Wiseaff

Karen White is the Wiseaff of the Month!

I'd like to make a special shout out to Karen White, one of my favorite affiliate managers.  I first met Karen White when she was the affiliate manager for the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas.  I had gotten wind of their first affiliate Fam tour and blogged about what a great incentive it was.  At the next affiliate summit, Karen introduced herself, invited me to the next fam tour and gave me a Wynn gift card.  I just couldn't resit working with her.

We grew a very profitable campaign with her at the Wynn, and had a great time at the Fam tour. Our sales for the Wynn the quarter after the Fam tour were $237k.  So their hospitality really paid off, we had done $20k the quarter before.

Unfortunately the Wynn let Karen go shortly after the fam tour, with her went the relationship, and after what we consider to be some bad policy decisions, our sales for the Wynn have dropped off significantly. 

But, we continue to have a great relationship with Karen and we are anxiously awaiting her next program with Partner Fusion.

I ran into Karen at CJU, and mentioned that my wife and 3 of her high school friends were coming out to Vegas for the weekend, and she totally hooked them up with tickets to the blue man group!  Sara and her friends arrived only to find out they were on the VIP list.  They got the first class treatment and got to go back stage afterwords and meet some of the performers, wow! 

 

It's going out of your way to do something so nice like this that totally cements a relationship, we would work with Karen wherever she went.

This is why we are announcing Karen White as our first Wiseaff of the Month!

Congratulations Karen, and thanks for making my wife's Vegas weekend so special.  What happens in Vegas, gets blogged here baby!  You rock!

Performics Updates their Links UI

It's been a little frustrating to have to create a unique link in Performics before being able to utilize the link, this has often made creating large number of links very difficult.

Performics recently announced an upgrade to their link UI.

"I'm happy to announce that we've released a major redesign to our links interface for affiliate publishers.  This UI is being made available concurrently with our legacy links interface in order to avoid any disruption during the holiday season" says Larry Adams, Affiliate Product Manager for Performics.

Performics has done a lot of user testing on the links and expects the new interface to save affiliates a lot of time.

Performics is offering this in Beta now, and want affiliates to "kick the tires" and provide feedback.  You can post comments on their blog @ http://blog.performics.com/affiliate/2007/10/new-links-ui-be.html or email them.

ShareASale Think Tank - October 2007

This year I was invited to participate in the Share A Sale Think Tank session. The session was hosted in Scottsdale AZ. I don't do a lot with SAS right now, so I was excited to be involved and to learn more about them and merchants in their program.

The hospitality of Brian Littleton and the Share-A-Sale staff was amazing. And frankly, I left feeling like I should explore their network and theie merchants more.  Which I guess was the point of being invited. ;)
By my estimation there were about 70 attendees including Affiliates, Merchants, OPMs, and SAS staff.

Overall, for my first Think Tank I had mixed feelings.
On day one, 12 SAS merchants each had about 40 minutes to present their company and their programs and allowed time for Q&A from the group. The presentations were as I expected...sales pitches to get affiliates into the program. However, it was the Q&A that left me somewhat confused. The questions meandered from the normal percentage commission in the program and cookie duration to extreme conversations about website function and UI details. At one point the conversation went on for 30 minutes regarding where the user landed after they added an item to their shopping cart and the location of the checkout button. I certainly can understand why UI is important for conversions, but I question the value of the conversation in a forum such as this. Some of these program managers were getting hammered on issues that they may not have any control over.

It seemed to me like that time would have been better spent hearing from more merchants or discussing industry issues.

From what I understand this is only year 2 of the Think Tank so maybe this is just growing pains. I also understand that both the affiliates and merchants in Share A Sale are pationate and are vested in each other. Maybe this detailed discussion is just thid passion in overdrive?

Sell Luxottica Group (NYSE: LUX) - Shutting down Ecommerce in Q4!!!

Earlier this month, I posted an article about information from the affiliate channel being used to predict stock prices.  Here is one you might want to take advantage of!

Luxottica Group (NYSE: LUX) is a leading company in the optical industry and owns a number of companies including Sunglass Hut, LensCrafters and EyeMed.

Here is the message we received from the Sunglass Hut affiliate team a few days ago:

In November, Sunglass Hut will unveil the first phase of its redesigned Sunglasshut.com website. The new site will deliver an outstanding online experience with the hottest brands and the latest styles.

The new Sunglasshut.com will elevate the customer experience through Fashion, Selection and Knowledge.

As Sunglass Hut launches the first phase, it will temporarily disable its E-commerce functionality on the site.  Sunglass Hut will reintroduce E-commerce to the site during the second phase of the redesign in Spring 2008.  Sunglass Hut promises to deliver an equally outstanding online buying experience with upgraded shopping cart functionality.

Please remove all banners and links by October 15, 2007.  The program will be temporarily paused and commissions will be suspended for the entire program until the site redesign is complete in 2008.  Please note that all relationships will remain intact during this time period.  Another communication will be sent when banners and links can be reinstated. 

Sunglass Hut and DoubleClick Performics look forward to working with all of our affiliate partners again in 2008 when all phases of the site redesign are complete.

As always, thank you for your support of the Sunglass Hut Affiliate Program. 

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Wow!!!  I would think that there would be a way to redesign the site in a development environment and keep E-Commerce running until the new system was ready to launch.  I can't imagine that shutting down online sales until next spring won't have an effect on their stock price.
The stock is up almost 11% this month, so it's probably a good time to buy some puts...

Maybe people just don't buy sunglasses during the Christmas season and winter skiing seasons.  No skiing, no vacations, no glasses?

I'm not sure how much of their business comes from online sales, but I'm sure it is not negligible.

You see a lot of odd things in this industry!

Misinformation in Affiliate Marketing

Each day I am surprised by the level of misinformation that is being spread regarding PPC marketing. It all started with Google’s one URL rule and has snowballed from there. Some is being propagated by internal search teams and some by outside agencies. Either way it all boils down to protecting their turf.

The Direct Linking issue has been one that is most often misunderstood.  Here is an example of a recent communication that I had with a program manager via email.

[PROGRAM MANAGER]
IMWAVE is in violation of MERCHANT’s keyword policy. MERCHANT affiliates are not allowed to use www.MERCHANT.com (or any variation thereof) as the visible URL. Please comply ASAP or we will have to deactivate you.

[ME]
Thank you for your email.  I have paused all of our promotions for MERCHANT while I review our campaign.  Imwave does not currently build out landing pages for our merchant partners and instead works only with ones that we can direct link to. Do you have an alternate URL that we can use to promote your company?  If not, I’m afraid we may have to stop promoting the MERCHANT program permanently.

Thanks in advance,
Tony

[PROGRAM MANAGER]
Thanks! I'll get back to you with our Search Policy as I am waiting for an update from the Search team over here. As far as I know, you can use your affiliate links to link to MERCHANT but the display URL in the ad can not be www.MERCHANT.com or any variation of that.

Otherwise, our own ads get knocked out.  I'll get you the search terms as soon as I have them in hand.

Note that the Internal Search Team is apparently writing the Search Policy

[ME]
I appreciate you looking into this.  There are a few concerns that I wanted to share with you.  In Google, if I directly link to the URL from your CJ links (MERCHANT.com) Google requires me to show MERCHANT.com in my ad.  If I show something else, they will shut off my ads for violating their guidelines (inaccurate display URL).  It may not happen immediately (usually does) but it will happen, so that is not a good long term solution.

As PPC marketers, the chances that our ads will “knock out” yours, is almost zero even if we use your URL.  Many times, internal search departments do not understand this and simply think that allowing it will increase their costs.

In the rare case where our keyword terms do overlap, we would typically not be bidding high enough to have our ads show over yours.  The hope is that we can generate a huge list of terms that you are not currently bidding on and if that’s the case, then again there isn’t a conflict on ads.  We have done this with other advertisers very successfully and without increasing their internal search costs.  If this sounds like something you may want to pursue, please let me know.  I’d be happy to have a call to discuss how we have made this work with other large merchants.

Tony

[PROGRAM MANAGER]
According to our Search team, 2 ads can't use the same display URL on the same keyword. One will always be knocked out. If you are seeing otherwise, we'd love to see a screenshot.

Per Google’s policy: http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/18928.html
Affiliate Policy: Affiliates get paid a commission to promote a merchant's website and drive traffic or create sales on that site. We allow affiliates to use AdWords advertising. Please note that we will only allow one ad for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same display URL per search query.

As far as bidding on terms we are not bidding on, you are right. It would not raise our costs. However, MERCHANT has not given any affiliates permission to use the display URL www.MERCHANT.com so, for right now, that option is blacklisted. This is not to say that it won't change in the future. We're in the process of building a new affiliate/search policy to present to MERCHANT so this is something we will bring up with them.

[ME]
Yes, that is Google’s policy.  It is 100% correct that 2 ads can not show at the same time for the same keyword and using the same display URL. 

The issue is which one will get “knocked out.”   My point was that even if we had the same display URL AND the same keywords the chances that we would knock out MERCHANT are slim to none.  The merchant will typically always be bidding higher than an affiliate and that higher bid will knock the affiliate out, rather than the other way around.

It’s about gaining a volume of keywords.  I realize that you must adhere to their policy.  I just wanted to point out that they may be losing volume due to a lack of understanding of the process

Tony

PPC affiliates typically can not afford to bid high enough to trump the merchant’s ads.  There is also another key point in this correspondence.  Channel conflict with the affiliate program.  The affiliate channel is like hiring a commission only sales person, generating sales at a fixed cost per acquisition.

In my mind, placing an Internal Search Team in charge of creating the Search Policy is tantamount to having the fox guard the hen house.  Our industry has got to find a way to get our message up to the “C” level. 

Can you imagine a conversation with a company CFO about what we do?
“Wait, you are generating incremental sales, I don’t pay you unless you sell something AND each sale is at a fixed CPA.”

UPDATE:
As it turns out the Program Manager here works for an Agency not the merchant.  The Agency is apparently handling both the Internal Search AND the management of the Affiliate Program....now that REALLY is the fox guarding the hen house! 

My 30 Minutes @ EcomXpo Fall 2007

I really hate to write this post because I love the folks at EcomXpo and I feel they are providing a unique and fun experience for the affiliate community as well as valuable educational content.

That being said, here was my 30 minute experience this year.  I missed the first day because I had some meetings and was traveling to our office in York, PA.

On the 2nd day, I logged on in the morning, went through each booth and joined all the prize drawings I could.  Left 2 emails, one to say hey to a partner of mine who was actually online in her both, and one to someone I wanted to follow up with from a conversation we had at CJU.  He changed companies and I didn't have his new contact info. (He wasn't actually online, I hope he get's it).

A brief stop in the education area to see if there was anything new and interesting I wanted to catch in today's sessions and in the on demand section.  Unfortunately I didn't see anything that I could say would be more valuable then continuing to work on other 4th quarter projects I have going on.

And that was it.  I feel sad, because I love EcomXpo, and don't want to see it go away.  I especially love the prizes I get every once in a while.  In the past I have won Ipods, PSPs, Luggage, and more!

My advice to exhibitors, is to find something that is easy to mail and give away a lot of prizes so more people feel like winners, and you can actually get some information into the hands of the drive by prize folks like myself.

I don't know of any other conference where you can visit each booth, register for all the prizes, and not even have to hand out business cards!  Fantastic!

I'm sure that's now what everyone wants to hear, but it was my experience this year.  In past years, I have spent more time watching the presentations, and have also presented a couple of times.  But, I always do the drive by prize registrations!

Insider Affiliate Stock Trading

Affiliates aren't considered "insiders" as far as the SEC is concerned for the companies that they market, but a lot of time as affiliate marketers we get some visibility into the health of a company that others just don't see.  Is a company's website converting really well?  Better than their competitors?   Has a company's site conversion rate dropped significantly?  Has a company made some communications to their affiliate partners that might indicate future trouble for the company?  We see this information all the time!

Here is an example.  Like a lot of affiliates we have a relationship with Walmart.  In June of 2007 we got a notice that Walmart was cutting their commission rates due to budget issues and that all departments across the board were being asked to make cuts.  Take a look at Walmart's stock chart from June of 2007 until today:

That's almost a 10 point slide!  Predictable?   Probably.   Shortly after that email came out they totally missed their quarterly numbers.

Here is a stock chart for a company we started marketing back in October of 2006.  The campaign shot through the roof from day one.  I didn't know much about the company, but had I purchased their stock based on the strong site conversions I was seeing, I could have made a pretty penny:

Maybe there is a business around using affiliate conversion data to predict stock market behavior?

What do you think?