We discussed each area covered in an affiliate audit, frequently asked questions regarding our audits, success stories and testimonials. We’ll also answered a few specific questions listeners had.

You can also learn more by going to www.affiliate-audit.com.

If you’d like to join our next call live, simply email us here.

Affiliate Audit Testimonials:

We were very impressed with the thoroughness of JEB Commerce’s audit. They left no stone unturned, and handed us a number of new opportunities.” - Jason Bernloehr, E-Commerce Mgr, Rockler Woodworking
“We have a very mature affiliate program and have been fortunate to see growth year over year for many years, but we felt like there was more we could do and that it was feeling a bit stale. We hired Jamie as a new set of eyes and we got so much more! In addition to his professionalism, responsiveness and expertise we walked away with a list of 15 action items that we could implement right away. I would highly recommend his services to any company considering, implementing or managing an affiliate program.” - Gina, Gardeners.com

Equip Your Affiliate Program for Explosive Growth in Q4 and 2010!

Is your affiliate program optimized to ensure your best possible opportunity for success? Is your affiliate program as effective and efficient as possible. Most programs have room for improvement, and in most cases, a complete analysis, appraisal, and audit of your affiliate program can identify opportunities to significantly increase your performance right away.

Join Our 15 Minute Preview Call
On Tuesday, November 3rd, Jamie Birch and Stephen Robinson will be hosting a 15 minute preview call to show you how our Affiliate Audit service can help you increase the performance of your program right away. The call is free and starts at 1pm PST.

We’ll be discussing each area covered in an affiliate audit, frequently asked questions regarding our audits, success stories and testimonials. We’ll also be on the line after our call to answer any specific questions you might have. You can also learn more by going to www.affiliate-audit.com.

To join our call, simply email us here, or dial 712-432-0080, conference room 286753 and hit the # key. If you’d like us to send you a meeting request, or you would like to listen to this call at a later time, simply email us here.

Here is some info I grabbed from the FeedFront website:

“Issue eight of FeedFront will also be distributed at ad:tech New York, Blog World Expo, and PubCon.

This issue of FeedFront Magazine includes a recap of Affiliate Summit East 2009, as well as articles on auditing affiliate programs, productivity, pro digital video camera formats, PPC, email, advertising tax, and the death of an affiliate network.

Plus, interviews with Loren Feldman of 1938 Media and Joel Bauer from the “Your Business Card is CRAP” video.

Issue 8 of FeedFront can now be viewed online, downloaded, and printed from Scribd.”

Stephen wrote an article that you can find on page 4  titled “Importance of Auditing Your Affiliate Program”.  Every affiliate manager should be auditing his program at least every quarter.  Stephen outlines some of the ways that he, and we, audit our programs to achieve maximum performance.  We hope you enjoy the article. If you have questions relating to auditing your program, you can visit www.affiliate-audit.com, or contact us for more information at jamie@jebcommerce.com.

Stephen at our booths at CJU Expo

Last week I went to CJU in Santa Barbara with our owner and CEO Jamie Birch. This was my first trip to CJU and the event certainly lived up to all of the hype.  This was an exciting conference since it was my first since accepting a full time position with JEBCommerce.

If you were there, you may have noticed that we take a different approach to these conferences by inviting our clients to join us.  We do this for a couple of reasons; it allows us to spend more time with them and they are also able to meet the publishers that promote their products and services.  This increased level of transparency has paid off for us in strengthening our partnerships.

Jamie and I went to CJU with several goals:

• Meet new publishers and potential partners
• Meet with our current partners to continue to grow these relationships
• Spend more time with merchants that joined us at the event and introduce them to our affiliate partners
• Look for new potential merchants

In addition to a full slate of meetings, we also hosted four of our merchants, Ned from 6pm, Brandon from Doba, Sumit from Luggagepoint.com and Steve from drop.io. We found that our affiliates really enjoy meeting our merchants and we really enjoy hanging out with them.

Brandon from Doba talking with mycoupons

Tuesday afternoon Sumit hosted his table for Luggagepoint.com and Brandon hosted Doba’s table at the CJU Expo. This was a great networking event and we even gave away some luggage courtesy of Luggagepoint. We were excited to see some of our current publishers as well as meet some new ones that have a lot of potential to do well for us.

After the CJU Expo, we hopped on buses and headed over to the Dell Welcome reception where we enjoyed some delicious appetizers and drinks while continuing to network. Pictured below on the right is Steve from drop.io giving a brief demonstration on the stop to TrialPay. Who needs wifi when you have an iPhone and a Mac?

Steve from drop.io walking Trial Pay through a drop.io presentation

Wednesday started interestingly enough when  Jamie woke up and realized he had no voice.  No matter how many times I told him to stop talking, he just kept on talking.  He was a real trooper.  Too bad Jamie doesn’t have an iPhone or he could’ve just used the “bump” app to network.  (A special thanks to Sumit from Luggagepoint for showing off this really cool app).  In fact, I suggested a 5 minute Bump networking session for CJU 2010.

We had a busy day full of sessions and meetings. Sumit, Brandon and I split up and covered some ground at CJU Connect, this was a unique networking opportunity where the publishers had tables and we came to them. I think Brandon and Sumit would agree that we had some very fruitful meetings during this event. The CJYou Awards Dinner was a classy event, great food and excellent conversations.  After dinner it was time to relax at the Cocktail Party at Tonic in downtown Santa Barbara.

With a full agenda of goals for this event, we wanted to be as efficient as possible. Therefore we created a special drop using one of our merchants, drop.io, to help us stay organized for this event. This drop allowed us to access our list of potential targets at anytime during the event. We also utilized the voice mail feature to leave voice notes after every meeting we had to make sure we didn’t forgot any action/follow up items. This proved to be a vital asset to the success of this event for us.

Sumit from Luggagepoint and I meeting with Marie from CJ

Thursday we wrapped up the event with a few meetings and lunch with our great team at Commission Junction. Thanks to Marie and Laura for treating us to lunch. This event wouldn’t have been as successful if it weren’t for the hard work of Marie and Laura who spent their days tracking down affiliates on our target list and introducing them to us. We are fortunate to have such a great account team at Commission Junction.

I came away very impressed from the event and anxious to follow up with many new publishers and old friends I met at the event.  This year’s event was a great success for us and we are definitely looking forward to CJU 2o10.

Isn’t that the truth? When the economy starts to drop off, then drops off a ledge, we are all tasked with doing more with less. Companies begin to layoff employees and marketing dollars begin to shift from higher priced campaigns.

“The study found that fully 75% of respondents reported a decrease in their marketing budget in 2009, while 67% agreed that marketers are now being expected to drive more sales with the same or lower budget.”

“With the economy still struggling to find its way out of the doldrums, marketing accountability has moved from the category of ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have,’” said Douglas Brooks, SVP and marketing officer for MMA. “Management and finance are getting on board in increasing numbers, and becoming enthusiastic champions of marketing accountability as they see the results in black and white.”"

Lower budgets and more accountability… This is a great time to be in affiliate marketing. Your costs and you only pay when sales/leads/needed actions take place. Your risk is low, costs are low and accountability - well you know your exact ROI daily. A well run affiliate program can help you use our budget more effectively, gain more accountability and increase sales during this slow period.

If you need help or have any questions about how this can be done, just give us a call.

We have big news!

We get so excited here at JEBCommerce when our clients and partners announce big news, and today is one of those days.  Today, drop.io has announced, in conjunction with Yahoo! Mail, that all Yahoo! Mail users will now have the ability to attach up to 100MB of files to each email they send by using drop.io’s Attach Large Files application.  This app was recently designed by the drop.io team specifically for this use on the drop.io API, that is available for any interested developer to access.  The application is now available in their Yahoo! Mail account under the Applications area.

From drop.io’s announcement today:

“As part of drop.io’s effort to make file sharing simple, we’re happy to announce that starting this week, Yahoo! Mail users will have the ability to attach up to 100MB of files to each email they send with drop.io’s Attach Large Files application.

The application allows people to seamlessly share groups of photos, documents, movies and more, combining the power of drop.io as a media & file sharing backbone with Yahoo! Mail, one of the world’s most popular email services.

People on Yahoo! Mail can access Attach Large Files from the applications menu in the lower left hand corner of their inbox.”

Read the entire release here.

I had a chance to touch base with Steve Greenwood from drop.io today to get his take on the news.  Here is what he had to say:

“Yahoo!’s decision to provide drop.io to all Yahoo! mail users is very exciting and validation that we are delivering the simplest way to share anything with anyone, period. The opportunity to share our service with the millions of Yahoo! mail users and the associated press coverage will provide tremendous brand exposure for our affiliates to benefit from in promoting drop.io.”

Wow, that is exciting!  And Steve is so right on here.  With so many new people being exposed to drop.io via their email accounts in Yahoo!, the drop.io brand will continue to grow and that is always a significant benefit for affiliates.  If you haven’t joined the affiliate program in Commission Junction yet, join today.  We’ve been managing the drop.io affiliate program for some time, so if you have any questions regarding that, just email affiliates@dropio.com or jamie@jebcommerce.com.

If you’d like to learn more about this new drop.io and Yahoo! Mail app, watch the screencast here. Or read Yahoo!’s release here.

Congratulations drop.io!

Are you attending the Commission Junction University next week in beautiful Santa Barbara California?  WE ARE!  Stephen, our Director of Affiliate Management and Jamie, our President and CEO, will be there along with several of our clients.  And we would love to meet you!

We will also be accompanied by Ned Farra of 6pm.com and Zappos, Steven Greenwood of drop.io, Brandon Delgrosso of Doba.com and Sumit Bhanote of Luggagepoint.com.  So let us know when you are available to meet with any or all of us and we’ll be sure to accomodate your schedule and even buy you a cup of coffee at the Fess Parker!

Jamie and Stephen will be available on the 15th, 16th and the morning of the 15th to discuss the following programs:

• 6pm.com
• drop.io
• Doba.com
• LuggagePoint.com
• QualitySmith.com

“This year’s CJU promises a fresh take on the entire event: we’ve created new ways to make it easier than ever to create the business connections you need and new ways to get social and have some fun. As “The Place to Affiliate,” CJU 2009 will provide unparalleled networking opportunities for advertisers and publishers, the chance to learn from thought leaders in online marketing and an insiders-only occasion to swap tips and strategies with the best affiliate marketers in the industry.”  -CJ.com

We hope to see you there.  LuggagePoint.com and Doba.com will both have booths at the Expo on the 15th from 1-5pm.  Make sure you swing by to arrange an appointment or email us at jamie@jebcommerce.com or stephen@jebcommerce.com.

Look forward to seeing you all there!

I think everyone understands that nothing is constant, change always happens and many aspects of an affiliate program fluctuate, adjust or need to be altered for the program to remain healthy and at times, to remain at all.  The commission rate is the first thing looked at by the controllers, directors and executives of a company when the economy takes a hit, or the company’s performance slides.  “How can we control costs?”  “How can we become more profitable?”  “Are we paying our affiliates too much?”

I’ve been in many conversations like this many times before and know I’ll be in many conversations like this in the future.  It’s inevitable, and honestly good business to evaluate all your cost structures annually to ensure the health of your program and company.  It’s a reality.

The first two items I listed in the Feedfront article are below:

• Accurate data: When making changes to commission rates, for example, be sure to know the lifetime value of affiliate customers and look at the profitability of each partner before making a decision. Accurate data will guide you in your decisions.

• Proven assumptions: Are your theories supported by data or simply the thoughts of someone outside of the marketing department? Good analysis will often stop bad decisions from being made.

These two items are the most important - data and assumptions.  I’ve seen tens of programs make changes to the commission rate based on NO data other than commission rate, and driven by assumptions that were never questioned, supported or thoroughly thought out.   Sales volume and the cost of those sales are only the beginning of the data you should be looking at.

You should also be looking at:

• lifetime value of affiliate driven customers compared to lifetime value of all customers
• how many times do affiliate driven customers purchase during a year compared to the rest
• what is the average order size of affiliate driven customers compared to the rest
• what is the cost of orders from other channels

I’m putting together a worksheet to help you through this process and will make it available at MyAffiliateCoach.net in the next week or so.

The biggest issue I have seen is how these changes are  communicated to affiliates.  Too often affiliates are looked at as faceless entities that drive sales and act more like a mathematic formula and not like true business partners.  Would you change the invoice amount of a “partner” and only tell them when the invoice is sent?  Or, would you contact a partner as soon as you know the financials of the relationship need to change and involve them in the process?  Which way is going to re-confirm your committment to each other, build trust with your partner and ensure the greatest chance of success for both of you?

That is how we need to fundamentally change the way we look at our affiliate programs and how we communicate with our partners.  Involve your partners in the process.  Call your producing affiliates as soon as you know you need to make a change.  They are driving thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in transactions for you and know the business, sometimes as well as you do.  So not only will you gain their trust, prep them for the coming change, but you may find some interesting and new ways to reward them, or avoid the need for change in the firstplace.

The economy is stumbling and you need every advantage you can get to be successful, don’t underestimate the value of your relationships with your partners, and don’t undersestimate their ability to help you innovate and come up with ideas to get through this tumultuous time.

I asked a well known affiliate to weigh in on the issue, Christian Gordun - CEO of Coupon Craze :

“After being in this industry for nearly 10 years I have seen my fair share of comission changes. I absolutely understand that they are at times necessary for a program to continue success because we must all realize that in this ecosystem we need to support each other. That is why I have never found myself to be an abuser of comission rates. I find that I am very flexible and fair with merchants in understanding their needs.There are profit margins and bottom lines to think about.

I would much rather have a lower comission rate and keep a program alive than have a program entirely close themselves down. Yet, before such measures are taken it is important to communicate with affiliates why changes are happening. Often times it appears willy-nilly such as a program starts at 10% then drops to 5% because of profit issues then goes to 12% months later in an effort to attract affiliates. That is just poor business. The more transparent you are with the needs the better affiliates will understand. We are not fools!

Most affiliates get the concepts that a program must maintain above the line. Therefore, I usually ask that merchants give us options such as: if they want to lower comissions with coupon affiliates to explain that it impacts their margins and that they still want to work with us. Not just drop them because they don’t take the time to figure out how to work with them. Also, it never hurts to ask affiliates - we can come up with solutions.

I had a merchant that wanted to lower the rate but we worked out a nice bonus structure. Therefore, if we achieved selected goals we would then be able to get back to certain rates. This is a performance based industry after all and therefore that to me is quite a fair exchange.

Lastly, this one might apply mostly to coupon affiliates but before closing a program entirely why not talk to us about options that we would be willing to accept. Perhaps a slightly lower rate but the ability to have access to exclusive coupons. Merchants very well should know who are their valuable affiliates are and find ways to work with us. I myself have always been very proactive in understanding the merchants needs and do not get mad when a merchant changes their terms. All I ever ask is to understand what created the change and talk with them in figuring out what to do. I might also add, bumping comissions up are obviously another option to get affiliates incentivized. It can be short term runs such as during Q4 or create bonus programs. All of these are very effective tools. Merchants must remember we are a resource and tool for their companies, help us help you bring better results!”

Great input Christian, thanks for putting that together.  There are ways to work through these issues and I hope that the above has helped you walk through this difficult area.

The Affiliate Summit is right around the corner! Are you ready for 3 days of networking, learning and dare we say some fun? Well, we’d like to help you with all of those things!

So, on Monday night (August 10th), starting at 9:30, drop.io will be hosting an exclusive invite-only party  in downtown Manhattan. This party is sure to be one of the premier events of the Affiliate Summit with an open bar from 9:30pm - 11pm.

Come meet the founder Steve Greenwood and learn all about the exciting features of drop.io and their affiliate program while networking in an intimate surrounding close to the Affiliate Summit.  Jamie and Stephen from JEBCommerce will be there too!

As mentioned, this is an invite-only event with a limited amount of openings. If you’d like to attend, please email us at affiliates@dropio.com or call Jamie or Stephen at 208-635-5164. But don’t delay, the invites are going fast!

We’ll send all confirmed attendees information and directions as soon as you RSVP.