Lammo.net: Affiliate Marketing Blog

Today, we’re blessed with a Day in the Life of an a4uaward winner - Mark Russell from Existem Affiliate Management, winners of “Agency of the Year 2008″. I’ve known Mark for years and years and years (yes, he really is that old), and he had his Affiliate Marketing apprenticeship at Big Idea Media where I taught him everything he needed to know about Affiliate Marketing - Which networks were bandits, never trust agencies, Friday afternoons are for the Pub, etc, etc. All of which is completely useless to him as MD of Existem AM, but I’m sure he also picked up one or two things that were useful..

Mark’s also a fellow Plymouth Argyle fan, and therefore knows what he’s talking about. We even managed to squeeze in a quick away win at Charlton last season the night before a4uexpo, a feat we’ll hope to repeat with an away trip to Chelsea around the 2009 event. Without further ado, it’s over to the big man himself..

John asked me to write this 2 months ago and hey just had a chance to do it…sorry!!

Well here is a normal day in my life running Existem Affiliate Management:-

7am Wake up and put the kettle on and make a massive cup of coffee, while feeding the dogs and letting them out for a run in the garden, get showered dressed and head off to the office, maybe having checked a few stats while drinking coffee.

8am Being a nice boss pick staff up on way to work (must start charging for petrol…lol) get into the office for about 8:30.

8:30am make sure the coffee has been put on and the aroma of fresh coffee is filling the office. Work through list of tasks for staff to do that day.

9am Start sifting through the spam, and some good emails from affiliates and clients, look at what news we have to promote to affiliates about codes, offers, and top selling products.

9:30am Go for a cigarette and have first call with Bruce to see what the plans are for the day from his side, and what he needs me to get staff to do.

10am Check through the forum, and check emails and reply to anything that has come through overnight.

10:30am Start checking stats for clients while filling in internal reports of trends from day to day and week to week, and then compare each client to see if there is any similar trends.

11:00am start sending out newsletters that we have been working on yesterday and this morning, get staff to send to me to check and add some details then get blogged, forum posted and emailed through network. Speak to affiliates about some promotions as we all know speaking to affiliates before 11 is never a good idea, (especially John who never arrives at desk before 1pm if you are lucky…lol).

12pm Look through affiliates websites and help affiliates by writing content for their sites (if you would like any unique content please email me, mark@existem-am.com).

1pm Speak to clients and recommend offers that they can run and start discussing promotions for the months ahead.

2pm Speak to Bruce again on the phone and discuss upcoming meetings events and any new strategies, plan diary for the next few weeks planning where and when we both have meetings and organise a time for Bruce to visit Plymouth office.

2:30pm check forum and add any more news that we need to let affiliates know about.

3pm Start filling in reports and filing paperwork, although you never believe it if you saw my desk!

3:30pm Work on new business look at any leads we have been sent or any clients that have contacted us and check we have sent everything that we should have and follow up any leads and calls.

4pm Speak to more affiliates about any promotions that we have and update our merchant discount code section

4:30pm Check on the latest football news, anyone who knows me will know I really enjoy my football and love the Greens, watch out premier league we are on our way!

5pm Check forum and emails again.

5:15pm Debrief with staff and plan the next days work.

5:30 Speak to my wife Lorraine and find out what time I need to be home for dinner (if I am lucky she will have something in the oven for dinner, maybe not at the moment as I am supposed to be fitting a new kitchen not sure where time comes from to do that..Eeek.

5:45 Check and update worksheets for the day and check emails, forum and update database, start thinking about what we are doing tomorrow.

6pm Go home taking staff on way home, (good boss aren’t I?),

6:30 Get home and have some tea and spend some time with Lorraine and the dogs (2 border collies Lucy and Pippa).

8pm One last check for the day on the forum, emails and statistics for clients.

10pm Settle down to catch up on daily news with Sir Trevor.

11pm Bed…must be getting old!

Throughout this day there are cigarette breaks, in the office premises I work from we have to go to bottom of the car park to the smoking shelter and this normally accompanied with my mobile where I make most of my calls, (I get comments from other residents about me always being on the phone) quite often these calls have the sound of a helicopter in the background (not mine but the airport is close and also the hospital).

Coffee machine is on constant flow in the office all day, if I was to add in each coffee the post would twice as long…I do like my coffee during the day although I really should consider decaf.

Many thanks for (finally, lol) sharing a Day in your Life Mark - If anyone else would like to be featured in this series (or has been promising to for months but not got round to it yet.. not looking at anyone in particular.. you know who you are!), then please get in touch - Lammo Readers are loving these snippets of your working days, and are hungry for more!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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!!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It’s been a few weeks since our last Day in the Life - A few people who promised to do one haven’t delivered yet, so I’ll be out chasing them over the coming weeks.. you know who you are, and you have been warned guys!

I’m really glad that Elaine agreed to share a Day in her life with us, as she’s one of the friendliest people I’ve met in Affiliate Marketing, and a great character with fantastic northern humour (She supports Leeds United) and a love of tiaras! Here she fills us in on a typical day with the Childrens Rooms empire (The Childrens Rooms affiliate program is on Paid on Results, and pays 7.5% commission), which revolves nicely around the Television schedules (You’ve got to love Sky+)…

7.30 – arise and shine – either me or Dave gets Ollie up, fed and off to school. Dave usually makes me a cup of detox tea, quickly followed by a cup of coffee while I’m checking the previous days stats whilst watching another snoring feature on GMTV, paying particular attention to Amazon as it’s quite easy to spot trends and hidden gems, which go down well with my visitors.

8.30 – wave Dave on his way to Children’s Rooms – he works there a couple of days a week - then don my wireless head phones for 30 minutes on the treadmill accompanied by the Sopranos (I also watch this when ironing – unfortunately the cleaner interrupted me during quite a raunchy episode – I’m sure she thinks I was watching something else entirely :0), we’ve also recently invested in a Power Trainer, so 10 minutes extreme vibrating before heading for the shower.
NB – with all this exercising you would think I’d be a shadow of my former self – unfortunately not so – but I reckon I’ve got a good chance with the Ladies Shot Putting team for the 2012 Olympics.

10.00 – check emails and make sure visitor levels are stable. If pages have fallen I need to ascertain why (it’s usually something I’ve done or not done!) or if a page is proving extremely popular check that I’ve got the latest offers and nothing is out of stock. Then it’s a quick tidy round and breakfast with Phil and Fern.

11.00 – In the car and a 20 minute drive to Children’s Rooms, where I meet up with my other half and Andrew. Much to discuss today and Andrew has thankfully typed up an agenda to keep us focussed. We’re in the final throes of completing on our new premises and all the bureaurcracy that that entails, deciding on who is going to be doing what as the company grows and the ranges and products we hope to introduce over the coming year. How we’re going to juggle PPC, the Affiliate arena and other sales channels and whether to go down the Order Fulfilment Route now that we have the extra space, The meeting goes well and we’re all very keyed up and excited about the future of Children’s Rooms.

2.30 – back home and a sandwich before settling down on the computer to do some general house keeping on the website – update some pages, tweak others for SEO purposes, send some link requests, check stats, catch up with the forum, Have a natter with one of my sisters or friends – working from home doesn’t count as work!

3.40 – wonder where Ollie is, he should have been home from school by now – he saunters in ten minutes later and tries to sneak onto WOW (World of Warcraft) before changing out of his uniform. Back to the computer until either Dave comes home or it’s 4.40 and time to catch the end of Deal Or No Deal.

5.00 - discuss what we’re having for tea, check to see if we’ve got anything in and decide who’s going to cook it – me, Dave or the local gastro-pub whilst trying to ignore Ollie’s cries of MaccyDees, MaccyDees.

6.30 – shoo Ollie out of the house to go play with his mates – in 5 minutes he can be on the beach, at the park or swinging from the ‘tarzie’ in the woods yet he’d be WOWing all night if we let him - another hour on the ‘puter for me before Coronation Street commences the evenings television viewing.

7.30 – skyplus Coronation Street as eldest son and wife – ourkev and Ditzy to you – pop round to discuss the latest developments with Nursery Rooms and Kids Shopping - our drop shipping sites that are coming along nicely - which will soon showcase some lovely children’s bedroom and nursery furniture from Germany – yep we’re going international – thank heavens they speak English so well.

9.00 settle down for the Apprentice and Desperate Housewives and then head for bed.

Tomorrow’s another day and I think I’ll be wearing my Grandma hat for most of it, and keeping company with Phil, Fern, the Loose Woman and David Dickinson – oh and Baby TV – although I might get a little bit of shopping-time in

Thanks for that Elaine, and Good Luck to Leeds on Sunday!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!