Last week I had a good chat with one of the industry’s most famous veterans, James Martell, who hosts his Affiliate Buzz show on Webmaster Radio. We’ve discussed the upcoming Affiliate Management Days East 2012 at length, and you may find the full recording by clicking the image below:
Here’s also a generic recap of some of James’ questions, and my answers to them:
Q. What Inspired you to Create the Affiliate Management Days event?
Great question. One would think that with the abundance of affiliate marketing content online and conferences (like Affiliate Summit, or PubCon has an affiliate marketing track), everything’s already covered. Alas! There has never been an affiliate management-specific conference before AM Days. And managers face very specific problems and challenges (starting from recruitment, communication and motivation, and on to affiliate compliance, legal issues (from affiliate nexus tax to FTC’s rules and regulations), new tools, areas for growth (mobile, social, trends, local, etc)… So it is to deal with these very specific tasks and responsibilities, as well as to come up with solutions tot he newest challenges that I’ve created Affiliate Management Days… Additionally (besides the informational/educational component), it’s the first and only professional forum for affiliate managers (which presupposes a very distinct type of networking and collaboration).
Case in point: at the upcoming AM Days (which will take place in Ft Lauderdale FL on Oct 9-10 of this year) we’ll have a keynote panel, where executives from major affiliate networks (Commission Junction, LinkShare, Google Affiliate Network, ShareASale, AffiliateWindow, and ImpactRadius) will be on the same panel (“The Role of the Network”) — answering questions of affiliate managers and merchants… Purpose: to align expectations, to provide better quality service, and to help the overall industry grow in the process.
Q. Who Should Go to Affiliate Management Days 2012?
This is the conference for:
- digital marketing managers
- internet marketing consultants
- affiliate program managers (both those who work in-house and OPMs)
- researchers
- affiliate network reps (as affiliate networks also have “affiliate managers”)
- vendors who cater to affiliate managers (by providing tools and solutions for compliance policing, tracking and management, and so on)
- merchants who are just looking at affiliate marketing as a potential “marketing channel”
Q. Tell me about the Speakers?
There will be a total of 32 speakers. There opening keynote speech will be delivered by Rebecca Madigan, the Executive Director of Performance Marketing Association. Our other two keynotes (on the afternoons of Day 1 and 2) will be from legends of search marketing: David Szetela and Brad Geddes. While the time doesn’t permit me to go through the whole list of the other speakers, to highlight just a few more: we’ll also hear from such luminaries of Internet marketing Joanna Lord (SEOmoz), Hunter Boyle (AWeber), and Tim Ash (SiteTuners), as well as such affiliate marketing stars as Carolyn Kmet (Groupon), Todd Crawford (Impact Radius), Brian Littleton (ShareASale), Peter Hamilton (HasOffers), Kevin Edwards (Affiliate Window), and Ali Pasha (Google Affiliate Network). It’ll be one exciting event!
Those who listen to the end of the original podcast, will also get a special code which can be applied to 2-day and combo passes (as we’re co-locating with Conversion Conference in Florida).