I know it’s a bit late but taking three days out of the office to go to Expo meant a backlog when I got back so I’ve only just got around to this.
After arriving in Amsterdam on the Monday afternoon it was straight to the pre-party at Rosarium. This was a good opportunity to catch up with some old friends in a laid back atmosphere, but inevitably ended up later than it should have done back at the hotel bar where I got chance to meet up with some new folk, like Dave Naylor and Joost de Valk.
Day 1 and the first session I attended was New Web and Traditional PR Strategies by Andy Barr of 10 Yetis. A strong and thought provoking session from the man who has made Mark Pearson what he is!! I particularly liked the case study on how Andy has begun to generate affiliate revenue from a site he’s built purely on the back of carrying out some PR. No extensive SEO, no PPC costs, no email, vouchers or cashback, just seeding a few stories and getting the name of the site out there and it’s making reasonable profit.
Secondly I attended Setting Quality Standards in Affiliate Marketing by Chris Howard and Will Martin-Gill of eBay. Now we all know that eBay are pretty smart when it comes to online marketing, but since their decision to ditch CJ and launch their own internal network, I was keen to see what direction they were taking. I’m not normally a fan of internal campaigns as it usually just consists of creaming the top few affiliates away from the network to save on override costs without adding any significant value. However I was really impressed with the approach of eBay. Their decision was based on the fact that they couldn’t access all the data they wanted from the network and therefore invested considerably to build a platform that gave them the desired visibility.
Their focus is very much on growing the affiliate channel and I was particularly struck by the fact that they felt that the affiliate channel could be bigger than display or paid search for them. Given their business model and the huge array of products that they sell, it’s not such an outlandish claim and they are certainly investing in some innovative tools to help affiliates reach that goal. Also some of the analysis being carried out is second only to i-level in it’s insightful nature!!
Next up was ME asking the question Is Affiliate Marketing Worthwhile?. I have posted the slides up so please have a look and let me know what you think. I thought it could have gone a little better and I stumbled and repeated myself at times, looking forward to seeing the video.
I was unable to attend the next session as I was being interviewed by Chris Johnson for A4U TV, but I am upset I missed Managing Success in a Downturn by Dave Harding of Argos
and Dan Powel from CJ. I hear it was really good and I got a chance to have a chat with Dave who certainly seems to know his onions.
Final session on the first day was Alicia Navarro’s Monetising Social Media. For me the title was slightly misleading as it didn’t really address how to monetise social media, more how to use Alicia’s Skimlinks. However this is a product that I really like and I think will be one of the biggest drivers of growth in affiliate marketing in 2009/10 so always good to hear about it.
Finally a few beers in the conference centre and even managed to squeeze in a quick meeting with another company to keep your eye out for – Fusepump.
Then a chat about voucher codes with Dave Naylor and a trip into town for the breakout party. This quickly got delayed by a trip over the road to watch the football with Rob Berrisford and Ricki Jones, Chelsea were boring. Then over to the party where J Lew and I put the world to rights before pizza with Maureen from Nectar and then a memorable taxi ride with me in the front and Maureen, Jess and Helen from DGM and Steph from Ogilvy in the back. Couple of beers with Steph in the hotel and then beauty sleep.
Day 2 round up to follow…
