Relevantly Speaking | Jen Goode Talks Affiliate Summit Mentorship

The good folks over at Affiliate Summit made a lot of people happy last week when they announced that ASW 2011 would be held at the Wynn Hotel instead of the Rio. Make sure to mark you calendars for next year as the conference takes place between January 9-11th.

Since we’re on the subject of Affiliate Summit, we thought it fitting to diver a little deeper into the Mentor Program. To that end, we chatted with Coordinator Jen Goode about what the program is, how you can get involved and what it takes to be a great mentor.

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Facebook Has it Wrong on Fans

I’ve been thinking about this blog post in one form or another for about 8 months. I kept stewing about how I was going to word it and what my argument would be. In the end, I’ll just come out and say it: Facebook is wrong about Fan pages.

For those of you that don’t know the intricacies of Facebook (and there are many), the difference between “Friending” someone on Facebook and becoming a “Fan” is that one requires a reciprocal connection and the other does not.

Facebook’s TOS mandate that anyone other than a person with a real first name and last name use a Fan page instead of a regular account. For example, if Bob Jones owns the Quick Fix Auto Repair Shop, Bob can have a Facebook page that connects via “Friending” whereas the Auto Shop would require Bob to create a “Fan” page. Follow me?

I believe this model is wrong on a few different levels. First off, it goes against everything that social media is supposed to be: community, conversation and interaction. It is supposed to level the playing field of big media and talk with us, not at us – or down to us. Becoming a “Fan” continues down the big media path. There is no option for a reciprocal connection and therefore perpetuates the one-sided communication model that we’ve been trying to get away from.

Recently I dug up some data on Facebook Fan pages and the results seem to validate my points.

Did you know that 77% of all Fan pages have less than 1,000 fans according to Sysomos, a social media monitoring firm? They analyzed 600,000 Fan pages on Facebook and came up with the following distribution curve.

The vast majority of pages have between 10 and 1,000 Fans. In fact, only 4% have more than 10,000 fans and less then 1/20th of one percent have more than a million Fans. I would bet that most people have more “Friends” on their personal accounts, than they do “Fans.”

Why are so many Fan pages unsuccessful at attracting people? I have a theory.

We get bombarded with requests to become Fans of everything under the sun. On an average day, I get 15 to 20 requests from people wanting me to become a Fan of everything from Puppet Motorcycle Racing to the Cat Fancy Club of Southwestern Utah. Each day I go through the list clicking “ignore” and then, guess what? Two days later I get the same requests from the same Fan pages over and over. It’s incredibly annoying.

Even if I did accept some of these, like I accept Facebook Friend requests, a Friend request shows as a tally of who you’re connected to and it is a reciprocal relationship – I show up on their wall and they show up on mine. By comparison, acceptance of a Fan request means you get some obnoxious list in your “info” tab of all the random people, companies, restaurants and celebrities you’re a fan of. To me, becoming a Facebook Friend is about accepting a connection. Becoming a Fan is like becoming a collectable object. You’re just a number, a statistic in the Sysomos research.

In fact, according to Sysomos, Fan pages on Facebook tend to be updated, on average,  only once every 16 days. How much of a conversation are you having if you only particpate once every 16 days? Twitter on the other hand is about regular and constant dialogue. You follow someone on Twitter because you actually want to engage with them. Why do you Fan someone on Facebook? I still can’t answer that question.

I plead with Facebook. First, stop forcing companies to use a Fan page. Rockstars have “Fans.” Companies like Quick Fix Auto Repair Shop have “customers.” It is condescending to those customers to assume we don’t want to have a connected, reciprocal relationship with them. Second, raise the limit on the number of Friends an account can have. Lifting the arbitrary 5,000 Friend limit would allow companies to use the Friend model as opposed to the Fan model. This would allow us to create the type of social experience and interaction we want to have with our customers, as opposed to Facebook dictating it to us.

Relevantly Speaking | Christopher Smith of MediaTrust Labs

This week we’re chatting with Christopher Smith in our Santa Barbara office about the launch of MediaTrust Labs. What is it? What are the criteriea for lab projects? Listen as Christopher explains this exciting new venture from MediaTrust.

We’re also talking about Superbowl ads. Did those companies see a lift in revenue? How do you measure results on your marketing spend? If you’re tired of spending money on questionable results, maybe performance marketing is worth a look. Our own Julian Mossanen has written a step by step piece called “An Advertisers Guide to Working with Affiliate Networks.”

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Relevantly Speaking | Peter Figueredo of NETexponent

This week the show is packed full of Peter Figueredo of NETexponent. We normally try to keep our segments between 2-3 minutes, but during our talk with Peter, there was so much great insight and information that we had to keep the camera rolling. I found it especially interesting to get Peter’s take on how much he thinks affiliate marketing is evolving.

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Amazon Kindle Contest!

Win an Amazon Kindle Pre-Loaded with the Top 10 Marketing Books of 2009!

Earlier today we published our picks for the Top 10 Marketing books of 2009. We believe that reading any, or all, of these books will help you to elevate your business to the next level. That said, you can go out and buy them yourself, or you can enter our swanky little contest to win an Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with these books.

You only have to do two things to enter:

1. Make sure you are following us on Twitter.

2. Tweet out the following: Attendance at ASW + @MediaTrust list of Top 10 Marketing books of ‘09 = becoming a better marketer! Details: http://bit.ly/4qIYl1 #ASW10

Because we believe in the value of education in our industry, we want to reward those that are taking the next step to expand their knowledge of Performance Marketing by attending Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. After you follow the instructions above to enter our contest, make sure you stop by the MediaTrust Meet Market Table #34 to drop your business card off for an extra chance to win. To be clear, you don’t have to attend ASW to enter, but it could help your chances.

We’ll be picking a winner on February 1st, so you have until then to enter. Good luck!

UPDATE: We’ve had a few inquiries, so I wanted to be clear that this contest is open to entries worldwide. So get in there and Tweet from far and wide!

Relevantly Speaking | Todd Crawford Launches Impact Radius

We’re back from Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. While we were there, we shot 14 interviews with some pretty amazing people. I’m excited to say that the first in that series is a doozy. Todd Crawford is a legend in the affiliate space. He is one of the true pioneers dating back to being on the founding team of Commission Junction in 1998. Not content to rest on past accomplishments, Todd has launched a new venture called Impact Radius. We’re talking to him about why this venture is so timely.

Also, don’t forget – there’s still time to enter our Amazon Kindle contest. By following us on Twitter and simply retweeting a phrase, you are entered to win a Kindle pre-loaded with our Top 10 Marketing books of 2009. Hurry, the winner will be announced on February 1st.

Finally, I wanted to draw your attention to a post by Jordan Kravitz called “Affiliate Marketing Version 2.010″ . It’s a call to action to get your business booming in 2010.

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Geeking Out at Affiliate Summit

It’s not uncommon for people to stop me during a conference and ask about the type of gear I’m shooting with. Some have seen the show and are curious as to how we achieve the look we get. Others are just fellow techies and want to spend a few minutes talking cameras, audio recorders and microphones. It is uncommon, however, for someone to shoot video of us as we’re conducting our interviews.

We met Dave Dugdale outside the exhibit hall at Affiliate Summit West. We chatted about gear for a bit and he asked if he could shoot some video of the rig. Yesterday he sent me this video:

Really nicely done Dave! You’ve definitely got some editing skills – and I love the time lapse of the strip. Thanks for taking the time to make our first ever “behind the scenes” video.

Relevantly Speaking | Special Edition: MediaTrust Acquires Kenzei

On this week’s special edition of Relevantly Speaking, MediaTrust is announcing the acquisition of email marketing company Kenzei. Scott Parent talked to Mike Stocker today on the floor of Affiliate Summit West.

We are committed to making MediaTrust the most comprehensive and full service performance marketing platform. The Kenzei acquisition helps us execute on this vision. We are excited about Kenzei being a part of our team and we look forward to working with their existing customers as well as new ones.

You can read the entire press release HERE.

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Relevantly Speaking | Talking Printing with Adsme

This week we’re gearing up for Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. If you’ve been following our “Meet the Team” series, you know who you can expect to meet at our Meet Market Table #34. We hope you’ll stop by and say hello.

In this episode we’re also chatting with Benoit Secher, CEO of Adsme, about printing. What happens to the brand experience on a website when a user prints out a webpage? How does the formatting look? Does it lessen the impact of the brand? Adsme is solving this very issue.

Finally, don’t forget to enter our contest to win an Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with our picks for the Top 10 Marketing books of 2009.

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Update on Direct Marketing Merchant Account Suspenions

As you have already heard… last week MasterCard suspended all direct marketing merchant accounts. They are cracking down and enforcing new regulations and guidelines pertaining to direct marketing. MasterCard maintains that these guidelines must be complied with in order for them to continue processing payments. ALL non-compliant accounts have been suspended until they can show 100% compliance with these new guidelines.

Bear in mind, the sky is NOT falling! This is a an effort by MasterCard to clean up some of the “negative option” marketing that exists out on the web today. Most of the quality programs will be updated and reactivated. These changes will be ultimately improve the quality of the campaigns out on the web and improve the consumer experience.

The linked document below outlines in more depth the criteria set by the card company. Here are the high level highlights of the compliance requirements for your reference:

1. The terms of billing must be clearly disclosed on the website.

2. Verbiage must plainly state the enrollment into the membership without distraction.

3. Any trial period must be a minimum of 10 days.

4. Images of celebrities are prohibited from use without express legal written consent of the entity being published.

5. By law, product claims must be truthful and not misleading. Claims made must substantiated by the formulas used in the product(s) marketed and the clinical research conducted to support it.

6. Merchants must provide customers with multiple outlets for cancellation – including phone, email, chat, and mail.

As many merchants look to update their offers, policies and pages some offers may go down for a short time, so be sure to reach our to  your publisher managers to make sure your campaigns are not effected.

NOTE: You can download the revised “Direct Marketing Best Practices” HERE.