Our first day was hosted by the brilliant CEO of Found, Tina Judic. After each session, Tina chaired a Q&A with the speakers, delving deeper into their topic of discussion by answering questions from the audience. If you want to watch Tina’s digest of day one, you can access the video of her closing comments to explore her key takeaways – including the fact that affiliate marketing has become sexy!
We kicked off with a fantastic session filled with future-gazing, predictions, and tips and tricks for the future. It was great to begin the event with a discussion during which the speakers assessed trends and takeaways from the past year and spoke about how these lessons can be implemented in the future. It set the tone for a brilliant event, and the rest of the day continued in the same way…
The evolution of e-commerce
A huge takeaway we took from day one is that e-commerce is no longer just an option – it is a prerequisite for retailers. Laney Gugunava, senior team leader at Groupon raised this point in the first session, ‘Closing that Chapter; 2020 in a (Bullet-Proof-Glass Covered) Nutshell’ and it remained prevalent throughout the rest of the agenda for the day.
Consumer behaviour has changed dramatically over the last year, with an explosion of not only new habits, but new customers. More people than ever are shopping online, and the industry has been forced to quickly adapt to this.
After beginning the day discussing this point, it was really positive to hear from the rest of the day’s speakers about methods to adapt to this, and to hear success stories from those such as Jake Newbould, CMO at Piglet, who discussed beginning an affiliate programme in the midst of the global pandemic, and the benefits of doing this.
Incrementality testing and attribution
Another theme that seemed to arise a lot over today was incrementality testing and the huge importance of this. Van Chappell, EMEA general manager at BrandVerity said: “It is crucial, now more than ever, that we mitigate risk factors so we can justify the true incrementality of all of our digital programmes.” His session, ‘No More Excuses – Removing the Barriers to Paid Search Monitoring’ was an essential listen for all of us who are concerned about fraud and protection within the affiliate space.
In terms of attribution, however, he raised the point that it is more important than ever for the different cogs in the affiliate space to be rewarded and recognised appropriately. The rise and improvement of tech options is making this more possible.
The different nuances of our channel are more able to be recognised than ever, as was raised by Amy Hadley, senior account director at Awin, in the ‘Enhancing ROI with Intelligent Promotions and Deals’ talk. The amount of positivity surrounding this subject today was lovely to hear about, and really encourages positive thinking and action surrounding incrementality testing.
Going global…
It’s been great to see so many people from so many different regions across the world tuning in, and we heard Global account director at Acceleration Partners’, Stephanie Lester, talking about this in her session: ‘Going Global – How to Run a Global Affiliate Programme’.
The differences between the different countries and markets have become even more apparent following the pandemic. Where different cultures and time zones were once the only things separating us, now we have different lockdowns, restrictions and trends surrounding this to consider too.
Stephanie ran through some of the most effective ways to tackle these differences in order to make working together more simple and productive.
If you’re yet to purchase a ticket, but have been enticed by today’s roundup, tickets are available to purchase throughout the event – we still have two afternoons jam-packed with insightful sessions coming your way.
Purchasing a ticket during the event doesn’t mean that you have to miss out on the sessions streamed prior to your purchase. All sessions will be available via our video vault when the show is over to rewatch for 12 months, so ticket holders, keep an eye on your inbox…
We look forward to seeing you tomorrow for day two of PI LIVE Global at 1pm GMT.