Lammo.net: Affiliate Marketing Blog

The latest subject in our Day in the Life series is Jason Baker, Publisher Account Director at Commission Junction UK. I’m grateful to Jason for taking the time to share a typical day at CJ Towers with us. Remember, if you would like to take part in “A Day in the Life..”, then please get in touch with me. Without further ado, it’s over to Jason..

So I have been asked to write this blog – I have to admit it’s a little daunting as I have as only been at Commission Junction for six months!

Here’s a little about me. As I said I have only been here at Commission Junction for a relatively short while. I came to Commission Junction after eight years in traditional press and B2B publishing, dipping my toe in the digital waters over the years, as anyone would while working for a national newspaper group or magazine publisher. So here I am in the digital space. When I was looking to move into digital ‘proper’, my brief was I wanted to work in the most fast moving, comprehensive and diverse area of online marketing, and boy do I realise now that I got what I wanted - I love it!

So here it is, a typical day in the life…

7am -It’s Monday morning and like pretty much everyone I know the reality has kicked in that the weekend is over and it’s time to get into the groove and get off to work. The usual routine and extra five minutes in bed is obligatory! J My wife Helen is just as chirpy (not!) as she has to get up earlier than me so I get out of bed and EMBRACE it!

8.50am - I forgot to mention what I just arrived back from a week away on holiday, so need to catch up the Everest size, mountain of emails I’ve received, deal with what’s urgent and park the ones that can wait. We have a new starter joining the publisher team today, Zhanna as an Account Executive - It’s great that we have another to person join the six of us resource-wise of course, but also we can now pen the title – ‘the magnificent seven’.

10am – the usual trawl through my email this morning is not as bad as I had predicted as lots of stuff was picked up by the team while I was away (thank you, thank you); I just need to make a few calls to clarify some details with my publishers this afternoon. Zhanna (the new starter) has arrived – I’m going to give her a little time to settle in, then take her round to meet the rest of the Commission Junction team, and also pop upstairs to introduce her to Mediaplex, Search 123, PriceRunner & ValueClick Media. There are around 120 of us in the UK office now across every business, so lots of names and faces for her to remember!

11.30am - Eventually… the morning is over! I have managed to catch up with a few of our publishers for a chat to see how their businesses have been doing whilst I’ve been away, talk through any spikes or dips in activity, and see if we can fix the dips. One publisher in particular had a great week as we managed to negotiate an increase in CPA from one of his merchants for a week to drive additional sales. Negotiating from £25 to £41 in CPA on a credit card for a cashback site will always go down well…. The publisher gives the advertiser extra exposure in the email bulletins and on their site, and sales go through the roof, everyone is happy J – so it’s clearly time to get the Advertiser Manager to go back to the merchant for an extension.

It’s always the way, but so much happens when you are off. Our second version of the Commission Junction Order Inquiry Manager has launched (otherwise known as the ‘cashback’ tool!) for our UK incentive and loyalty affiliates. What does this mean? In a nutshell this enables us to manage the transaction process more effectively and track any transactions that may have been blocked by anti-virus programmes or users cookies being blocked for whatever reason. Really useful bit of kit to take to market and, admittedly, to clear the backlog we had. So far it’s been received really well but as always it would be good to hear of any improvements you think we could make.

12pm - We have our publisher and advertiser team meeting at 12pm every Monday so we run through the strategy as usual, catch up on anything I have missed and what needs to happen in the week ahead. There is quite a lot to go through this week because in the next few weeks we are reviewing our progress on Q1-2 strategy and starting to work on the planning for Q3-4. A key part of the strategy this time of year will be to ensure we have the most appropriate publishers in place for the retail push later in the year, and Jan/Feb 09 next year for travel. We also need to ensure the merchants have appropriate commissions in place. Lots to do and I get the coffee and biscuits in to keep everyone raring to go.

Last but not least we are organising a publisher night out – what shall we do this time? Casino, comedy, a day out of team building and outdoor pursuits (yeah right) or straight down to Soho for a night on the tiles J … we decide on a comedy night for early June (some of you may know that we often do Soho beers so it will be good to do something a little different).

Now it’s time for a couple of calls to our finance publishers who specialise in PPC and content about a few new programmes that are launching, and to set up a few catch up lunches for later this week and the next.

1.30pm - Quick lunch which today means a Chinese takeaway (it is healthy!), then back to my desk to get everything together for a 2pm meeting. I am joining Florian, our Senior Sales Manager who is meeting a major PC and Laptop merchant who has just signed to join the Commission Junction network. They are coming in to also discuss becoming a Commission Junction publisher and meet some more members of the team. They want to place links to merchants (ideally software and technology) products and services on their site to drive incremental revenue. A pretty simple process, with set up taking around five minutes then they will have access to our full range of merchants and even be able to search by product if they want links to something specific.

It was a great meeting as it turns out that we also will be able to load Commission Junction tracked merchant icons on the desktops of all of their PC and laptops as well.

3.30pm – I’ve got some time now before a late afternoon meeting to go back to my ‘parked’ emails and do final prep for trip up north tomorrow to see a few of my affiliates. This will be a good one as Alison Guise (our European General Manager) and Cheryl Ingram (UK Client Development Director) are going as well, which will give our publishers a chance to give face-to-face feedback on their turf.

5.15pm - OUT of the office!!

I’m just off to meet a few of the regulars for some networking and beers. They’re a really good bunch and it gives me a chance as the new boy to bounce my ideas around as most of these guys have been around the block a few times and are really experienced affiliates.

1.15am (I think?) We ended up finishing the evening with some decent food before parting company having talked through some good ideas but latterly, enough rubbish to pack a small landfill site! Taxi home!

So there you go, that about sums it up before it all starts again tomorrow. Hope it sheds a little light.

Signing off, Jason Baker!!

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