Following speakers on Twitter is a good opportunity to start networking with them in advance of the conference.

Check out the Affiliate Summit East 2013 agenda to see when and on what topic they are speaking on.

If you’d like to follow all of the speakers in one shot, you can follow the Affiliate Summit East 2013 speaker list on Twitter.

Posts from the Affiliate Summit East 2013 speakers are also organized in an online newspaper format at the Affiliate Summit East 2013 Speaker Daily.

If you don’t want to have to remember to visit daily, you can opt-in to receive a reminder by email each day.

The post Follow Affiliate Summit East 2013 Speakers on Twitter appeared first on Affiliate Summit.

Join us in the Exhibit Hall on Tuesday, August 20th from 2pm-4pm to mix, mingle and have a beer courtesy of participating Affiliate Summit East 2013 exhibitors and sponsors.

Attendees will be provided with a map denoting Official Pub Crawl Stops.

The Networking Pub Crawl is the perfect opportunity to find out more about the exhibitors, check out demos and network with your fellow attendees.

Don’t forget to bring your business cards, nail down that elevator pitch and make it a point to visit as many Official Pub Crawl stops as you can.

More information on becoming an Official Pub Crawl sponsor, please visit http://www.affiliatesummit.com/13e-exhibitors/#pub-crawl.

The post Affiliate Summit East 2013 Networking Pub Crawl appeared first on Affiliate Summit.

Yet many marketers do not understand affiliate attribution. As a result, merchants are unaware that their affiliate sales are inflated—sometimes by as much as 200% to 300%—making their affiliate program a cost center rather than a revenue source. Ouch.

Why does that happen? Because what counts as an affiliate sale is not always clear-cut. Many marketing teams make the mistake of not de-duping their affiliate sales against other channels, such as search engine optimization, pay per click, display ads, email marketing, and so forth. In many cases, the same sale is getting credited to multiple channels.

Identifying Low-Quality Affiliates

Such overcounting is problematic for affiliate programs with a large percentage of low-quality affiliates.

Low-quality affiliates may include sites that target current customers (loyalty sites), customers shopping with purchases already in the cart (coupon sites), or people looking for the brand by name (trademark bidders and coupon sites).

Marketing managers take note: Low-value affiliates often account for 90% of affiliate sales. And they not only generate little incremental revenue but also crowd out higher-value affiliates and make it impossible for them to succeed.

By looking carefully at analytics and individual affiliate conversion rates, merchants can identify the lower-value affiliates that are not generating incremental sales or whose sales methods cannot be understood. Examples include trademark bidders and poachers (pay per click and search engine optimization), cookie stuffers, and sites that try to get forced clicks (coupon sites are big offenders) or automatically set a cookie that is difficult or impossible to uninstall.

Identifying High-Value Affiliates

The best way to make sure an affiliate marketing program delivers sustainable results is to recruit and nurture high-value affiliates. They have the ability to affect a purchasing decision, develop brand loyalty in a new audience, and bring merchants the traffic or mindshare they want.

High-value affiliates also often know to promote at the product level, and as a result they should generate 75%+ new customer referrals and a 2%-3% conversion rate, in line with industry norms.

Here are eight tips for identifying and developing affiliates.

1. Realize it’s just like sales

Approach finding great affiliates just as you would approach a sales campaign. Identify the best targets, reach out to them personally, and offer them something of value. Follow up. Build the relationship over time.

2. Think like a recruiter

You always need to find the best talent. It’s likely that affiliates that come to you won’t be top-quality, so go in knowing you’ll need to hunt for affiliates that will perform. Don’t forget to consider nontraditional affiliates—those who’ve likely never considered becoming affiliates—that might want to work with you based on your business. For instance, a holiday card company might reach out to photographers and local schools to become affiliates.

3. Research, research, research

Make sure you’re reaching out to prospective affiliates that deliver the audience and volume your program needs. Often the best affiliates already refer to complementary products and services, plus create their own content. As a result, they have a thriving brand and community. Many easily available research tools, such as SEM Rush and Alexa, can help identify sites that have desirable SEO or traffic in areas where you want your company to be found.

4. Revisit current relationships

Do a deep dive into your analytics to see what sites have referred quality traffic in the past. Follow up on natural links and people who did blog posts and reviews. Ask them about becoming an affiliate if they talked about your product and liked it.

5. Reach out to your best customers

See that blogger who’s a repeat purchaser? She loves your products, and she would likely be honored to become an affiliate. Customers who use you often are likely referring people anyway, so why not formalize the relationship and make it more rewarding?

6. Get personal

Building one-on-one relationships with affiliates is key; and though it might be time-consuming, it will pay off in spades when they are engaged in your brand, new offers, and promotions. Be in touch by phone and email regularly, and attend the conferences they attend.

7. Get creative with creative

Merchandise your offerings to reach different vertical markets. For example, if you’re selling jewelry, consider doing a specific promotion around wedding party gifts or around different holidays. Set up creative materials and data feeds by category, then use third-party tools to extend creative reach.

8. Use the right incentives

Everyone wants to be motivated and rewarded for great work. Run cool promotions or contests for high-value referrals, pay more for new customers, and set the most competitive commission rates for affiliates that are creating value. Pay less to those that aren’t creating value.

In this weekly wrap-up, Todd discusses a few topics from this week found at the Affiliate Summit Blog.

1) Maps of Hotels and Reminder before it’s too late!

Yikes! You gotta hurry folks. The second hotel is filling up quickly. Make your move now, and secure your hotel room at the group rate.

2) Commission BUMP!

Here’s another awesome bonus for being a speaker at Affiliate Summit: Now, speakers can earn a 50% commission from referring sales to Affiliate Summit! (Normally, 15%.)

Yes, all past speakers (from the last TEN YEARS) are eligible.

3) College Tuition and Semester vs. $549 and 3 days.

Shawn wrote a great blog post establishing the value and similarity of 3 days at Affiliate Summit vs. an entire semester at College.

4) Local Meetups are growing!

Check our list of local FREE Affiliate Summit Monthly Meetups to see if your city is represented.

If not, why don’t you start one? It’s pretty easy and a great way to get involved in the Affiliate Summit communiity. Just contact Todd Farmer to get started!

Get your tickets to Affiliate Summit East 2013 and all affiliate summit events at http://affiliatesummit.com

The post Affiliate Summit Weekly Wrap-up, June 17th 2013 appeared first on Affiliate Summit.

Television viewing is in the midst of a rejuvenated golden era, with 2012 Nielsen figures showing that viewers are watching more TV than ever, an average of about 34 hours a week. The modern twist on this trend is the increasing presence of the second screen, diverting eyes and fingers for the entire duration of the show. Today’s TV viewers remain constantly plugged in via second screen viewing, watching TV while also using a smartphone, tablet, or laptop computer.

This has resulted in the growth of content streamed and viewed via various channels, like on-demand TV, Direct TV offers and live wireless streams via your home TV. The second screen experience represents ripe new land for marketing, but mis-targeted efforts risk pushing viewers away from programming rather than pulling them closer. Understanding how viewers are actually using their second screens, then, is a prerequisite to using the tool for brand engagement. A few ideas for marketers are gathering steam in this area:

• Keep viewers engaged in the first screen content
• Look to increase live audiences and decrease delayed viewing
• Know how viewers are using second screens in relation to first screen use
• Learn to prevent viewers from being sidetracked by social media conversations

Four points of engagement

The key to preventing second screen viewers from wandering away from the show is to understand how they’re using their second screens. The NPD Group has identified four ways that viewers are using their secondary devices:

1) Discovery — Viewers are turning to their devices for more details about the show (or movie) and its actors, information on athletes in sporting events, articles and news about the show, and previews or clips of future episodes and sequels.

2) Interaction — Here’s one of the sweet spots for second screen marketing: polls and games added to live broadcasts, à la Bravo’s “Play Live”. This type of content includes games related to the show in an app or website, earning rewards by “checking in” to the show, voting for something on the show, and buying or researching an advertised product.

3) Social networking — Many viewers use their second screens to keep up with social media, often discussing the show in progress and following the conversation. Twitter often gets much of the credit for this activity, but the reality is that far more viewers can access the program’s companion site, and not everyone with mobile devices uses Twitter to link to the site, as Social TV Digest notes.

4) Information collecting — Simply using the second screen as a TV guide to find what shows are on remains the most popular behavior, according to the NPD report. Other informational uses include checking to see which shows are most popular and launching a show onto a tablet, laptop, smartphone, or TV.

What’s showing success?

Nissan North America and Sony experienced success with second-screen marketing during a fall 2012 campaign targeted at fans of PlayStation’s Gran Turismo video game, according to DM News. Almost a million players took to social media to find a download that would enter them into a competition on the show “GT Academy” on Spike TV. A Nissan rep suggested that its strategy of messaging within the program helped users to seek additional content via mobile devices, leading to further customer engagement.

More recently, Facebook is hoping to help marketers connect the dots more easily by rolling out hashtags. This Twitter invention will help Facebook users to search relevant topics in their feeds and elsewhere, making it easier for users to join discussions on particular topics. It is a golden opportunity for media partners, journalists and broadcasters, as noted in a Facebook blog post. The social media site mentioned that nearly 100 million Americans log on to Facebook while watching prime time TV every night, and that could bring about a solid advertising or marketing tie-in for brands.

Choose your strategies well

Where do marketers look for the right strategies? A recent opinion article written by the CEO of Ramp, a search and video monetization firm, outlined three strategies that work:

• Do the research — Get real-time insight into social conversation via companies such as Twitter TV, which provides Twitter-based TV ratings.
• Take advantage of apps — Engage viewers and reward them for watching live shows and interacting with sponsors with apps like Viggle, Get Glue and others.
• Sync purchases — Apps such as Get This let viewers buy items associated with the shows they’re watching. Develop licensing partnerships for these. For example, Target’s recent sponsorship of the 2013 Grammy Awards Live App gave viewers access not only to behind-the-scene footage, social media news feeds, and interviews but also Target’s music store.

Heed the balance

Some marketers mistakenly go with the notion that broadcast TV is always the first screen. That’s not always the case. Forbes highlighted the concept that viewers are grabbing their mobile devices during broadcast commercial breaks, to check with friends, to see what’s on in the world away from the TV. And if marketers spend a lot of time trying to tie-in second screen adventures for viewers, they may be in danger of losing these TV viewers, or at least, make it more difficult to get their time and attention.

The lure of the second screen is strong for marketers looking for opportunities for tie-in marketing and viewer engagement. Bringing together viewers with online promotions tied to the show themes can bring a great response via social channels. The challenge for marketers is in the balance.

Those were the days. If you needed help, you stuck your sign in the window and BAM someone walked in and asked you about the job you had to offer.

Now the second hotel, the Philadelphia Downtown Courtyard by Marriott, is getting tight on space, too.

So, here is a map of hotels in the area of the Philadelphia Convention Center.

Be sure to take care of your hotel ASAP.

Register for Affiliate Summit East 2013 before all of the passes are gone.

The post Map of Hotels Near the Pennsylvania Convention Center appeared first on Affiliate Summit.

That got me thinking about the state of digital marketing and higher education.

Tools and techniques evolve rapidly, and the things we learned just a year ago can be woefully obsolete now.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think there is a real argument of conferences vs. college.

After all, when you get a Networking Plus pass for Affiliate Summit East 2013, you’re only paying $549 to sit in on a number of classes, as well as dozens of hours of educational sessions on video, as well as access to the nearly 100 strong speaker faculty and thousands of affiliate marketers who are working on this stuff day in and day out.

Plus, the latest information at Affiliate Summit is delivered in three days. Not a semester.

On the other hand, college tuition is a crazy, big expense with access to a handful of instructors who have one foot in the classroom and one foot in real business (at best).

And it’s pretty rare for a lot of the people around you on campus to have 5, 10, or 15 years of experience in the stuff you’re learning about.

But college does provide a valuable learning foundation and the parties are better.

The post Get a Digital Marketing Education in 3 Days for Just $549 appeared first on Affiliate Summit.

But that deal just got a whole lot sweeter for Affiliate Summit speakers – we will be bumping their commissions up to 50%.

The Affiliate Summit affiliate program is on ShareASale with a 30-day cookie and set for auto-deposit (there is never a $0 balance on the account).

The current rates for passes to Affiliate Summit East 2013 range from $249 to $2,249.

The average sale for affiliates over the past 7 days has been $1,318.40.

If you are an Affiliate Summit speaker, please contact us with your ShareASale affiliate ID and we will adjust your commission rate.

The increase is not just for the nearly 100 speakers who will be in Philadelphia in August, but for all Affiliate Summit speakers over the ten year history of the conference.

This increase applies to transactions moving forward, after we’ve made the change to the affiliate accounts of speakers.

The post Big Increase in Affiliate Commissions for Affiliate Summit Speakers appeared first on Affiliate Summit.

Image source: Todd West Media

Increasing your CTR shouldn’t be rocket science, a few small tweaks here and there typically does the trick.  Here are my six fast and easy ways (each one can be done under 5 minutes) to help you lower your costs while optimizing your Adwords campaigns.  Ready, set, prepare for liftoff…

1) Use Ad Extensions

Enhance your ads by using extensions.  You can include additional information about your business like your location, phone number, product, sitelinks and social (which associates with your Goolge+ page).   There is no cost to implement this and Google reports that ad extensions can increase CTR by about 30%!

2) Create A Relevant Display URL

This takes seconds to do and is often forgotten.  The display URL can be different than your destination URL as long as it is within 35 characters so chose your words wisely to market your product.  Use uppercase for the first letter of each word so it clearly stands out.  For example: www.SanFranciscoMovers.com

3) Have Catchy Headers

Unless you are offering some blowout deal, I don’t recommend including the price in the ad.  Instead mention the discount “save $20″  or a bonus offer such as “free delivery” or “buy-one-get-one -free”.  If a special event or holiday is coming up, mention it in your headline.

4) Refine Your Negative Keywords List

I learned this the hard way by not including a comprehensive list of negative keywords in my campaign and ended up overspending very quickly.  CTR can drastically be lowered by search queries that don’t relate to your product.  If you are not offering something free or discounted, make sure you add “free” and “discount” to your list of negative words.  Research and comparison shopping keywords should also be added if they are irrelevant to your offer (ex. what is, how to).

5) Focus On Long Tail Keywords

You won’t get a ton of searches but you can expect that when someone clicks your ad, they are serious and really interested.  Plus long tail is way less competitive so you get higher CTR with a lower bid.

6) Test 2-3 Different Types Of Ads Per Ad Group

Tighten up your ad groups with fewer, but highly relevant keywords.  A common mistake is to dump truck too many keywords into an ad group.  Make sure your keywords are mentioned in the ad and pause keywords that receive a low quality score.

At the end of the day, a higher CTR usually indicates that your CPC will be lower due to higher Quality Scores.  But remember that increasing CTR does not always translate to higher conversions .  The key is to have a good sales funnel and a compelling offer targeted toward relevant consumers.