Target audience: Advertisers/merchants, CMOs, Affiliate Managers, Independent Consultants

Experience level: Beginner & Intermediate

Nearly every retailer on the Internet Retailers’ Top 500 list has an affiliate marketing program. It isn’t unusual to see as much as 60% of an online advertiser’s sales driven in by affiliates. Whether you are looking for sales, leads, phone calls, or any other kind of performance, affiliate marketing is a powerful tool you should not overlook.

In this interactive and case study based half-day workshop, Geno Prussakov will provide a “true crash course” to Affiliate Marketing 101. Geno, who has conducted such workshops for the American Marketing Association in DC, Baltimore, and internationally, will walk you through the entire process of researching, setting up, launching, managing, and building an affiliate marketing program for your business. You’ll start your day learning how and walk away with all the tools and knowledge necessary to make your affiliate program a success.

We'll Cover: 

THE BASICS
• Definitions
• Size of the industry 
• What affiliates are not
• Types of affiliates
• Universality of affiliate marketing
• Payment models
• Reversals and the notion of “qualified” referral
• Notion of “locking period”

AFFILIATE PROGRAM SETUP
• Platforms (in-house, affiliate networks, etc)
• Management (in-house or outsourced; most networks won’t manage it by default)
• Competitive intelligence (prior to setup and determining terms; and ongoing)
• Commission/payout, cookie life, incentives, locking period
• Creatives 
• Program policies (TOS)
• Program bio, email templates
• Launch and announcement

AFFILIATE MANAGEMENT
• 5 pillars of affiliate program management
• Recruitment: basics, tools 
• Activation: ideas
• Policing: tools
• Communication: importance, frequency
• Optimization (via competitive intelligence, replicating own successes, co-branded pages, etc.)
• Continuous self-education

Best practices from visionary affiliate managers through shared stories on crafting blueprints and executing innovative tactics that are driving home game changing results. Learn clever approaches that contributed to vibrant growth by keeping a diligent focus on opportunities from non-traditional affiliates, off-peak seasonal opportunities, offline promotion, global expansion and more.

Mapping your digital footprint involves examining where your brand lives online (website, paid platforms, earned media, etc.) and determining how these properties are connected via digital brand behavior and communication.

In this session, you'll get the tools you need to create a visual map of how and where your brand lives online, and how to use it to enhance your digital identity, visibility, and credibility as an affiliate.

Key takeaways:

* How to optimize your digital brand to increase conversions.

* How to find people in the flow of their day and be relevant to the context you find them.

* How to align your digital bran

Marketers have come a long way since we first heard the word omnichannel, nearly 10 years ago.  There are many ways that affiliate marketing has contributed to retail's success in creating a customer-centric shopping experience. Today's affiliate technology can aid brands in creating strategies that connect digital and in-store.  Additionally, there are now more opportunities for publishers to customize offers and build a more personalized relationship between the consumer and a brand.  Join us as we explore the technology and strategies that can be used to bridge the gap between in-store and online commerce.

Seeing your competitors spam the Google Index? Been penalized by Google? Want to avoid a manual action being applied to your website? Join former senior Google Search Quality team member Fili Wiese to learn all about how to avoid being penalized by search engines. Walk away with a deep understanding how and why penalties get applied, how to recover from them, how to prevent them from being applied to your website and how to submit actionable web spam reports. Having penalized countless websites for Google Webmaster Guidelines violations for years during his time at the Google Search Quality team, Fili Wiese is the world's leading expert on the topic of Google penalties.

In the annual 12 billion industry of affiliate marketing, understanding each facet of a given opportunity can translate into significant revenue. In this session we will review the latest research to highlight current conditions of the global affiliate marketing industry. By studying both the big questions of how big is the industry, what kind of ROI can advertisers expect, what is the lifetime value through affiliate marketing and the smaller questions of the shopping differences between countries, mobile performance by vertical, the incremental value of coupon affiliates – smart advertisers can refine their program to maximize revenue results.

Influencers are in high demand in affiliate programs. There is no denying, influencers need to be part of your affiliate management strategy. However, many managers are frustrated with the time-intensive recruitment process that yield low sales. This session teaches you how to convert influencers, who traditionally focus on storytelling, into performing affiliates. I will discuss both passive and proactive tactics including the following

* Influencer contracts/statement of work

* Compensation options 

* Resource centers

* Campaign asset pages

Whether you're starting a new program, growing an existing one, diversifying the mix, or adding influencers you'll need to find and reach out to the perspective publishers. We looked at of 1M+ outreach email to perspective publishers to look for best practices on how to manage the process of accelerating recruiting efforts. In this session we'll cover how to send at large scale, when automate, tools to use, and much more.

With email getting more challenging to get into the inbox and keep open rates over 10%, the chat bot is the future of the death of email marketing. Chat bots are interactive, and the open rates are close to 99%, with the interaction rates at 60% or more. With one action, the person is subscribed via their Facebook messenger - the data you now have on your potential buyer is massive!

Heather actively (and successfully) uses chat bots for lead generation on podcasts, radio, and e-commerce store.  RET technology is the future, and now is the time to learn how to leverage, understand, and discover the next generation of communication.

A practical, data-driven look from both an influencer network and an affiliate network that shows how the affiliate channel and influencer marketing cannot operate in the same space. Learn clear-cut definitions of just what an influencer is, the biggest bottlenecks they face in the affiliate channel and how to properly leverage their impact.

Discover and leverage the skills of your coworkers to streamline the daily management process, build a stronger client base, and increase profitability. Learn how we systematically improved efficiency and leveraged the combined skills of our team. This session will include details of talent discovery, training methods, and easy-to-implement improvements in the way you approach team building and affiliate program management.

With a recent shift in consumer behavior, advertisers are tasked with serving up the right content at the right time to outpace their competitors. Influencers are the secret weapon for achieving this—reaching their audiences with rich content. However, scaling influencer programs presents a hurdle when it comes to guaranteeing return on marketing dollars.

Join this session to uncover how performance marketing is the missing element to your influencer program. From redefining incrementality, building brand equity and gathering analytics essential to optimizing and rewarding your partnerships, you will leave this session with tools to build and expand your influencer marketing strategy.

Data is a buzzword, but also a publisher's most valuable asset. Often mistakenly limited as a means to measure and evaluate other assets, data itself can actually be repurposed into a unique and valuable property, driving deeper audience insight and engagement when its dynamic utility is understood. In this session, Nikesh will explain how to effectively use data to impact and inform your content and marketing strategy, drawing on case studies involving financial institutions like OppenheimerFunds. Attendees will learn how to effectively reexamine your customer data, marry first and third party data sets, and invest in tools like personalization and targeting to improve engagement.

Alison Chew, Director of Partners and Insights at Acceleration Partners, will present case study results on 2017 recruitment efforts across our diverse client base, illustrating the pros and cons of mass recruitment and sharing the best practices our expert account managers have learned.  Chew will also discuss how these trends inform new interesting types of affiliates to look out for in 2018.

All too often Advertisers get tunnel vision looking only at quick money partners and lose out on long tail revenue wins. Or get affiliate fatigue and develop the notion that "Affiliate" takes the form of only one type of website or promotion. 

Let's turn that bus around during our 45 min together!

A fresh crop of Publishers are hitting the scene - traditional and emerging media players are looking at Affiliate Marketing to drive new revenue. In this session learn how and why mass media publishers are utilizing Affiliate Marketing, the impact of those partnerships for Advertisers, and how you ensure you don't miss out on this opportunity.

Are you up to date in the world of technology advancements and integrations to drive improved results for your affiliate marketing program? This session will look at innovations and advancements from a technology integration perspective, analyzing different examples of what strategic networks, publishers and advertisers are doing to maximize performance marketing results with algorithms, API Integrations, AI and more.

The most devastating characteristic of affiliate fraud is techniques constantly evolve. When one deviation to the system is detected and blocked, fraudsters will simply create a new strategy. You may think you are protected, but you are really not! US brands will lose $6.5 billion to advertising fraud this year. How can you recognize the red flags? Effective fraud management demands a multilayer approach. You can't use just one or two tools and call it a day. Fraudsters are cunning. They change tactics as soon as they realize their efforts might be detected. You need to be just as flexible and progressive.

Your brand’s best influencer is your existing customer who organically and authentically loves you. Customer word-of-mouth advertising remains the richest path to authenticity, new customers, and positive ROI. Performance marketing’s veteran, Melissa Salas, will share how you can evolve the influencer marketing industry to a performance-based model.

Each year we see several online brands move their program to a different network or tracking provider. However, in most cases the actual transfer of affiliates is less than complete and we see thousands of dead links on affiliate websites in every market and sector leading to a network signup or 404 page. For the affiliate this is lost commission of course; for the advertiser it represents not just a potential lost sale but a negative brand experience. 

This session will show how to find these links using data analysis - and based on user examples, to offer some useful tips on how to avoid losing all of this potential revenue during and after the transfer process.