Comments:
Yes, it’s true - affiliate managers need to finally stop putzing around with text links and banner ads and newsletter ideas and start gauging search results against affiliate results against natural traffic and broaden their horizons. “Performance Media” indeed - it’s time for affiliate managers to perform.
jeff,
I agree relationships are a important part of the game, but metrics are just as important. The best affiliate managers I know can do both especially on the CPA side of the game where you need to be able to determine profitbility of a deal based on LTV of a subscriber or of revenue per Lead in a ever changing lead marketplace. The first question to anyone interviewing on my team is how did you determine ROI in your last job. If they can’t explain and give an example, they don’t make it to the next round.
I think it’s short sighted to think that AM’s are simply a relationship management role in today’s metric driven internet marketing role.
Beth Kirsch