Just another Equatorlive.com weblog
Woohoo! I am one very happy girl - I managed to get tickets to go and see the mighty Foo Fighters next June, live at Wembley! Radio 1 sold out of their Sat night tickets within a few mins apparently, but luckily for me they soon after announced that they would also be playing on the Friday. They cost a small fortune (£42 pp) but I don’t care it will be worth it I’m sure 
Mmm Dave Grohl lush….
Having taken far too long a break from blogging, I have a couple more thing to say… The Christmas Campaign has been taking up a lot of my time, but it is going to be well worth it, and I’ve been helped along the way by two lovely affiliates….
Firstly Kieron Donoghue - after trying (not very successfully) to convert me as a fully fledged member of the R’n'B fanclub on the way down to the Expo, he did not give up. God loves a trier, and surprisingly so now do I. After sending me a link to BBC 1Xtra, a guy called G Child’s show, I thought I was in for 2 hours of utter rubbish. As Kieron likes to point out I’m a bit of an indie chick at heart, so the thought of listening to some guy talking too fast over a monotonous beat over and over again did not fill me with excitement.
I was wrong. Now for those of you that know me I am not one to admit that very easily - I can be quite stubborn at times. I promised I would listen to the first hour of the show - I actually listened to the full 2 hours. Now don’t get me wrong there was some not so great stuff on there, but there was some really good stuff too. I don’t know about being fully converted, but Kieron is certainly persuaded me further than anyone else ever has about R’n'B! He’s also given me something to listen along to whilst getting lots of hard work done :) No mean feat but thanks for keeping at it - and I can’t wait for my Young MC CD….
I’ve spoken to Chris Frost AKA Frostie on numerous occasions, but met him properly for the first time at the Expo. Before providing me with great security, he took the piss out of me quite a lot. He was convinced I was talking Gaelic. I’m very patriotic, but I don’t actually speak the native tongue; I just have a bit of a Scottish accent. That’s what drinking too much does for your hearing I guess ;) Anyway I of course had to return the favour and do my impression of a scouser. Apparently it wasn’t very good because I have since received a guide to “Wicked Scouse English”. I’m gearing up for the Buy.at Christmas Cracker, where I plan to talk nothing but Scouse. Thanks for the help Frostie!
As my post a few weeks ago mentioned, it is time for another great Equator Christmas Campaign! We have an official go live date - 7th December; which also happens to be the same day the new official Equator site goes live. Oooo I’m excited!
We have music sorted, the flash pages are being completed by our fabulous designers Paul and Paddy, and our filming will commence by the end of the week. I’ve already had some wonderful costumes delivered right to my desk - I don’t want to give too much away but there are some very attractive French Maid accessories and monkey masks in a big brown box ready to be put on by one of our lovely Equator team.
We’ve taken a mish mash of everyone’s ideas from our brainstorming a few weeks back - and I think it’s going to be awesome. Even better, for every unique visitor to the microsite The Boss will be donating money to Yorkhill Childrens Foundation, an incredibly worthwhile cause.
One more clue to finish this blog post off - the 7th December just happens to be 12 (working) days before Christmas….
I meant to post last week following my Expo summary, but time ran away with me.
Huge congratulatons to the guys at eConversions, on winning not one but two awards! Not only did they receive the “Innovation in Affiliate Marketing” award but also came out top in the “Best International Publisher” category (the one Equator presented).
There are a couple of very special pictures and I had to upload them hence the delay of this post….
Congratulations guys you really deserved it, your dedication to the Wickes campaign has been excellent and I can’t thank you enough for all of your efforts! Especially you Josh
Yes it’s Tuesday and I’m only just getting round to updating my blog after THE affiliate event of the year! I won’t do a complete dissection of the A4UExpo as loads of others have already done so but I just wanted to say a couple of things about it…
And Tara - we managed to share a room without any serious mishaps! Although the spooning thing in the middle of the night was kinda weird…..
Great event - can’t wait til next year! Got some time to recover before the Buy.at Christmas Cracker thank the lord.
The long-awaited affiliate marketing conference A4UExpo at the Excel in London, is almost upon us - with things kicking off tomorrow night at the pre-party held by the chaps at buy.at. Tara and I are journeying down to London with the lovely Kieron in his new car, and are due to arrive just in time for dinner! Stuart (from POR) and I will also be trying to track down the Celtic Champion’s League game against Benfica before the pre-party gets into full swing.
The first day looks set to be a great start with a whole load of presentations to choose from - I am particularly interested in the “Confluence of Search and Affiliate marketing”, plus the email marketing presentation. The case study from Experian I’m sure will also get a lot of visitors!
Then it’s off to get ready for the A4U Awards at Fox near the Excel, where we have been nominated for 3 awards! We are also delighted to be presenting the award for Best International Publisher - with Clicks2 Customers, eConversions and Net Media Planet the nominees. I’ve met Sri Sharma (Net Media) at several industry events and he is always good fun; but I work with Josh and Richard from eConversions a lot and they really are a great couple of guys so this will be an interesting one for Tara and I to present.
A few drinks (*ahem) and a couple of hours sleep later, and then it’s on to Day 2! It looks better than Day 1, Tara and I are just going to have to split into numerous people and get along to all of them…. The future of the industry is obviously something we are all interested in, particularly the changing role and nature of search - both paid and natural. Despite having a great team of search engine optimisers at Equator always on hand to help, I am really interested in the SEO 101 - then I can bowl our guys over with some link building jargon! The topic of networks and their role in the industry is one which is most certainly changing - after my recent posts on their role and what we look for in a network, I am really interested to see the thoughts of others on whether we will “Need a network in 2008″. Interesting to note that this is perfectly on a topic recently highlighted by my senior manager Tara about the blurry lines of the industry. You can see her post here.
We won’t be attending the after party - two nights out in a row plus trying to consume all this wonderful knowledge is no task for the faint hearted… If you haven’t met us before and are attending the conference then we look forward to meeting you, if we have then we are looking forward to catching up! (Providing the G&T’s aren’t £8 this time round eh Josh??). As well as Tara and I, our Head of Marketing, Martin Jordan, and one of our SEO experts, Colin Boyd, will also be attending so come and say Hi!
Now we have our Christmas night out all sorted it’s now time for us to get the Equator Christmas Campaign moving. Who can believe it’s a year since the fantastic Mission Unpossible!
This year we want to make it even better! To get everyone at Equator involved we are spending this afternoon brainstorming some ideas. The allocated groups (see below) will get together and get those creative juices flowing! We’ll then be rounding everyone up and getting each team to present their idea(s). The members of the group with the best idea (as voted for by the Equator steering group) will be awarded a bottle of champagne each.
Check out our reindeer groups….
Dancer - Lachlan, Vicki, Paul, Graeme L, Jarrod, Graeme D
Prancer - Tara, Andrew, Dex, Stephen, Fraser, Cheryl, Martin
Blitzen - Sarah, Bill, Caroline, Clair L, Les, Patrick
Dasher - Suzanne, Jonathan, Gill, Elaine, Mark, David W
Donner - Clare J, Kevin, Grant, Colin, David C, Laura
Our Head of Marketing, Martin Jordan, has already come up with a great idea already so it’s game on for the rest of our teams to come up with one to compete…Good luck everyone!
Following on from yesterday’s post about what an agency looks for in an affiliate network, we had a visit from another one today. DGM wanted to discuss their ad network with us, as having never used it before, and always being open to new ideas, and with them being in Glasgow, now seemed as good a time as any to discuss exactly what they can do for us.
The conversation did however start with a question of why we no longer use dgmAffiliates (the affiliate network part of Deal Group Media). For those of you who are familiar with the affiliate marketing industry you will be aware that dgmAffiliates have had more than their fair share of issues over the last 18 months, and for that reason we spent most of the meeting discussing them! If you aren’t in the industry you might not even be interested - but one of the main things was the launch their new reporting system (dgmPro) and no one liked it. There are a whole host of reasons why (which if you are really interested can hear on Fraser’s blog here). From my perspective the main reasons we no longer use dgmAffiliates is because of the reporting and the level of account managment we received.
The conversation was lengthy about the problems that we have experienced - however we’re always willing to give someone another go (within reason!). It seems the last few months has seen some changes over at dgmAffiliates….
Thanks to Martin Giraud and Garth Stone for coming up to see us. It’s the first time since I have been at Equator (19 months and counting) that we have been paid a visit for a chat. It was great to get a few things off our chest about the network and the problems we had been having, and I have to say they listened and accepted what we were saying. I guess none of it was new! It does appear that some of it has already been taken into account, with changes being made to dgmPro and restructuring of the account management team. They also appear to be getting a lot of new merchants on board - so is this the start of a new era? Only time will tell.
One thing for sure is that the Expo next week will be a big thing for dgmAffiliates - as well as one of their account managers, Matt Bailey, being up for an award (in the same category as me!) it’s a massive PR exercise for the company. A lot of affiliates have very strong opinions on dgm; a lot of which will take a lot of persuading to be converted again… I will be interested to see the changes to dgmPro and compare it to the likes of Affiliate Window (which is a great system to use).
With each day we near closer to the big event at Excel London and it’s looking more and more interesting…
Today seemed like a good one to write my second blog post…
Martin and I have just returned from lunch with the lovely Carol Cadman-Cooke and Stuart Mathie from Paid On Results - as we are both based in Glasgow now seemed like a good a time as any for us to start looking into doing some business! Having never used this affiliate network before I can only go on others’ opinions; all of which seems to be incredibly positive (particularly from Nadeem) and their technology in the affiliate marketing industry appears to be second to none. Despite our lunch table being made available rather late the food was good and the banter even better (Stuart and I will be finding a pub showing the Celtic game next Wednesday…). We may even have persuaded them to add something interesting to their Expo stand next week… Trust me everyone will be paying their stand a visit at the exhibition!
From an agency persepective there are a number of things we look for in a network. As we have a strong affiliate management team in house we don’t want an affiliate manager from our networks. Instead we want a number of key things:
Equator use a number of affiliate marketing networks to give us the technology to run our affiliate programmes - and I have to be honest and say that none do all of the above. Some come close (namely Affiliate Window) but as always there are a number of things they could do to improve :) I will be interested next week at the Expo to see an overview of the Paid On Results interface and what they as a network can offer us.
Finally a thought on the Equator Halloween night out - 2nd November is the date and I am going as Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean… I may not be as skinny but I have an equally good right hook! Frilly shirt and funny hat here I come….
I know, I know, I’m slow…. But I still want to talk about it!
The event that was the Equator BBQ was it all it promised to be. At a beautiful location. On a boat. The sun was shining. And last but not least Messy. With a capital M. Bringing Cherry Vodka in hindsight was perhaps a dangerous idea, particularly with Mark and Graeme around, ready and willing at 11am. But muchos fun was had by everyone, the day was great fun, and was good for a bit of team bonding! I even saw a bit more of James, our Creative Director, than I anticipated…. I can honestly say that I am glad I left when I did though… Take a look at all the best pics on the Equator flickr account here.
Top prizes go to our Head of Marketing, Martin, for the best face ever when drinking a shot, and to one of our lovely account managers, CJ for looking particularly special at Vodka Wodka!
Speaking of prizes; Equator might be winning some! The first A4UExpo is due to be held on the 25th and 26th October, The UK’s very own industry-specific educational Affiliate Marketing Conference and Exhibition for everyone working in or across Affiliate Marketing. The event already looked set to be a great couple of days, with everyone who is anyone in this industry set to make an appearance.
To add to the excitement of the event A4U are also for the first time going to be rewarding “Excellence and Innovation in Affiliate Marketing”. After nominations being put forward back in August, the final list has been published - with all A4U members being able to vote now in a number of great categories. As well as Equator being nominated for “Publisher choice of Agency”, one of our merchants have been nominated as “Best New Merchant of 2007″. The Wickes programme is on Affiliate Window, and we are delighted that they have been presented with this nomination.
And if all that wasn’t enough, I have been given the honour of being nominated as “Best Account Manager 2007″. I have to say this was a great shock to me - there are a lot of incredibly talented people in this industry, so to be placed next to some of them in this category is very flattering. Thanks to everyone who nominated me - and please feel free to vote for me if you agree on the nominations!
I can’t mention this without saying a massive THANK YOU to my senior manager Tara Moar. Tara has been in this industry for a few years now and is without doubt one of the best people in the sector. Without her I would be no-where near getting this nomination, so it’s yours too Tara!
And so I come to an end of my first post… there will be more so keep your eyes peeled!
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