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?
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