[Vanns.com]

Hi all,

I wanted to let you know about a conference that I'll be attending next week.

Etail 2003 - located in Palm Springs. This conference is subtitled - Mastering The Art And Science Of Multi-Channel Retailing. It should be a great experience and I hope to come back with a great deal of knowledge that I can share with all of you.

Basically this is an opportunity for companies to share their sucess stories with one another and learn from each other. Also it's a chance to meet with the industry leaders in fields like SEO (search engine optimization), which I'm looking forward to.

I'll make sure to keep my ears and eyes open for solutions that can help us all.

Do any of you have questions or comments about this conference?

Also, I'll be out of the office (obviously) but I will have my laptop with me. I'll continue to check email and postings here so if you need to get a hold of me let me know.

Thanks,

Matt Ranta
Vanns.com
netProfits Affiliate Program
Manager
netprofits@vanns.net

[paulcook]

It would be nice to hear a few juicy tidbits from you every day or two while at the conference, maybe so WE have a small voice there(and to make sure you aren't really there partying http://abw.infopop.cc/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif OK, we want to hear about the partying, too.

We really appreciate you keeping in touch with us on this board. As I've said before, the ONLY reason I became a Vanns affiliate in the first place is your presence on this board.

Vanns has a MAJOR OPPORTUNITY now that Circuit City has gone COMPLETELY commission free. The quality of help always goes down when a salesperson makes the same amount of money whether they help you or not! (Funny thing is, I got my FIRST Circuit City affiliate check in the mail today!)

All of this will only make affiliate marketers and SEO experts all the more important in the future.

[Vanns.com]

You got it. I'll try to keep you all posted on the goings on at this conference.

By the way, if you want to know more about the conference you can visit:

http://www.etail2003.com

On another note, I totally agree about Circuit City. What they did was a huge mistake in my eyes. The fact that they have decided to "Out Best Buy, Best Buy" this late in the game is ridiculous. I can't see this as anything but a bad long term move for them.

Also, the comment about Affiliate Marketing becoming more important is very accurate. One point Circuit City cited as a reason for this move was that consumers are doing more internet reasearch.(and more buying too) Well, where are they doing this research....on your sites is my bet. More and more people are relying on information and opinions that their peers provide. So the more educated and informative any affiliate site is, the better chance they have of directing traffic and earning a commission. What I would love to see is each one of the 3900 Commissioned sales people that Circuit City let go starting their own affiliate sites to companies like Vanns.com and others that strive to provide a service oriented sales process. Anyway, Circuit made a mistake...so, not only does Vanns.com have a better chance....so do each of you! The more informative and helpful you and I can be to any customer right now the better. Take advantage of this opportunity and win some new customers.

Thanks,

Matt Ranta
Vanns.com
netProfits Affiliate Program
Manager
netprofits@vanns.net

[Vanns.com]

Conferece Update - Day 1 : CRM Strategies

Today was a very interesting day for us here at Etail. We talked a lot about Customer Relationship Management.

I'll hit the high points and if you have any specific questions just let me know...

Customer Centric Transformation -

From -"How can we increase sales of our products"? To - "What do our customers need and how are we going to meet need"?

From - "How many products did we sell, which are most profitable"? To - "Do we have profitable relationships with our customers? Can we make them more profitable"?

From - "Mass advertising and promotion of products" To -"Interactive dialogue with individual customers".

Basically it all boiled down to -

Know your customers wants, needs and desires. Trust your data and your intuition.

And test everything (three times).

I know this is the 30,000 feet up overview and if you have more detailed questions about CRM and what I can do to assist you with CRM please let me know.

Thanks,

Matt Ranta
Vanns.com
netProfits Affiliate Program
Manager
netprofits@vanns.net

[paulcook]

Anything else from Etail 2003, Matt?

How about any lightbulb moments? Gotta be something exciting to share with us...

[Vanns.com]

Hey all,

Sorry that I didn't give you an update yesterday but it was a long, long day....7:00 to 11:30 when everything was finally done.

Yes, there have been several light bulb moments as Paul asked about and quite a few interesting(to say the least) conversations.

So here goes:

One of the most interesting things that was suggested was that companies that run affiliate programs should create a website and become the affiliate of other companies to gain more understanding of the affiliate/publisher point of view. I think this is a great idea and plan to pursue it. (Although in all fairness, I will not ask to be a part of the affiliate only boards here on ABW)

Reminder Services are becoming big selling tools on numerous sites. FTD.com is using this type of technology to remind customers that...(for instance) "Your Wife's birthday is only 6 days away. Last year you bought flowers for her with us and asked that we remind you of the occassion again this year". This seems to be an extremely simple yet highly effective method of gaining repeat business.

Also, lots of companies are obviously using opt-in email as a great marketing tool. But here's another simple way of potentially gaining new customers and new email addresses to market to. Give a reward/discount for customers that forward the email along to a friend. There's somethings to look out for with this....One, don't allow rewards/discounts to people that forward to themselves, Two don't collect the email that they forward to, wait for that customer to make the opt-in choice. Simple but brilliant.

I also got reinforcement of something that has been a floating idea for me for some time now. We have to individually track every sale's origin point from start to finish, including a return if thats the finish. We need to attach unique codes for each point of origin so that we can equate phone sales to their point of origin and credit those sources accordingly be they an affilliate or a CPC relationship that we may think is performing poorly but it's really driving a massive amount of phone traffic, etc...


I was blown away to learn that Amazon.com has 850,000+ affilliates and expects to top 1M this year. Wow, I wish.

Also, smarter searching is becoming more and more prevalent across the web and will grow to be a reason people do or don't visit your site.
Companies like EasyAsk,Endeca and iPhrase are all offering "intelligent" search offerings. Think of it this way...customers don't walk into a store and just say, "Pants". They come into a store and, if they speak with a salesperson, say, "I'm looking for a pair of black dress slacks in a size 33/32". Now if a customer can search a website and type in "5 disc DVD Player, with a built-in decoder in Silver" and get a relavent result(s) aren't they more likely to buy when they get back 2 or 3 relavent results than the person who comes along and types "DVD Player" (because they have to, to get any results) and gets back 50 results that may or may not be what they wewre looking for in the first place?

Finally, two very cool products just to take a look at...

Check out

http://www.mobular.com

and

http://www.viewpoint.com


Well, that's all for now. I'll probably write more after I've had the time to digest everything and get some good sleep. If you have questions or comments please let me know.

Thanks,

Matt Ranta
Vanns.com
netProfits Affiliate Program
Manager
netprofits@vanns.net