Innovation lies in the grey area between chaos and order 

GartnerCRM 2013 featured a surprisingly fresh guest keynote: “The Art of Vision” by Eric Wahl, described as a graffiti artist, author, entrepreneur and philanthropist… Initially I wondered what someone like Eric could bring to the table at a business conference. Besides a high entertainment factor (Eric’s talent stood out through a Steve Jobs portrait crafted on stage), Eric was also inspirational, forcing everyone to think outside the box (where’s the box?) and pushing us to be creative. In fact, here’s an infographic done by the artist himself with some key takeaways from the event:

Understand. Engage. Deliver

The event’s opening keynote showcased the three protagonists that drive the ultimate customer experience: Understand. Engage. Deliver. Which one is more important? “Understand” swept away the biggest number of votes from the audience, but take a moment and think what would really be the deal maker for your company! One thing is for sure: customer experience is a major differentiator in today’s highly competitive world. According to Gene Alvarez, Gartner’s VP Distinguished Analyst and Conference Chair, e-commerce is a key part of that customer experience. Luckily, business leaders of the world see e-commerce as a top investment priority. Alvarez also stressed that driving change and preparing for the future of e-commerce is a cross-layer process between systems of record (well understood, tightly controlled – example: order management, ERP systems), systems of differentiation (example: commerce engine, customer service) and systems of innovation (highly flexible – example: social community).

B2B meets B2C

A session by Chris Fletcher, Research Director at Gartner, validated of what we see every day in software & Cloud services: B2B and B2C learn from each other when it comes to how they reach customers, or organize their internal processes to support marketing and sales.  We’re on the same page here: B2B and B2C absolutely have to learn from each other, as consumers are savvy purchasers who respond to sophisticated marketing and sales campaigns previously reserved for corporate clients while businesses make purchasing decisions 24/7 to experiment and put ideas into practice quickly, influenced by personal, professional and social networks. At Avangate we call this “convergence” between B2B and B2C “B2i” – business to individual – and you’ll see more of this concept mentioned in our articles, as we acknowledge this key market shift. We also see a lot of growth in digital subscriptions for both B2B and B2C, another key point mentioned at the Gartner event, so we’ll hopefully see this subject covered more by research going forward.

What to do on Monday

The title of Gartner’s ending keynote was simply this: What to do on Monday. The main point of the keynote was to force people to think about the event’s key lessons and understand the why, what and how for their own companies. This is a great place to start, what does your Monday bring along?

P.S. Speaking of innovation, it was exciting to see our client Metaio, a leader in augmented reality technology, mentioned by Gartner’s Gene Alvarez as an example in “A vision for e-commerce – trends that will shape your strategy” (see screenshot below) – junaio is Metaio’s Augmented Reality browser for 3G and 4G mobile devices). Well done, Metaio!

Junaio, Metaio’s mobile browser, mentioned by Gartner at Customer 360

It’s all about the Individual

Just a few years ago, the B2B and B2C software purchasing processes were … different. Businesses worked directly with software salespeople and went through long qualification processes, often involving complicated requests for proposals and smoke-and-mirrors demos. Companies ended up paying upwards of six figures for complicated on-premise installation and restrictive licenses. Consumers purchased software CDs in stores and struggled to install products on their own, receiving limited support.

Well, the rise of the Cloud, the proliferation of mobile and improved access to information  redefined the software & SaaS market, and empowered buyers in new ways. These shifts go beyond consumerization of IT or BYOD and set the stage for a truly new and fully individualized purchasing process.

No longer can software vendors set fixed prices, offer limiting license terms, and drive a hard sale. Instead, they must move beyond traditional B2B or B2C sales by embracing a new approach that focuses on the individual. As Jason Miller of Marketo reminded us in a recent interview on Facebook for B2B – “always be helping”, not “always be closing”- which clearly applies to software and cloud services, digital goods in general.

What B2i really means

The new business-to-individual (B2i) sales model puts a greater emphasis on understanding customer needs and building customer relationships that grow over time. Consumers are becoming “prosumers” and businesses are buying more like consumers – they all have superior access to information and powerful new tools at their disposal (including social!). How does this affect their expectations and actions in the buying process?

Consumers-turned-prosumers research online extensively, interacting with products or product information about a dozen times before making a purchase. This in-depth research guarantees that prosumers know as much as (or sometimes more!) than software sales staff, turning the tables in favor of the customer, not the vendor. Prosumers seek to buy anytime, anywhere, from any device, using the model they choose. Whether on a mobile device, tablet, or PC, and whether signing up for a trial, freemium, subscription, or other offer, prosumers pursue what meets their needs in the moment.

In a similar vein, businesses are adopting more consumer-like purchasing behavior, becoming more agile, independent and experimental, rather than consolidated and slow-moving. The IT department is no longer fully in charge of software; rather, each department uses its own goals to acquire the technology that makes their life easier (we won’t go into implications of that here and how that is also shifting). Businesses expect to watch demos, ask for reviews, try products before they buy, pay with a credit card. Adopting flexible subscription models helps individual buyers in a business setting avoid large upfront commitments and improves their speed to market drastically.

B2i challenges and opportunities

While it all seems logical and sounds easy, in fact, changing buyer behavior creates new challenges for vendors. Demanding and empowered buyers expect a new level of flexibility and responsiveness in the purchasing process. As a vendor, you need to provide consistent content, self-service and assisted transactional or product support (even in multiple languages), product access etc. across channels, models, and markets. This can be a complex endeavor, but it’s necessary to support your business which is inevitably a global one today. Plus, as new distribution channels, like app stores and marketplaces flourish, buyers want to take advantage of these without disrupting any existing products or services.

B2i requires the flexibility to support multiple combinations of business models as well as bundles of products or services – distributing software in creative ways turns into an important source of differentiation for vendors.

Meeting B2i challenges

Just as B2i is a new approach to selling, meeting B2i challenges requires a whole new blueprint for operations, which we call customer-centric commerce. We’ll cover the elements of customer-centric commerce in future articles and whitepapers, so stay tuned.

What are Google AdExtensions?

The Google AdExtensions feature allows the advertiser to display additional information in a specific ad. This information might include multiple links per ad, dynamic ad links, the location of your business, or direct (and clickable) display of your phone number. For further enhancement, you can show off products in your Google Merchant Center feed, establish a social link to your Google+ profile, and even create special offers for your customers.

Displaying more information with each search result will increase your conversion rates at no extra cost. You’ll simply display more detail for the same basic cost, which can lead to an increase in conversion rates of about 25%. Also, showing more specific information from step one will likely increase your clickthrough rates overall, because the user has more chances of finding what he’s looking for from the start. Note that some types of AdExtensions display above (rather than next to) search results, which may increase your cost per click, but the results will be worth it.

Reasons to Use AdExtensions

Why should you use Google AdExtensions? Here are a few reasons to explore them:

• No extra cost. Users are already searching; the only difference is in the amount and type of information displayed.
• Meet user needs. Improve your chances of offering the right information from the first contact with the customer.
• Higher clickthrough and conversion rates come from offering more robust information to users.

Types of AdExtensions

Google offers a wide assortment of AdExtensions, each of which is tailored for specific business types and needs. The available AdExtensions types, along with their functions, include:

• Location Extensions show your business location on the search engine results page.
• Call Extensions display your phone number in the ad so customers can call you directly. As a bonus, you can track calls coming from AdWords.
• Offer Extensions promote product offers within your ads, even setting timeframe, discount percentages, terms and conditions, and other relevant criteria.
• SiteLinks Extensions include more than one link to your website in each ad.
• Product Extensions display product pages directly in the SERP.
• Social Extensions link your social accounts (Google+) to your ad.
• Dynamic Search Ad Extensions are designed for dynamically generated ads and feature some complex options that will be explored in detail in a later article.
• App Extensions link directly to your mobile app in the appropriate store (e.g., App Store or Google Play) from your ad.

AdExtensions Use Cases

Let’s experiment with some scenarios to show how each extension type can help in different situations.

Scenario 1: A website with a mobile version (or a responsive theme) allows visitors to easily browse and buy products/services via mobile, but clickthrough and conversion rates are low because visitors want more details than the ad provides.
AdExtension to try: Call Extension
Why it works: Adding a phone number to your ads will make the calling process into a single-step conversion.

Scenario 2: A website with many interesting links is promoted with ads that feature only one link at a time.
AdExtension to try: SiteLinks Extension
Why it works: Including 4-5 links increases the chance that the ad will show what the user is looking for, from the first contact. Great for improving clickthrough rates and even conversions.

Scenario 3: A mobile app is presented on a website landing page that’s promoted with AdWords, but mobile users aren’t downloading the app from the page.
AdExtension to try: App Extension
Why it works: Adding a link to your app in the App Store or Google Play so that people searching on a mobile device can go directly to download the app will increase conversions (in this case, downloads).

Scenario 4: A physical store with a website that showcases its products.
AdExtension to try: Location Extension
Why it works: A Location Extension allows searchers to see your store’s physical location on a map snippet, increasing the chance that they will visit the store in person. This strategy is especially useful when targeting ads to specific cities.

Scenario 5: A website with a Google+ page.
AdExtension to try: Social Extension
Why it works: Adding a Social Extension will increase the social relevance of ads by associating them with your Google+ page. Social relevance will also help your website in terms of SEO.

Scenario 6: An ecommerce site with products listed in Google Merchant Center.
AdExtension to try: Product Extension
Why it works: Having a Product Extension will show your products from Google Merchant Center alongside search results for terms in the product title and/or description. This extension increases the chances of conversion by showing a lot of relevant information regarding the product, including images, and linking to the store being promoted.

AdExtensions Get Results

Avangate tested various AdExtensions for an entire year for a single goal and found that the extensions increased conversions substantially. AdExtensions were associated with 23% of the thousands of conversions in the test scenario. Furthermore, AdExtensions decreased the cost per conversion while increasing clickthrough rates, showing the cost-effectiveness of the approach.

Conclusion

Using Google AdExtensions in the right situation at the right time can be just the boost that some ad campaigns need. Even better, it’s a boost that doesn’t cost more, but allows you to display the essentials of a website in a single ad, building connections between a website and its future customers.

We’re curious about how AdExtensions have performed in other campaigns, for other business types. Have you used AdExtensions in your AdWords campaigns? What were the results?

Why do some affiliates stop promoting my products or services?

There are many reasons affiliates might stop promoting your products or services. The affiliate may have left the affiliate business, found a similar product with a better commission, or simply run out of good ways to promote your product. In order to combat affiliate fatigue, every successful affiliate program must conduct a series of retention campaigns to maintain a close relationship with power affiliates and give them ways to sell actively.

How should I relate to my affiliates?

The most successful affiliate programs rely on intimacy. Being in close contact with top affiliates is crucial to retaining them, helping the relationship move forward, and mending any issues that might arise. Don’t put yourself in the situation of “reacting” to a problem, but be proactive: keep your affiliates happy with your product and let them know if something is about to change.

What matters most to my affiliates?

Start by finding out what factors affiliates consider when choosing a product to promote, since these will be the main drivers of their behavior on an ongoing basis. According to the AffStat 2012 affiliate survey, the key drivers for affiliate retention are commission (cited by 19% of respondents), merchant reputation (13%), brand awareness (10%), and affiliate program reputation (9%). Other elements can also make a difference when comparing similar affiliate brands and products, such as ad unit availability and optimized landing pages (2%) or payment terms and methods (5%). Knowing  what your top affiliates need from you will help prioritize ways to improve your program and retention campaigns.

How do I craft retention campaigns?

Let’s use each of the key affiliate drivers listed above, plus a few others, to create some effective retention campaigns:

The above ideas are just a few examples of retention campaigns. The important thing to remember, above all, is to understand what drives your top affiliates, communicate with them constantly, and keep them actively engaged.

How do you make sure your affiliates don’t leave your program?

This is what the latest release from Avangate is about – helping software and cloud services companies unify siloed cross-touchpoint commerce experiences. Although it sounds complicated, it really is not. With more flexibility and control brought into the platform, you can take mobile to the next level, make better use of integrations via API, enhance customer support and interaction with partners to fuel extra revenue.

Transact at Every Touchpoint

Fully Branded Mobile Shopping Cart

Adapting your engagement strategy to keep up with touchpoint diversification requires a mature set of tools designed to power customer experiences that can be accessed on any screen. Avangate’s advanced mobile shopping cart not only enables you to reach smartphone and tablet users, but to increase conversion rates with tailored mobile shopping experiences. You’ll be able to use a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor to personalize the mobile cart, or write your own CSS and JavaScript code for full customization.

Enhance billing flexibility with API updates

Avangate continues to invest in the evolution of our ecommerce API, providing you with a constant flow of enhancements designed to ensure that no touchpoint is unreachable. Using the Avangate API, it’s now easier than ever to extract product info based on stock keeping unit (SKU) details, retrieve subscription information, access payment data for shoppers, and resend invoices, even in multi-refund scenarios. In addition, the API supports the seamless transition of customers from the Avangate myAccount to your own shopper hubs, creating a superior experience that boosts sales.

The API enhancements also simplify other tasks, like monitoring subscriptions as they evolve through billing and contract cycles, tracking orders by source, managing multiple refunds, and even extracting complex ordering data stored by the Avangate system.

Salesforce.com Connector multi-currency and bundle support capabilities

Are you using both Salesforce.com and Avangate? Then why not use the two together? With Avangate’s Salesforce Direct Connector (SFDC), you can extract data from the Avangate system and send it into Salesforce.com automatically. The latest update to the SFDC delivers extra support to global businesses that sell in multiple currencies. Avangate handles advanced localization and more than 139 currencies, and now your international organization can take advantage of these multiple currencies for Salesforce’s opportunities, forecasts, reports, and more.

Selling your products or services in bundles? Then you’ll be happy to know that Avangate – Salesforce integrations now break down bundles and report order data for each product or service that actually reaches customers. This fine-tunes your analysis of what’s most popular with customers.

Drive Successful Interactions with the Avangate Customer Service Solution

Refund management expands to include partial refunds

Support customer loyalty by leveraging out-of-the-box assisted service functionality at your disposal with the updated Avangate platform. The latest upgrades empower customer service representatives to deliver the kind of superior support that increases user satisfaction. We’ve expanded the service resolution process with Extended Refund Management, offering you more control over resolving issues related to reimbursements. Total and multiple partial refunds can now be managed more efficiently, helping you deliver personalized service that meets customer needs.

Easy invoice management: resend invoices from the control panel

To enhance customer relationships further, Avangate produced assisted service enhancements that optimize invoice processing. On top of the automation options already available, new on-demand invoicing capabilities simplify the process of manually transmitting and re-transmitting invoices to customers so you’re working with consistent information.

User Activity Insights

The Avangate system has been enhanced with new self-service functionality, simplifying the tracking and logging of key actions performed by your cPanel users. This helps provide advanced insight into the activities of users such as customer service representatives. The new user activity reporting capabilities enable you to monitor a complex range of activities performed in the Avangate cPanel, segmented by cPanel user or action type, while enjoying data portability functionality for the info logged.

Grow Sales – Any Channel

Combine sales efforts across touchpoints with powerful, optimized distribution channels that diversify your reach and build new revenue streams.

With Customizable Partner Portals, Avangate is upgrading your channel commerce capabilities, enabling you to create branded, personalized experiences when selling to partner companies.

Even as partner relationships grow, it has never been easier to leverage the Avangate network of 37,000 affiliates. We’ve just introduced Enhanced Affiliate Newsletters that support advanced brand communication through customizable HTML messages. And to improve your relationships with affiliates, new cookie-less tracking capabilities ensure that your partners are rewarded for the sales and revenue they generate for your business.

Avangate is always ready to lend a helping hand, as illustrated by Outsourced Program Management (OPM) for Affiliates. Essentially, you’ll be able to tap Avangate experts for fully managed affiliate services, both multi-network and in the Avangate network, effortlessly building your partner base.

Express Payments Checkout Flow

Avangate has upgraded its collection of ordering flows with a new purchase process focused on streamlining payments. The new optimized payment flow minimizes billing data entry, and specifically facilitates high payment volumes through PayPal.

We recommend that you test the compatibility of existing shopping cart templates with the ‘Express payments checkout’ flow to ensure smooth purchase experiences for customers.

Sell More with Avangate Platform Enhancements

• Automated campaigns for upselling and cross-selling: Subscription commerce is just a part of what Avangate offers. A healthy consumer base can be monetized well beyond the recurring payments that come from subscription renewals, with only minimal investment. Upselling and cross-selling provide excellent opportunities to create revenue streams that not only offset any subscriber churn, but also drive profits. New automated campaigns for upselling and cross-sell ing provide additional flexibility in offering your customers appealing ways to buy more.
• Upselling with trials: Avangate’s upselling capabilities now include free trial offers for which payment details are collected. Whether used for promotional purposes, incentives, or as a spin on the traditional upsell, upselling with trials helps increase your revenue. Offer shoppers free trials of one product when they’re purchasing another, while also supporting seamless conversion to paid status at the end of the trial.
• Promotion enhancements: Speaking of incentivizing shoppers, order promotions and multi-currency discounts are also live, reflecting Avangate’s continuous commitment to providing the right tools to convert users into customers and support localization efforts.
• Direct Debit for Netherlands: To simplify payments even further, customers in the Netherlands can take advantage of a new way to pay for products. Avangate now supports Direct Debit for the Netherlands, having previously supported this payment method in Germany and Austria.

We hope you enjoyed reading about the new features in the Avangate 2013 Spring Release. Now it’s time to try them out! To get started, explore our documentation of these new ways to engage with customers and grow your sales.

It’s a fact that power is shifting into the customers’ hands and purchasing habits are changing due to “online-first”, while the channel ecosystem is struggling to adapt to the new cloud challenges. This may make it seem like the only way to distribute SaaS products is to sell direct.

Yet a recent Forrester research, commissioned by Avangate, contradicts this assumption: 66% of software vendors surveyed say that channel partners are of strategic importance to their SaaS revenues. The channel is here to stay, although it is and will continue to undergo major disruptions as the software industry shifts from on-premise installation to SaaS delivery and from perpetual licenses to pay-as-you-go subscriptions.

In the next Avangate webinar, on April 16th, we are attempting to answer this question: “Are Channels Any Good at Selling SaaS and Cloud Services?”, together with Peter Sheldon, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. More than this, we’ll look at what it takes to develop and optimize your channels to increase SaaS and cloud sales. As software companies need to work harder than ever before at retaining their customers, it is critical to leverage the power of the channel to increase retention rate and reach further out in the market. Coverage of the topics below will help you get started using channels for customer acquisition and retention:

• Partner performance: Challenges your peers face enabling channels to sell SaaS products
• Revenue mix: Upcoming shift of the revenue mix between direct and indirect channels – how that mix (and your channel strategy) differs based on target market
• Channel tools: Technology investments, such as self-service tools, necessary to support channels and equip them to build long-term relationships with end-customers (and how to prioritize these/ benefits of partner order and revenue management)

All webinar participants will receive the supporting whitepaper “As SaaS Goes Mainstream, ISVs Invest in Channel Support Tools” conducted by Forrester Consulting (and commissioned by Avangate), which reflects the importance of channel sales to SaaS.

Sign up now to learn how channels can revolutionize your SaaS revenues. Feel free to share from your experience, or ask a question for the presenters below.

Our experience shows that using remarketing with Google Analytics is the best way to recapture the attention of customers who abandon their shopping carts. With remarketing, you get maximum exposure for your brand and products at a low cost, and also increase your shopping cart conversion rate by bringing in people who already engaged with your brand and are very likely to convert.

If you’re not convinced, look at the numbers: 20% of cart abandoners return to make a purchase after receiving remarketing messages, and these visitors spend about 55% more than those who do not abandon the cart. These statistics speak loudly enough for me to want to implement remarketing lists right about… now.

Getting Started with Remarketing Lists

Since last year, Google remarketing works with your Google Analytics account, so you don’t have to use separate remarketing codes for your web pages. This makes it a lot easier to implement remarketing lists and keep them updated over time. You can now see Remarketing Lists in the Admin section of your Google Analytics account.

Remarketing Prerequisites

Before setting up remarketing lists, you’ll need to do the following:

• Link your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts.
• Set up ecommerce tracking for your Avangate Cart in your Google Analytics account and ensure you are receiving accurate data.
  • If you don’t have ecommerce tracking set up yet, this step-by-step guide will show you how to use Google Analytics for high-performance analysis of your Avangate cart: Analytics Mini-Bible.
• Set up Avangate Cart Transaction goal.
• Update your privacy policy on the website.
• Decide who you want to target: all visitors who abandoned the cart, visitors who added multiple items, or perhaps even visitors who made a purchase and may need a related item.

The 4 Steps to Setting Up Remarketing Lists

After your prerequisites are in order, you can set up remarketing lists for shopping cart abandoners by following the 4 steps below.

Step 1: Update your tracking code

First, update the Google Analytics tracking code  inside your Avangate shopping cart template. This will enable the remarketing lists to track your shopping cart abandoners properly.

Replace the following Google Analytics code from your Avangate shopping cart template

…with the new code highlighted in the example below.

Please keep in mind that you must make the same update to the rest of the Analytics code existing on your website.

Step 2: Create your lists

Now that you’ve updated your Analytics code, start creating your remarketing lists. To get started, click on +New Remarketing List in your Google Analytics account. You will see the following options:

As you can see, you have the option to target all of your site’s visitors or visitors who have viewed a certain page of your site. However, you also have two more options: target all visitors who have completed a goal that you have previously set up in Google Analytics, or create your own remarketing type using Visitor Segments (which is similar to setting up Advanced Segments). For our remarketing list, we will use the final option: Visitor Segments.

Note: It is best to define who you want to target before setting up your remarketing lists. If you haven’t already done this, spend a few moments with your team identifying the top 3 remarketing lists (other than shopping cart abandoners) you’d like to create, according to your business needs. You’ll want to choose the list name, select the criteria for the visitors that will be added to that list, and define the length of time visitors can stay on that list. Pay particular attention to the name of the list; it should be descriptive enough so that you will remember its structure in the future.

To re-engage buyers who abandoned the shopping cart, start with the list of users who visited the checkout page but did not make a purchase. To define the user profile that collects the visitors you intend to target, select “Create my own remarketing type using Visitor Segments”:

Then, create a special Visitor Segment for the users who visited the Avangate checkout page but abandoned the shopping process (did not complete any transactions). The following image shows you how to define these visitors using filter criteria.

Congratulations! You’ve just created a sequence filter that will help you identify shopping cart abandoners and send targeted messages to convince them to re-engage with your brand or product. Here’s what the finished filter looks like:

Other options: In addition to filtering for visitors who accessed the shopping cart but didn’t complete any transactions, other lists of highly qualified prospective buyers could include:

• Visitors who purchased a product that are qualified for cross-sell or up-sell products.

• Visitors who purchased a product with a short lifespan.

• Visitors who downloaded free products.

• Visitors who signed in to your site.

Step 3: Collect user data

Once you have defined your remarketing list, you will have to wait to collect enough data for your remarketing campaigns. After 100 users meet your remarketing criteria (that is, 100 people abandon the shopping cart), the list of these users is automatically sent from Google Analytics to Google AdWords. After the list has been sent over, you can start remarketing to those visitors with Google AdWords.

Step 4: Remarket using AdWords

Steps one through three get lists of qualified leads into your AdWords account. Now, you can create and run custom ad campaigns for these visitors using Google AdWords. The creative materials for these remarketing campaigns should have specific messages that match the list of target users. For example, you might attract shopping cart abandoners with a message like “Finalize your purchase order! Get your product now with 30% off!” Have no worries, your targeted remarketing messages won’t be shown to people who are not on the remarketing list.

That’s it! In just four easy steps, you are remarketing using Google Analytics!

But wait, there’s more…

A few final remarketing tips & tricks that show the many possibilities out there:

• Create lists with visitors coming from different traffic sources (PPC, organic, etc.).

• Create lists with visitors who have engaged with your website in depth (based on time on site).

• Create custom offers for your lists based on previous behavior such as product/service interest or technology used.

• Offer promotional prices/discounts/bundles to your remarketing lists.

• Address users with a seasonal message (New Year’s, Easter, etc.).

A great complementary remarketing tactic that will make your remarketing efforts complete is setting up the Lead Management module available in Sky Commerce. This will allow you to set up follow-up emails for unfinished payments (with recovery rates up to 40%), abandoned shopping carts and free trial downloads. And it’s up to you to decide how many to send and how often.

Remarketing has proven to be a very powerful tool for increasing conversions by targeting engaged prospects who have already visited your site. Integrating remarketing with Google Analytics provides more power and may even transform abandoned carts from a liability into an asset for your company.

When it comes to affiliate management, there are two main options to explore: an in-house affiliate program manager or an outsourced program manager (OPM). When determining which solution is the best fit for you, focus on these 5 points:

You shouldn’t evaluate these 5 elements separately, but rather take them all into consideration when evaluating affiliate management. Here’s a brief analysis of how each of these 5 points affects the two approaches you take to affiliate program management.

Cost

When it comes to cost, having an in-house affiliate program manager is typically more effective than hiring an OPM. However, as the program scales up and you need to get additional people to do the work, you may reach a point where it becomes more reasonable to hire an OPM agency.

If you’re a start-up company, you should definitely go with an in-house affiliate manager to develop an understanding of how affiliates can work for you. If you’re an established company, the extra cost of an OPM will also reflect the greater results you can get and the shorter ramp-up time for the program.

Recommendation: Dependent on your company’s budget and maturity.

Experience

You want the people that take care of your affiliate program to be as seasoned as possible and know the affiliate marketing business very well. Whether your affiliate program is just starting or your goal is to optimize and grow an existing program, you definitely want to have an experienced person to take care of matters. Unless you prefer to do it yourself in the beginning to develop an effective affiliate model specifically for your business, there’s no doubt about it—you will be better off with an agency’s expertise.

Recommendation: OPM agencies have experienced affiliate managers that can get the best results.

Relevance to your business

Suppose your company sells B2B software services. When having to choose, would you rather hire an affiliate program manager or OPM that only handled physical goods, or would you go with one that has at least some experience in the software field? I think the answer is pretty straightforward.

Recommendation: Find an in-house affiliate program manager or OPM agency with relevant experience.

Connections with affiliates

This is a very important aspect of your affiliate model, and appropriate connections should come along with being relevant to your industry. If the affiliate program manager or OPM has previously worked with companies that offered similar products to yours, then they’re bound to have strong connections with affiliates in that area. But just having the relationships is not enough. Try to determine the strength of these relationships with affiliates. This is important because it will determine the program manager’s ability to influence possible power affiliates to promote your products.

At the same time, keep in mind that some affiliates promote almost any kind of products –- discount websites, online catalogues, etc. These affiliates and their managers may be able to help out by expanding your reach, rather than your quality of relationships.

Recommendation: There’s not a clear choice here. Make your decision based on individual program manager or agency relationships.

Scalability

Once your program gets bigger, you will need to increase the amount of effort put into it. This can ultimately mean getting more people on the job. If you have an in-house program manager, then at some point you should consider complementing their efforts with an OPM agency. Or simply start with an OPM agency, after finding out how they can scale to run your program at the desired performance parameters.

Recommendation: OPM agencies are more scalable than in-house affiliate program managers.

Conclusion

To wrap up, I would say that in the final run you should always have at least 2-3 options to choose from, whether that’s different agencies or different in-house candidates. Choose your most important criteria from the list above, and then see which approach has the most strengths for your business.

This year’s shareconomy theme focuses on “sharing knowledge, resources, and experience to create new forms of collaboration”, all possible due to the proliferation of Cloud services and increase in user trust. The theme aligns perfectly with Avangate’s focus as an agile SaaS-based service provider. Avangate offers the tools that help companies grow their revenues and reach new customers and segments in the shared economy.

At CeBIT 2013, Avangate will host a series of talks designed to communicate the value of establishing an “eCommerce Infrastructure” as the basis of a shared economy:

In addition to these expert talks, Avangate invites you to meet us over dinner at 6:00 pm on March 6 in the eCommerce Park. You need to register to attend. The first 100 appointments get free CeBIT admission, so sign up today! We’ll also give away an iPad mini.

By participating in CeBIT 2013, Avangate hopes not only to spread the word about how its products and services can help software and cloud services vendors accelerate their sales worldwide by embracing new business and revenue models, better engage with customers and increase retention, but also hear about vendors’ needs and goals for making their products a more integrated part of a shared economy where all members of the ecosystem benefit from one another.

Are you looking to increase Affiliate Network sales and not sure how? Have you connected to several affiliate networks and sales are still not picking up? Don’t have the additional staff to manage affiliates day in and day out?

If you are confronted with any of the above, or have just started in affiliate marketing and not sure how to go about it, don’t lose heart. Affiliate networks do require day-to-day management and support in order to be successful.

Of course we take pride in the number of affiliates we have attracted in the Avangate network, recently passed the 35,000 milestone and growing. But just being connected to many partners is not the recipe for success. What holds valid is that with the right tools, counseling, and guidance, the effectiveness of the affiliate channel is increased.

We have spoken about these issues with many people involved in affiliate marketing – on the vendor side, the affiliate managers, on the affiliate side as well as with experts in the field. And all of them emphasize the same key things: relationships & communication. Here’s what Marius Motohon, Affiliate Manager at Bitdefender, provider of innovative security solutions, commented on the subject: “It takes time to find the right partners and then you need to communicate with them on a constant basis. Automation and mass campaigns have their value, but the larger the deals, the more important it is to have one-to-one relationships, and this is what Avangate facilitated for Bitdefender.”

And just to prove this with hard core numbers, here are some results that Bitdefender obtained with the help of the Avangate Affiliate Doctor & affiliate managed services:

Read the full case study on the Clients section from our website.

Have you got a similar affiliate success story to share?