Top Brands Discuss Affiliate Strategies:
Incremental Sales
by Jeff Molander
It’s finally official and word is out on the street… not just behind closed doors. Retailers engaged in Web affiliate programs are not settling for less when it comes to their insatiable desires: Incremental sales. Affiliates be damned if they’re not able to provide more accountability, transparency and really get into bed with advertisers — form relationships that allow advertisers to have their cake and eat it too.
Increasingly, affiliates are expected to offer advertisers something that they, themselves, cannot access. Affiliates’ domination of the search landscape is forcing the issue as advertisers themselves rush into search marketing — only to find their affiliates have beat them to it. The environment has become highly competitive and downright nasty at times.
Earlier this year a panel convened in Boston at the conference for Multi-Channel Marketers to discuss the state and future of retail-focused affiliate marketing programs. The panel featured:
Amanda Watlington, Principal, Searching for Profit
Carol Steinberg, VP eCommerce (not pictured)
Stephen Fuller-Rowell, Chinaberry Inc.
Slide presentations presented at the session are also available below.
PROGRAM GUIDE
3:55 – State of Industry Overview (Molander)
9:50 – Panel present brief summery of experience
14:19 – Chinaberry presentation
23:21 – Amanda Watlington presentation
36:29 – Affiliates as consultants?
38:34 – Affiliates must bring incremental sales (C. Steinberg)
40:20 – Tools affiliates need
41:25 – Question: Staffing for affiliate marketing
46:00 – Question: Tools for monitoring affiliates
48:38 – Question: New customers and loyalty sites
51:57 – Question: Google’s Universal Search and affiliates
60:44 – Digital media protection
61:30 – Closing, forward-thinking take-aways on affiliate marketing
(63 MINUTES)
Download the MP3 file here.
Play the program now!
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[...] a transcript taken from the May 25, 2007 edition of Weekly Insight that discussed a recent “state of affiliate marketing” panel convened at the DMA’s Multi-Channel Marketing Conference. You may listen to [...]
[...] Bottom line: Affiliates in general earn a poor reputation and are not valued if they are nothing but low value opportunists who do not deliver incremental value to advertisers. Value is now being measured here in the States (mainly based on incremental sales). [...]
[...] the DMA’s understanding of email practices? “You, Jeff, have put a lot of energy into debunking affiliate myths… I think email is due for a similar de-bunking in the next few years,” added [...]