By Michael Hines
The president of zanox answers some big questions on how affiliate marketing can benefit your company and your clients.
You probably already know the basic premise behind affiliate marketing. You know that the advertiser pays for sales or leads instead of impressions or clicks. And you already know that unless the campaign is successful, it hardly costs the advertiser anything. But what you might not be entirely sure about is how to get started, how to track campaigns or who the major players are. Or perhaps you've already tried affiliate marketing and been disappointed.
I am going to answer some of the questions you might have and, with any luck, help you understand how affiliate marketing can benefit your company or your clients.
Whom you need to know about
Generally speaking, companies involved in affiliate marketing fall into three categories: advertisers, publishers or affiliate networks. These categories have evolved into many sub-segments in the past few years, but we'll just focus on the basics.
In a nutshell, publishers -- also known as affiliates -- display ads supplied by advertisers. The role of the affiliate network is to bring publishers and advertisers together, offering them the infrastructure necessary to track purchases, pay affiliates and report back to both parties on online activities. Some advertisers choose to work with affiliate networks, while others prefer to recruit their own publishers and manage everything in-house. If you're new to affiliate marketing, you might want to start by working with a network, but if you decide to go the do-it-yourself route, you'll need to hire an experienced affiliate manager.
Our focus here will be on those who choose to work with an affiliate network. It usually works like this: the advertiser decides to run an affiliate marketing program targeting a specific audience. It chooses the affiliate network(s) that best reach(es) that audience, agrees on the objectives of the campaign and the value of the offer, creates the ad media and sets up all the parameters, such as the commission structure. After this is done, the publishers registered with the affiliate network(s) decide whether to sign up for the campaign. Some networks will assist the advertiser in promoting the offering to the right affiliates for the program. The network then launches the program into the market. The network tracks all purchases (or leads, clicks, etc.) that were initiated by affiliates, provides reporting to the advertiser on activities and makes commission payments on a regular basis to the affiliates. Payments can range from weekly to monthly, depending on the offer and confirmation of the sales.
Affiliates are a very diverse bunch
Not all publishers are the same. Most people think of websites and bloggers when it comes to affiliate marketing, but there are many other types of publishers. Affiliate marketing has grown into a sophisticated sales and marketing program that can be embedded into opt-in email lists, price comparison tools, shopping directories, review sites, cash-back networks and coupon sites, just to name a few. Affiliates can also be search engine marketers who run pay-per-click campaigns in order to drive traffic and sales for an advertiser.
Affiliate marketing is about performance!
While you are thinking about affiliate marketing for your company, there are a few things to keep in mind. First and foremost: affiliate marketing is all about performance. It guarantees that you only pay for actual results, such as sales or leads, or whatever action you define as success. You will know exactly which publisher and which advertisement was most effective. Imagine that! As more and more marketing dollars move online, that level of insight into online behavior is only going to become more important in optimizing spend. As Emily Steel reported in the Wall Street Journal: (subscription required) "Advertisers increasingly want more detailed feedback on the effectiveness of their online marketing efforts... to justify their increased spending. They want to know ...how many clicks translate into purchases." Right there is the biggest advantage of affiliate marketing: it gives advertisers data that other forms of online and offline advertising still struggle to offer. Most importantly, it provides immediate reporting, allowing the advertiser to adjust its plans almost immediately based on results.
You can still control your brand
Another thing to keep in mind: brand and affiliate marketing are not mutually exclusive. Getting involved in affiliate marketing doesn't mean losing control of your brand. As the advertiser, you should set the rules, determining which affiliates can sign up for your campaigns and exactly what they can do in your name. It comes down to staying in touch with your publishers and understanding their business models. Effective affiliate marketing campaigns are those run by companies that take the time to communicate frequently with their network of publishers, know what works for the key ones and are flexible in customizing programs as needed.
Remember, the affiliate is an extension of your sales and marketing department. You need to manage an affiliate as you would any internal team member. Engage with affiliates on a regular basis and you will see higher retention, the right level of brand control and overall higher effectiveness of your campaigns.
The 80-20 rule
Once you start your affiliate marketing campaigns, you will quickly learn that the 80:20 rule applies here, just as in most other areas of life: 20 percent of affiliates account for 80 percent of the business. Therefore, you want to make sure you reward your best affiliates accordingly and stay in constant contact with them. This 20 percent of publishers is the most sought after, so you have to work hard to attract them to your program. It is important to recognize they have the opportunity to work with many companies; they will choose those that help them meet their expectations. Here are the three fundamental things you must offer:
* Quick confirmation of sales and a short timeframe between confirmation and payment: It keeps affiliates motivated to sell more and builds your credibility.
* Tiered incentive structure: Your program should reward top sellers with higher commission rates.
* "Fair" tracking of purchases: The best affiliates just won't sign up for a program that doesn't reward their efforts fairly.
Tracking can be especially tricky, because there are so many things that can happen between the time an ad is viewed and when the purchase is made. What if the buyer doesn't buy the product immediately or types the address into the browser instead of clicking on the ad? Check out my previous post for some pointers.
If you are not yet in affiliate marketing... your competition likely is
Affiliate marketing is growing and evolving. It has become quite sophisticated, and has gone global like most industries. We are seeing considerable experimentation with regards to social networking and with video and mobile advertising. Get involved now, learn the basics of affiliate marketing and be prepared once new channels go mainstream. It will give you an advantage over your competitors. You will be reaching audiences, increasing traffic and generating sales that the other guys won't.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Top 10 challenges interactive marketers face
By Aaron Kahlow
Conversations with thousands of marketing folks revealed their greatest challenges going forward. Here are some tips for tackling them.
The top 10 challenges facing the interactive marketing community are very much the same as the top 10 challenges facing the entire marketing community in that almost every marketing professional must address the interactive/online marketing medium.
Having spent the last two years traveling across the country for the Online Marketing Summit events, educating marketers on the best practices of online marketing, I've had a chance to interact with thousands from all areas of marketing, and when asked about top challenges many say things like "social media" or "search engine optimization" or "integrating online and offline." But I think the real issues are much more basic, much more fundamental to the day-to-day functioning of the individual and organization.
Here's my list of the top challenges, and my recommendations for dealing with them:
#10: Time
"I have to get this e-newsletter out tomorrow; can we talk about our landing page strategy next week?"
As marketers, especially online marketers, we are all stretched way too thin. So, I put time at the bottom of the list because it's never really about a lack of time; it's about prioritizing time, right? We can do whatever we want; it just depends on what we decide to do first. As it applies to online marketing, we get so caught up in the day-to-day execution of existing campaigns, that we never take the right amount of time each week, month or year to say, "What can I do, which will have the largest impact on my marketing goals?" I'd argue taking the time to properly research what your customers do online and where they spend their time would be paramount, but rarely do we do our homework.
Recommendation: Familiarize yourself with "website usability" and start testing or learning from others who have already done so.
#9: Saying no (to client, agency or boss)
"I just read about a blog that Starbucks' CEO does… we need to do that!"
This ties in with #10 on time factors, but moreover, saying no to the 1,000s of ideas that are out there today is really needed, regardless of whether it's a request from your boss, client or agency. Have the courage to ask for the research, the case studies and the plan for execution first, before taking on activities that are hot or sound cool, but, in the final analysis, have very low utility.
An example of such would be saying no to building a blog until you have mapped out the audience, the time it takes to maintain such and what the desired outcome would be.
Recommendation: Write down your list of priorities for the year, and if this new idea does not help one of these, then put it in the idea box for next year.
#8: Getting involved
"Facebook is for kids. I don't really see why I'd want to join, plus who has the time for that?!"
One of my favorite conversations focuses on social media and social networking. Most marketing professionals over the age of 30 are skeptical when it comes to social networks like Facebook, reason being, they've never taken the time to explore the medium. The psychological elements inherent here cannot be explained; they must be experienced, and then, and only then, can you be the judge.
Recommendation: Join Facebook. It's not going to be of huge utility at first, but put in some time and poke around; you'll then see. To encourage you further, I'd be happy to be your first friend and connect you to hundreds of marketing leaders across the United States.
#7: Unifying stakeholders
"IT doesn't think we need it; boss-man/woman is too busy for it and marketing department has all sorts of opinions."
So many people these days have opinions on what's best as it relates to online marketing. IT professionals feel they can create everything; your executives are not willing to spend time thinking about it because they are too busy, and your peers have certain opinions based on what they read and see. Your annual budget and strategy meetings seem to default to whoever has the loudest voice and/or the biggest ego.
Recommendation: Spend a day learning best practices together as a team. Have an executive debriefing (a consultant or advisor who will share what's happening in the marketplace and why companies are successful).
#6: Budgeting
"Got shot down again on getting budget for a new analytics tool; not going there again."
Most companies still have the same formula for allocation of marketing budget they've had for years. In fact, I'd say the majority of marketing departments take a look at last year's budget and tweak it, taking some dollars here, and placing some there, etc. I bet if you were able to find your company's marketing budget from 20 years ago, you'd see the same layout.
Recommendation: Take out a blank sheet of paper, write down top 10 things your target customers do with their time on a daily basis and the top three places they will search for your offerings, and then start talking about where to spend your money.
Next page >>
#5: Evaluating communication channels
"If 92 percent of people use the web to evaluate purchase options, why do we only spend 20 percent of our budget on our website?"
Most people don't realize that all of our marketing efforts flow through our website at one time or another. Whether it is a search campaign, which obviously starts the buying cycle by linking to the website, or whether it's a print ad that has the URL, no one today will pick up the phone and ask your sales people to explain the product or service; they will find that information on your website. So getting that right is critical!
Recommendation: Build some real world user personas and use cases observing how easy it is to find your product/services (as if you are that customer); or better yet have five random people go to your website and watch them (no guiding).
#4: Removing ROI
"What will be the new ROI?"
ROI is absolute, but if a company bases all decisions on guaranteed ROI, that company would not have started in the first place. Much of marketing is testing, research and learning how to effectively communicate with our customers. So our budget must reflect this, or our company will never see incrementally better results.
Recommendation: Fight for R&D in your budget so you will have the latitude to discover the one killer campaign or marketing idea.
#3: Willingness to take risk
"We never really did much for SEO, because there are no guarantees and we know nothing about it."
Today's technology is intertwined with marketing (CRM software, web analytics and important elements like search engine optimization). As premiere marketing executives, we are not so comfortable with the technology side of the equation, so we shy away from what we don't know because it poses a big risk for us. So, we must go out there and talk to those who do know. We must educate ourselves and get over the fear (as President Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"); otherwise, we risk a massive opportunity lost.
Recommendation: Find your most feared technology element and search for a consultant or educational material to just educate you first; THEN, decide on what your next step will be.
#2: Education
"We really need help on how to proceed with next year's planning… we don't really know where to start."
This one ties nicely into #3 as we need to first seek the education before we make decisions. Online marketing is so new and constantly changing that if we don't take the time to educate ourselves (team, boss and agency), then we will be stuck with half-baked opinions vs. hard and true factually based best practices with which to drive our efforts.
Recommendation: Find an educational event on the online marketing areas of greatest interest and treat your key stakeholders -- go to this event and learn from the experts.
#1: Understanding human behavior
"Why would anyone want to go to a website and read the user reviews or ratings on our product/service when they can just call us?"
It may seem strange, but human behavior is what drives all marketing. It's the understanding of how your customers behave that drives which communication channel (TV/radio/print/online) you choose to spend money in. It is the behavior of your customers that drives your messaging to resonate with them. And now, human behavior has changed forever. The preferred method of communicating is electronic (email); the preferred information source is online (RSS); the preferred pre-purchase research channel is Google. So, we must go back to human behavior again -- as was witnessed in the 1950s with TV -- and understand what it takes today to get the message out, loudly and clearly, forever embedded in the memory of our customers/clients.
Recommendation: Watch and observe your customers' behaviors.
Conversations with thousands of marketing folks revealed their greatest challenges going forward. Here are some tips for tackling them.
The top 10 challenges facing the interactive marketing community are very much the same as the top 10 challenges facing the entire marketing community in that almost every marketing professional must address the interactive/online marketing medium.
Having spent the last two years traveling across the country for the Online Marketing Summit events, educating marketers on the best practices of online marketing, I've had a chance to interact with thousands from all areas of marketing, and when asked about top challenges many say things like "social media" or "search engine optimization" or "integrating online and offline." But I think the real issues are much more basic, much more fundamental to the day-to-day functioning of the individual and organization.
Here's my list of the top challenges, and my recommendations for dealing with them:
#10: Time
"I have to get this e-newsletter out tomorrow; can we talk about our landing page strategy next week?"
As marketers, especially online marketers, we are all stretched way too thin. So, I put time at the bottom of the list because it's never really about a lack of time; it's about prioritizing time, right? We can do whatever we want; it just depends on what we decide to do first. As it applies to online marketing, we get so caught up in the day-to-day execution of existing campaigns, that we never take the right amount of time each week, month or year to say, "What can I do, which will have the largest impact on my marketing goals?" I'd argue taking the time to properly research what your customers do online and where they spend their time would be paramount, but rarely do we do our homework.
Recommendation: Familiarize yourself with "website usability" and start testing or learning from others who have already done so.
#9: Saying no (to client, agency or boss)
"I just read about a blog that Starbucks' CEO does… we need to do that!"
This ties in with #10 on time factors, but moreover, saying no to the 1,000s of ideas that are out there today is really needed, regardless of whether it's a request from your boss, client or agency. Have the courage to ask for the research, the case studies and the plan for execution first, before taking on activities that are hot or sound cool, but, in the final analysis, have very low utility.
An example of such would be saying no to building a blog until you have mapped out the audience, the time it takes to maintain such and what the desired outcome would be.
Recommendation: Write down your list of priorities for the year, and if this new idea does not help one of these, then put it in the idea box for next year.
#8: Getting involved
"Facebook is for kids. I don't really see why I'd want to join, plus who has the time for that?!"
One of my favorite conversations focuses on social media and social networking. Most marketing professionals over the age of 30 are skeptical when it comes to social networks like Facebook, reason being, they've never taken the time to explore the medium. The psychological elements inherent here cannot be explained; they must be experienced, and then, and only then, can you be the judge.
Recommendation: Join Facebook. It's not going to be of huge utility at first, but put in some time and poke around; you'll then see. To encourage you further, I'd be happy to be your first friend and connect you to hundreds of marketing leaders across the United States.
#7: Unifying stakeholders
"IT doesn't think we need it; boss-man/woman is too busy for it and marketing department has all sorts of opinions."
So many people these days have opinions on what's best as it relates to online marketing. IT professionals feel they can create everything; your executives are not willing to spend time thinking about it because they are too busy, and your peers have certain opinions based on what they read and see. Your annual budget and strategy meetings seem to default to whoever has the loudest voice and/or the biggest ego.
Recommendation: Spend a day learning best practices together as a team. Have an executive debriefing (a consultant or advisor who will share what's happening in the marketplace and why companies are successful).
#6: Budgeting
"Got shot down again on getting budget for a new analytics tool; not going there again."
Most companies still have the same formula for allocation of marketing budget they've had for years. In fact, I'd say the majority of marketing departments take a look at last year's budget and tweak it, taking some dollars here, and placing some there, etc. I bet if you were able to find your company's marketing budget from 20 years ago, you'd see the same layout.
Recommendation: Take out a blank sheet of paper, write down top 10 things your target customers do with their time on a daily basis and the top three places they will search for your offerings, and then start talking about where to spend your money.
Next page >>
#5: Evaluating communication channels
"If 92 percent of people use the web to evaluate purchase options, why do we only spend 20 percent of our budget on our website?"
Most people don't realize that all of our marketing efforts flow through our website at one time or another. Whether it is a search campaign, which obviously starts the buying cycle by linking to the website, or whether it's a print ad that has the URL, no one today will pick up the phone and ask your sales people to explain the product or service; they will find that information on your website. So getting that right is critical!
Recommendation: Build some real world user personas and use cases observing how easy it is to find your product/services (as if you are that customer); or better yet have five random people go to your website and watch them (no guiding).
#4: Removing ROI
"What will be the new ROI?"
ROI is absolute, but if a company bases all decisions on guaranteed ROI, that company would not have started in the first place. Much of marketing is testing, research and learning how to effectively communicate with our customers. So our budget must reflect this, or our company will never see incrementally better results.
Recommendation: Fight for R&D in your budget so you will have the latitude to discover the one killer campaign or marketing idea.
#3: Willingness to take risk
"We never really did much for SEO, because there are no guarantees and we know nothing about it."
Today's technology is intertwined with marketing (CRM software, web analytics and important elements like search engine optimization). As premiere marketing executives, we are not so comfortable with the technology side of the equation, so we shy away from what we don't know because it poses a big risk for us. So, we must go out there and talk to those who do know. We must educate ourselves and get over the fear (as President Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"); otherwise, we risk a massive opportunity lost.
Recommendation: Find your most feared technology element and search for a consultant or educational material to just educate you first; THEN, decide on what your next step will be.
#2: Education
"We really need help on how to proceed with next year's planning… we don't really know where to start."
This one ties nicely into #3 as we need to first seek the education before we make decisions. Online marketing is so new and constantly changing that if we don't take the time to educate ourselves (team, boss and agency), then we will be stuck with half-baked opinions vs. hard and true factually based best practices with which to drive our efforts.
Recommendation: Find an educational event on the online marketing areas of greatest interest and treat your key stakeholders -- go to this event and learn from the experts.
#1: Understanding human behavior
"Why would anyone want to go to a website and read the user reviews or ratings on our product/service when they can just call us?"
It may seem strange, but human behavior is what drives all marketing. It's the understanding of how your customers behave that drives which communication channel (TV/radio/print/online) you choose to spend money in. It is the behavior of your customers that drives your messaging to resonate with them. And now, human behavior has changed forever. The preferred method of communicating is electronic (email); the preferred information source is online (RSS); the preferred pre-purchase research channel is Google. So, we must go back to human behavior again -- as was witnessed in the 1950s with TV -- and understand what it takes today to get the message out, loudly and clearly, forever embedded in the memory of our customers/clients.
Recommendation: Watch and observe your customers' behaviors.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The Problem with Podcasting Isn’t Downloads
The Problem with Podcasting Isn’t Downloads
January 10, 2008 — 11:01 AM PST — by — Share This
That Wizzard Media has hit a billion download requests in 2007 is the news on everyone’s lips these last couple of days. Indeed it is a milestone for Wizzard Media, and is probably worthy of note for those of us in the podcasting world to remember that people do indeed love to download podcasts, and that it is a sharply growing medium.
Unfortunately, the fact that people download podcasts isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, ever in dispute. The problem that we cannot make reliable money from monetizing these downloads is the issue that keeps cropping up and preventing the rest of the world from taking it seriously. I primarily speak of audio podcasting, since thanks to the online video revolution, the video portion of podcasting has been swept up into respectability.
The last year I’ve spent in podcasting has been a cautionary tale on all the pitfalls there are in the business.
Personal Problems with Podcasting
My journey in podcasting, this time around, began with TalkShoe. My buddy and I revived our old politics and technology show, which gained traction quickly, and within a matter of months, we were accounting for around a third of all downloads to the system on TalkShoe.com. They paid respectably for a while, but ended up pulling a bait and switch on us, and wound up reducing our CPM
After a couple nasty issues of censorship of my wife’s podcast, Art and I moved on to Podango, and also struck up a partnership with RawVoice. The partnerships couldn’t have come at a better time, as Podango and the TechPodcast network both found us advertisers right as we were breaking major news on the hot story of the moment, the gPhone.
Our already high download numbers shot through the roof, blasting through the 30,000 downloads a day mark for several days.
Unfortunately, though, we found that Podango was unable to find further advertisers for our show after the contract with Overstock ended due to reorganization in their sales department, and RawVoice did not pay on the contract as agreed either. The contract with RawVoice ran twice as long as the contract Podango had arranged with Overstock, and had a slightly higher CPM, yet Todd Cochrane’s company saw fit to send us a payment for $176, whereas the check for a same pay period from Podango would have been over a thousand.
The reason cited for the discrepancy was that the statistics engine favored the advertiser, and not the podcaster.
Search for New Podcast Representation
Art and I since put our politics and tech podcast on hiatus. If we couldn’t make dime one
I set about creating some concepts for a couple of podcasts for Mashable, which frankly is the easy part. I spoke to Pete about them, and he gave them tentative approval, provided I could find sponsorship for the podcast at the onset. I gave everyone a call in the business I could think of to find a suitable sponsor.
Unfortunately, it was a pretty short list. Podango’s sales department was still in flux. Federated Media didn’t work with audio podcasts. TalkShoe’s monetization scheme was no longer suitable for podcasts that didn’t take live calls. RawVoice had shown they wouldn’t pay appropriately for downloads. I’d been signed up with PodTrac for around a year without a single advertising offer.
I gave Adam Curry’s folks over at PodShow a call, and at first they seemed fairly interested in helping us out, after I played phone tag with one of the ‘talent recruitment’ fellows for a week or two. We spoke for about 15 minutes or so, and things sounded interesting, but I’d have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement to further talks with the company. The NDA never arrived, so after a week or so, I gave LibSyn a ring to see if they’d help us with finding some sponsors for the show.
I spoke to Jim Else, a Vice President at Wizzard Media, and described the situation to him to see if he could help us out. He at first attempted to give me a primer on the basics of podcasting as if I had no idea how the business operated. I stopped him and re-iterated that I was fairly experienced in the business, and described again that we were looking for sponsorship and advertising representation for some Mashable branded podcasts, and he told me that the business simply didn’t work like that, and I’d have to host the podcast with LibSyn for a substantial amount of time before finding any advertisers for us, and that they would more than likely be affiliate based ads as opposed to CPM ads.
You See My Dilemma
It’s clear that the world likes audio podcasts, despite the fact that the clients are often somewhat obtuse, and it isn’t the rich media technology with the lowest barrier to entry. The growth of the medium is going strong, and will probably continue to do so. The advertising world needs to catch up to this fact, and actually put some work into making money off it. I’m not the only one facing this problem, too. Of those I’m acquainted with in audio podcasting that are in it to make money, they’ve reported similar experiences.
Sure, it is exciting that another download milestone has been passed. Let’s work on getting some milestones in monetization passed, and then you’ll see me getting excited about podcasting again.
100-word Version: The real untold story of the iPhone
100-word Version: The real untold story of the iPhone
n its February issue, Wired promises "The Untold Story" of the iPhone. But as typical for the magazine, they instead deliver a rehash of things you mostly already know, spread over 3,336 lavish words. Here, instead, are 378 words, in bullet points, containing the truly juicy tidbits Wired writer Fred Vogelstein was able to turn up. My favorite? That when Steve Jobs gets really mad, he doesn't scream. He stares.
n its February issue, Wired promises "The Untold Story" of the iPhone. But as typical for the magazine, they instead deliver a rehash of things you mostly already know, spread over 3,336 lavish words. Here, instead, are 378 words, in bullet points, containing the truly juicy tidbits Wired writer Fred Vogelstein was able to turn up. My favorite? That when Steve Jobs gets really mad, he doesn't scream. He stares.
Survey: Search Pros Managing Massive Budgets Have Little Experience
by Tameka Kee, Thursday, Jan 10, 2008 8:00 AM ET
ABOUT A THIRD OF ALL in-house search pros are managing budgets of more than $200,000 per month--and some 40% of these budget bigwigs have three years of experience or less, according to stats from the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's (SEMPO) inaugural In-House SEM Salary Survey.
"The $200K monthly spend is a healthy barometer of the search marketing industry and it syncs up with SEMPO's current trend projections that SEM spending will double by 2011, to more than $18 billion," said Duane Forrester, co-chair of SEMPO's In-House SEM Committee and Lead SEO Program Manager with Microsoft. "We anticipated a lower ceiling of monthly spend closer to the $100,000 range, so we were pleasantly surprised."
While the survey results show that marketers are pumping dollars into search, they also highlight the need for search to mature as an industry. Just about a third of respondents managing $200,000+ budgets had between three and five years of experience, and 26% had five years or more.
This lack of relatively tenured in-house search pros is what allows the more experienced practitioners to command six-figure salaries, as 21% of those with between three and five years of experience were bringing in at least $100K annually--and 26% of respondents with five or more years of experience clocked in over $200K per year. In contrast, just 8% of respondents with three years of experience or less were making at least $100K. Roughly half of all of these less-tenured in-house search pros earned between $30K and $50K.
According to Rob Crigler, co-chair of SEMPO's In-House SEM Committee and director of interactive marketing for Orkin, the salary spread is evidence that the search industry already is maturing--as candidates will often have to manage large budgets and deliver results before gaining a title and the salary that comes with it. "You can't just be a hotshot search geek and think you're going to walk in to a six-figure in-house job off the street," Crigler said. "That might have been the case a few years ago, but you have to pay some dues now."
ABOUT A THIRD OF ALL in-house search pros are managing budgets of more than $200,000 per month--and some 40% of these budget bigwigs have three years of experience or less, according to stats from the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's (SEMPO) inaugural In-House SEM Salary Survey.
"The $200K monthly spend is a healthy barometer of the search marketing industry and it syncs up with SEMPO's current trend projections that SEM spending will double by 2011, to more than $18 billion," said Duane Forrester, co-chair of SEMPO's In-House SEM Committee and Lead SEO Program Manager with Microsoft. "We anticipated a lower ceiling of monthly spend closer to the $100,000 range, so we were pleasantly surprised."
While the survey results show that marketers are pumping dollars into search, they also highlight the need for search to mature as an industry. Just about a third of respondents managing $200,000+ budgets had between three and five years of experience, and 26% had five years or more.
This lack of relatively tenured in-house search pros is what allows the more experienced practitioners to command six-figure salaries, as 21% of those with between three and five years of experience were bringing in at least $100K annually--and 26% of respondents with five or more years of experience clocked in over $200K per year. In contrast, just 8% of respondents with three years of experience or less were making at least $100K. Roughly half of all of these less-tenured in-house search pros earned between $30K and $50K.
According to Rob Crigler, co-chair of SEMPO's In-House SEM Committee and director of interactive marketing for Orkin, the salary spread is evidence that the search industry already is maturing--as candidates will often have to manage large budgets and deliver results before gaining a title and the salary that comes with it. "You can't just be a hotshot search geek and think you're going to walk in to a six-figure in-house job off the street," Crigler said. "That might have been the case a few years ago, but you have to pay some dues now."
Cumbrowski "affiliate marketing resources"
We want to thank Carsten Cumbrowski for the Advaliant ad into his blogs "affiliate marketing resources" section. Being recognized by industry thought leaders such as Carsten is VIP as we grow into an industry leader, and further supports our corperate culture, beliefs and strides to innovate the industry.
Return to Affiliate Marketing Resources Home
CPA Networks (listed alphabetically)
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 | Advaliant is a pay for performance network launched in 2004 by MediaTrust, an integrated online media and advertising solution company. |
E-Mail Marketing: $2.1 Billion in 2012
Great little snippet on email marketing from DM Confidential.
by Jason HahnAccording to a recent JupiterResearch report, e-mail marketing spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.1 billion in 2012.
Spending on retention e-mail efforts will more than double during that time period and will make up more than half of all e-mail marketing spending in 2012, while acquisition e-mail marketing will grow at a slower pace.
The report, titled “US E-mail Marketing Forecast, 2007 to 2012,” also touched upon what is expected for spam volume in the coming years. While spam volumes will grow, consumers may not notice any increase thanks to efforts by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to ensure that these messages do not reach consumers.
David Daniels, Vice President and Research Director at JupiterResearch, lauds e-mail service providers for their efforts to give feedback to ISPs in order to improve the e-mail delivery process, and notes that this will “create better opportunities for e-mail marketing, although marketers will have to work harder to remain relevant in their communications with their intended audiences.”
This lends further evidence to support e-mail marketing’s steady and important value.
Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS105540+07-Jan-2008+BW20080107
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/01/07/email-marketing-spending-to-hit-21-billion
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