And others have taken notice!  Recently, a good friend of mine and incredibly successful affiliate manager (and industry luminary), Carolyn Kmet, of Groupon, featured one of our team’s newsletters in an article for Practical Ecommerce – Affiliate Marketing: Communicating With Your Affiliates.  Jon and Geoff who manage the Eastern Mountain Sports affiliate program compile many newsletters each month to notify affiliates of the comings and goings of this program.  It’s great to see our team get some recognition from such a valued source. Great job Jon and Geoff!

Thanks Carolyn!

Over the last few days, all of us here at JEBCommerce have bounced around the topic of what the general public really knows about Affiliate Marketing and how valuable it can be to a company.  It seems that people generally consider Affiliate Marketing either a source of spam on the internet or they just don’t have a clue.  Ironic it seems, since, affiliate marketing is the fastest growing industry on the internet. For those of you out there that don’t know, in a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a performance based profession in which the marketer is rewarded by the businesses for driving in visitors/ buyers to the different business’ websites.

Successful affiliate marketing programs consist of long term, mutually beneficial collaboration between the affiliates or the owners of the websites and the businesses that choose to advertise on those websites. At JEBCommerce we recognize the importance of that collaboration and work hard to offer that relationship through our agency with the unique and innovate services we offer our clients.  As we described on our website, ‘two qualities that always get noticed is our ability to provide clients the freedom to execute their entire online marketing plans and the assurance that they have the most qualified team in the industry managing every aspect of their affiliate marketing campaigns.’

Each day, we are creating amazing things for our clients and are thrilled to be apart of this exciting industry.  And now, please join us for our latest installment of ‘What is JEBCommerce Reading?’

Brian Secrist:  ‘Singtel’s Amobee Buys AdJitsu To Take Mobile Ads Into The Third Dimension’

Danielle Dougherty:  ‘The Man Who Makes the Furture: Wired Icon Marc Anderson‘

Geoff Marshall:  ‘A Relevant Tale:  How Google Killed Inktomi’

Jamie Tapia:  ‘Oracle wins on infringement; jury stuck on Google’s fair use argument’

Jen Dorman:  ‘Bill would make Facebook snooping, digital spying by employers illegal’

Jon Goodwin:  ‘Russia Is Sending Troops To The US To Learn American Military Tactics’

Maryellen Garasky:   ‘What a 9-Year Old Can Teach You About Selling‘

Shannon Simmons:  ‘Driverless cars approved by Nevada’

Please share with us your thoughts, ideas and comments….

Attribution has been on the landscape, at least for myself and JEB, for many years. Not sure what it is, read this – Read Attribution Part 1: The Concepts.  It’s a great series, gives you a good idea of the topic and should provide you with some food for thought.

In Part 2 of this series, Lisa pulls a quote from a guest blogger, Helen Southgate,  at eConsultancy:

“No it isn’t.” she writes. “This is a channel that pays a commission per sale and the most viable, fair way to do this is on a last click basis. The industry is not looking at a solution to replace this, it works.”

While I am not familiar with Helen or her work (I’m sure she fantastic), I do disagree on this point.  It may simply depend on what/who you deem as the “affiliate industry”.  Almost all our clients, past and present, have struggled with attribution and how to determine who should get credit for what in the customer’s journey from intent to purchase.  I do agree that affiliates are not looking for a solution, as attribution may mean a cut in their commissions (I personally feel it will lead to their participation in orders they are not seeing happening in other channels), but advertisers, especially multi channel merchants, are definitely looking for a solution to this issue.  They want to know how their spend in a particular area affected their sale.  How do they maximize their marketing budgets and what can they reduce to maximize profit, new customer acquisition and overall ROI.  They are definitely looking at this issue – just google “channel attribution” and see how many articles are being written about this.

It’s not a new issue really, maybe new-ish to the affiliate industry.

I first dealt with this issue in 2001 while at Coldwater Creek.  The question came from the top – “Are affiliates really driving revenue?  Why are we seeing sales tagged as SEM, Catalog and Affiliate?  Could we be more efficient in our marketing?  Could we optimize certain affiliate relationships to send more traffic through other channels and reward those affiliates?”  Those were some of the questions that we struggled to answer.  (It’s wasn’t simply an affiliate issue either.  Determining how each channel effects the other makes good business sense.  In the end, each advertiser wants to grow their overall business.)

We did quite a bit of analysis and data gathering in this area and came up with some really good observations.  We also developed some new strategies on an individual affiliate basis to maximize revenue, reduce cost and increase overall profitability.  The key to each success was looking at each affiliate partnership individually.

In the end, with the technology we have, you are still making assumptions, but you have much better data when you engage in an attribution endeavor.  I highly recommend it.  While affiliates and affiliate managers may not be driving this type of initiative, CEO’s, MarCom VP’s and advertisers in general will be.  They have been for some time, not just for affiliate marketing, but for all their channels.  Our industry should be prepared.

Thank you Lisa for a fantastic series!  Looking forward to reading the next installment!

Here are links to all of her posts:

Read Attribution Part 1: The Concepts

Read Attribution Part 2: The Pros and Cons

Read Attribution Part 3: Selling the Concept to Your Organization

Read Attribution Part 4: By the Numbers

JEBCommerce is fortunate to be located in one of the most beautiful areas of Northern Idaho; Coeur d Alene.  Now, we realize that we might be biased but when you are surrounded by snow-capped mountains year around, glorious lakes and rivers, hiking trails at every turn, the world’s only floating green, amazing restaurants and interesting shops, you can’t help feel that you are one of the privileged.

However, glancing at the weather reports the last few days, one might begin to doubt their lucky.  Forecast for the next week or more– rain, rain, rain and yes more rain.  And as we all know in this region, where there is rain, there is cold and gray skies.  But then, just as we began to feel like the weather was outside; cold and gray; we happened upon Anthony J. D’Angelo brilliant quote, “Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.”  It seemed instantly, our mood changed and our focus improved.

Exciting News for JEBCommerce!  Two of our brilliant and extremely hard working staff members have been featured in an online article.  Please read about the amazing job that Jon Goodwin and Geoff Marshall are doing for one of our clients, Eastern Mountain Sports.  The article titled “Affiliate Marketing: Communicating with Your Affiliates” focuses on one of the great services that we offer to our clients – email newsletters for efficient communication with affiliates.  Please check it out!

We hope you enjoy our articles, share a few of your own and if you are in this area, stay dry!!

Brian Secrist -  “The BlackBerry 10 Camera App Can Turn Back Time”

Danielle Doughery -  “Oxford Docs:  We Can Prevent PTSD… With Tetris”

Geoff Marshall -  “Today’s Top Stores:  Facebook Adds Organ Donor Status, Samsunt Ships 93.8 Million Phones in Q1″

Jen Dorman – “July 9 could be “Internet doomsday’ for some (so check your PC or Mac”

Jennifer Ramb -  “‘Bullied’ dolphin hiding from pushy pod, officials say”

Jamie Birch -  “Google Crushes Spinners and Spammers”

Jamie Tapia -  “Hiring Issues and Healthcare Put Damper on Small Business Growth”

Jon Goodwin -  “Super Secret Hypersonic Aircraft Flew Out of Its Skin”

Maryellen Garasky -  “Microsoft’s Nook deal is a real ‘game changer’

Richard Hawkins -  “Grammatical Gaffes on the Web are the Worstest”

Shannon Simmons – “Dentist Anna Mackowiak pulled out all of ex-boyfriend’s teeth after he dumped her”

The new google glass!  See the article below!

We here at JEBCommerce  all look forward to our weekly team meetings where we share the success of our clients with each other, brainstorm fresh ideas in our field and share the interesting articles that we then share with all of you.  This week, we are pleased to have more members of our staff share their articles.  As they say “the more the merrier!”  Enjoy!

Geoff Marshall-  Social Candy Optimizes Its Facebook Marketing Tools With Fresh Templates and New Timeline For Brands

Jen Dorman -  Google augmented reality device could work with your own glasses

Jennifer Ramb – Scientist uses physics to get out of a traffic ticket

Jamie Birch -  The Next Shift at Google Could Have Big Impact on Advertisers and Pinterest Isn’t Only for Window Shopping: Nearly 1 in 3 Buy

Jamie Tapia -  7 Suggestions for Better Affiliate Newsletters

Jon Goodwin – Pilot sends plane into dive after mistaking Venus for oncoming plane

Maryellen Garasky – Housing starts slip, but permits for new building soar

Shannon Simmons – American Chicken McNuggets have 2.5 times the salt of British Ones

Thank you for stopping by!

Welcome to another episode of “What is JEBCommerce Reading – April 13, 2012″!  April met all of us in the Northwest with a mix of confusing weather; sunny and warm temps one day and snow and cold the next.  Everyone at JEBCommerce have been reading different articles this week featuring affiliate marketing and interesting social media news.  Please enjoy!

Brian Secrist:   “Android On Your PC:  Qualcomm Invests In BlueStacks After Beta Sees 1M Downloads in 10 Days”

Geoff Marshall:   “Microsoft and Nokia Begin Massive Marketing Push Behind Lumia 900″

Jamie Birch:  “Why you shouldn’t overlook affiliate marketing”  and  “Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity”

Jamie Tapia:  “Facebook Buys Instagram for $1Billion” and  “Pinterest Soars to No. 3 in Social Networking”

Jennifer Dorman:   “Answer your tattoo – your phone is ringing”

Jon Goodwin:    “11 Ways I Drive Traffic To My Sites”

Maryellen Garasky:   “Twitter users rally to save carjacked man”

Richard Hawkins:  “Why you shouldn’t overlook affiliate marketing”

Shannon Simons:  “Say ‘hello’ to CISPA, it will remind you of SOPA”

We welcome comments and thoughts!  Thank you for stopping by!

Aaron talks about the issues marketers have with managing budgets in performance marketing, it’s something that we manage each month and myself, my staff, can attest to the difficulty level, and the overall reward you receive when it’s done correctly.  It takes a bit of time to work out the kinks, each client of ours is a bit different, but we have seen growth of 100% or more when this is done effectively.

Moreover, marketing managers are often told to “use their budget or lose it,” and it’s significantly more time consuming to manage performance-marketing budgets given the above, so some opt for the easy way out, which is avoidance.

Rest assured that it indeed can be done.

Aaron, earlier in the article, also talks about the time that is needed to grow and manage performance marketing campaigns:

In addition, when things are trackable, it means that you can optimize and improve performance. Tracking and optimization take energy and dedication, and setting aside time to learn new programs like Google AdWords, Skimlinks, etc. It also means that you might find data suggesting things aren’t going well.

I’d say there is quite a bit more for you to understand, learn and master in affiliate marketing, but Aaron hit the nail on the head.  If you are avoiding affiliate marketing because the budgets are too difficult to get your arms around or you simply don’t have the time to master more skill sets AND another marketing channel, give JEBCommerce a call.  It’s what we do and managing performance marketing along side, cooperatively, with your other channels is our forte’.  It can be done, let us help.

We are a bit delayed in our posting of this week’s episode of “What is JEBCommerce Reading” as we have been working on revamping our website.  After reading our articles, please take a look at our new and improved website at jebcommerce.com.  As always, we encourage your feedback….comments, suggestions and input on what you a reading.

Brian Secrist -    Slam Dunk or Rimshot?  NBA Star Tracy McGrady Launches His Own Daily Deal Site

Danielle Dougherty -     Why is the long tail key in 2012 and how can you win attention?

Jamie Birch -     Price It Right and Prepare for Profit, Pinterest is Not Influencing Purchasing Decisions, 30 Twitter Accounts Every Affiliate Should Follow and Amazon: To KDP Select, Or Not?

Jamie Tapia -     The War Against Affiliate Marketing Continues and Hot or Not: Sales and Marketing Trends in 2012

Jen Dorman -   News Brief: New Jersey Latest Star in Affiliate Tax Showdown

Maryellen Garasky-     7 Things you need to know to keep kids safe online

Shannon Simmons -     SpaceX CEO claims he can send you on a round-trip to Mars for $500K

Thank you.

I’m now working on my 13th year in the online marketing field. I really don’t feel that old, but wow, in this online world that sure is a long time. I remember a few colleagues of mine were joking at the last affiliate summit that one online marketing year is worth 7 brick and mortar years.  So that puts me at, um, carry the 1, divided by x, at about 91 years of online marketing experience. 8 of those, I mean 56 of those, have been in the consulting and agency world. During that time, my team and I have worked on over 100 different programs. That breadth of experience has provided us with some great insights into the goals, requirements, and needs of merchants of all sizes.

Across those many different clients, a few things remain the same. I’d like to discuss those here.

Affiliate marketing is definitely in a maturation stage now. A lot of the activities that were acceptable, and available, are no longer the norm, or no longer optional as Google continues to turn the screws on affiliate sites (remember Florida, and who can forget Panda). But overall I think this is a good thing for both merchants and affiliates (well, probably not Panda). Because of this maturity, merchants are requiring more of their partners, both in terms of sales production but also in terms of insight into the affiliates’ users and the affiliates’ activities on their behalf. Here are some of the things I’ve heard our clients, and potential clients, ask for over the last several years:

• Media Kits: Affiliate Partners are truly publishers, or need to be, in the offline sense of the word. Merchants/Advertisers are requiring more information on who you reach, how many you reach, and how you reach them. Advertisers are, more and more, looking for a specific type of customer and are willing to spend their money with those partners that reach that customer.
• More lasers and less shotguns: Budgets for advertising and affiliate programs are still out there and I anticipate will continue to be as more dollars are shifted from display and other channels to performance marketing channels. But, advertisers don’t want to spend “willy-nilly”. “Find me the sites that drive our type of customers and I’ll spend more money there” – we hear that quite often at JEB. Advertisers want to be more focused in their marketing efforts than before. The current economic climate is a main driver of that. You need to not only know the true value you bring to your advertising partners, but you need to make sure they have that information in an easily digestible format.
• New Customers: Have you been approached by an advertiser wanting to pay you more for new customers? If not, you most likely will soon. Back in the day, any sales were good sales. But as advertisers become sophisticated, and attribution models become more useful, advertisers are looking at each of their channels’ performance and requiring, and rewarding, for the amount and quality of new customers.
• Incremental Sales: Similar in nature to new customers above, but differing in one unique characteristic. Incremental sales are sales driven through the affiliate channel that the advertiser would not have gotten without the affiliates’ participation, promotion, and effort. This is the big daddy that many advertisers are struggling with today. How you measure and quantify incremental sales is different with each advertiser, but as affiliates, there are some things that you can do to show that your sales are incremental (assuming they are). I would begin by clearly demonstrating the activities you engage in on behalf of your advertising partner. Be specific, frequent, and show how those activities are driving sales. Do you keep reports of how different activities drive sales for different partners? If asked today, could you answer the question “are you driving incremental sales?”

These are just a few of the things that we’ve heard our clients ask for from their affiliate partners. I’ll be doing another post later this week or next on common perceptions of affiliate marketers and would love your input and feedback on that blog post as well. I’d love to get your feedback on the above and look forward to your comments.

(Brian Secrist)            “Jumptap: Android, iOS Now 91% of All Mobile Ad Traffic, Kindle Fire 33% of All Tablet Use”

(Danielle Dougherty)   “10 Deadly Mistakes With Email Marketing”

(Geoff Marshall)         “Your Desk Job Makes You Fat, Sick and Dead”

(Jamie Tapia)             “Today’s Top Stories: iPad HD Rumors, Colleges Demand Applicants’ Facebook Data”

(Jen Dorman)              ‘World’s thinnest tablet,’ Toshiba Excite 10 hits US in March

(Jon Goodwin)             “Warm Weather Puts Chill on Brands’ Winters”

(Maryellen Garasky)     “The Collapse of Print Advertising in 1 Graph”

(Shannon Simmons)      “Apple wins right to Android development details in patent lawsuit”

(Jamie Birch)           “The Skill of the Follow Up” Brad Lomenick and  “Twitter chats and Twitter parties for brands”

We would love to hear from you…your comments, articles that you are reading, anything else you would like to share!  Thank you for stopping by!