
pons site, tools provider, loyalty site, sub-affiliate network,
minute adjustments, as not all merchants will meet deadlines
international, content creator or pay-per-click (PPC). Choose
and you should always have a plan B. Some adjustments
your main category, having too many could be as confus-
are acceptable and others are not. Remember that everyone
ing as having none. If your business model is original, try to
should win and do not be afraid to reject projects that did not
explain it based on the known categories, it will be easier to
convince you.
understand.
5. Play Fair. There are some bad practices that everyone
2. Research and Benchmark. Do your homework. You
dislikes, such as social media farming, unreliable databases,
need to understand how you fit in this universe. Choose your
and link farms. Those tricks will not bring sales, so, do not
allies wisely, you will want to keep them for a long time, and
even try them. Also, you need to be aware of the types of fraud
you will not want to have too many to handle.
and help prevent them for your own safety. Hackers and bots
Research will help you to have realistic expectations and
are a real threat.
to negotiate better. You would not want to spoil a good chance
In my experience, these five points make healthy relation-
because you are asking for a very high commission, or make
ships between affiliate and merchant and help to enrich and
a fool of yourself bragging unimpressive metrics. At this point,
strengthen any marketing plan. Other stories may be different,
you may find another business model that best suits you.
but this is a good start.
I work in affiliate marketing for the Travel vertical from Cancun, Mexico.
19
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Reducing Chargebacks
and Fraud Through Data Analytics by Suresh Dakshina
Suresh Dakshina
W
hen a merchant wants to get a handle on charge-
dropping an affiliate that produces five percent chargebacks.
backs, there are certain key numbers that are
Be aware that if an affiliate gets a cut of the sales price,
critical to examine.
Start with the merchant account itself. Find out how
close you are to the threshold of one percent to three percent chargebacks that typically puts an account at risk.
there’s an incentive to recruit fake customers, split the commission, and then have the fake customer file a chargeback. We have also experienced situations where affiliates buy stolen credit cards and create fake orders to earn a commis-
Next, break down that total number of chargebacks into
sion. Working for a health-and-beauty client, we were able
two groups: those due to true fraud and those due to friendly
to identify and recover $20,000 in fraudulent sales driven
fraud. With modern fraud prevention tools in place, true fraud
through a single affiliate.
should account for well under ten percent of the total.
An unusually high rate of refunds on an affiliate’s sales
Friendly fraud is when the customer is aware of the
can be another red flag. A rogue affiliate can tell friends and
charge, but initiates a chargeback anyhow. Each chargeback
family to place orders, and then ask for a refund after a week.
due to friendly fraud has a story to tell the merchant. The story
Lax enforcement tends to make the problem worse.
may be a customer who wants to defraud the merchant, or a
Some vendors manage hundreds of clients and don’t provide
mistake the merchant has made.
the same degree of attention to each. When an affiliate knows
Figure out what percentage are due to fulfillment issues,
you are monitoring them, they are incentivized to tighten their
poor customer service, a sudden drop in product quality, or
controls and do a better job, so as not to risk losing the ac-
other root cause. We have seen instances where the fulfill-
count. The affiliate industry has a lot of moving parts. You
ment department did not track causes of problems, such as
must be vigilant.
an incomplete address, which can delay or prevent delivery.
The common thread for all chargebacks is to look for ab-
Or a customer service agent may collect the information for a
normal patterns, and analyze the numbers every month. You
refund but forget to click on the refund button.
may feel like you are making money, but if you don’t have these
If you sell through affiliates, pay attention to which ones
numbers under control, your feelings can be misleading.
are responsible for unusual numbers of chargebacks. Be
In our experience, a merchant keeping close watch on
aware that there are a few ‘bad apples’. If most affiliates fall
analytics can get chargebacks under control in as little as 90
within one percent to three percent chargebacks, consider
days.
20
Suresh Dakshina is President & co-founder of Chargeback Gurus, chargeback prevention and representment specialists.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Making Your Business
Sexy on Social Media
Michelle Held
by Michelle Held
A
We know that social media posts that are accompanied few months ago, I was leading a webinar on social
by photos earn more engagement and clicks. A photo in a
media audits. The session ended with typical ques-
Facebook or Twitter stream stands out, because it takes up
tions about the best practices for content, productiv-
more real estate in a crowded space. Eye-catching visuals get
ity, and building a following.
readers’ attention, making them more likely to remember your
Then someone posted one last question to the chat window:
content. Images are necessary on the other social channels to
“I’m not very sexy. What do I post on social media?”
get maximum effect.
Well now, good thing we all have our webcams off! LOL. What he really meant was that he did not feel that his business could ever fit in with those beautiful Instagram posts, and that it was too boring for even Twitter, never mind somewhere fresh like Snapchat.
To market a so-called boring company on social media or in anywhere, think about the needs your business fills for a potential customer, and how to connect with their emotions. Most people move at least once in their lifetime, although not everyone employs professional movers. I advised him to
His line of business was supposedly not visually appeal-
talk about the positives that his business brings: sincere pho-
ing, but he still wanted a social media strategy. Mr. Unattract-
tos of his family run team, workers carefully packing and load-
ive felt like a wallflower in social media world. Thinking that a
ing your belongings, photos of houses or businesses they’ve
business is too unsexy or boring for social media is a com-
served to show us what size job they can handle.
mon concern that prevents many from getting started. In webinars, workshops, and live audits, I always want to have at least a preliminary solution, so I asked him what line of
Boring businesses can use ancillary topics like insurance and property value concerns. This all gives them quality content for their blogs and provides content for social.
work he was in. He told the webinar audience that he owned a
B2B’s tend to be the industries that fall into the boring cat-
moving company. Phew. Easy. Although his question is valid,
egory. A few weeks later, I was asked the same question. This
moving vans are far from ugly ducklings. A moving company
time from a global brand that sells cranes. Challenging? You
is actually easy to market.
bet. Impossible? Never say never. Let’s call it social media for
If your brand, product, or business is not one of the beau-
not so sexy businesses.
tiful genre that are easy to represent in photos and market on
My extreme makeover session for boring businesses is
social (think travel, beauty, fashion), then you will indeed have
on January 15 at Affiliate Summit West. We’ll discuss what
to work a little and get creative when developing content.
works. I look forward to seeing you in Vegas.
Michelle is an and author and digital agency owner who blogs on metrony.com and pintalk.net
21
· Issue 37 · January 2017
5 Steps to Relaunch
an Affiliate Program
by Cristian Miculi
Cristian Miculi
S
ometimes your affiliate program gets idle, whether
Customize the network emails - application, acceptance
it’s because no dedicated person handles it, or it’s
and rejection. Don’t forget to tell the affiliates what your prod-
not seen as a priority. Symptoms of this idle mode
ucts do, and how to reach you for more details.
include:
The affiliate information page on your website should tell
»» Lower rates of the monthly affiliate sign-up numbers than before;
affiliates how much they earn, when they get paid, how to join, and any restrictions you have (e.g. brand use in paid search).
»» Slightly declining affiliates revenue, month over month;
3. Refresh your ads and deals. Banners should be re-
»» Constant decrease of sales and traffic active affiliates.
freshed at least twice a year and you should roll out dedicated
Here are the five steps you should take to relaunch the affiliate program:
banners for special campaigns, such as Black Friday, summer sales, etc. Use video ads for your products - include your prod-
1. Make sure the affiliates’ traffic has a smooth con-
uct videos on the landing pages affiliates use.
version path. Look at the shopping cart or sign-up form: it
4. Identify top potential affiliates from your niche
should support local languages (and payment methods); cus-
and give them the red carpet treatment. Find them online,
tomers should know where they are in the process; and the
promoting your competitors, and in the affiliate network. Co-
cart must have payment processor contact information and
branded landing pages, exclusive deals, exclusive banners,
trust seals.
and giveaways for their audience are some examples to stir-
Check the dedicated landing pages for affiliates for clear
up their interest. Often, you may have to get a paid listing to
call-to-actions and ensure the messaging on the banners and
open the relationship with a publisher, but eventually your goal
videos is coherent with the destination landing pages.
is for them to promote you as an affiliate.
2. Optimize network listings and affiliate info page. To
5. Communicate regularly with affiliates. According to
recruit new affiliates, educate them about your products and
the AffStat 2015 survey, about 80% of affiliates consider their
services, and give them the information to decide on joining
relationship with the affiliate manager to be valuable, if not
the program.
crucial. So get that newsletter section updated at least once
As the most important factor for affiliate, when choosing
a month, and speak individually with your top performers on
a merchant to work with, is the affiliate network or tracking
a bi-weekly basis. Go with different messaging for each affili-
platform (AffStat 2015 survey), make sure yours is trusted by
ate category depending on their promotion channels: content,
affiliates. Go through your affiliate network advertiser profile
coupons, email, paid search, etc.
and make sure it’s still relevant as category, keywords, commission information, terms, restrictions, etc.
22
To wrap this up: don’t expect overnight results - this should take at least 3 months to see the first results.
Cristian heads up performance marketing for Connectify and Speedify networking software apps
¡ Issue 37 ¡ January 2017
Smart Affiliate Recruitment:
Teodora Dobjanschi
Affiliate Lifetime Value by Teodora Dobjanschi
T
he value an affiliate has in a specific program is one
and particularities. This will help you identify the right affiliates
of the key metrics a manager should measure in or-
for your program and set smart recruitment tactics based on
der to make the right decision for growing its affiliate
real data from your program.
channel.
TIP: Taking a closer look at the affiliate lifetime value gives
Recruiting the wrong affiliates will inevitably lead to poor
you an insight about the state of your program, and the sta-
engagement, low activation rate, and a high number of latent
tus of your affiliates, while at the same time it provides data
or dormant affiliates.
about top and potential affiliates or the ones that are definitely not a good fit and should be removed.
Calculating value: To find the overall lifetime value of your affiliates, you should split the total revenue generated by your affiliates to the total number of registered affiliates.
Planning ahead: In your analysis you may find out that affiliates from a specific region are the ones that have the highest lifetime
For example, if the affiliates have generated a total rev-
value in your program, and also that these are usually using
enue of $100,000 in the past year, and there were 4,000 regis-
a specific promotional method (i.e. content or PPC affiliates).
tered affiliates in the program, the overall lifetime value of an
This is the data you need to know in order to focus your re-
affiliate in this program would be $100,000/4,000 = $25.
cruitment budgets in the future on the right affiliate catego-
TIP: Remember to take into consideration the revenue,
ries, and have full control over your budget.
not the volumes they are generating, as $25 would be the
At the same time, you may find that you have affiliates
maximum amount to be paid per lead for recruitment pur-
from a specific country or category who are not productive at
poses.
all and are not a good fit for your program – you may want to remove these from future recruitment campaigns.
Finding the right match: To find the right affiliates and calculate their lifetime value, you should look at those that are active in your program. For example, if you have 400 active affiliates and they have generated $100,000 revenue in the past year, the lifetime value of an active affiliate would be $100,000/400=$250. Review each category and see where most of the active affiliates are from, and what are their promotional methods,
24
Nevertheless, keep in mind that the same affiliate can rank higher with a specific advertiser, and have lower results with a different one. The affiliate lifetime value is not the general value of one affiliate, but rather the value they have with a specific advertiser. Calculating the lifetime value of your affiliates gives you great insights about your program that will help you optimize, grow, and manage your affiliate channel. Teodora Dobjanschi is Senior Affiliate Recruiter at Avangate Affiliate Network.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Grow Your Audience
and Reduce Your Opt-outs by Cris Angelini Cris Angelini
T
here are plenty of articles focused on improving in-
would be an improvement for some of the brands out there. Ac-
box placement and increasing both open and click-
cording to a MarketingSherpa case study, The Golf Channel was
through rates, but two areas that are largely ignored
able to increase their list size by 32% leveraging these tools.
are growing your list size and reducing your unsubscribe rate. Lucky for you, they are also the two easiest to solve.
Reducing Opt-Outs
Let’s first discuss the top of the email funnel, list size.
Another opportunity to maximize your email programs
Established brands will find that over time their list size will
is at the bottom of the funnel with opt-outs. Why are people
flatten out or even start to decline, while at the same time see
opting out of your mailings in the first place? They obviously
website traffic increase from search or social sharing.
were engaged at some point, but something along the line has
This can lead to a huge disparity between your site traffic and list size. Take ESPN and WSJ, for instance, according to
caused them to scroll to the bottom of your email and click to unsubscribe.
SimilarWeb, they have site traffic of 384M and 84M unique
Did you mail them too frequently? Were you sending in-
monthly visitors, but their list sizes are 12M and 500K. Even
formation that wasn’t relevant to the consumer? With a pref-
a modest increase to a 5% capture rate adds millions of new
erence center, consumers can choose their email frequency,
subscribers.
as well as the types of messages they receive. In the case of The Golf Channel, they saw a decrease in opt outs, as well as
Growing Your List One Click Registration – Do you really need a birthday,
increased engagement averaging a 40% open rate and 60% click through rate.
country, and zip code to send an effective email? Removing
If a consumer still chooses to opt out of all of your email
those unnecessary fields will help increase the number of
messaging, the thank you page can be a last chance to keep
subscribers significantly, especially on mobile devices, where
interacting with them. Savvy brands are asking customers
space is limited and users are less likely to fill in multiple fields.
to engage with them via Facebook or Twitter on their unsub
Feature Email Signup Opportunities – Where are you cap-
thank you page, giving them a chance to continue the con-
turing email signups? Far too many brands simply throw an
versation.
email signup in the footer of their site template. The digital and
Inboxing and open rates are always going to be important
email teams need to collaborate and A/B test lightboxes for con-
metrics for an email program. Leveraging list size through cre-
tent and positioning, as well as use their social media presence
ative acquisition efforts and minimizing opt-outs are the next
to drive email signups. Even adding email signups to the header
steps in optimizing your email channel.
Cris Angelini is the Director of Partnerships and Alliances at PostUp.
25
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Tracking Issues:
When the World Is Burning
by Joel Garcia
Joel Garcia
Y
ou’ve recruited great affiliates. Your creatives are up
data source is unavailable, all is not lost. Historical data and
to date. You’ve provided great content for your af-
conversion rates can be of great use in calculating estimated
filiates to use. There are great deals and promotions
sales and commissions. With this research complete, a man-
available. You’ve done everything right… and everyone is mad
ager is then able to make plans for amends and contact affili-
at you.
ates to provide information about the outage.
Despite the best precautions, sometimes affiliate pro-
Compensation for a tracking error should be calculated
grams experience tracking and attribution issues that need
and processed as quickly as possible, however, affected af-
to be properly reconciled. This can be the stuff of nightmares
filiates should know that sometimes this due diligence may
for affiliates and affiliate managers alike. Affiliates invest a
take several weeks, depending on the scale of the outage. Ad-
great deal of time, effort, and capital into their websites, com-
ditional compensation, above and beyond estimates, may be
munities, and campaigns. Every impression, click, cookie, and
warranted for a severe outage. Managers should continue to
sale matters. When anything happens to put tracking at risk,
communicate with affiliates about the situation to alleviate
the affiliate management team is responsible for handling the
fears and maintain a positive business relationship.
situation quickly and transparently.
There are several processes a manager can put in place
Tracking errors can be created inadvertently by website re-
to reduce the possibility of tracking problems. Conduct track-
designs, additional integrations, network changes, or any event
ing tests regularly on all networks, especially for multiple pay-
when the tracking code could possibly be changed, affected, or
ment types. We have seen many merchants overlook tracking
omitted. Data center outages, DOS attacks, and even an under-
via PayPal, for example. Educate your technical team about
funded affiliate escrow account can also interrupt tracking.
the importance of the tracking pixel to the affiliate channel
If a tracking error has occurred, take a deep breath and
and make sure to include affiliate tracking tests as part of any
don’t panic. Your first order of business is correcting the track-
website redesigns or updates. Enable auto-deposit for your
ing immediately. Depending upon the cause, this may involve
network escrow account to eliminate an unexpected low bal-
enlisting technical support or network assistance. Your net-
ance and set up a reminder for yourself at least two months
work is a great resource and should be quick to assist you.
before your on file credit card is due to expire.
Next, it is important to research the scope of the damage and
Unfortunately, not all tracking outages can be prevented
what data might be available to help fill in missing information.
and affiliates are rightly concerned to know that their efforts
You may have additional data available via analytics or inter-
will be fairly compensated. Affiliate managers should work
nal tracking that can provide helpful sale data. If an alternative
quickly to minimize damage to the channel and affiliates.
26
Joel Garcia of Lab6 Media rescues data from the abyss and plays guitar quite nicely.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Where Influencer Marketing
and Affiliate Marketing Meet by Chris Tradgett
I
Chris Tradgett
ment function is that expansion of activity is constrained by budget. This is a fast moving area of marketing, so the affili-
nfluencer Marketing has become a central focus for many
ate CPA model offers valuable flexibility to the merchant in de-
marketers over the past year. From being a key factor in fash-
veloping influencer relationships, with the added benefit of a
ion, mainly involving celebrity endorsement, the term is now
measurable ROI.
applied more widely across third party content marketing.
Even with standard affiliate commissions, there have
Affiliate marketers, of course, would say this is what content
always been occasions when an influential affiliate attracts
affiliates have been doing for years – so where do these inter-
an additional tenancy payment for placement. It can be ben-
sect, and what does influencer mean for an affiliate manager?
eficial to look at increased flexibility with influencers; an attribution model is particularly beneficial for working with these
Overlap
publishers.
For many marketers, it has become evident that what we are doing is not digital marketing – but marketing in a hyper-
Finding Relevant Influencers
connected digital age - and it’s broadening. The silos of affili-
67.6% of marketers state that finding relevant influenc-
ate, PR, advertising, SEO, and content are becoming less con-
ers is the hardest challenge, according to TapInfluence. For
strained, and there is much more crossover, not just of types
brands in micro-niches, it is possible to mine the affiliate
of publisher being engaged with, but also how their websites
network data to discover relevant publishers and several net-
and activity are monetized.
works have this search facility. There are also several indepen-
Most bloggers and publishers are aware of all the various
dent analysis tools to enable the brand to extend this search
models of monetization, including affiliate, and the more com-
to a wider potential publisher base and find relevant influential
mercial publishers are using multiple revenue streams. In the
bloggers and content affiliates.
tighter niches, many or most of these influencers already use
Using this broader analysis helps in identifying the pub-
affiliate programs as a revenue stream; the Technorati 2013
lishers who work across several networks and yields useful
report shows 41% of influencers using affiliate programs.
understanding of the best way to approach and develop rela-
There is always the issue for the content publisher losing out
tionships with them.
to the last-minute coupon affiliate cookie overwrite, though that is being addressed.
So… Influencer marketing presents some real opportunities for
Budgets
affiliate marketers. With the eroding of silos in marketing and
A major benefit of the affiliate channel for many brands is
more transparent commission being applied, the two chan-
that they sensibly see affiliate as a cost of sales and thereby
nels are intersecting. There is a huge opportunity to develop
elastic with sales volumes, as opposed to a marketing cost.
relationships with influencers to deliver a stronger proposition
The difference with influencer marketing as a brand engage-
within the affiliate discipline.
Chris Tradgett is Director at Publisher Discovery having started in affiliate at buy.at affiliate network.
27
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Productivity, Prioritizing Goals,
and Overcoming Setbacks by Travis Glenn
“M
Travis Glenn
ost people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in
each day, you can project out to develop an overview of your
a month.” unknown
entire week, month, quarter, and year. You don’t have to figure
We all want more hours in the day. Our schedules are
filled with commitments, meetings, personal appointments, and huge piles of emails. It’s easy to overbook yourself. This can leave us frustrated and unproductive.
out every detail months in advance, but you may have some major events and initiatives to plan for. Work backwards from a major goal and add in the steps that are required to make it happen. Stay mindful of your
There are a few strategies I’ve found that help organize
weekly timeframes. If you’re knocking off five high value tasks
my week and tackle goals. These tips can help prioritize high
each day, that’s 25 in a typical five-day workweek; well over
value tasks and adjust to unexpected setbacks.
1,000 in a year. Completing 1,000 tasks that are truly high value will lead to some amazing results.
Goal Setting Triage We all utilize some form of goal setting. Where most of us fall short is in conducting a deep evaluation of these goals and tasks. Do this and triage accordingly. There are many productivity apps that are available, yet I’ve had more luck with an old school approach. A physical day
Expect the unexpected. Life happens. The best made plans don’t always work out. Challenges, failures, distractions, even emergencies will strike at inconvenient times. Flexibility and ferocity can help overcome these setbacks.
planner is perfect for this. There is a limited amount of space
Be flexible enough that you don’t meltdown when things
for each day block. This forces you to focus on the top five
go wrong. Things rarely play out exactly as we expect them
tasks. When choosing your tasks, think quality over quantity.
to, and that’s okay. Be flexible and realize that you may have
There will be dozens of smaller things you do everyday, but what are the five tasks that will make the biggest impact
to course correct and try a backup plan to accomplish your objectives.
for you, your employer, and your customers? Keep your plan-
That’s where ferocity comes in. If your goals are truly vi-
ner close to your computer and check it frequently to keep
tal, get them done. If some unexpected emergency made it
yourself on track for completing your big five. You can even
impossible to accomplish anything on Tuesday and Wednes-
do a little victory celebration once you cross off your tasks.
day, work on Saturday and Sunday. Or double up your hours or your efforts on Thursday and Friday. Sometimes, you can
Timeframe Perspective In addition to using a planner to hit five high priority goals
delegate or lean on your team to help out in a pinch, but often it takes hustle and hard work.
Social Media Marketer and Biz Dev Director at the PeerFly Affiliate Network. Twitter: @travispeerfly
29
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Are You Seizing China’s
E-Commerce Opportunity? by Jeff Unze
Jeff Unze
C
hina is the world’s biggest e-commerce market, cur-
of Chinese have international credit cards, fewer have PayPal.
rently twice the size of the US, and three times its size
China KOLs (key opinion leaders), with great names like
by 2020. Have you investigated its suitability for your
“Mr. Bags” and “GoGoBoi,”, do a great job culturally position-
products? Have you wondered how international merchants
ing brands to build instant credibility. Many take liberties with
sell to a market that’s notoriously difficult to navigate? Well,
placement however, cyber-squatting on social media brand
it’s easier than you might think.
pages and portraying themselves as official channels.
Previously, marketing to China required logistics, localiza-
China resellers are online retail partners that take advan-
tion, payment integration and a local partner. Brands turned to
tage of China’s logistics, payment, and localization asymme-
marketplaces like TMall and JD, that require $100,000 setup
try to make money. They offer international products for sale
fees, six-figure advertising commitments, loss of brand con-
on their site at a premium. They take payment from their cus-
trol and bad revenue share terms.
tomers via Wechat or Alipay, and then place the order directly
Today, China’s newly wealthy are sophisticated “hai tao”
on merchant’s international sites, and ship to a US freight for-
(overseas) buyers, who visit international websites to find
ward address. The downside is final customer information is
the best the world has to offer. There are many performance
not passed to the merchant, and pirated products often make
channels to reach these active buyers that require little inte-
their way into the product mix. China ecommerce apps are the last category of perfor-
gration but produce significant sales. Which products are the right fit? Baby and mom items
mance options. Shopping apps help users buy the way they
dominate, equaling 50% of cross-border volume. Fashion and
want (65% of e-commerce in China is done via smart phone).
beauty products are next, both affordable and aspirational
Some of the apps do other functions, as well, such as discov-
luxury brands do quite well. Health and tech products are also
ery via user or professionally generated content articles.
significant slices of the market.
How do you find these partners? Your affiliate network
Four categories of traffic partners dominate performance in China.
do a quick search in your affiliate network for Chinese names
Cash back and deal sites can drive tens of thousands of customers to your .com. The downside is low cart conversion when users are linked out to an English site that doesn’t have Chinese characters, payment options, or logistics. Less than 1%
30
rep should have a database of good places to start. You can as well. There are also a number of KOL agencies that can also point you in the right direction. The opportunity is huge and well worth the time required to vet and check China channels.
Jeff Unze is VP of BD at the Beyond Fashion Discovery App and long-time China marketer.
· Issue 37 · January 2017
8 Ways to
Travel Easier by Shawn Collins
I
fly around often for work, and I have some strategies and tricks to make my trips easier. Whether you travel or the
Shawn Collins
time, or just occasionally, see below for some things you
may not be doing, yet. 1. Install Rideshare Apps. Uber and Lyft are in most cities, and I far prefer them to yellow cabs for comfort and ease of booking the rides. I prefer Lyft, since it allows for tipping in the app (Uber doesn’t), because I often don’t have cash on me. 2. Get a BauBax Travel Jacket. If you think it would be
take a picture of the room number outside your door with your phone.
helpful to have a jacket that includes a neck pillow, gloves, sty-
6. SeatGuru for the Best Seats. TripAdvisor has a ser-
lus pen, neoprene lined drink pocket, a 10-inch tablet pocket,
vice at SeatGuru.com where you can enter in the airline and
a water-resistant smartphone pocket, a passport pocket, and
flight number you plan to book, and you can see which seats
more, check out BauBax.
are the best. Sometimes, seats you think are better are a little
3. Apply for TSA PreCheck. security lines are the lon-
narrow or don’t recline.
gest at the most inconvenient times. So, take advantage of
7. Install Airline App. the airline apps make it easy to
the express line by going through the quick process of apply-
check-in for your flight from your phone, as well as receiving
ing for TSA PreCheck. Not only is the security line shorter, but
updates on delays and gate changes (let me see your printed
you don’t have to remove your shoes, laptop, belt, etc.
boarding pass do that!). Plus, many of them enable paperless
4. Travel Charger and Cord. if you pack at the last min-
boarding, so it’s one less thing to keep track of.
ute, that can lead to stress when trying to find things you need
8. Collapsible Water Bottle. flying dehydrates you, and
to bring, like a charger and cord for your phone. Just get ex-
while the flight attendants will bring around water, I want more
tras that are strictly for traveling and keep them in your com-
than those little dentist cups. Get a collapsible water bottle
puter bag.
and fill it up after security. When you’ve finished it, either try
5. Take a Picture of Your Room Number. after a while, the hotels all blur together, and it’s a hassle if you forget your room number and must go to the front desk to ask them where it is. When you go to the room for the first time, just
and get more water on the flight, or dry and collapse your bottle. Travel is a whole lot more fun when you prepare well. Have a safe and fun trip.
Shawn is Co-founder of Affiliate Summit and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine, and blogs at affiliatetip.com.
31
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Affiliate Summit West 2017
Agenda Day 0
Saturday, 1/14/2017
Sunday, 1/15/2017
Early Check-In Open
Check-In Open
Day 1
Time: 12:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Time: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm
Location: Champagne Ballroom 1/4
Location: Champagne Ballroom 1/4
Come by Saturday to pick up your badge and attendee bag
Pick up your conference badge and attendee bag, and get
so you can enter immediately on Sunday when the confer-
started with Affiliate Summit.
ence opens!
Networking Lounge Open Networking for Introverts Time: 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm Location: Versailles 1/2
Time: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm Location: Vendome A All attendees are welcome to take advantage of the tables
»» Missy Ward, Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit
and WiFi to have meetings, catch up on work, or simply
»» Shawn Collins, Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit
take a break. Coffee and Tea available to those with Refresh
Does the idea of introducing yourself to a constant series of strangers over three days make you sick to your stomach? Do you tend to enjoy quiet concentration, listen more than you talk, and think before you speak? Well, come to our
Drink Tickets. (The VIP area located within the Networking Lounge is open to VIP Pass Holders only.) Open to All Pass Holders
networking for introverts’ workshop for some advice and exercises to get you ready to be a more effective networker. Niche/Vertical: Networking Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced Open to All Pass Holders
Press and Speaker Lounge Time: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm Location: Bordeaux The Press and Speaker Lounge is an area reserved credentialed Press and Speakers only to grab some desk space, run through presentations, relax, and network. Press or Speaker Ribbon Required
33
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Exhibit Hall Booth Setup Time: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm Location: Rivoli & Vendome B & C Exhibitors may set up their booth at this time.
Session 1a – DIY Tips for Building Big Things With WordPress Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Location: Champagne 2 »» Brian Messenlehner, Co-Founder/CTO, WebDevStudios
Exhibitor Ribbon Required
»» David Vogelpohl, VP Web Strategy, WP Engine WordPress is more than a blogging platform, it’s an applica-
Meet Market Table Setup Time: 9:00 am - 12:00 pm Location: Concorde A, B & C Meet Market Exhibitors may set up their tables at this time.
tion framework. Learn the plugins, themes, tools, and techniques used to create WordPress experiences that are so much more than blogging. Niche/Vertical: WordPress Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate
Exhibitor Ribbon Required
Job and Resource Fair Time: 9:00 am – 11:00 am Location: Skyview 5/6 (Bally’s) Your company needs a place to find people to find new employees/contractors, business solutions and targeted
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 1b – How to Become a Millionaire Blogger – Ask the Experts Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Location: Champagne 3
traffic. You need a place to find a new career and sell your
»» John Chow, Titles Are For Wimps, John Chow dot Com
services. These places are actually the same place. Your
»» John Rampton, CEO, Due.com
solution is the Affiliate Summit Job and Resource Fair. Par-
»» Syed Balkhi, CEO, WPBeginner
ticipating is easy. Just locate the room area that is suited
»» Zac Johnson, CEO, ZacJohnson.com
to your needs, grab a blank sign and write down what you want. Shy? Don’t worry. You can simply walk around to view
Four of the industry’s most well-known and successful
the offerings and see if you’re a fit.
bloggers and online marketers come together to share their expertise, insight, & knowledge on how to build a success-
Open to All Pass Holders
ful business through blogging. Niche/Vertical: Monetization
First Timer Orientation Time: 10:00 am - 10:30 am Location: Champagne 2
Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
»» Shawn Collins, Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit All first-time attendees are encouraged to join Affiliate Sum-
Session 1c – Live Site Reviews – SEO & Monetization
mit Co-Founder, Shawn Collins for tips and advice on get-
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
ting the most out of your time at Affiliate Summit.
Location: Versailles 1/2
Niche/Vertical: Networking
»» Adam Riemer, President, Adam Riemer Marketing LLC
Target Audience: First-Time Attendees
»» Brian LaFrance, Lead SEO Analyst, CBS Interactive
Experience Level: Beginner
»» Carolyn Shelby, Director, SEO, Tronc, Inc
Open to All Pass Holders
34
»» Scott Polk, CEO, MarketingNomads.com
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Want your website to rank higher in the search engines or
models to their onboarding, activating, and measuring re-
maybe you want to know how to make more money. Sub-
sults. Q&A at the end.
mit your site for a live review or learn from watching others with these 4 experts. Niche/Vertical: SEO Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate
Niche/Vertical: Influencer Marketing Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Meet Market Open Session 1d – Advertiser’s Crash Course in Influencer Marketing Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Geno Prussakov, CEO, AM Navigator LLC
Time: 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm Location: Concorde A, B & C The Meet Market is a showcase featuring affiliate programs, networks, and vendors. Each exhibitor table is a meeting spot for teaching, learning, closing deals, creating partnerships and finding new opportunities. Review the Meet Market Map, to line up who you want to meet.
Learn to leverage the power of influencers! We will cover an array of key areas: from types of influencers and payment
Open to All Pass Holders
35
· Issue 37 · January 2017
VIP Snack Break Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm Location: Skyview 5/6 (Bally’s) VIP Pass Holders: Fuel up and recharge with some snacks and drinks in a relaxed networking environment. (Your “Sunday Snack” Ticket must also be presented upon arrival). VIP Pass Holders with Snack Ticket Only
Session 2c – Attribution in Real Life – Case Studies from the Vault Time: 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Sarah Beeskow Blay, Director of Client Services, ShareASale, Inc. See real life examples of how merchants use attribution to reduce spend and motivate their affiliates. Several case studies will be reviewed to illustrate best practices.
Session 2a – Your Family Will Destroy You; Find a Proper Support Network Time: 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm Location: Champagne 2
Niche/Vertical: Attribution Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
»» Sean Steinmarc, CEO, TFC Tuition Financing Stop using family members as your support system when they don’t understand your business. Get support & assistance from those who understand the stresses of entrepreneurship. Niche/Vertical: Entrepreneurship Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 2d – Engage and Convert 500% More Using Video Commerce Time: 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Rey Pasinli, Executive Director, Total Apps, Inc. The future is Web 3.0: Social Commerce. VideoCheckout enables marketers to sell directly within consumer’s Facebook feeds. Frictionless transactions convert 500% higher than text or banner ads. Niche/Vertical: Conversions
Session 2b – Transitioning from Sponsored Posts to Affiliate Posts Time: 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm Location: Champagne 3
Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Advanced VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
»» Stephanie Robbins, President, Robbins Interactive Want affiliate marketing as part of your revenue stream? Like the idea of passive income? Learn how to transition from a traditional post to a converting post without sacrificing your authenticity. Niche/Vertical: Influencer Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 3a – Maximizing Productivity: Tips & Tricks To Getting More Done Time: 1:00 pm - 1:30 pm Location: Champagne 2 »» Eric Nagel, CTO, FMTC Keeping busy and being productive are very different. This session will demonstrate various techniques to focus, work on the right tasks and eliminate distractions to get more done each and every day.
36
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Niche/Vertical: Productivity
Niche/Vertical: Influencers
Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser
Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser
Experience Level: Beginner
Experience Level: Intermediate
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 3b – 9 Ways to Increase Your Form Conversions Time: 1:00 pm - 1:30 pm Location: Champagne 3 »» Rich Plakas, Founder, Connected Systems In this session, I will review 9 ways you can increase your Form Conversions including using Google Maps APIs, Mobile Usability and Modal Windows. We’ll even get your Mom to help out! Niche/Vertical: Forms Target Audience: Affiliate/ Publisher, Merchant/ Advertiser Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 3c – How to Run a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign Time: 1:00 pm - 1:30 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Adam Dahlen, Director of Client Development, iAffiliate This session will provide an overview on influencer marketing. The agenda will include, how influencers differ from traditional affiliates, KPIs for measuring the success, tools and tactics.
37
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Session 3d – The Time is Now for an Affiliate Marketing Renaissance
Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Time: 1:00 pm - 1:30 pm Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Maura Smith, Senior Vice President, Affiliate Marketing, Pepperjam Network Learn why 2017 is the year of the Affiliate Marketing Renaissance and understand how taking advantage of evolving content can help capture the micro-moments that influence buyer decisions. Niche/Vertical: Renaissance Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 4c – RevShare Management Principles: Growth Through Balance Time: 1:45 pm - 2:15 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Greg Hoffman, President, Apogee Understanding how affiliates promote your brand is the first step toward finding balance and profitable growth in your program. Once you know, you can reorganize and execute a winning strategy. Niche/Vertical: Management Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate
Session 4a – What Customers Want From Your Web Content
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Time: 1:45 pm - 2:15 pm Location: Champagne 2 »» Brandon Gustafson, Marketing Instructor, Washington State This session will cover a consumer study that investigates the different ways consumers interpret affiliate web content. Niche/Vertical: Content Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 4d – A How to Guide to Make Your Email Newsletter Work for You Time: 1:45 pm - 2:15 pm Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Elie Ashery, CEO & President, Gold Lasso Email is the third largest driver of traffic yet we often fail to monetize it. Hear 6 concrete tips to enhance, optimize, and monetize your email newsletter to drive revenue and increase engagement. Niche/Vertical: Email Monetization
Session 4b – Affiliate Niches – What’s Hot and
Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser
What’s Not in 2017
Experience Level: Beginner
Time: 1:45 pm - 2:15 pm
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Location: Champagne 3 »» Andra Ioana, Affiliate Program Manager, FastSpring Overview of the best performing affiliates niches from the network and agency perspective. Get insights on what has worked in the past and is still profitable. Niche/Vertical: Niche Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher
38
Session 5a – Social Media for Boring Businesses Time: 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm Location: Champagne 2 »» Michelle Held, Owner, MetroNY, LLC Social media can work for non-sexy brands, products & ser-
· Issue 37 · January 2017
vices too! Learn to make social media work for businesses
»» Rachel Hirsch, Attorney, Ifrah PLLC
that aren’t very social. Get content ideas and examples. Niche/Vertical: Social Media Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Are there magic words that can help mitigate your exposure to a lawsuit? Learn the top 5 most common marketing disclaimers and how you can use them correctly. And wait until you hear what’s #6! Niche/Vertical: Disclaimers Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network
Session 5b – How to Growth Hack the Affiliate Earnings of Your Blog
Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Time: 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm Location: Champagne 3 »» Harsh Kumar Agrawal, CEO, ShoutMeLoud
Session 6a – How to Recruit New Affiliates that Sell Time: 3:15 pm - 3:45 pm
Growth hacking strategies for bloggers to increase their affiliate earning. The tips are tested, tried & proven on an award-winning blog.
Location: Champagne 2 »» Teodora Dobjanschi, Senior Affiliate Recruiter, Avangate
Niche/Vertical: Growth Hacking
Affiliate recruitment is a costly and complicated part of an
Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher
affiliate program development – simplify it with a targeted
Experience Level: Intermediate
approach! Find new affiliates that will sell.
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Niche/Vertical: Recruitment Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate
Session 5c – Affiliate’s Fraud Detection & Prevention
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Time: 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Gaurav Sethi, CEO & Head of Strategic Operations, Virus Do you see Spike in your affiliate’s monthly invoices? Are you loosing traffic from your cart or checkout page? Do you see round tripping in your traffic? Learn how to combat theft from us Niche/Vertical: Affiliate’s Frauds Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 6b – Affiliatize Me: Earning Revenue from User-Generated Links Time: 3:15 pm - 3:45 pm Location: Champagne 3 »» Joshua Margulis, CTO, Honeyfund.com, Inc. »» Sara Margulis, CEO, Honeyfund.com, Inc. More affiliate platforms offer scripts to automatically “affiliatize” links on your site that clicks off to an advertiser. Learn how Honeyfund is employing this technology and how you can do the same.
Session 5d – One Simple Disclaimer to Mitigate Lawsuits? – Check Out #6! Time: 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm Location: Versailles 3/4
Niche/Vertical: Auto-Affiliatizing Links Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
39
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Session 6c – Winning the Mobile Moments Time: 3:15 pm - 3:45 pm Location: Versailles 1/2
Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
»» Jonah-Kai Hancock, Director, TUNE Mobile moments are the next battleground to win, serve, and retain customers. A mobile moment is a point when someone pulls out a mobile device to get what they want immediately and in context. Are you missing huge opportunities to seize critical mobile moments? Niche/Vertical: Mobile Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 7b – Outsourcing Secrets Time: 4:00 pm - 4:30 pm Location: Champagne 3 »» Akiva Ben-Ezra, CEO, SEO Kings Everyone talks about Outsourcing but how to actually do this. Attendees will learn: Where to find the right staff. How to recruit and maintain them. How to manage staff from different cultures. Niche/Vertical: Outsourcing Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser,
Session 6d – Successful B2B Strategies & Why You
Network
Should be Promoting Tech
Experience Level: Beginner
Time: 3:15 pm - 3:45 pm
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Bonnie D’Amico, Senior Affiliate Manager, Shopify Learn campaign strategies and hear success stories on how affiliates are earning 5-6 figures a month by promoting B2B products/services. SAAS and general B2B program trends will be discussed. Niche/Vertical: Strategy Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 7c – Increasing Affiliate Revenue Through Membership Sites Time: 4:00 pm - 4:30 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Marcus Couch, Founder, Membership Coach Successful strategies to implement a membership site component into your affiliate marketing campaigns. Increase loyalty, increased affiliate revenue and additional recurring revenue at the same time. Niche/Vertical: Membership
Session 7a – Our Critical Role in the Affiliate Program Time: 4:00 pm - 4:30 pm Location: Champagne 2
Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
»» Theresa Duerr, Director of Digital Marketing, Quill.com It’s going to take creative ways of keeping your company
Session 7d – Bringing Brands to China with Affiliate
top of mind, informing the network and affiliates about
Marketing
what makes your business tick, and building relationships… all year ’round. Niche/Vertical: Growth
40
Time: 4:00 pm - 4:30 pm Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Rick Parada, Managing Director, Dealam & 55haitao
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Chinese consumers have an insatiable desire for international brands. I will discuss how to leverage affiliate marketing to develop and optimize your presence inside China.
Monday, 1/16/2017
Day 2
Niche/Vertical: China Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Attendee Check-In Time: 7:30 am - 5:00 pm Location: Champagne 1/4 Pick up your conference badge and attendee bag, and get started with Affiliate Summit.
Movers and Cocktail Shakers Reception Time: 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm Location: Vendome A Mix and mingle with other VIP pass holders and kickoff Affiliate Summit West 2017 over cocktails and light fare.
Networking Lounge Open Time: 7:30 am - 5:00 pm Location: Vendome A All attendees are welcome to take advantage of the tables and
VIP Pass Holders with Reception Ticket Only
WiFi to have meetings, catch up on work, or simply take a break. Coffee and Tea available to those with Refresh Drink Tickets.
Newcomer Program Meetup
Open to All Pass Holders
Time: 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm Location: Bordeaux The Affiliate Summit Newcomer Program helps connect first-time attendees with Affiliate Summit veterans. Conference veterans volunteer their time to share their past experiences, ideas and information to help newcomers optimize their time at the conference. This is an opportunity for those first-time attendees and conference veterans to meet. (You must be enrolled in the Affiliate Summit Newcomer Program to participate in this event.)
ShareASale Under the Stars Party Time: 8:00 pm - 12:00 am Location: Jewel Nightclub For details and to RSVP, please visit Blog.ShareASale.Com Open to All Pass Holders/RSVP Required
Press and Speaker Lounge Time: 7:30 am - 5:00 pm Location: Bordeaux The Press and Speaker Lounge is an area reserved credentialed Press and Speakers only to grab some desk space, run through presentations, relax and network. Press or Speaker Ribbon Required
Exhibit Hall Booth Refresh Time: 9:00 am - 10:00 am Location: Rivoli & Vendome B & C Exhibitors may come in during this time to refresh their booth from yesterday’s setup and prep booth staff. Grab-ngo coffee, tea and pastries will be served. Exhibitor or Sponsor Ribbon Required
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
VIP Buffet Breakfast Time: 9:00 am - 10:00 am Location: Concorde B & C VIP Pass Holders: Fuel up on a hearty buffet-style breakfast in a relaxed networking environment. (Your “Monday Breakfast” Ticket must also be presented upon arrival).
Session 8c – How Affiliate Industry Giants are Building for the Future Time: 10:00 am – 11:00am Location: Versailles 1/2 »» John Toskey, Director, eBay Partner Network »» Keith Posehn, Owner, Uber »» Robert Glazer, Managing Director, Acceleration Partners
VIP Pass Holders with Meal Ticket
Join Keith Posehn (Uber), John Toskey (Ebay Partner Network) and Robert Glazer (Acceleration Partners) as they
Session 8a – Expanding Reach: How Affiliates and
shed light on big changes and growth opportunities in the
Social Drive Together
affiliate marketing channel.
Time: 10:00 am – 11:00am Location: Champagne 2 »» Brandon Myers, Affiliate Director, Aceable Drivers Education
Niche/Vertical: Growth Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
»» Dave Stewart, CTO, CAKE Affiliate Marketing is expanding to encompass other channels. This session explores the value of including channels like social into your Affiliate Marketing mix to increase ROI. Niche/Vertical: Social Marketing Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 8d – Attribution and Affiliate Marketing: Where are We Now? Time: 10:00 am – 11:00am Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Chad Waite, Marketing Manager, AvantLink »» Paul Schroader, President, PS Web Solutions, Inc. »» Sarah Hohman, Affiliate Senior Specialist, Cabela’s »» Todd Crawford, VP Strategic Initiatives, Impact Radius Nearly 5 years after our initial discussions about attribution
Session 8b – Boost Your Marketing with Faux
and affiliate marketing, we’ll look at what we’ve learned.
Holidays and Special Events
What mistakes have been made and what would now be
Time: 10:00 am – 11:00am Location: Champagne 3
considered best practices. Niche/Vertical: Attribution Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser,
»» Joe Sousa, Senior Affiliate Coordinator, Fanatics.com
Network
»» Nathan Smith, President, Zynali Marketing Solutions
Experience Level: Intermediate
»» Tricia Meyer, Owner, Sunshine Rewards
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Expand your marketing with lesser-known “holidays” and trending events. Learn where to find them, how to use them in your content marketing and social media, and how they can boost your revenue. Niche/Vertical: Marketing Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
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Exhibit Hall Open Time: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm Location: Rivoli & Vendome B & C Affiliate Summit’s Exhibit Hall floor features a wide variety of affiliate programs, networks, outsourced program man-
· Issue 37 · January 2017
agers, agencies, technology providers, traffic sources and
Niche/Vertical: Global
other vendors. All attendees are welcome.
Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate
Open to All Pass Holders
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Demo Day Time: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm Location: Concorde A Networks, technology firms, digital agencies, traffic sources, retailers, and other solution providers will take the stage
Session 9b – 10 Cardinal Sins of Affiliate Marketing Time: 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Location: Champagne 3 »» Liliana Chan Ventura, Director Key Accounts, Acceleration
on the hour and demonstrate their services.
Partners
Open to All Pass Holders.
Advertisers, avoid these 5 things to operate a successful affiliate marketing program. Publishers, prevent these 5 things for a productive and profitable relationship with top
Opening Remarks & Keynote Time: 11:15 am - 12:15 pm Location: Concorde B & C »» Marty Weintraub, Founder, Aimclear »» Missy Ward, Co-Founder & President, Affiliate Summit, Inc.
advertisers. Niche/Vertical: Optimization Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Open to All Pass Holders
VIP Buffet Lunch Time: 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm Location: Concorde B & C VIP Pass Holders: Fuel up on a hearty buffet-style lunch in a relaxed networking environment. (Your “Monday Lunch” Ticket must also be presented upon arrival). VIP Pass Holders Only with Meal Ticket
Session 9a – Your Links are Broken! Maximizing Sales in Fragmented Stores Time: 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Providing the right tools for payment and return item recovery. Call us today to see how we can improve your dialy transaction processing, revenue and relationships.
Location: Champagne 2 »» Jesse Lakes, Co-Founder, Geniuslink
588.522.8524
Are you monetizing all your traffic? Most publishers’ traffic is global but not all affiliate programs are. Dive into what “geo-fragmentation” means and how to earn more from your existing audience.
www.paymentprocessingalliance.com 43
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Session 9c – How Big Brands Handle FTC Demands Time: 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Julia Pavone, Sales Manager, BrandVerity In the eyes of the FTC, brands are directly responsible for affiliate activities. What regulatory risks do your affiliates
ably promote any affiliate’s product without ever risking a dime of your own money. Niche/Vertical: Online Sales Funnels Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
pose and what are smart marketing organizations doing to maintain compliance? Niche/Vertical: Compliance Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 10b – Use Passive User Tests To Improve Your Conversion Rates Time: 2:45 pm – 3:15 pm Location: Champagne 3 »» Justin Rondeau, Optimization Manager, Digital Marketer Passive user testing is the best way to get info about users in the
Session 9d – Asian Affiliate Market: How to Crack the Billion Dollar Nut
wild. You’ll learn what makes this type of test powerful, how to get this valuable info, & exactly how it can improve conversions. Niche/Vertical: Optimization
Time: 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser
Location: Versailles 3/4
Experience Level: Intermediate
»» Max Pepe, Global Business Development & Marketing Director, Mozoo The Asia-Pacific (APAC) region has been experiencing tremendous growth within digital and affiliate marketing in the past years. Let’s look at the market, and successful case studies. Niche/Vertical: APAC Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 10c – Import/Export – The New Frontier of Internet Marketing Time: 2:45 pm – 3:15 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» John Monarch, CEO, Direct Outbound Many affiliates are moving to launching their own stores, products, and more. Learn about importing product from overseas, dealing with customs, exporting, and more. Niche/Vertical: Products
Session 10a – How to Promote Affiliate Products
Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser
Without Risking a Dime
Experience Level: Intermediate
Time: 2:45 pm – 3:15 pm
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Location: Champagne 2 »» Russell Brunson, CEO, ClickFunnels Tired of losing money promoting affiliate products. I will share our 3 favorite affiliate funnels that will help you profit-
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Session 10d – Persuasion and Negotiation in the Affiliate Marketplace Time: 2:45 pm – 3:15 pm
· Issue 37 · January 2017
Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Shaughn O’Neill, Strategic Account Manager, AffiliateManager.com Learn tools and tips for negotiating win-win deals in the affiliate space from an award-winning OPM. Whether you’re a mer-
Session 11c – Mixing TV, Radio, Social & Affiliate to Drive Profits Time: 3:30 pm – 4:00 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Marty Fahncke, Chief Marketing Officer, Barton Publishing
chant, affiliate, or an agency, you’ll find valuable information. Niche/Vertical: Negotiation Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Multi-channel/Multi-Media: How to combine TV, radio, search, social and affiliate marketing (and a little controversy) to reach every prospect in every medium and generate massive profits for all Niche/Vertical: Mulit-Channel Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Advanced
Session 11a – Emotional Appeal Marketing & Selling
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Via Live Social Video Time: 3:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Session 11d – Swimming with Sharks: Should a
Location: Champagne 2
Publisher be an Advertiser?
»» Jeremy Schoemaker, MFCEO, ShoeMoney Media Group Inc. Learn about the successful marketing medium of live video. Live video via social networks was one of the biggest inno-
Time: 3:30 pm – 4:00 pm Location: Versailles 3/4 »» Suresh Dakshina, President, Chargeback Gurus
vations of 2016, and I will show you its marketing potential. Niche/Vertical: Live Video Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Publishers get paid for traffic, while advertisers make money while they sleep. Learn more about running your own offers. Niche/Vertical: Profit Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 11b – Ride the Adult Coloring Book Wave Time: 3:30 pm – 4:00 pm Location: Champagne 3 »» Deborah Carney, Consultant, BookGoodies/Team Loxly How to use the adult coloring book sensation to further
Session 12a – The Now, The New, The Next in Mobile Time: 4:15 pm – 4:45 pm Location: Champagne 2 »» Lance Bachmann, CEO, 1SEO.com Digital Agency
your brand. Offering freebies plus print books on Amazon will extend your reach and message. Niche/Vertical: Marketing Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
This presentation will provide insights for implementing what matters now, like AMP, leveraging what’s new, like expanded text ads, and forecasting what’s next in order to dominate the digital space. Niche/Vertical: Mobile Marketing Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
Session 12b – Email Marketing Automation For Affiliates – Why, What & How Time: 4:15 pm – 4:45 pm Location: Champagne 3 »» Lior Weinstein, CEO, Automailtion LLC The session will give affiliates info on email marketing automation
Opening Remarks & Keynote Address Time: 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm Location: Concorde B & C »» Brian Massey, Conversion Scientist, Conversion Sciences »» Shawn Collins, Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit Open to All Pass Holders
and how to use it to increase conversions and scale marketing activities for their lists. Hands on from concept, tools and examples. Niche/Vertical: Marketing Automation Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Affiliate Ball Time: 9:00 pm – 1:00 am Location: Light Nightclub/Mandalay Bay VIP party from 9-10 pm. Artist to be announced. Open to All Pass Holders/RSVP Required
Session 12c – Goodbye Keyword Optimization, Hello Topical Optimization Time: 4:15 pm – 4:45 pm
Tuesday, 1/17/2017
Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Stoney DeGeyter, CEO, Pole Position Marketing Keyword research continues to be a vital part of digital marketing, but it’s now about building topical authority. Learn how to achieve search engine dominance one topic at a time. Niche/Vertical: SEO Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser
Attendee Check-In Time: 8:00 am - 3:00 pm Location: Champagne 1/4 Pick up your conference badge and attendee bag, and get started with Affiliate Summit.
Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Networking Lounge Open Time: 8:00 am - 4:00 pm
Session 12d – Viral & Social Marketing Time: 4:15 pm – 4:45 pm Location: Versailles 3/4
Location: Vendome A All attendees are welcome to take advantage of the tables and WiFi to have meetings, catch up on work, or simply take a break. Coffee and Tea available to those with Refresh
»» Nick Andrews, CEO, ReviTrage
Drink Tickets. (The VIP area located within the Networking
»» Tara McCommons, VP of Sales & Marketing,
Lounge is open to VIP Pass Holders only.)
Tips on how advertisers can harness this powerful channel
Open to All Pass Holders
to promote their brands. Niche/Vertical: Social Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
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Press and Speaker Lounge Time: 8:00 am - 4:00 pm Location: Bordeaux
Day 3
· Issue 37 · January 2017
The Press and Speaker Lounge is an area reserved creden-
Clay and co-author of “The Art of SEO” Stephan Spencer
tialed Press and Speakers only to grab some desk space,
answer your every SEO question.
run through presentations, relax, and network. Press or Speaker Ribbon Required
Niche/Vertical: SEO Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate
Exhibit Hall Booth Refresh
VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Time: 9:00 am - 10:00 am Location: Rivoli & Vendome B & C Exhibitors may come in during this time to refresh their booth from yesterday’s setup and prep booth staff. Grab-ngo coffee, tea and pastries will be served.
Session 13b – Scaling Performance Marketing Programs on Facebook Time: 10:00 am – 11:00am Location: Champagne 3
Exhibitor or Sponsor Ribbon Required
»» Marc Kelechava, Client Partner, Facebook »» Niket Shah, Client Partner, Facebook
VIP Buffet Breakfast Time: 9:00 am - 10:00 am Location: Concorde B & C VIP Pass Holders: Fuel up on a hearty buffet-style breakfast in a relaxed networking environment. (Your “Tuesday Breakfast” Ticket must also be presented upon arrival). VIP Pass Holders Only with Meal Ticket
RevShare Roundup Exhibitor Setup Time: 9:00 am - 10:00 am Location: Concorde A RevShare Roundup Exhibitors may set up their tables at this time. (Exhibitor Ribbons Required for admittance) Exhibitor Ribbon Required
Marc and Niket, Client Partners at Facebook, are responsible with growing Performance Marketing activity on Facebook in North America. They’ll provide a tactical product overview. Niche/Vertical: Facebook Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Beginner, Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 13c - How To 5x The Value of Your Affiliate Website in a Year Time: 10:00 am – 11:00am Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Chuck Mullins, President, Cash For Your Site »» Thomas Smale, Managing Director, FE International Ltd Will use examples from various sites we have grown in value by 5x in a year with actionable advice to help people with web-
Session 13a – SEO: Ask Me Anything Time: 10:00 am – 11:00am Location: Champagne 2 »» Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay Inc. »» Duane Forrester, Vice President Operations, Bruce Clay Inc.
sites of all sizes increase how much they could be sold for. Niche/Vertical: Affiliate Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
»» Stephan Spencer, Co-Author, The Art of SEO A combined 50+ years of SEO experience, Bing’s longtime spokesperson Duane Forrester, godfather of SEO Bruce
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
Session 13d - Crafty Marketing: The Handmade
Opening Remarks, Pinnacle Awards & Keynote
Market Explored
Address
Time: 10:00 am – 11:00am
Time: 11:15 am - 12:15 pm
Location: Versailles 3/4
Location: Concorde B & C
»» Carolyn Kmet, Senior Account Manager, All Inclusive Marketing Inc. »» Jen Goode, Owner, JGoode Designs »» Liz Fogg, CEO, Liz Fogg Consulting »» Trisha Lyn Fawver, CEO, Blinkstar Media
»» Missy Ward, Co-Founder & President, Affiliate Summit Inc. »» Shawn Collins, Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit »» Sean Dolan, President & COO, PushFire Open to All Pass Holders
The handmade market is exploding with the growth of Etsy, Pinterest, & Instagram. Learn marketing tactics for promoting your own handmade items & navigating social media with an eye for marketing. Niche/Vertical: Social Media Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Exhibit Hall Open Time: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm Location: Rivoli & Vendome B & C Affiliate Summit’s Exhibit Hall tradeshow floor features a wide selection of affiliate programs, networks, outsourced
VIP Buffet Lunch Time: 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm Location: Concorde B & C VIP Pass Holders: Fuel up on a hearty buffet-style lunch in a relaxed networking environment. (Your “Tuesday Lunch” Ticket must also be presented upon arrival). VIP Pass Holders Only with Meal Ticket
Session 14a – Outside Influences Affecting Performance Marketing Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Location: Champagne 2
program managers, agencies, technology providers, traffic
»» Gary Kibel, Partner, Davis & Gilbert LLP
sources and other vendors. All attendees are welcome.
»» Rachel Honoway, CEO, FMTC
Open to All Pass Holders
From tax legislation and FTC regulations, to ad-blocking technologies and search algorithm changes, several outside influences have a direct effect on the performance
RevShare Roundup Open Time: 10:00 am - 12:30 pm Location: Concorde A If you are looking for new revenue share programs to drive traffic to, the Affiliate Summit Revshare Roundup showcases a variety of affiliate programs to discover. (Unrelated conver-
marketing industry. Niche/Vertical: Industry Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser, Network Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
sations will not be entertained during this 2-1/2 hour event.) Restriction: Affiliate | Advertiser | Affiliate Management | OPM/Agency | Network Only
Session 14b – 10 Ways to Solve the Website Conversion Rate Dilemma Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Location: Champagne 3
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
»» Evan Weber, CEO, Experience Advertising This session will focus some of the most cutting-edge ways to increase your website or landing page’s conversion rate so you can advertise more effectively online. Niche/Vertical: Conversions Target Audience: Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Session 14c – The Metrics Diamond – The 4C’s of Affiliate Revenue Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Location: Versailles 1/2 »» Jeannine Crooks, Client Services Manager, Affiliate Window »» John LoBrutto, Director of Affiliate Solutions & Partnerships, Liquid Web LLC »» Mike Allen, Founder/Problem Solver, Businesswright Consulting For bottom line clarity, learn the hidden internal metrics of the 4C’s – Clickthrough, Conversion, Cancellation and Commission – that can produce flawless results. Niche/Vertical: Metrics Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher Experience Level: Beginner VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
Exhibit Hall Networking Pub Crawl Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Location: Rivoli & Vendome B & C Refer to your Pub Crawl map of participating sponsors and visit each one for great networking opportunities and, of course, free beer and wine. All attendees welcome. Pub Crawl Official Sponsor: Insurance Revenue LLC. Open to All Pass Holders
Ask the Experts Roundtables Time: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Location: Concorde A »» Bill Rothbard, Attorney, Law Offices of William I. Rothbard »» Daryl Colwell, Senior Vice President, Fluent »» Mark Daoust, CEO, Quiet Light Brokerage »» Oliver Roup, CEO, VigLink »» Vadim Rogovskiy, Founder & CEO, Clickky »» Valentina Piol, Vice Head Affiliate Marketing, metapeople GmbH »» Bring Sexy Back to the Performance Path »» Building Content that Drives Commerce & Conversions »» Europe’s Landscape: Networks & Affiliate Models Status Quo »» How and When to Sell Your Internet Based Business »» Tips from an FTC Pro: Do’s & Don’ts of Digital Advertising »» Hybrid Consumption: How to Use Mobile to Its Full
Session 14d – A Revolution in Digital Monetization
Potential
Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
The Affiliate Summit Ask the Experts roundtables are an
Location: Versailles 3/4
opportunity for merchants, networks, and affiliates to ask
»» Naren Nath, CEO, Wayfare Interactive Most digital media marketing uses strategies that bombard the user. The user is responding with ad-blockers and dismal CTRs. The Solution: Help, don’t inhibit, the end user. We will show you how. Niche/Vertical: CTR
questions about various specialties and issues. Handpicked experts handle topics in their specialty, conduct discussions, answer questions and share opinions during this networking and education session. The talks are literally at roundtables and you may come and go as you please. Open to All Pass Holders
Target Audience: Affiliate/Publisher, Merchant/Advertiser Experience Level: Intermediate VIP Only (Networking pass holders may attend by purchasing a separate session ticket)
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
Keynote Bio
Marty Weintraub
M
arty is an entrepreneur, author, speaker and mu-
tional search & social marketing conference audiences. He’s
sician. He is the Founder of Aimclear®, a driven
been quoted in flagship publications including WSJ, Forbes,
marketing agency dominant in audience target-
Inc. MediaPost and Adage; was thrice honored as a “Top 25
ing, modern distribution, customer acquisition and classic
Most Influential PPC Expert,” a TCB Top 100 People To Know
creative values. Aimclear, a four-time Inc. 500/5000 Honoree,
in 2016; and also claimed the coveted 2013 “US Search Per-
has worked with clients including eBay, Airbnb, Dell, Linke-
sonality Of The Year” tiara. Marty’s Wiley/Sybex books, “Killer
dIn, Eurail, Firestone, Amazon, Intel, Travelocity, Macy’s, and
Facebook Ads” and “The Complete Social Media Community
numerous others. A fixture on the international conference
Manager’s Guide: Essential Tools and Tactics for Business
circuit, Marty has appeared in front of hundreds of interna-
Success” are critically respected.
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
Keynote Bio
Brian Massey
B
rian Massey is a Conversion Scientist™ and he has the lab coat to prove it. He is the founder of website optimization company Conversion Sciences and author of the book “Your
Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist.” His rare combination of interests, experience and neuroses was developed over 20 years as a, computer programmer, corporate marketer and entrepreneur. He appears in his trademark lab coat when speaking to corporations, universities, and conference attendees around the world.
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
Keynote Bio Sean Dolan
S
ean Dolan is the President & COO of PushFire. In 2003,
As a result, in 2009, Sean co-founded Ascendgence. Sean’s
on his way to a business degree, Sean landed himself
first Ascendgence project was “Pimp This Bum” – a market-
on the NBC reality show Fame. Sean entered show
ing campaign that received global attention & international
biz & would make a name for himself in Houston as a well-
news coverage on Fox, CNN, CBS, & more after making a des-
known DJ & Director of Marketing for one of the area’s hottest
titute man named Tim Edwards the “Face of Homelessness
nightclubs. He decided to mesh his musical & business tal-
in America.” In 2012, Sean & his wife, Rae Hoffman, combined
ents & launch a DJ business: Orangeman Productions. After
forces & Ascendgence became PushFire. Sean oversees
successfully advertising Orangeman via SEO & PPC, friends
PushFire’s paid search division, which manages millions of
began asking Sean to apply his talents to their businesses.
dollars in spend for its clients.
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
Speaker Bios Harsh Agrawal
Harsh Agrawal has been involved in the affiliate marketing space for more than half a decade. He is popularly known as blog scientist for his award-winning work @ ShoutMeLoud. com. As a professional blogger, Harsh has the opportunity to work directly with numerous brands since 2008. He has been a star affiliate generating millions in revenue for numerous online companies. He also consult brands with their affiliate program strategies & helped numerous startups & bloggers with growth hacking. His superpower is his passion for blogging & interest in understanding customer psychology.
Mike Allen
Mike Allen has been involved in affiliate marketing since 1999 and is a charter member of the Performance Marketing Association where he serves on two councils. He is the founder and “Chief Executive Shopper” at Shopping-Bargains® and, as such, was a finalist for the LinkShare Golden Link Merchant’s Choice Award in 2005 and the LinkShare Golden Link Advertiser’s Choice Award in 2008. Mike was the 2009 “Affiliate of the Year” recipient at the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards. In addition, Mike likes to provide solutions for online and local businesses. In doing so, he performs affiliate program management, website and social media development, and local Internet marketing services via Businesswright Consulting which he established in 2013. Mike has presented multiple times at Affiliate Summit as well as Blogworld (NMX), Affiliate Management Days, CJU, and several other performance marketing conferences.
Ford and Kraft. Previously, Elie co-founded Newsletter.com (acquired by a division of The Tribune Companies), served as VP of Business Development at IncenSoft, and was a Research Analyst at Newby & Company. In addition, Elie is an Adjunct Professor of game theory and strategy at his alma mater, the University of Maryland, where he earned his BA and MBA.
Lance Bachmann
Lance Bachmann is the Founder and President of 1SEO. com Digital Agency, a full-service global digital marketing firm based in the Philadelphia, PA area. Bachmann and his team of over 60 digital marketers provide end-to-end solutions for their clientele with a full suite of services like search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), social media optimization (SMO), website design, content development and email marketing, Bachmann and 1SEO.com Digital Agency cultivate an online presence for their clients in order to harvest leads, closes, conversions and profits. In fact, Bachmann and 1SEO.com Digital Agency have accumulated numerous awards and other accolades for their efforts. In just 6 short years, Lance Bachmann
Nick Andrews
Nick is grounded in over a decade of traditional marketing experience, including work with Fortune 100 brands like Staples, Estee Lauder, Pfizer, and Pepsico. Since founding ReviTrage, he has developed into a leader in the Viral and Social Marketing space, and leverages these powerful channels to help his 100+ Internet Top 1000 clients grow their online revenues rapidly. As CEO of ReviTrage, Nick is responsible for generating over $10M+ in revenue each month for his clients via digital/social promotion.
Elie Ashery
With 20 years experience in digital, affiliate and performance marketing and media, Elie Ashery founded and serves as the CEO of Gold Lasso, the first technology to bring native advertising to email programmatically, offering a new level of email personalization and monetization for companies like Allstate, Home Depot,
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has become renowned for his expertise and he is regarded as one of the leaders in the digital marketing space because of the results his agency produces for their clients.
Syed Balkhi
Syed Balkhi is a killer online marketer with design & development experience. He’s the founder of WPBeginner, List25, and many other sites. His work has been featured in: New York Times, Wired Magazine, Business Insider, Huffington Post, and others. Syed has been working online since he was 12 years old, and has a very successful online business.
Sarah Beeskow Blay
Sarah Beeskow Blay is the Director of Client Services for the performance marketing network, ShareASale.com. She joined ShareASale in 2005 and is currently responsible for the Client Services Department. The Client Services team provides strategic, educational, and technical guidance to help our clients grow. Sarah regularly speaks on the topic of Affiliate Marketing, has served as emcee for Affiliate Summit West 2012, and has contributed to industry publications: Feed Front magazine and MarketingLand.com. Prior to joining ShareASale, Sarah was at the Michigan Association of Broadcasters as Director of Member Services and Broadcast Coordinator for the implementation of Michigan’s Amber Alert program.
Akiva Ben-Ezra
Akiva Ben-Ezra is the owner of Israel-based SEO Kings, which helps small to medium businesses, both in the US and worldwide, to gain market share worldwide. As a speaker and panelist at international Internet marketing conferences and through webinars, he teaches non-experts how to understand difficult web concepts and methods and put them to work building revenues and sales.
Russell Brunson
Russell Brunson started his first online company while wrestling at Boise State University. Within a year of graduating he had sold over a million dollars worth of his own products and services from his basement! For over 12 years Russell has been starting and scaling companies online. He is a best selling author, owns a coaching company (DotComSecrets) helping others scale their businesses online, and is one of the top super affiliates in the world. He owns a software company (ClickFunnels), that provides all of the tools and resources affiliates and business owners need to build and scale their companies online. ClickFunnels has grown to over 20,000 users in less than 2 years. As CEO, Russell is exposed to over 300,000 sales funnels and more than 150 Million dollars in sales, making him the leading expert in online sales funnels. Russell enjoys sharing his knowledge and experience about what really works in today’s marketplace when it comes to selling products and services online.
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Deborah Carney
Deborah Carney a.k.a. Loxly has been involved in affiliate marketing since the beginning. As a single mom with children with physical disabilities, affiliate marketing allowed her to work from home. In 2005 she transitioned from affiliate marker to affiliate manager, working with some top companies. Now she travels the country publishing books of photos, adult coloring books and runs a successful network of book promotion sites, once again using affiliate marketing as one stream of income.
Liliana Chan Ventura
Liliana Chan Ventura is a multicultural and multilingual digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and business operations professional. She is the Director of Key Accounts at Acceleration Partners, working with our largest clients on global performance marketing programs. Prior to joining Acceleration Partners, Liliana led Ogilvy & Mather’s affiliate programs for internationally recognized Fortune 500 brands including Apple, iTunes, and IBM, among others. Her performance marketing experience spans the entire spectrum from advertiser to agency to affiliate. Her passion is connecting brands with the consumers that love them.
John Chow
John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales Foundation, the man who controls the black market on baby seal pelts and member of the “probably yo’ daddy” foundation.
Bruce Clay
Bruce Clay is founder and president of Bruce Clay, Inc., a global Internet marketing optimization firm providing search engine optimization, pay per click management, social media marketing, conversion rate optimization, SEO-friendly web design and architecture, content development, and SEO tools and education. As an industry thought leader, he is an accomplished speaker, author and educator. He hosts a weekly podcast, SEM Synergy, covering search marketing news and analysis for digital marketers. His book “Search Engine Optimization All-In-One For Dummies,” published by Wiley, is now in its third edition.
Shawn Collins
Shawn Collins has been an affiliate marketer since 1997. He is a Co-founder of Affiliate Summit, the leading global conference and tradeshow for the affiliate marketing industry, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine. He has authored the books “Affiliate Manager Boot Camp“, “Extra Money Answer“, “How to Get the Most from Exhibiting at Conferences”, “How to Get the Most Out of Attending a Conference”, and “Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants“. Also, he co-publishes the
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annual AffStat affiliate marketing benchmark reports. Shawn blogs on affiliate marketing at AffiliateTip.com, and hosts the podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing, on GeekCast.fm. Additionally, Shawn has been quoted in numerous publications, including Entrepreneur Magazine, Internet Retailer, Inc. Magazine, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Daryl Colwell
Daryl Colwell is Senior Vice President of Sales for Fluent, LLC, the industry leader in people-based digital marketing and customer acquisition. An industry veteran with over 15 years of experience, Colwell previously served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Matomy Media Group. Before Matomy, he held senior management and sales roles at Relevance-X, the online behavioral and life-stage targeting division of Acxiom, and digital advertising agency SilverCarrot. Colwell is a well-known industry thought leader and frequent speaker at industry conferences including Affiliate Summit, LeadsCon, Search Marketing Expo, OMMA Global, and PubCon. He also served as an expert industry panelist at the Federal Trade Commission’s 2015 “Follow the Lead: An FTC Workshop about Online Lead Generation.” Colwell’s insights have been featured in a number of leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Advertising Age, Direct Marketing News and MediaPost.
Marcus Couch
Marcus Couch is the founder of MembershipCoach.com, a site dedicated to helping businesses plan, build, launch and grow a successful membership site. In addition to his coaching site members, Marcus has built revenue generating member sites for best selling authors, renowned motivational speakers, non-profit organizations, E-Commerce businesses and charttopping musicians. Marcus is a fixture within the WordPress community, co-hosting the two top WordPress based podcasts; WordPress Weekly and WordPress Plugins A-Z. He has been a successful affiliate marketer for over a decade.
Todd Crawford
As a co-founder, Todd Crawford evangelizes the opportunities presented by a multi-channel approach to the performance model. Prior to Impact Radius, he served as vice president of sales and business development for Digital River’s affiliate network, oneNetworkDirect. Todd also contributed to the founding team at Commission Junction in 1998 and led its business and sales development efforts as vice president for more than seven years.
Jeannine Crooks
As the Client Services Manager with Affiliate Window US, Jeannine works closely with many of their largest programs such as 1&1 Internet, Lonely Planet, Agoda.com, and Ctrip.com. She is a frequent speaker at numerous events including Affiliate Management Days and Affiliate Summit, and is a regular
contributor to iBlog Magazine. Jeannine is a prominent affiliate advocate in the fight against the affiliate nexus tax both in Colorado and other states. She loves working with all kinds of affiliates and merchants, from newbie bloggers to huge site, trying to assist any way she can. Jeannine believes that the most important take-away from any session is truly actionable information – so that every attendee leaves with ideas to make their sites or programs perform better immediately. Jeannine, her husband photographer Brad, and their two Siberian Huskies, Dusty and Harley, live south of Denver. They all love sports, especially watching hockey or football, and travel as often as they can.
Adam Dahlen
Adam is the Director of Client Development at iAffiliate Management and oversees the strategy and planning for the entire agency portfolio. Prior to joining iAffiliate Management, Adam worked for Commission Junction in variety of roles in both account and product management. Adam is a member of the PMA’s Compliance Council and recently authored a white paper on copyright law and the use of images. Fun fact: before making a career change to affiliate marketing, Adam worked as a municipal prosecutor in suburban Minneapolis.
Suresh Dakshina
Suresh Dakshina is President of Chargeback Gurus, whose services help e-commerce merchants prevent and reverse costly chargeback losses, winning up to 83% of the chargeback cases it handles. By fine-tuning client operations, lowering risk using proprietary technology, advanced analysis, and hands-on services, clients’ chargeback rates drop from the industry norm of 5-8% to under 2%, saving clients tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. A certified e-Commerce Fraud Prevention Specialist, Suresh has deep expertise in fraud and chargeback prevention, and a passion for creating 360‐degree bulletproof protection for e-commerce merchants, having been an online merchant himself. A pioneer in data analytics, Suresh, as co-founder of Chargeback Gurus, brings over a decade of proprietary risk reduction solutions, process optimization, fraud and chargeback prevention, online marketing, SEO optimization and direct response marketing experience for e-commerce merchants.
Bonnie D’Amico
Lifetime entrepreneur and full time affiliate manager professional since 2006 with specialization in the B2B and SAAS space. Currently at Shopify and leads a team of 3 other affiliate managers. Attending/participating Affiliate Summit since 2009
Mark Daoust
Mark Daoust is the founder and CEO of Quiet Light Brokerage, Inc., an online business brokerage firm that has sold over 600 web based businesses for over $100,000,000. Quiet Light Brokerage works with high-value web based businesses and entrepreneurs
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helping them chart a successful exit where value is maximized for both the buyer and the seller. Mark is an in-demand speaker, a writer for Entrepreneur, and has had his work featured in HuffingtonPost, Inc., Forbes, SearchEngineJournal.com, among others.
Stoney deGeyter
Stoney deGeyter, author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period, loves to talk—especially about web marketing. Having started Pole Position Marketing in 1998, Stoney has amassed a wealth of web marketing knowledge as he and his pit crew have helped thousands of businesses grow through strategic digital marketing strategies. He has presented at a number of world-class search marketing conferences such as the Affiliate Summit, PubCon, Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, and WordCamp, as well as marketing organizations such as International Association of Business Communicators Cleveland and in-house teams such as L’Oreal, and local business workshops. He is also a prolific blogger. His web marketing articles have been published by a number of industry blogs, including Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal and SEMRush. He is also the main contributor at Pole Position Marketing’s E-Marketing Performance blog.
Teodora Dobjanschi
Teodora Dobjanschi has 7+ years of experience in the marketing field, of which the past 3 years dedicated exclusively to the affiliate marketing industry. She is Senior Affiliate Recruiter at Avangate, working to increase the affiliates pool of the Avangate Affiliate Network and find new, innovative ways to drive growth opportunities. Author of ‘7 tips to recruit affiliates directly’ article published in #33 FeedFront Magazine.
Theresa Duerr
Theresa Duerr has held her position of Director, Digital Marketing at Quill.com for two years now. Before her position here, she managed digital acquisition channels at OfficeMax, consulted on digital marketing initiatives for Calendars.com (US, UK, AU) and SFMusicBox.com, managed US and EU affiliate partnerships for zanox, managed digital media plans and placement for Coolsavings.com and started her career in traditional advertising, working on The Chicago Tribune and Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants. Theresa was born and raised on the Southwest side of Chicago (Go White Sox) and currently lives in La Grange, IL with her husband Ed and three children. When she’s not dreaming of digital, she enjoys watching her sons play baseball, cooking and reading historical fiction. Although business travel has taken her around the US and Europe, she’d like to one day explore more of the globe for pleasure.
Marty Fahncke
An expert in multi-channel direct response marketing with 30 years of experience, Marty M. Fahncke brings a unique and proven
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track record of success to his audiences. Having been involved in marketing campaigns that have generated over one BILLION dollars in sales, Marty has seen what works…and what doesn’t. For 15 years as President of FawnKey & Associates, a consulting and marketing management firm, Marty generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for his clients using direct response television, the telephone, and the internet. In his current role as CMO of Barton Publishing, Marty has turned the world of online info-marketing on it’s ear by integrating direct response TV and infomercial strategies, along with proven online and affiliate marketing concepts, and the power of the “celebrity endorsement” to create massive success and generate millions of dollars in revenue.
Trisha Lyn Fawver
Trisha is the CEO of Blinkstar Media, a boutique marketing agency offering affiliate program management, copywriting, and creative services. She began as an in-house affiliate manager in 2006 before moving on to agency life, growing in-house and outsourced affiliate programs exponentially. Trisha has spoken at essential conferences such as Affiliate Summit, Performance Marketing Summit, Social Media Marketing Summit, and Affiliate Convention. She has given back to the Affiliate Marketing community in the form of mentoring programs, mastermind groups, podcasts, contribution to books, and articles appearing on Marketing Pilgrim and in FeedFront Magazine.
Liz Fogg
Liz started out as an Outsourced Program Manager in 2006 working with such programs as Viator Tours and Travel and Wyzant Tutoring as a way to stay home with her now 16 year old son whom she homeschools. Liz is the CEO of Liz Fogg Consulting which offers consulting and marketing services to businesses in several different niches and also includes program book design for pageants of all levels, social media instruction and management, and more. With over 14 years in the pageant industry, Liz has worked with pageants from Local to the International levels helping to ensure that they provide a great experience for everyone involved. Liz is also the CEO of My Bling Place which offers hand made slide charm jewelry of many different types. She has built a successful online business as a result of her marketing experience and connections throughout various industries.
Duane Forrester
Duane Forrester is the Vice President of Organic Search Operations, overseeing SEO work, content and social media. Prior to moving to Bruce Clay, Inc., Duane was a Sr. Product Manager with Bing’s Webmaster Program and the inhouse SEM running the SEO program for MSN in the US & Americas earlier in his Microsoft career. He’s also the founding co-chair of SEMPO’s In-House SEM Committee, was formerly on the Board of Directors for SEMPO, founded the SEMPO Salary Survey and is the author of two books: How To Make Money With Your Blog
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& Turn Clicks Into Customers. He’s written for publications ranging from SearchEngineLand and DuctTape Marketing, to Entrepreneur Magazine, the New York Times and Inc. He actively advises startups and large corporations, and even spent time advising the staff who maintain the White House’s websites.
Robert Glazer
Robert Glazer is the founder and managing director of Acceleration Partners, a performance marketing agency focused on profitable online customer acquisition for high-growth consumer businesses. Representative clients include Target, Tiny Prints, adidas, Reebok, ModCloth, The Honest Company, Stella & Dot, Warby Parker, Rent the Runway, Tea Collection, and Gymboree. In addition to speaking at industry events like ad:tech, Affiliate Summit, DMA, IRCE, and Shop.org, he has published over 100 articles on marketing, strategy, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Robert formerly served on the board of the Performance Marketing Association and currently sits on the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay. In his spare time, Robert is an avid skier, biker, amateur photographer, and serial home renovator.
Jen Goode
Jen Goode is both geek and creative, a professional artist also working as an affiliate and merchant in the Performance Marketing industry. She is a work-at-home mom of three, social media enthusiast and “doodler in charge” of JGoode Designs (JGoodeDesigns. com) with her work published in a number of magazines. Jen offers her illustration and design work for licensing to manufacturers while she promotes products featuring her art through various affiliate programs. Jen is the Affiliate Summit Newcomer Program Coordinator and has been proactive in the fight against the Ad-Tax in Colorado. She has spoken about getting started in affiliate marketing at various conferences and shares her insight about business and creativity at 100Directions.com.
and performance marketing industry forward. Our goal is to innovate, educate and transform the industry globally. As a team, we develop TUNE’s marketing strategy, showcase our brand, and bring the TUNE story to life for our clients and prospects. Jonah-Kai has over 15 years of experience in marketing and has had the pleasure of working for some prestigious companies in the Seattle area, including Weber Shandwick, Tableau Software, AdReady, Razorfish and Concur.
Michelle Held
Michelle is an entrepreneur, author and consultant involved in digital marketing for over 18 years. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Michelle is a video partner with Entrepreneur Magazine’s YouTube channel, Entrepreneur Network. She is the author of “Pinterest Tutorial.” Follow Michelle on her blogs, metrony.com and pintalk. net. Michelle serves as a consultant to clients on topics such as digital marketing and project management. Her company, MetroNY, LLC, specializes in customized digital marketing strategy, social media marketing, and search engine optimization. As a speaker, she conducts seminars and training sessions on social media and web technologies. Michelle was a featured speaker at the NY NOW Gift Show, Pubcon, the South Florida Marketer’s Association, and Affiliate Summit West. Connect with Michelle on Twitter (@metrony or @pintalknet).
Brandon Gustafson
Brandon Gustafson is a marketing strategy researcher from Washington State University. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in marketing and a MBA with a specialization in finance and international business from Oakland University. He is currently completing his PhD in marketing strategy and conducting his dissertation work on the process of affiliate marketing. Specifically, studying how affiliates provide valuable content to consumers, thereby motivating them to purchase. Within his research, he investigates how consumers respond to different types of affiliate content and uses a number of statistical techniques to evaluate how the customer-affiliate engagement increases merchant revenue and loyalty.
Jonah-Kai Hancock
As Marketing Director at TUNE, Jonah-Kai’s main focus is leading a team of marketers with the goal of pushing the mobile
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Rachel Hirsch
Rachel Hirsch is an attorney at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Ifrah PLLC. Ms. Hirsch advises clients on compliance with FTC and state consumer regulations. Her clients include, among others, a variety of networks, advertisers, publishers, software and data providers, and her practice covers all federal and state consumer protection and privacy laws and regulations. Ms. Hirsch focuses her practice counseling clients on how to implement measures to reduce their exposure to liability. Often litigating cases against the government, Ms. Hirsch and Ifrah PLLC have achieved a string of victories for their clients in federal and state enforcement actions. Ms. Hirsch is a regular contributor to her firm’s blog, www.ftcbeat. com, where she writes about issues affecting online marketers.
Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman is President and CEO of Apogee, a Performance Marketing Agency. He was the Pinnacle Award winner for Affiliate Marketing Advocate of the Year at ASW16. His agency, formerly known as Greg Hoffman Consulting, won the Pinnacle Award for Best Agency/OPM in 2014. He’s been managing programs for more than ten years and has been a contributor to FeedFront Magazine and Website Magazine.
Sarah Hohman
Sarah Hohman is currently the in-house affiliate manager for Cabela’s. She has managed a number of affiliate programs for large brands, with an emphasis in the outdoor industry. She has experience on the network, advertiser and affiliate side of the industry, all of which have been beneficial in developing her program management style.
Rachel Honoway
Rachel is the CEO of FMTC, a premier affiliate solution provider and the company behind the Fresh Press Media Influencer Marketplace . She is currently serving as the President of the Performance Marketing Association Board of Directors. Rachel has been in the performance marketing industry since the late 90’s helping merchants launch new programs, assisting affiliates in starting their businesses and has been a part of developing technologies that help affiliates, publishers, bloggers, merchants and advertisers optimize their interactions and maximize the return on their relationships.
Andra Ioana
Andra is a seasoned project manager with a 5+ years experience in the online industry. She has extensive knowledge in affiliate marketing strategies, managing thousands of publishers worldwide with a focus on gaming and software programs. Internet marketing strategies and online performance management are 2 of the key skills you can find in Andra. She’s an IT geek passionate about reading and traveling.
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Zac Johnson
At the age of 15, Zac Johnson began making money online designing web site banners for $1 each. A self taught entrepreneur, Zac’s been making money online for nearly 20 years and has been involved in nearly every facet of affiliate and online marketing. One of Zac’s many successes includes his story of “How I Made $860,538.38 Profit in 4 Months!” from one web site, which can be read at his blog at ZacJohnson.com. Zac continues to focus on his blog, where he provides readers with firsthand accounts of his experiences, successes & failures. In addition to his own success stories, Zac reviews affiliate networks and informs readers how & where they should be making new money. Zac’s social reach and site traffic is now over 100,000 strong and has referred over $5,000,000 in new business to his advertisers and network partners. You can also listen to Zac’s new podcast “Rise of the Entrepreneur” on iTunes and connect with Zac through his new online training community at Blogging.org.
Marc Kelechava
Marc is a Client Partner at Facebook, working with the highest volume lead aggregators and performance marketers in the US. Using his background in mathematics and data mining, he creates unique targeting models for clients by manipulating relevant Facebook signals. He has successfully scaled dozens of direct response advertisers on the platform and helped them make Facebook their #1 marketing channel.
Gary Kibel
Gary Kibel (gkibel@dglaw.com, @GaryKibel) is a partner with the law firm of Davis & Gilbert LLP (www.dglaw.com). He practices in the areas of Digital Media, Advertising/Marketing and technology law. Gary regularly counsels clients with respect to issues such as interactive advertising, search marketing, affiliate marketing, enterprise technology implementations, behavioral advertising, social media, privacy and data security, gaming, mobile marketing, joint ventures, copyrights, trademarks, corporate matters and laws affecting the Internet. Davis & Gilbert is widely regarded as the premier law firm in the U.S. representing advertising, marketing and promotions agencies, from specialized shops to the largest advertising holding companies in the world, and also represents prominent technology and entertainment companies, marketers, and advertising trade associations. Prior to becoming an attorney, Gary was an Information Systems Analyst with Merrill Lynch. He is also the General Counsel of the Performance Marketing Association (PMA).
Carolyn Kmet
Carolyn Kmet is a senior account manager with All Inclusive Marketing, a full-service agency. In this role, she manages the affiliate program for Fire Mountain Gems, one of the largest online retailers of beads, gems and jewelry making supplies. Carolyn was previously the director of affiliate marketing
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for Groupon, where she helped shape global affiliate marketing strategy. In this role, she was honored with the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for Affiliate Manager of the Year 2010, and the New Advertiser of the Year 2011 award from Commission Junction. Carolyn is also a senior lecturer at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches undergraduate and M.B.A.-level marketing and information systems classes. She is also a regular contributor to Practical eCommerce and Insight magazine.
Brian LaFrance
Brian LaFrance is currently Lead SEO Analyst for CBS Interactive where he oversees search efforts for major sites such as CBS Sports, GameSpot, and CBS.com. He has been involved in various aspects of SEO and affiliate marketing for over 15 years. He continues to run his own affiliate sites and consults for a few clients that he has worked with for many years. In 2010, he sold his main affiliate site to a large internet media company and moved on to be the marketing director for an SEO data provider. Brian leverages his knowledge of development, SEO, tools, and data to take advantage of the ever growing list of APIs available for analyzing search data. This allows him to quickly and efficiently scale SEO strategy, regardless of the size of a site.
Jesse Lakes
As the former Global Product Manager for the iTunes Affiliate Program at Apple, and consultant to the Microsoft Store Affiliate Program, Geniuslink CEO Jesse Lakes has seen his fair share of “global” affiliate programs. What he’s seen is that these programs appear “global” from the outside, then tend to be made of up region specific storefronts under the surface, which can make global monetization a massive pain. Fortunately, he’s eager to share some lessons he’s learned around the “geo-fragmentation” debacle.
John LoBrutto
John P. LoBrutto is the Director of Affiliate Solutions & Partnerships at Liquid Web, Inc., an industry leading Web Hosting company. Liquid Web has a full suite of Managed Hosting services, including Storm Cloud, VPS, Dedicated Servers & Word Press. John’s previous positions include; Director of Affiliates & Partnerships for 1&1 Internet, Inc., Head of Global Distribution for the AllHotels, Sales Director for Holiday Autos USA (both divisions of Travelocity, LLP), President of Pencils Plus, and Technology Director for Sabre Travel Network. John has over 20 years’ experience in the travel, retail & technology sales channels and has managed affiliate programs for the last 7 years. He specializes in developing new programs, optimizing for success, with a focus on entering new markets. He believes, “the best approach to affiliate marketing is to keep things fresh, be creative and always think out of box, whenever possible.” John is married with two children and is based in New York.
Josh Margulis
Josh brings top-notch technical skills and targeted expertise to Honeyfund as co-founder and CTO. Josh holds two US patents for processes he engineered at Adobe Systems, where he worked as a software engineer in the digital imaging and Web-authoring division and then as a systems engineer. Prior to Adobe, Josh worked at Macromedia, Microsoft and Xerox. This wealth of both industry and technical experience has propelled Honeyfund to the #1 Wedding Registry App in the country. As an expert in Adobe Creative Suite and a tech entrepreneur, Josh frequently speaks on these topics, as well as website performance optimization and application architecture.
Sara Margulis
Sara is a wedding- and crowdfunding-industry CEO and lover of all things wedding, gifting, and travel. Sara and her husband Josh started Honeyfund after their own wedding when guests contributed more than $5000 toward their dream honeymoon in Fiji. Sara’s background in business and marketing combined with Josh’s expertise as a software engineer have made Honeyfund the #1 online wedding registry. The couple is now using a SharkTank investment from Kevin O’Leary to expand both in weddings and beyond, with Plumfund, online crowd-gifting for all of life’s occasions. Both services offer 100% free options and the lowest third-party credit card fees in the industry. Their top priority is to make giving feel good. Sara speaks on entrepreneurship, wedding gift etiquette, crowd gifting, and women in leadership roles
Tara McCommons
Tara McCommons is VP of Sales and Marketing at LinkConnector, a performance marketing network providing superior service and technologies to affiliates and merchants for over a decade. Tara leads a high performance team that plays a pivotal role in identifying new merchant and affiliate opportunities to continually expand the LinkConnector Network, while also taking a hands-on approach to effectively optimize existing merchant and affiliate relationships. Tara possesses over 20 years of business development experience spanning both corporate and startup environments within the technology and financial industries. Tara began her career in affiliate marketing with LinkConnector (in 2004) where she has a proven record in the development and leadership of strategic partnerships and sales growth. Tara moderated a Top-10 ASW15 panel, has been a contributor to FeedFront, AM Days Speaker and is a Board of Directors Committee Chair with the Performance Marketing Association.
Brian Messenlehner
Brian, a former software developer for the United States Marine Corps, is the co-founder and CTO of WebDevStudios. com, a web development company that specializes in building all things WordPress. He is the co-founder of AppPresser.com, a WordPress based framework for building iOS and Android Apps.
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He is also the Co-Author of “Building Web Apps with WordPress”, a book published by O’Reilly Media about WordPress as an Application Framework. Brian enjoys learning about new technology and believes open source software like WordPress is the key to successful cost effective web solutions in any situation.
Tricia Meyer
Tricia Meyer (@sunshinetricia) is the owner of Sunshine Rewards, Helping Moms Connect, and other niche sites. She frequently speaks and writes about affiliate marketing topics such as monetizing blogs, affiliate and affiliate manager relationships, and the basics of affiliate marketing. She serves as the Executive Director for the Performance Marketing Association. She is also a partner in WineClubGroup.com. Tricia has been a finalist for the Pinnacle Award for Industry Advocate and won Affiliate of the Year in 2014 and Best Blogger in 2012.
John Monarch
John Monarch is the CEO of Direct Outbound, a provider of call center and shipping/fulfillment services with close ties to the Affiliate Marketing industry. As a former affiliate and advertiser himself, he learned the ins and outs of how to make these programs run smoother and more effectively. John is a graduate of Clemson University in Physics, and has been featured by CIO Magazine, CreditCards.com, Yahoo! Finance and other publications.
Chuck Mullins
Chuck, a serial entrepreneur and early pioneer of the internet, built his first profitable website in 1996 at 18 years of age. In college he studied computer software engineering which taught him the skills to analyze search results and implement strategies that take advantage of the observations he makes. Throughout his career of creating, managing, and consulting for dozens of internet-based companies, Chuck has been instrumental in developing strategies that lead to growth and profitability. Among people he works with, Chuck is regarded as “the idea guy.” He is known for his ability to spot opportunities, create a plan, and execute. After seeing an opportunity to leverage his time by acquiring under-performing sites, he has participated in several million dollars worth of acquisitions.
Brandon Myers
Brandon Myers is an Affiliate Director for Aceable, a mobile based drivers education provider in Austin, Texas. As an affiliate marketer, Myers has devoted his career to understanding performance marketing models and where they fit in with today’s shopper. With a degree concentration of Rhetorical Theory from the University of San Diego, Myers prides himself on understanding human reactions to messages and what makes buyers convert. By leveraging data, highly refined tracking tools, and a knowledge of how brands grow their own identity through third parties, Myers has been highly successful in curating a mix of marketing channels to drive growth, increase conversion, and ultimately create brand awareness.
Eric Nagel
Eric Nagel is a business-savvy technology executive with over 17 years of experience in programming and online marketing. He is passionate about developing applications that allow businesses, teams and individuals achieve their goals through automated tools and access to actionable data. As a marketer himself, Eric truly understands the needs of today’s marketing professional. He has designed and executed SEO, PPC, social media and affiliate marketing strategies for his clients and his own affiliate sites. He has been recognized as a top performer in several programs and won the Best Blogger Pinnacle Award in 2011. Eric now leads a team of developers in designing innovative solutions for performance marketing professionals as FMTC’s CTO.
Naren Nath
Prior to Wayfare, Naren served as president and chief operations officer at cFares, Inc., a leading meta-search site for the online travel market. Before cFares, Naren served in numerous executive roles, including executive vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Persistent Systems, senior vice president at Trilogy Software, and the lead for product management and marketing for interactive television (broadband) at Microsoft, directing product marketing initiatives from market research to
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product launch. He later oversaw the company’s efforts to establish Microsoft’s IE and IIS products as standards with premier US and international media companies and web sites.
Shaughn O’Neill
Shaughn O’Neill has been a Strategic Account Manager for AffiliateManager.com for 2+ years. He has managed accounts from Fortune 500 companies to startups across many verticals. He prides himself on out-of-the-box affiliate program management and receives top customer service ratings from his clients. He works as an extension of his clients’ brands, finding the right puzzle pieces for each affiliate program. Prior to AffiliateManager, Shaughn spent eight years at Sempris, where he worked to build affiliate pages within the company’s membership savings programs. Shaughn finished a Master in Business Administration degree from the University of Minnesota in 2015. He is a Minnesota native who still lives there today, along with his wife and Maltese dog. When not hard at work, he enjoys biking, traveling, reading, and is an avid supporter of his local sports teams, who never fail to let him down.
Rick Parada
Rick Parada is the Managing Director of 55haitao & Dealam, two leading Chinese ecommerce sites focused on helping the Chinese consumer save money when purchasing from US online stores. He has spent the last 15 years working for a number of successful startup comparison shopping sites in the US including Shopzilla.com, Smarter.com and Extrabux.com. He was the General Manager for Extrabux.com in Shanghai where he lived and helped setup the operations. He is very knowledgeable, passionate and focused on educating Chinese consumers where, when and how to buy online overseas. He also loves to educate US advertisers on the growing enthusiasm that Chinese consumers have for their brands.
Rey Pasinli
Rey Pasinli is one of the credit card processing industry’s foremost experts on emerging internet trends and evolving technologies. With nearly eighteen years of industry experience, he has successfully collaborated with over 40,000 internet merchants. As Executive Director of Total Apps Inc., Mr. Pasinli is responsible for identifying and developing emerging web-based technologies to improve the performance of each client’s processing. Mr. Pasinli currently collaborates with the top executives at multiple processors alongside with 700+ prominent internet business service vendors, to provide clients with a one-stop-shop for everything related to selling on the internet. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from California State University Fullerton and an MBA from Pepperdine University.
Julia Pavone
Julia was born and raised in the Seattle area before attending the University of California, Berkeley where she pursued a
degree in Molecular Biology. Upon graduating Julia moved back to Seattle where spent time doing research for the University of Washington and taught a year of high school science. Julia has been with BrandVerity for two years as a Sales Manager. In her spare time Julia can be found with her husband and two yellow Labradors hiking and spending time on the water.
Max Pepe
Max is Global Business Development & Marketing Director. He spent the first 8 years of his career in the music industry, touring and recording with two successful rock bands, played over 1,000 shows and recorded albums in UK and US with highly acclaimed multi platinum selling producers. In 2010 Max started his affiliate marketing career as a humble affiliate manager. He launched Clickwork7 Global Performance Marketing in 2012. In just three years he grew a team from 2 people to 30, and drove 800% growth over three years. This lead to Max being recognised as one of 6 digital industry leaders by one of the UK’s largest and most successful digital marketing publications. Max has now joined Mozoo and Surikate to assist their global expansion in UK, Europe, US and Asia. He is a regular speaker at global events and has given talks at events such as TEDx Talk London, Ad:Tech London, Performance Marketing Insights Berlin and New Media Europe, and more.
Valentina Piol
Valentina Piol (30) is since 2015 Vice Head of Affiliate Marketing at metapeople in Germany. metapeople belongs to NetBooster, a leading independent European agency in digital performance marketing. Since 2012 she has been Account Manager for Affiliate Programs of several advertisers of metapeople, especially in the travel sector. She e.g. setup and managed the international rollout of Lufthansa’s’ Affiliate Program across 39 markets. Now she focusses herself among others to the strategic consultancy of their 20+ advertisers. Valentina is truly European. Originally Italian she grew up in Germany where she currently lives, undertook however her studies in the Netherlands (Bachelor of Business administration) as well as England (Master of Science in Business and Management) and had internships in Spain. After her studies she first started as product manager and purchaser before finally dedicating herself to online marketing.
Rich Plakas
I have an IT background dating way back to the days of Novell & DOS( my first computer was a Timex Sinclair! ) In 2007, I began “messing” with WordPress websites. In 2011, I switched my business focus away from IT and solely to websites and digital marketing with my company Connected Systems. Currently, most of the work I do is lead generation and optimization of ecommerce websites. When I am not helping people with their website optimization, SEO, PPC, and other digital marketing, I run a popular craft beer blog in Austin, Texas aptly named CraftBeerAustin.com. Other hobbies include BBQ, home automation and robotics.
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Scott Polk
Scott Polk has built his expertise as a knowledgeable and experienced Search Engine Optimization/Internet Marketing strategist for more than a decade. He concentrates his resourcefulness and skills on the diversified aspects of Search Engine Optimization for clients, where he’s earned the distinction of consistent top rankings in all major search engines. Scott is consistently involved in technologies that maximize Conversion, Usability and Accessibility when optimizing & developing large web sites as well as identifying problems/solutions that result in major cost saving strategies. Highly successful and respected within the SEO industry, Scott Polk has consulted and been employed by successful internet companies such as: Bruce Clay, Edmunds.com, AT&T Wireless, ABC News, PGA.com & PGATour. com, Sports Illustrated, Toyota.com, Direct Brands, and numerous others.
Keith Posehn
Keith Posehn is responsible for managing strategic growth at Uber. He is an experienced online marketing professional and problem-solver that has run branding and performance marketing campaigns for Fortune 1000 companies. Previously, Keith was head of paid marketing at Square where he was responsible for developing innovative customer acquisition strategies for Caviar. Keith has the ability to operate on both a strategic and tactical level, managing all aspects of the customer acquisition road map.
Geno Prussakov
Geno Prussakov, a Cambridge graduate and affiliate marketing veteran, is the CEO & Founder of AM Navigator – an award-winning affiliate program management agency. As an affiliate manager and consultant he contributed to the online marketing success of both Forbes, Nokia, Hallmark, Warner Music, Medifast, Skype, Forex Club, and hundreds of small businesses. Prussakov authored 4 books, including his bestselling “Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day,” which have trained thousands of marketing professionals worldwide. In 2011 for influencing “change within the industry” Rakuten named him one of Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocates, while in 2014 and 2015 Small Business Trends recognized him as one of North America’s Top 100 small business influencers. Geno runs Influencer Marketing Days and Affiliate Management Days conferences and also contributes to affiliate marketing industry via his blog posts, articles, and conference presentations. His ASW17 speech marks his 16th time speaking at Affiliate Summits.
John Rampton
John Rampton is an entrepreneur, investor, online marketing guru and startup enthusiast. He is founder of the online payments company Due. John is best known as an entrepreneur and connector. He was recently named #2 on Top 50 Online In-
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fluencers in the World by Entrepreneur Magazine and a Blogging Expert by Time. He currently advises several companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Adam Riemer
Adam is an industry veteran and 2016 Pinnacle Award winner for Affiliate Manager of the Year. With a proven track record of managing top-of-the-funnel and value-adding affiliate programs, helping companies and bloggers get higher search engine rankings and working with data to help you monetize your traffic, he is ready to help you with a custom strategy that fits within your budget. You can reach him on his website at www. AdamRiemer.me and make sure to follow him on twitter @rollerblader.
Stephanie Robbins
Stephanie Robbins connects brands to niche online influencers to incrementally grow revenue through affiliate programs – without cannibalizing existing sales. She brings over 20 years of online marketing experience to the table, including leading the interactive division for a nationally acclaimed digital agency. Stephanie is known for representing a select few brands that she can authentically promote, treating each brand like it is her own. She has spent the past 8 years developing relationships with over a thousand content affiliates and is passionate about helping them create a flexible lifestyle through passive income. A known subject matter expert, Stephanie has been interviewed on NBC Business Talk Radio, published in Feedfront Magazine, and spoke at Affiliate Management Days, Influencer Marketing Days and Performance Marketing Summit.
Vadim Rogovskiy
Vadim Rogovskiy is a successful entrepreneur and the founder of Clickky, the global mobile monetization and user acquisition platform providing solutions for publishers and advertisers. He launched Clickburner, his first digital marketing startup in 2010. Clickburner was a social app monetization ad network that later evolved into the Clickky platform which now employs more than 90 people in 5 countries and was rated 11th in INC5000 fastest growing companies in Europe list. In 2012 Vadim founded AdCenter – the first fully automated service for social ad campaign management in Eastern Europe. In 2013 it was sold to VertaMedia. Vadim is also a co-founder and the managing partner of the WannaBiz venture fund. In 2015 Vadim was featured in Forbes Ukraine as one of the most prominent young entrepreneurs.
Justin Rondeau
Justin Rondeau is the Director of Optimization at DigitalMarketer and runs all of the optimization efforts and split tests at DM and is active among our other properties. A top-rated domestic and international speaker, Rondeau has spent his entire
· Issue 37 · January 2017
career working on optimization campaigns and has helped train some of the leading optimization teams at Fortune 500 companies. Rondeau has run hundreds of tests for both B2B and eCommerce brands and has has analyzed 3,000+ tests across virtually every industry.
Bill Rothbard
Bill Rothbard is a seasoned FTC advertising lawyer. He counsels direct response advertisers, online merchants and affiliate marketers on their FTC compliance duties and represents clients in federal and state deceptive advertising investigations and enforcement actions. He has litigated and negotiated settlements in dozens of FTC and state Attorney General cases. Bill is a regular speaker at ad industry conferences, a regular contributor to the Direct Response Marketing Alliance (DRMA) newsletter, and author of FTCAdLaw Alert, an FTC blog published at www.FTCAdLaw.com. Bill received his law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 1976. From 1977 to 1984, Bill was an attorney with the FTC, holding positions as an advertising enforcement attorney and Attorney-Advisor to the FTC Chairman. Bill has practiced law continuously since 1984, except for a two-year appointment as Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987-88.
Oliver Roup
As Founder and CEO of VigLink, Oliver Roup understands the power of native monetization like few others, and is passionate about powering content-driven commerce for companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Reuters, Bonnier, Rodale and more. VigLink enables publishers to earn revenue automatically and at scale, directly through their own words. Prior to VigLink, Oliver served as a Director at Microsoft in charge of product for properties including XBOX Live Video Marketplace, Zune Marketplace, and MSN Entertainment. Oliver has also worked at Founders Fund, for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and at the BBC. He holds several patents, is an elected board member of the Performance Marketing Association and founding chair of the PMA’s Content Monetization Council. Oliver received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science from MIT and his MBA from the Harvard Business School. He lives in San Francisco and is a passionate cyclist and sailor.
Jeremy Schoemaker
Jeremy Schoemaker, aka “Shoemoney”, is a serial entrepreneur made famous by running one of the highest-trafficked websites in the world, Shoemoney.com, and by being a pioneer in the world of Internet marketing dating back to the early 2000s. He launched and subsequently sold three successful businesses –AuctionAds, FreeSEOReport, and Fighters.com — and in 2010 was named the “Most Influential Person on the Internet” by Fast Company magazine. Jeremy has been featured in major news and media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, ABC News, Techcrunch, the New York Times, Busi-
ness Week and dozens more. In 2012 he published his first book, an autobiography, called “Nothing’s Changed But My Change: The Shoemoney Story”. The book was announced #1 bestseller shortly after. Later in 2012 Jeremy started a new company, PAR Program, a SaaS company to revolutionize the way companies are doing email marketing. The ParProgram was later acquired in late 2015 by GoSocial.
Paul Schroader
Paul has been in Interactive Marketing for more than 20 years. Mr. Schroader founded PS Web Solutions, Inc. in 2001 and has managed Affiliate Programs for a number of top brands including: TMP Worldwide (Monster.com), Oreck, Blue Man Group, Wise Company and temp-tations® Direct.
Gaurav Sethi
My name is Gaurav Sethi and I represent Virus Positive Technologies. I am responsible for our organization’s Testing & customer support initiatives. Have successfully pitched and implemented several Outsourcing/Offshoring opportunities across countries such as Israel, United States, Australia, Europe and India. I run a global QA & Testing, Affiliate Frauds, Compliance’s and Services organization providing broad range of business & technology services to clients across USA ,UK, Israel & Canada. We have testing labs equipped with real desktop (with Windows & MAC OS), Virtual machines (with Windows & MAC OS) & real Mobile devices for Android, iOS, Windows & Blackberry.
Niket Shah
Niket is a Client Partner at Facebook that works with the largest scale performance and affiliate marketers in North America. With a deep understanding of the digital performance marketing world, he’s been able to quickly guide partners to sustainable ROI and high growth. His background at Facebook has exposed him to every size and type of business, giving him a unique perspective on how to accelerate businesses towards long-term success.
Carolyn Shelby
Carolyn Shelby has been involved in developing and marketing Internet technologies since 1994, when she was the cofounder and managing partner of an Internet Service Provider near Purdue University. She specializes in technical and enterprise SEO, and has been helping corporations adjust their structure and focus to make the most of new media by integrating “search awareness” into their corporate culture since the 90s. As Director of Search Engine Optimization at tronc, Inc. (formerly Tribune Publishing), Carolyn and her team are responsible for technical SEO and organic audience-generation strategies across tronc’s vast portfolio of properties including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and the South
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Florida Sun-Sentinel. Her team delivers data-driven strategies through a commitment to web-analytics, employee training, and honest reporting.
Thomas Smale
Thomas Smale founded FE International in 2010, growing the business with zero funds from scratch to a seven-figure-ayear business. Smale specializes in advising the sale of SaaS, e-commerce, affiliate and content businesses and has overseen 450 acquisitions. He also runs a 7-figure portfolio of content and SaaS businesses, specializing in increasing value.
Maura Smith
As SVP of Affiliate Marketing at Pepperjam Network, Maura Smith oversees the client and publisher relationships that drive the success of Pepperjam’s omni-channel performance marketing solutions. With over 10 years of performance marketing insight, Maura has led advertiser, agency and publisher teams, responsible for the growth and optimization of over 1,200 performance marketing programs across 200,000 publisher partnerships. Maura received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Delaware in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing and holds an MBA from the University of Scranton.
Nathan Smith
Nathan is moderately internet-famous in portions of rural Michigan and northern Ontario as “CoffeeNate.” A student of social media and a specialist in online community building, he has successfully created and implemented social media strategies for local and international brands, as well as government agencies. Nathan enjoys all aspects of online marketing and blogging, but his passion is creating connections between organizations and the people they serve. In the affiliate space, Nate manages online marketing for FMTC.
Joe Sousa
Joe has been in the SEO/Affiliate industry since 1998. He started out doing SEO for clients but transitioned into a full time affiliate and affiliate manager. Over the years Joe has built hundreds of different sites in many different niches and has experience in PPC, SEO, video, blogging, affiliate management, and social media. Joe is currently the Affiliate Coordinator for Fanatics. com, FansEdge.com, NBAStore.com, NFLShop.com, shop.MLB. com and other related properties. He blogs about affiliate stuff at http://whatdoesjoethink.com.
Stephan Spencer
Stephan Spencer is an internationally recognized SEO expert, consultant, and bestselling author. He is the co-author of The Art of SEO (now in its third edition), author of Google Power Search, and co-author of Social eCommerce. Stephan founded Netconcepts in 1995 and grew it into a multi-national SEO agency before selling it in 2010 to Covario. Stephan invented a pay-for-performance SEO platform called GravityStream that was also acquired and is now part of Rio SEO. Stephan’s clients post-acquisition have included Zappos, Sony Store, Quiksilver, Best Buy Canada, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Chanel. Stephan is the creator of Traffic Control, a three-day seminar on SEO, and the host of two popular podcast shows, The Optimized Geek and Marketing Speak.
Sean Steinmarc
Recently named CEO of TFC Tuition Financing, Sean is working to improve the affordability of education at all ages. A graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Sean spent the first eight years of his career in financial services leadership roles across a Top 5 global bank and a Fortune 100 company. His primary roles were converging technology & business strategies, and improving operational processes. After a few years in education financing, Sean launched award-winning startup psGive to help brands solve digital marketing challenges through a combination of games & cause marketing. Now, Sean is applying his combined startup and corporate skills to move TFC, a 45-year-old organization, into the next era. In his free time, Sean enjoys finding new recipes to further his cooking skills, competing in Race to Affiliate Summit challenges, and whiskey.
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· Issue 37 · January 2017
Dave Stewart
Dave oversees research and development for CAKE’s marketing technology products. In this role, he manages a talented team of engineers, in support of current customer needs as well as ongoing product innovation. Dave has spent much of the past decade architecting software and is an expert in systems architecture, front-and back-end web technologies, database design and development, cloud infrastructure and complex UX design. Dave joined CAKE while still an undergraduate student at the University of California, Irvine. He worked full-time while attending school to help build CAKE from the ground up. He received a bachelor’s degree in Informatics.
John Toskey
John Toskey is responsible for leading strategic growth across eBay’s largest paid marketing channel. With nearly 20 years of experience in online merchandising and affiliate marketing with leading online retailers, he truly knows the industry inside out. His experiences as both an affiliate publisher and affiliate program manager provide John with a balanced perspective on key issues, and his proactive attitude, people skills and bias for action have led him to become a well-respected member of the affiliate marketing community. He is a thought leader who enjoys helping others learn from his experiences by speaking at events, writing for publications, and serving on advisory boards.
David Vogelpohl
David Vogelpohl is the Vice President of Web Strategy at WP Engine, a premium managed WordPress host. David’s team at WP Engine focuses on affiliate marketing, web development, business intelligence, and online advertising. Since 1996, David has been managing affiliate marketing campaigns, online marketing, and web development efforts in support of a wide range of websites and monetization models. Through his speaking at national events like Affiliate Summit and WordCamps, David is an avid contributor to the community and a 20 year veteran at using the web to drive revenue.
Chad Waite
Chad Waite is the Marketing Manager for the AvantLink affiliate networks and a six year veteran of the affiliate industry. He is also a co-founder of the Fervora brand ambassador marketing platform and a lover of anything digital marketing. When not behind a computer, Chad can be found on his mountain bike, trail running and spending time with his wife and kids.
Missy Ward
Missy Ward has been an affiliate marketer since 1999. She is the Co-founder of Affiliate Summit Inc., a privately-held media company that produces the Affiliate Summit Conference & Tradeshow Series, Performance Marketing Summit, FeedFront Magazine, GeekCast.fm, AffStat.com and ReveNews.com. She is also the Founder of AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com and own multiple niche affiliate websites including EasyGlutenFree.recipes, itsaWAHMthing.com and SpecialNeedsGifts.com, to name a few. Missy is a WAHM, wine-enthusiast, die-hard AC/DC fan, and a New York Jets, Rangers, and Yankees addict. She is also an active fundraiser for charities that support breast cancer research, treatment, and community programs. She hates cold weather, flavored coffee, gluten, and meat. Check out her affiliate marketing blog, MissyWard.com.
Evan Weber
My name is Evan Weber and I have been involved in the Internet industry for almost 20 years. I got my start selling on eBay, through ecommerce websites, and through a free auction website that I founded in 1997. My next major career leap was joining DentalPlans.com in 2002 and becoming their Marketing Director and part-owner. After successfully growing their company into a large, profitable Internet company, I left in 2007 to pursue other projects of my own. I launched my digital agency in 2007, Experience Advertising, and have worked with more than 200 Internet-based e-commerce companies on various aspects of their online marketing and social media strategies. Some of the digital marketing channels that we manage for clients may include any combination of the following channels: affiliate marketing, social media, Facebook advertising, Twitter advertising, website conversion optimization, paid search, shopping channels, SEO, online PR, customer referrals, programmatic media buying…
Lior Weinstein
As an experienced affiliate and tech entrepreneur, Lior Weinstein built and sold companies in excess of $20M and created one of the world’s largest mobile marketing automation companies. With his new venture, Automailtion, Lior is tacking the email marketing automation space to bring the power of smart email marketing automation to the masses. As an experienced affiliate, Lior had promoted hundreds of different products and services ranging from DIY chicken coups to satellite TV subscriptions. He knows the ins and outs of traffic generation and conversion optimization from concept to scale.
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