New Affiliate Opportunities & Strategies

If you are looking to get in to the world of affiliate marketing and become an affiliate for the first time, then you can’t afford to miss the tips, tricks and techniques specifically focused on affiliate marketing revealed by our experts. Designed to help you navigate through all the various affiliate programs and the inherent difficulties of being an affiliate, this session will cover everything from commissioned-based “click-through” programs to managing product feeds, how to choose a niche and optimising someone else’s content. Part art and part science, with affiliate marketing there are no products to develop, warehouse or ship; and no orders to process or refund. Sound too good to be true? Join us a learn what it takes to become a successful affiliate!

Moderator:
Dixon Jones, Managing Director, Receptional LTD

Speakers:
Judith Lewis, Search Director, i-level
Paul Reilly, Head of Search, Stickyeyes
Matthew Wood, Founder, a4uexpo

If you’re attending and would like the panel to cover something specific, just drop me a line or reply to the thread.

If you’ve not yet registered but are tempted, you can use the  SES Discount Code SPG for 20% off the delegate rate; that might just convince you.

What is Voucher Cloud?

In short it will give consumers the ability to download digital vouchers onto their mobile phone to redeem at restaurants, cinemas, bars and at their favourite high street stores.  Using GPS technology it will direct you to savings via map or category.

Thousands of outlets will be available on the app on launch including Majestic Wine, Bowlpex, Hotel Chocolat, Perfect Pizza and Dorothy Perkins.

The power of Voucher Cloud, what I’m going to call the paper voucher killer -is it’s direct marketing ability for local and national retailers to add discounts via the online interface and for them to be instantly pushed to consumers who have downloaded the app nationally.

With Voucher Cloud gone are the days of remembering to tear out and indeed bring along a paper voucher, you simply show your mobile to the server and you’ll bag your discount; and the best bit? It’s totally free for the majority of offers.

To aid the transition, a new voucher portal vouchercloud.com will also launch bridging affiliate marketing, the online voucher code, and printable voucher space with that of the future - the mobile.

I’ll keep you updated with progress on the blog; if you’re interested follow the teams progress on twitter.

And for those who are vaguely interested they are very comfortable! - Stay with me - now as I was watching Liverpoool get thrashed at home for the first time in two years in the league - I was intrigued by the banner placement on Digg.

Re-targeting banners on digg.com

Now it gets serious - This re-targeting of said Havaianas for Office is enabled by a company called Criteo - and its something I’ve been observing for a while now on a number of websites and with a number of merchants.

To the marketeer its a great idea, serve banners to the user with similar products to the last pages viewed on the clients site, even offer a voucher code to those basked abandoner’s.

However what does concern me with the uptake of such technology is whether Affiliates who first introduced the consumer to the product or brand are losing out on valuable commissions.

This naturally depends on the retailers de-duplication policy against other marketing channels and the sophistication of tracking and analysis employed by the merchant.

This is one element of the merchant transparency which ultimately affects conversion is something that the IAB Affiliate Council has been highlighting recently - indeed their recent ethical merchant charter includes the following statement:

“Deduplication

Many merchants will deduplicate between affiliate networks and/or other online sales channels, eg PPC, SEO, display, direct partnerships. Providing information to affiliates on which channels you deduplicate against and the logic that is involved (eg last click wins) is a good idea as it enables affiliates to optimise their campaigns accordingly”

Whilst a good start Id say, it’s more than a good idea - it’s a must.

This all raises more questions about the commission strategy employed by each merchant and the possible allocation of commissions to those who have influenced the sale along the purchasers journey - whilst this could have a negative affect for some channels in Affiliate Marketing who are closer to the end of the sales journey it could boost affiliate revenue who are nearer the start - is that fairer?

If merchants de-dupe affiliates against what is effectively an elaborate CPC method of re-targeting - is that fair on the affiliate or indeed other marketing activity? especially when some research suggests that 90% of re-targeted traffic should be credited to other channels.

I can foresee the arguments that the affiliate failed to convert in the first instance, that last click should always win -  that its not just affiliates who are part of the sales journey - so rewarding just the affiliate would be difficult to justify.

Personally I feel all of this needs discussion as evolution occurs and its a key factor in the future of Affiliate Marketing and finally we should also debate whether affiliates should be able to retarget using affiliate links!

This trend will certainly have implications on Affiliate Marketing as more cookies are dropped along a shoppers journey to the basket and adds to the debate on both de-duplication and allocation of commission.

It also rightly does point out that the market is still a little murky, due to some historical and present  spammy and rather volitile methods used by some sites to acquire traffic over user experience - something I think Google will take action on at some stage.

Despite the mass of voucher codes sites in existence and I’m talking over 200 - I can see a core handful of companies taking this channel by the horns followed by a number of syndicated and white label offerings and thankfully a total clean up of this internal channel.

Also good news for our wee’ project Restaurant Vouchers though, as the report states that searches for the term have increased by 226.3% over the last 12 months.

More stories from Google News.

So if we know each other, and if you’d like to exchange links on your blogroll let me know on this thread and I’ll add you! My only requirement is that you have a blog dedicated to Affiliate Marketing and are not a spammy affiliate marketing e-book affiliate! (or similar)

Cheers,

Matt

Flickr credit: martinstabe

Barbados itself was a treat – it was less developed than I had imagined, that’s a good thing.

It was great to get back into diving, after a 4 year gap I was a little rusty, but it all came back to me quickly – Thanks to Hannah for convincing me to go!  The nights at Harbour Lights and the Boat Yard were great fun.  Both were all you can drink evenings! Yes, that was a little messy for some – James do we have pictures of the ‘Worm’? - and who has the photo evidence of Dwight Yorke heading off with the Columbian Hooker?

The Rum Ball Rally offered a great opportunity to explore the Island, our jeep consisted of Jim Mansfield from Intel, his wife Erica and James - we managed to blag a 7ft rum bottle cutout on our scavenger hunt - somehow it managed to get back to London to bless the AF walls!

Thanks to Tom Quinn for organising the fishing trip, sadly we didn’t catch anything but least we had rum and coke to hand and the sun shining! Don’t know how MagicFreebies Tom managed to survive the trip with a dislocated shoulder after a ‘Shark Attack’ the night before?

Finally my activities were rounded off with a round at Sandy Lane Golf Course, sadly not the $4000 a round Green Monkey, but the equally impressive Sandly Lane Country Club course – its pretty neat as you get a local caddy with insider knowledge of the greens and fairways.

I hear James is looking to potentially increase the numbers again next year with up to 100 people flying over, and looking at a hotel with direct beach access which would be I believe, welcomed.

Thanks to everyone who made the trip so much fun, and to anyone who is thinking about heading out next year – I’d definitely would recommend it!

Other thoughts:

• http://www.leemccoy.co.uk/2009/06/thanks-guys-for-barbados-but-i-wont-be.html
• http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/affiliate-future/113132-huge-thanks-af-team-barbados-09-a.html

Well I should give you a bit of background about who I am -  I’m the Managing Director of Existem Ltd where I work with a talented team to develop new and exciting websites. I like to think we have a start-up mentality where we have no barriers to creativity, are nimble on our feet, utilise new technology and challenge traditional thinking.

I’m also Managing Director of Existem Events Ltd, a company that progressed from running regional get-togethers in bars across the UK to organising the UK’s and now Europe’s largest Affiliate Marketing Conference series - a4uexpo - our fourth conference will be at ExCeL London in October.  The company also organises the black tie awards ceremony in London for the Affiliate Marketing Industry which takes place for the third time on June 2nd  at the Park Lane Hilton.

I’m looking forward to sharing my candid views on Affiliate Marketing on a personal level away from the corporate side of affiliates4u, My life on the road and also the day to day running of what I believe is an exciting and dynamic online business.

I hope you find it vaguely interesting!

Woody.