Affiliate Summit West was another great event for the Today’s Business team. We caught up with old friends, met some new ones, and, of course, had tons of productive conversations with publishers on how to promote our amazing brand partners. After a few days of recapping all the network meetings, publisher conversations, and seminars we compiled our affiliate team worked together to create a simple recap blog for anyone who wasn’t able to attend the event but wants to know what we learned. Enjoy!
What were the biggest takeaways from ASW 2024?
- Long-term Partnerships with Mass Media Publications Create the Best Results
By committing to a long-term partnership with big publishers you are going to see many benefits. These types of partnerships make it easier to optimize content and get better data. With more data, we can monitor performance better and have the ability to request updates. Additionally, this type of commitment ensures our brands will be kept top of mind more frequently with writers at these publications.
- Being the Agency of Record is Beneficial
We found that the best conversations we had with publishers were for brands where Today’s Business was the agency of record managing multiple marketing channels. This allows us to have more flexibility with conversations since we have more insight across the brand’s paid spend, social initiatives, and more. Having this knowledge allows us to get more creative and really find ways to tap into publishers in the way that works best for everyone
- Holistic Partnerships are the Best Way to Capture an Audience
Partnerships that are holistic in nature are the key way to gain an audience’s attention.
They allow a brand to leverage not only one aspect of the publisher’s channels, but also reach an audience on a mass scale via social media, on site, or even through ads simultaneously. In addition, it can allow specific targeting that may resonate with a larger spectrum of the audience so that they are more knowledgeable about the brand being promoted.
What were the best affiliate meetings Today’s Business had at ASW 2024?
New York Post
Today’s Business kicked off the conference by meeting with our friends at the NY Post over breakfast. We more new offerings from the NY Post, discussed optimizing existing partnerships, and showed off some of our new brand partners. Lots of great ideas were circulated and plenty of follow-ups to come!
UpSellit
On day 2 of the event the team met with our friend Josh from Upsellit. We learned about ways to utilize Upsellit for brands that aren’t offering coupon codes and developed plans to help increase on-site conversion for some of these brands.
TV Scientific
This was one of the most interesting meetings we had. The team over at TV Scientific is shaking things up in the space offering CTV ads through a CPA payment structure. It’s almost unheard of to get these types of placements while also working on a performance model. The team is very excited to present this new partner to our brands and see how they perform.
Sweatcoin
The team met with Sweatcoin at ASe in 2023 and we executed a few campaigns right after that were pretty successful. We discussed planning out campaigns in advance for 2024 and also working with them on giveaway campaigns to collect email leads and social followers for our advertisers.
ID.Me
While we’ve worked with ID.Me in the past the team learned a lot about their new offerings and how their marketplace expands beyond just first responders and military shoppers. We’re excited to launch our brands on the platform and plan out cashback increases around key shopping moments for our brands.
BeFrugal
We hadn’t met with BeFrugal in quite some time so it was great to reconnect with them and learn more about their audience. We learned that they are more cashback and loyalty than a discount site and believe there are plenty of opportunities to connect with their audience to drive new customers for our brands.
FlipGive
Today’s Business is very familiar with the FlipGive product as we managed their SEO and paid media initiatives for quite some time. It was great to reconnect with the team and talk about their growth plans and some ways for us to further promote the brands we have on their platform and possibly add on some of our new brands.
What were the best seminars at ASW 2024?
How to solve every problem with coupon sites except one
Speaker: Brook Schaaf (FMTC)
As an affiliate agency or brand, a key aspect of every program is working with coupon sites to ensure that they are providing incremental value. Our biggest issues with coupon sites have always been inconsistent or undesired content, coupon leakage, and that the consumer “would have bought the product” regardless. The main takeaway for us was that the coupon strategy we have internally developed is consistent with strategy that industry leading brands and agencies have dealt with these partners in the past. We have found that in order to minimize undesired content and coupon leakage, it is essential to work with coupon sites and have them in the program. This allows us to have autonomy and leverage to make sure both of the previously mentioned issues are not happening. Working with coupon partners allows us to optimize with them to not only create good content, but also minimize coupons that we do not want the public utilizing. In terms of the “customer was going to buy the product anyway” mentality, we have found the best way around this is to provide “Buy more, save more” coupons, similar to “Buy x, Save x,” in order to increase Average Order Value and provide an incremental increase to our brands revenue.
About The Author:
Joe Sanfilippo has been in the affiliate marketing industry for over 7 years. He has managed affiliate and influencer marketing campaigns for some of the biggest brands in men’s fashion, food, supplements, sports, and more. Joe’s efforts have helped Today’s Business win Gold at the US Partnership Awards and he was also selected as a Top 30 US Partnership Marketing Changemaker by Hello Partner.