Full-Agenda

 10:30-11:15am • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

How to Get Affiliates to Care About Your Emails

If you’re like most affiliate managers, you’re probably frustrated by lower open and engagement rates with email. What can you do to turn that around?

This session will cover tests and techniques you can use to revive those relationships, increase conversions and response rates, and optimize your newsletters, promotions and recruitment emails. You’ll leave with new ideas and a course of action to get results right away.

Speaker: Hunter Boyle, Senior Business Development Manager, Aweber

 10:30-11:15am • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

Affiliate Management: Grab Your Buckets & Let’s Go!

Successful affiliate management requires recruiting, however understanding & tailoring your communications to current affiliates is essential to long term success. There are 4 buckets that affiliates fit into: Inactives, Non-converters, Tricklers & Top Performers.

One way to optimize your program is to be aware of these different segments, know what % of your file is in each one and then build targeted promotional and communication strategies around them. Clearly the ultimate goal is to move them through the ranks and add them to your top performer bucket. Examples will be provided as well as statistics on what has worked for various clients’ programs.

Speaker: Jennifer Myers Ward, CEO, ebove & beyond

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 11:20am-12:05pm • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

Mobile Affiliate Marketing: Million Dollar Industry Not on Everyone’s Radar

Half of the volume and much of the growth of online traffic is due to mobile. A quarter of smartphone users bought something from their device and purchases are set to exceed $100billion by 2015. What is unclear is how ready retailers and affiliate networks are to capture the value of mobile traffic. Mobile conversion remains low even though merchants understand the need for mobile-optimized sites.

A few publishers have excellent mobile-conversion rates, but only a small fraction of retailers are capturing millions in mobile sales, Oliver Roup will outline the scope for the mobile affiliate marketing landscape and why the market is falling short.

Speaker: Oliver Roup, CEO, VigLink

 11:20am-12:05pm • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

The Tricks & Traps of Blackhat Affiliate Marketing

Is the new affiliate in your program just too good to be true? Perhaps you have a long-term affiliate that can’t adequately justify his numbers from time to time? Hold onto your hat if these affiliates are Blackhats, because you are in for quite a ride if that’s the case.

Technical know-how is always a plus, but not required in this presentation as we get down and dirty with the darker side of affiliate marketing. In addition to discussing the latest blackhat techniques currently in use (with live & reproducible examples), we will look at some of the steps you can take to protect your program.

Speaker: Wesley Brandi, Founder, iPensatori

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 1:00-1:45pm • Track 1• Room: Golden Gate C2

Rapid Fire – Live Affiliate Landing Page Critiques

Your website and landing page stinks – its just a question of degree. Bring your URL and landing page optimization expert, Tim Ash, will give you some quick and actionable tips to immediately improve performance. This is guaranteed to be an educational and entertaining session!

Speaker: Tim Ash, CEO, SiteTuners

 1:00-1:45pm • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

10 Things New Affiliate Managers Should Know

After 4 years of managing multiple affiliate programs for Deluxe Corporation, Martin Marion has come up with a comprehensive list of “out of the gate” must know details on how to immerse yourself to become knowledgeable in the affiliate industry, and key points that are critical to understand when taking on affiliate program management. Martin will cover details about the industry itself good and bad, the nexus issue, program setup, recruitment and relationship building, order verification, commission payouts based on affiliate type, fraud, technology and whole lot more. Perfect for newbies!

Speaker: Martin Marion, Affiliate Manager, Deluxe Corp

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 3:15-4:00pm • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

Affiliate Compliance: It’s Not Just the Message, It’s the Messenger

This session examines how companies can manage their affiliate programs to address common pitfalls that arise not only in how their affiliates create advertising content, but also in how their affiliates transmit advertising messages to the consumer public. Attend and learn how companies and their affiliates can mitigate exposure to liability both from the FTC and from private litigants instituting class actions.

Speaker: Rachel Hirsch, Attorney, Ifrah PLLC

 3:15-4:00pm • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

How to Improve the Advertiser-Affiliate Relationship

Moderator: Daryl Colwell, Senior Vice President, Matomy Media Group

Can affiliates and advertisers ever get along? In this panel, leading advertisers and affiliates share their perspectives on how to improve the relationship between the two. Panelists will debate the types of advertiser campaigns that work best from an affiliate perspective and some of advertisers’ big pet peeves when affiliates run their campaigns. Affiliates will leave with a better understanding of how they can forge stronger relationships with advertisers in order to gain access to top-performing campaigns, while advertisers will learn how to work effectively with affiliates (and their intermediaries — affiliate networks) to drive traffic for their campaigns.

Panelists:
Sean Geraghty, Manager, Program Management, Invoca
John Rampton, Founder, Blogging.org & PPC.org
Yuriy Timen, Head of Online Marketing, Grammarly

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 4:05-4:50pm • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

Performance Analytics: Provide Your Affiliates Long-tail Metrics

Transparency has been the buzz of the industry in recent years, but what does that really mean between you and your affiliate? Attend as we examine how to collect long-tail customer behavioral data and how to provide that feedback to your affiliates to properly optimize for the customers you want. Analytics and data drive the evolution of your product and website…your affiliates should benefit from that data as well. Here we cover topics ranging from incentivization methods to safely sharing your conversion data.

Speaker: Cameron Stewart, General Manager, HasOffers

 4:05-4:50pm • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

The Value of Working with Different Affiliate Types, the Need to Diversify

Diversity is important for the long-term sustainability of a successful Affiliate Marketing program. Using a network-wide case study including hundreds of merchants across 17 industry verticals, learn the importance of working with the various types of affiliates and how diversity is such an important component for obtaining and sustaining growth.

Speaker: Choots Humphries, Co-President, LinkConnector

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 10:30-11:15am • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

The Development & Use of APIs for Affiliate Marketing

There is a need for data by publishers. The more information you can provide the better and the more up to date it is, well, that’s key. We discovered there was a global need from our publishers for our Hotel Data. Our initial system involved a three-month process that only allowed us to on board one publisher a quarter. We felt there was a need and demand for providing publishers real time data on our hotels.

In 2012, we launched the RoomService API portal and have just finished RoomService 2.0 to expand the service to other partners outside of affiliates. We have also provided more features requested by our partners.

Speakers:
Ryan Hudgins, Affiliate Marketing Manager, InterContinental Hotels Group
Sanarr McLaughlin, Interactive Marketing Manager, InterContinental Hotels Group

 10:30am-11:15am • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

Attribution, Tag Management & Its Impact on Performance Marketing

Now at attainable prices for all, attribution and “path to purchase” reporting is being utilized by agencies, merchants (and even networks themselves) to discover and activate the (previously not) connected user interactions between channels, vendors, coupon types and differing types of 1st / 3rd party data.

Putting the “Fun, back into Funnels,” Chris Brinkworth, VP of Industry Solutions for TagMan will share actionable experience and instant (free) tools to take-away, to show how conversion path results are positively/negatively impacted by surprising external factors such as page speed, coupon placement, browser type, location and many other factors your teams are not aware of currently

Speaker: Chris Brinkworth, VP of Industry Solutions, TagMan

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 11:20-12:05pm • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

Hiring, Firing, and Compensating Affiliate Managers

In a relationship-based space, everyone has some kind of reputation but are there also objective assessment tools available to gauge aptitude and likelihood for success? Moreover, what are appropriate compensation levels for entry and senior level affiliate managers?

Brook Schaaf will present perspective from their years of hiring and firing program managers, including the acquisition of another OPM. CC Mullen, a compensation consultant, will share her methodology and findings for market-based salaries in our space.

Speakers:
Brook Schaaf, CEO, Schaaf-PartnerCentric
CC Mullen, CEO, Compensation & Organization Solutions

 11:20am-12:05pm • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

Turn Up the Heat: Engage & Activate Affiliates Who’ve Since Gone Cold

A very common problem for many affiliate managers is once-active affiliates who’ve become dormant. This presentation shows you how to get those affiliates back up and running, and how to make them successful members of your program once again. Attend and examine outreach strategies, engagement techniques, and methods for activation that every affiliate manager can use today.

Speaker: Jon Levine, Director of eCommerce, All Inclusive Marketing

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 1:00-1:45pm • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

10 Affiliate Recruitment Strategies that Work (and a Few Bonus Ones Too!)

Affiliate recruitment is arguably THE most essential part of growing your affiliate program. Without affiliates (especially the right ones) there is no hope for success.

So what are the key elements to finding affiliates who will drive new customer acquisitions and incremental sales? What strategies do the most effective affiliate managers in the world use to find and capture high profile partnerships?

This session will cover 10 proven strategies (and a few bonuses) for finding and recruiting the best possible affiliates for your program, and get them engaged so they can start promoting you!

Speaker: Sarah Bundy, Digital Marketing Strategist, SarahBundy.com

 1:00-1:45pm • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

Understanding How Your Affiliates Promote Your Brand

Promotional transparency between advertiser and publisher varies widely from complete transparency through to intentionally deceptive or no transparency. We’ll discuss a range of promotional techniques that affiliates often use to promote brands and highlight techniques to validate an affiliate’s disclosed promotional methods.

Speaker: David Naffziger, CEO, BrandVerity

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 3:15-4:00pm • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

Trends in Affiliate Marketing & Attribution from a Network’s Perspective

Learn what analyzing big data from a network has revealed, including seasonal trends, the number of affiliates really involved in a typical sale, and just how many other marketing channels touch an affiliate sale.

Speaker: Chad Waite, Marketing Manager, AvantLink

 3:15-4:00pm • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

Using Affiliate Forums and Blogs to Create an Online Reputation

Affiliate Managers, Merchants and OPM’s can benefit by developing a reputation on top affiliate forums and blogs. This session will include how to:

• develop a profile
• create a signature
• gain valuable SEO links to your company

Speak to the Administrator to gain access to private forums of your peers to further network and learn Best Practices.

Speaker: Chuck Hamrick, President, Hamrick.biz

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 4:05-4:50pm • Track 1 • Room: Golden Gate C2

Best Practices to Go International with Affiliates

Find out how to build a strategy on expanding worldwide using affiliates and what things you should take into consideration for that. Get the particularities of each major region and see best practices to get successful there.

Speaker: Michael Ni, CMO/SVP, Marketing & Products, Avangate

 4:05-4:50pm • Track 2 • Room: Golden Gate C1

Video, Audio & Rich Media: Steering Affiliates Beyond Search/Display in Mobile

We all know how search and display are the main drivers of leads and sales for affiliates on mobile, but new mediums such as video, audio, and rich media are taking over. We’ll explore how to leverage these new and exciting formats on your cell phones and tablets. We will discuss how to create ads on a budget, what types of sources work the best and how to integrate your affiliate tracking programs into this new medium. With mobile video consumption growing at 300% YOY and audio ads moving beyond just Pandora, come learn how to take advantage of these emerging trends. In 2013, 10% of all retail ecommerce dollars are spent via mobile or tablet and utilizing engaging ad formats will help you stand out in the crowded ecosystem and drive more conversions and profits.

Speaker: Brett Kaufman, VP Mobile, DoublePositive

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