Panel: How to Recruit Super Affiliates

– Adam Viener, President, Imwave, inc. (Moderator)
– Peter Figueredo, CEO, NETexponent
– Vinny Lingham, Founder, incuBeta
– Dan Murray, Internet Marketing Strategist, Ravenwood Marketing, Inc.
– Steve Schaffer, President, Vertive, Inc.

In most programs, 5% percent of affiliates drive 95% of the commissions. Meet some of the top performing affiliates, learn about their businesses, and discuss what motivates them to promote or flee from a merchant’s program.

Video: Affiliate Summit West 2007 – Panel: How to Recruit Super Affiliates

– Scott Hazard, CEO/Plan Manager, Cooperative Affiliates Inc.

Ideas and strategies you can use to gain new customers, build your brand and create a buzz around your site, and how to accomplish this while working within a responsible and profitable promotion budget.

Video: Affiliate Summit West 2007 – Marketing Your Affiliate Site – Outside of the Box

Panel: Best Practices for Advertisers and Affiliates

Steven Richter, President and General Counsel, Media Breakaway, LLC (Moderator)
• Eileen Harrington, Deputy Director, Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection
• Bennet Kelley, Assistant General Counsel, ValueClick, Inc.
• Aaron E. Kornblum, Senior Attorney, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corp.
• Pete Wellborn, Founder, Wellborn & Wallace, LLC

Video: Affiliate Summit West 2007 – Best Practices for Advertisers and Affiliates

Seeds to Stalks: Cultivating your Affiliate Program presentation from Affiliate Summit East 2006, which took place July 9-11, 2006 in Orlando, FL.

• Mike Catania, Vice President of Business Development, America One Funding

The vast majority of us do not manage affiliate programs for multi-billion dollar companies. Our monthly advertising budgets might, in a good month, break into four digits.

We know the names of way too many of our affiliates and how much they made last month without having to look it up. We walk to a co-worker’s office to ask a question because we can.

With careful management and organization we still successfully compete on the highest level with Household Name Companies for the attention of affiliates; and they love us.

The basic principle for running a small affiliate program is controlling only what you can and ignoring the rest. You can control your conversion rates, your payouts, where you find affiliates and how they feel about you–so control the heck out of them.

From October 2005 through March 2006 we have been (are) running six simultaneous studies to answer six questions that are key to not only our company but any other small/medium sized affiliate program.

1. Showing them the money: Does raising the payouts really increase affiliate signups? Is “the magic formula” for determining the dollar-value accurate?

2. The Map of Doom: What do you do when something is broke and you can’t fix it?

3. SEO versus Affiliate Managers: Do more affiliates signup because you’re in the top 5 for their keyword or because one of your affiliate managers contacted them personally?

4. Custom Landing Pages: Personnel costs versus amount of revenue from affiliates with custom pages. Is it worth the trouble? What about affiliate-hosted forms? Can you trust the affiliates?

5. Transparency: How did we screw up when affiliates weren’t paid or tracked accurately? How can we fix it and ensure it wouldn’t happen again? What can you do to prove your trustworthiness in the often-deceitful world of affiliate marketing?

We have a 1200 member in-house affiliate program that we’ve been developing since 2003. The leads they provide supply about 20% of the leads we process.

Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.

Video: Seeds to Stalks: Cultivating your Affiliate Program

Co-Opetition, Comparison Sites and Conversion: Lessons Learned From The Adult Online Playbook presentation from Affiliate Summit East 2006, which took place July 9-11, 2006 in Orlando, FL.

• Jim Lillig, Dir. Business Development, LobsterGram International

98% of people who visit your site do NOT buy from you! Let them go? Hell No!

Co-opetition is a strategy derived from an adult industry practice of leading non-buying visitors to competitor’s offers and profiting in the process.

This session will explore how brands, merchants and affiliates can effectively use online co-opetition strategies to improve their edge over their competition, get paid for doing market and optimization research and lead to additional revenue generating opportunities.

The second half of the session will explore the Comparison Site Strategy in which a merchant or affiliate employs a “ranking and rating” Web site to dramatically improve PPC and organic search campaign conversion percentages.

First used in online adult affiliate circles, merchants and affiliates in almost any niche can benefit from using a Comparison Site model to entice users to convert to customers with fantastic success.

WARNING: Prolonged use of these high level strategies will lead to intense profits.

Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.

Video: Co-Opetition, Comparison Sites and Conversion: Lessons Learned From The Adult Online Playbook

Benchmarking presentation from Affiliate Summit East 2006, which took place July 9-11, 2006 in Orlando, FL.

• Chris Henger, VP, Affiliate Marketing, Performics

Advertisers are always asking how their program is doing relative others and we know that affiliates compare programs with other advertisers. “How can we benchmark our progress” is a very common phrase uttered by marketers.

Performics is currently compiling research and metrics that will truly enable advertisers and affiliates to conduct critical “benchMarketing” or better marketing through benchmarking.

Chris will present data, case studies and best practices around how merchants can and should benchmark their programs.

Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.

Video: Benchmarking

Benefits and Liabilities of Coupon Affiliates panel from Affiliate Summit East 2006, which took place July 9-11, 2006 in Orlando, FL.

• Marty Fahncke, President, FawnKey & Associates (moderator)
• Ian Larsen, Director of Affiliate Relations, Digital River’s OneNetwork
• Jonathan Miller, CEO, ForgeBusiness USA Inc
• David Lewis, CEO and Founder, 77blue.com
• Michelle Madhok, President, SheFinds

This is a moderated debate on the pros and cons of coupon affiliates for an affiliate program.

Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.

Video: Benefits and Liabilities of Coupon Affiliates

Opening Remarks & Keynote

Lisa Riolo, Online Marketing Professional (MC)
Michael Sanchez, CEO and Co-founder, ClubMom (Keynote Speaker)

Video: Affiliate Summit West 2007 Keynote – Michael Sanchez

Building a Multi-Brand Niche Affiliate Program presentation from Affiliate Summit East 2006, which took place July 9-11, 2006 in Orlando, FL.

• Stephanie Schwab, Vice President, Converseon

Science Kit, a 50 year old catalog company was running a niche affiliate program for their Edmund Scientifics brand (science and hobby products) on one of the major affiliate networks, but they wanted more.

They have a number of other niche sites in the science, education and hobby arena and in 2005 they predicted that if they could expand their product offering through affiliates to include more of their sites, they could not only grow their original Scientifics affiliate program, but also boost sales for their other sites as well.

The problem: not all of the sites have enough volume to warrant individual affiliate programs, in terms of technology or management.

The solution: Science Kit, who was already partnered with affiliate management agency Converseon, decided to move away from the network and build an in-house program where all of their brands could live together in a “mini-network,” the Science and Education Affiliate Network (SEAN).

Converseon transitioned the Edmund Scientifics program onto a platform that they customized for Science Kit and SEAN, and brought four (soon to be five) niche sites together with one login for affiliates. From SEAN, affiliates can promote a wide variety of products across all of the Science Kit sites from one place, through banners, text links, data feeds and PPC marketing. Costs for managing the SEAN program are now shared across all of the participating Science Kit sites, which enables great flexibility with regards to affiliate commissions, bonuses, and incentives.

The program was fully launched with four sites in November 2005. Sales for November were up 100% from the previous year, and December was up 356%; January continued the trend with 421% growth. Affiliates love the new program: the wide variety of products available, the tools and creative, the exceptional customer service, and the enhanced commissions levels and bonus programs.

This case study will provide solid examples of what to do (and what not to do) when promoting a niche program and building a multi-brand program, including all of the affiliate tools and resources used for SEAN, recruiting tips, communications materials, and stats and conversion rates.

Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.

Video: Building a Multi-Brand Niche Affiliate Program

Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Merchants panel from Affiliate Summit East 2006, which took place July 9-11, 2006 in Orlando, FL.

• Forrest Schaaf, Partner, Schaaf Consulting (Moderator)
• Dan Chiss, Director, Affiliate Strategy, Performics (Affiliate Segmentation – the devil is in the details)
• Peter Figueredo, CEO and Co-Founder, NETexponent (Outsourced affiliate program management)
• Rob Key, CEO, Converseon (Search engine optimization)
• Fran Maier, Executive Director and President, TRUSTe (Goodware or badware – making black and white out of gray)

Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.

Video: Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Merchants