I am writing to you from the A4U Expo in Amsterdam which, as you would expect, is going swimmingly. Rather foolishly I have forgotten my camera lead so I will give you a full report with pictures later this week. In the meantime though, here are April’s Tips of the Week.

“Publishers should consider creating a PDF information pack and case studies demonstrating the results they have generated for advertisers. These can be provided to your CJ Account Manager and advertisers to enable them to learn more about how you operate and develop a closer working relationship.

You can see some case studies on the CJ website here.

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Following hot on the footsteps of Linda, last month’s new member of staff, it is with great pleasure that I introduce Lea Martin who is joining us in the client development team.

To continue our theme of international hiring Lea is from France. She is, in fact, from the home of the finest mustard in all the world, Dijon. 

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Last quarter we had over thirty advertisers/agencies in for our training. I know that a few people couldn’t make the dates so here are our Q2 training dates. The training has again been split into Beginners and Intermediate.

Beginner’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing (this course is suitable for merchants or agency staff with less than six month’s affiliate marketing experience or for those who are launching their first programme:

Details: Thursday 14th May, 9:30 – 13:00, CJ Offices, Breakfast Provided

Content

• Basics of a programme
• How to best utilise the CJ interface
• Publisher Business Models – a detailed analysis
• How best to communicate with affiliates
• Top 10 things that you should be doing

Intermediate Guide to Affiliate Marketing )this course is suitable for merchants or agency staff with between six months and two years affiliate marketing experience)

Details: Wednesday 20th May, 9:30 – 13:00, CJ Offices, Breakfast Provided

Content

• Strategy Planning
• Identifying, attracting and retaining the best affiliates for your programme
• Exploiting seasonality
• A creative approach
• What to do when it isn’t working

Anyone is welcome to attend although we have limited space for each course. Let me know at admin@cjblog.co.uk if you could like to come along for either course!

Commission Junction has just signed up for another year’s membership of the IAB. In fact, the contract spans all of the UK businesses meaning that, amongst other things, we retain our membership of IASH (of which Richard Sharp the MD of ValueClick Media is the current chair) and, crucially for CJ, the Affiliate Marketing Council (AMC). I wanted to talk a little bit about why we felt, despite tightening budgets across the industry, it was so important to continue to invest in the IAB.

The gathering together of affiliates, agencies, networks and merchants is old hand for the AMC. Although the faces around the table have changed over the years, the organisations represented have remained consistent. Through these collaborative efforts, excellent work such as the IAB Affiliate Marketing handbook has been delivered to a wider marketplace that does not always understand affiliates and their place in the online mix. The AMC has also allowed all its members and guests a voice in discussing issues. Such an open door policy allows discussed topics to flow freely back to the marketplace.

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Happy April Fool’s Day. So far nothing has happened to me but I remain on guard. Below are the CJ Tips of the month but before I start I thought I would give you some tips for today.

 Lock your computer (this is the most important of all), keep your phone with you at all times, repeatedly check your back for notes, look under your desk for any food stuffs which may have been taped there (this sounds weird but I speak from experience – the offender not the offended). Oh I could go on forever. Above all trust noone. Not even your best friend. Not even your close colleagues.

Anyway – here are the CJ tips of the month for March.

“Using hotlinks to log straight into affiliate networks can save considerable time. The hotlink for Commission Junction is this one. USERNAME needs to be replaced with your login email address and PASSWORD with your… errr… password. It can be used by both publishers and advertisers.

Another example is this hotlink URL for Valueclick Media’s lead generation arm.

You can save the URLs to your browser favorites, although I would recommend you do not do this if your computer is accessible to others.”

James Lamb Read the rest of this entry »