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If you’re running an affiliate program or at least considering to do so, I think you agree that education  is very important – seeing the best practices, getting to know where and why some were not so successful at this and so on will help take the best decision in order to maximize your affiliate program performance.

A couple of weeks ago, our close friend Geno Prussakov announced the launch of a new conference series dedicated especially to affiliate program managers. So, naturally, I had to know more about this. Geno was very kind to answer to a few questions regarding the event.

1. Geno – congratulations for this brand new event! What were the things that inspired you to do this?

Thank you, Cristian. I am excited, and very much looking forward to our launch event in San Francisco on March 8-9, 2012. To answer your question two main things have moved me towards starting Affiliate Management Days:

• Widespread and largely unsatisfied demand for face-to-face affiliate management education (and important element of studying process which got eliminated by the specifics of the context),
• Absence of an affiliate management professional forum, an event where digital marketing managers and online merchants could gather on a regular basis — to share affiliate management knowledge and experience, and work out solutions to common problems and challenges.

2. Affiliate Management Days is primarily aimed at affiliate program managers. Do they need to have prior experience to join this?

The answer to this question will, actually, also address the statement you’ve started it with. No, attendees do not need to have any prior experience in affiliate marketing (or affiliate program management) to benefit from the conference. In fact, as mentioned not too long ago elsewhere, the 4 keynote speeches that we will have will be of use both to affiliate marketing-savvy managers, and to novice. As for the 24 breakout sessions that we’ll run over the course of two 10-hour days, the attendees will have a choice of two tracks, and will always be able to pick the better-fitting session depending on their particular situation and readiness level. It is on this reason that we are neither limiting our audience to affiliate managers only.

Anyone involved in e-commerce on the merchant’s end (be it the owner of the business, company’s executive officer, digital marketing manager, and affiliate manager specifically) will come out with a portfolio of actionable and immediately-applicable knowledge to implement for the betterment of their affiliate (and other!) marketing campaigns.

3. Why should software merchants affiliate program managers attend this event?

Regardless of your vertical (retail, software, services, digital goods) or target audiences (businesses, or individual consumers), the principles, situations and case studies covered will enrich your marketing strategy.

If you have a look at AM Days San Francisco 2012 agenda, you will see numerous sessions that will benefit an online merchant regardless what they sell. We have sessions on affiliate marketing analytics and attribution, landing page and checkout optimization, combating fraud, digital payments, mobile, social, and many other cross-vertical subjects.

4. What are the key elements that differentiate this event from other shows where affiliate program managers are within the target audience?

As mentioned at the outset of our conversion, AM Days will (a) have the heaviest focus on education, and (b) be unique in terms of professional networking. By the way, speaking of education: our San Francisco 2012 sessions will be conducted by folks who graduated such top schools as Harvard, Cambridge, Yale, University of Chicago, Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), Kellogg (Northwestern University). If you register and come, you won’t regret it.

5. Thank you for this short interview and looking forward to a successful show in March!

We look forward to seeing Avangate there, and happy to extend a special 10% off to all Avangate customers and your blog readers. The coupon code to use is AVANGATE.

Thank you for the opportunity, Cristian.

Today’s Tough Requirements

eCommerce is quickly becoming the mainstream – regardless of the type of goods or services you are selling.  For digital goods and software in particular, eCommerce is quickly becoming mission critical. Today’s consumers and businesses alike require a faster, more convenient way to access and purchase digital goods anytime, anyplace, on any device.  Agile commerce will soon be considered a “must” rather than a “nice to have.”

This means that software and digital goods vendors face the challenge of managing downloads and subscription-based access, advanced licensing requirements, product security/ DRM, plus managing the customer experience across the product lifecycle, channels and devices. The rapid rise of subscription-based products and SaaS only serves to amplify this need (SaaS sales are forecasted to reach around $48BN in 2014 from $17BN in 2010).

To leverage the opportunities, as well as to stay relevant in the face of increasing competition, eCommerce professionals are also looking to expand to new markets and geographies, embrace new revenue and licensing models, multiply their sales efforts through affiliates and other channels, optimize online campaigns and buying processes … and the list goes on.  Just to expand to new geographies alone brings its own set of challenges: local payment methods, ordering interface languages, shopper support (local numbers, languages), billing currencies, taxation, etc. All of these require business intelligence, expertise, industry insights and additional services to support internal teams.

How Are You Benchmarking Your eCommerce Efforts?

Is your in-house solution or ecommerce provider offering the needed flexibility and broad palette of capabilities?  Want to try something new or simply to benchmark your current eCommerce platform?  Do you need flexibility in terms of adopting new business models or ways to get to market, including questions like being the merchant of record, service provider, or both?

Evaluating solutions when you have multifaceted requirements is a daunting task. Not to worry, help is at hand.  Forrester Research Inc. recently released their report, “Market Overview: Digital Commerce Solutions 2011”, highlighting providers that are changing the game in terms of how digital goods are taken to market, bought and used.

Market Overview: Digital Commerce Solutions 2011

The Forrester report takes a look at the key solutions available today and lays out simple steps for selecting the digital commerce provider that is right for you

The report recommends:

• Focus on the unique needs of your vertical
• Identify future-state business models
• Beware of the pitfalls of outsourcing operations functions
• Consider niche solutions where appropriate
• Focus on building a digital relationship with your customers
• Use Forrester’s scenario-based technology evaluation process (STEP) to ensure your business and customer goals are met

Core to their recommendation is that software and other digital goods vendors look at their long-term digital commerce strategy, and select eCommerce vendors that have the flexibility and scalability to meet their rapidly evolving needs in this dynamic digital goods marketplace.

Get Your Complimentary Report Now

Avangate is offering the “Market Overview: Digital Commerce Solutions 2011”report complimentary to software, SaaS and digital goods vendors.  You can download the report here and feel free to comment below on what you see as key elements of an ecommerce solution that can take you forward in 2012 and beyond.


Another Affiliate Summit event went by and I’m happy to say that it was the most successful one so far for us – not only for the new connections we made, but also the number of folks to whom we got to introduce Avangate. A lot of people involved in the software business – merchants, affiliates and service providers – came to event making the 13+ hour flight there worth it … plus, of course, it’s Vegas :) Check out some nice pictures and videos on our dedicated Facebook page.

In terms of getting exposure, I hosted a roundtable discussion about selling software. We had a lot of fun – the table was full and we had a lot of interesting questions. I expected mostly affiliates wanting to explore the software niche, but was happily surprised to see that about half of the folks who came to the table were affiliate program managers looking on how to leverage affiliates to grow their business.

Getting to the title of this post, here are a few pointers that helped us get the best of this show – I recommend you keep these in mind when attending an industry event as big as ASW12 (5,000+ delegates):

1. Clearly set the objectives for attending the show. For example – we want to talk to X new affiliates, get in touch with our partners Y and Z at the show, learn more about this business, etc. You will have to measure them afterwards to decide if it was a good event or even if it’s worth for you to go there next time.
2. Start planning meetings as early as possible. Check your leads pool and see if they’re attending. Don’t forget to follow-up with the people you’re contacting at least once. Also monitor the event’s social media channels (Twitter, Facebook). We’ve also had success reaching out to leads attending by social media, so don’t underestimate this.
3. Get the attendees list early and scan for updates weekly. I like the fact that Affiliate Summit always makes the attending companies public on their website, which clearly helps you meet the right people for you. As for the early thing: it’s easier to go through a big list months before the event than rush this in a few days right before the event. Meet possible partners in the exhibit hall – this will be a time saver for both parties. For important leads, set up a time to meet them separately.
4. See what your competition is doing at the conference. Keep an eye on your competition for the show. They could be sponsoring the event or organizing a party. Or maybe they have a presentation or are involved in a panel discussion. Do drop by and say hello if you have the chance – after all, we’re only competition, not enemies ;)
5. Clients are your best asset. Set up meetings with them, even outside the event, if they’re based there. If there’s more from your company going to the show, you might want to organize a special event for your partners where they have the chance to talk to each other and to you. From my experience, schmoozing leads to best results and when you’re having fun it’s even better.
6. Take advantage of the live sessions. Check out the event agenda and join the sessions appealing to you. You can meet the big people in the industry and get their advice.
7. Follow-up after the event. Remember those business cards you received during the show? Now it’s time to follow-up with the people and get things moving. You don’t have to do it in the same day, but some 2-3 days after the event ends is a good period to reignite the discussion.

Do you have any other items to add to the list? How was Affiliate Summit West 2012 for you?

Google recently announced that it will now use the encryption protocol called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to encrypt all the searches that people do using the Google Search Engine if they are signed-in using their Google Account login.

This means that these logged-in Google users will be redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra’s’) from http://www.google.com (non SSL) once they are signed-in with their Google account. This switch to SSL encrypts your search query which means that the sites the user visits after clicking on the results from Google will no longer contain the “Referrer data” (data which tells the destination site how it was found, whether from a search term entered into a search engine or from an external link) except in the case of ads.

Only Google and your web browser will see your searches and a third party (not even Google Analytics) will not know what is being searched. The new encryption will block referrer data, which means site owners will know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information on what the exact search was.

How does this affect SEO?

With the new system in place, Organic Traffic can still be tracked, but it will not be possible to drill down to the keywords from which the website visit was derived. Even Google Analytics isn’t spared, one will no longer be able to isolate the search term associated with the visit in GA.

However the keywords or terms Google search engine users use to find their websites will still be offered on Google Webmaster Central. Presently, Google Webmaster Central shows the top 1,000 queries that a site appeared for at Google – as well as was selected for – over a 30 day period.

Referrer Data for Ads:

However referrer data will be passed into the advertiser’s site, which means they (ad sites), will still receive information that they currently get with unencrypted search. The main reason stated by Google being that advertisers need the referrer data to evaluate their ad campaigns, to know which keywords or search terms are driving traffic in order to improve the ads which we believe is to keep the advertisers happy.

However, when the user is signed-in and clicks on an ad with the advertiser’s website being HTTP rather than HTTPS, Google will send the search term for that specific search to the advertiser over HTTP.

The encryption change as per Google will impact only the single digit percentage of search users, anyone who hasn’t signed-in will still send referrer data to the websites he/she visits which means lots of data for SEOs to do a conversion analysis to the keyword level.

With the move to SSL, Google has taken web search security to the next level; the trick is to balance data security for the web users and to keep advertisers happy.

2011 – A year of tremendous expansion in how we serve our Software and SaaS customers

When I end a year, I like to take a moment to step back and appreciate what we accomplished.  2011 has been an incredibly exciting year for Avangate.

We launched our new SkyCommerce Suite, expanded our overall service with close to 1.000 new features and enhancements, delivered new marketing and optimization services, and extended our global presence with new team members and offices, including our new North American headquarters in Redwood Shores, California.  All of this with the aim of helping our customers sell more software through any channel and any model.

It is not too surprising that the software market continues to grow as software plays an increasingly important role in our world (see Andresseen’s view on how “Software is Eating the World“).  More interestingly is the massive shift in how software is being distributed and sold.   The market size of ESD and SaaS will grow from $45Bln to over $120Bln by 2014.  The 3TS Cisco Growth Fund recognized this opportunity with a $6 million investment in Avangate in March of this year, accelerating our growth and strengthening our global presence.

We’ve been honored to serve this market – we participated in, sponsored or organized over fourteen events this year to network, share ideas, and help our customers grow their businesses.  We now have over 2,000 clients, from some of the largest vendors of consumer software titles, such as Bitdefender and Kaspersky, to SaaS vendors including Terapeak and TeamLab.

In addition, our affiliate network has grown to over 27,000 software members – Majorgeeks, Siliconaction.com.br and TopTenServices.net are three power affiliates that joined in 2011.  I’m incredibly proud of the Avangate team for continuing to deliver a mature platform with the scale and flexibility to serve shareware, mid-market, and enterprise software and SaaS companies.  What’s more, we are honored to be recognized in Forrester’s recent report on Solutions For Digital Commerce.

2012 – Prediction, Cloudy with a Chance of Significant Growth

The cloud is not a new concept, but we see this trend accelerating to dominate future initiatives (8 out of 10 new software start-ups are SaaS). The software market will only continue to be driven and disrupted by the rise of the cloud.

What does this boil down to? I particularly liked a blog post by Louis Columbus talking about “stripping away the hype by asking how these technologies [analytics, big data and cloud computing] contribute to excellent customer experiences and greater customer engagement.  Those are the real catalysts of market growth and the greatest disruptive forces at work in enterprise software today.”

While there are many predictions for 2012 (many articles are mentioning growth for next year which is good news – here’s one example about the antivirus sub-vertical; and also check out this Boxing Day treat by Ray Wang), let us spotlight one that is specifically apt for software companies: the transition from systems of transaction to systems of engagements and experience.

Software: engagement across the lifecycle

We feel this is important and has many implications for a software company. As many ISVs transition from perpetual to pay-as-you-go models such as freemium, rental, or subscription, they need to also experiment with new partners and affiliates and manage sales worldwide through any channel, online and offline.  The challenge is to do this while providing a flexible and frictionless customer experience across the software lifecycle. We have focused on this in 2011 with our integrated SkyCommerce solution and are continuing this focus into 2012.

Software companies need to have the platform to effectively engage and create the right experiences for their customers and need to be able to do it in a way that complements, and not alienates, the resellers which still make up over 50% of software sales today.

Likewise, software resellers and distributors need to be able to take advantage of these industry shifts, continue to increasingly migrate their businesses online and focus on emerging trends, such as aggregating cloud services.

Meet with us

Stay tuned for new and exciting things we’ve planned for 2012. To start with, meet the team at the first industry event we’re attending next year: Affiliate Summit West, January 8-10, Las Vegas, USA.

Happy 2012 and best wishes from all of us here at Avangate!

P.S. Your point of view for 2012?

We would love to hear what you think are some of the key trends that will drive your sales in 2012. We will continue to build upon these issues into the New Year on this blog and look forward to continuing the conversation!

This morning, our Risk Management Team detected a massive SPAM action coordinated against Avangate. The messages were sent from multiple locations worldwide.

While the action it-self was not in any way a Phishing action, our Team detected malware contained within the respective notifications sent to web-users.

With this occasion we want to reiterate all the signs you have to look for when receiving an email referring to your payment details.