Thank You for 10 Amazing Years

Monday, April 25, 2011

It is with great pride that I look back on the last 10 years. Chris Kramer and I started Netx (then NETexponent) in January of 2001 with one simple goal; to acquire the most valuable customers for our clients at the most efficient rate. 10 years laterand that is still the driving premise behind everything we do at Netx.

Over the years we have had the pleasure of working with many great people across many wonderful companies. Our client list currently includes such top brands as Audible.com (an Amazon.com company), Nickelodeon, Conde Nast, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Financial Times, Hot Topic, Dymo (a Newell Rubbermaid company), and Red Roof Inn. Other client experience includes work for AMEX, The New York Times (our first client), Verizon, Scholastic, ESPN, and many other category leading brands. Our clients are extremely forward thinking and treat us as a partner rather than a vendor. To all of our clients, past and present, “Thank You.”

We have also had the pleasure of working with some of the most amazing people in the online ad industry. The folks that work at Netx are the best and brightest minds in this space and constantly impress us with their creativity and dedication. To all of our staff, past and present, “Thank You.”

The publishers we work with are genuinely nice folks who work hard to drive the best results possible for us and our clients. To all of our publishers, past and present, “Thank You.”

The client-agency-publisher trifecta can be described simply as “good people & great results”.

For all of these reasons and many many more…I consider myself very lucky to be a part of Netx.

Netx 10th anniversary cake

We would not be here without help. So four our 10th anniversary celebration we decided thank as many folks as we could. A party took place in Battery Gardens, a wonderful waterfront venue in Battery Park NYC. We were joined but current staff, past staff, clients, partners, friends, and family. Notice that our custom cake features each of our current staff along the base (our foundation) and our clients on the second tier and a message of thanks. It was a fun opportunity for us to say “Thank You” to those who have helped us along our journey.

We must also thank our wonderful friends and family for cheering us on over the years. Our parents taught us to take chances, be creative, and treat others the way we would want to be treated. Our siblings pushed us to achieve more and always believed in us. And our loving spouses constantly deal with our addiction to email and late nights working. We love you all and “Thank You!”

Here are some great moments from that special night. I am sorry that we could not have everyone there with us but please know that you were all there with us in spirit.

Thank you for 10 amazing years and cheers to many many more!

I love my job!

Signed,

Peter

 

 

 

Filed in Events, Meet Us, NETexponent Fun | |

Advanced Affiliate Marketing for Subscription & Retail Marketers

Thursday, April 21, 2011

I was lucky enough to speak with Vinny Lingham of  Yola.com at AdTech San Fransisco last week. Our session was part of the performance marketing track and focused on advanced affiliate marketing techniques for subscription and retail marketers. Netx has a long history of building successful affiliate marketing programs for retail companies like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Hot Topic, Ice.com, etc but we also have a long history of building successful programs for subscription marketers such as Audible.com, Conde Nast, Yola.com, and many more. In this presentation I explained some of the different challenges facing each segment and then shared how affiliates can help. Check out the presentation below to see what was presented. Tweet any questions to @figueredo or @netxagency.

advanced affiliate marketing for subscription and retail
View more presentations from netx agency

Here is the official session description from AdTech

Advanced Affiliate Optimization
Techniques for Retail & Subscription Marketers

wednesday, april 13 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM | Performance

Affiliate marketing best practices are not “one size fits all.” Optimization tactics that work for online retailers could prove disastrous for subscription marketers (and vice versa). This session examines popular affiliate strategies from both the retail and subscription marketing perspectives to identify how both types of marketers can grow sales/subs, manage quality, protect their brand and ultimately get the most from this channel. Learn from Peter Figueredo’s, Co-Founder and Brainstorm Chaser of Netx, 11 years of experience running successful affiliate and search campaigns for large retail and subscription advertisers.

Key Takeaways:

  • Learn how to create a cooperative search and affiliate strategy
  • Hear best tactics for retailers using coupon sites and consumer promotions and growing order size and lifetime value
  • Gain insights into how subscription marketers can manage lead and trial quality, maximize retention rates and manage affiliate promotions

 

Filed in Affiliate Marketing, Events, Meet Us | |

New Media is People. BlogWorld 2010

Friday, October 22, 2010

Before the jet lag from the west coast finally catches up with me, I would like to take some time to recollect the experiences and insights I’ve obtained from attending BlogWorld in Las Vegas last week.

Last Wednesday, Sal Conca, Noelle Huter, Regina Black (Audible’s Marketing Manager) and I flew to Vegas to represent audible.com at BlogWorld & New Media Expo. The main reason we attended was to announce our brand new Podcast Sponsorship Program, in addition to finding bloggers who’d like to promote Audible through their affiliate program!

Audible Booth

Regina, Sal, Val, Noelle at the Audible Booth

The Audible Podcast Sponsorship Program is a separate affiliate program just for podcasters. If you have a podcast and you’d like Audible to sponsor it, all you have to do is visit www.audibletrial.com/signup. Once you sign up, we’ll set you up with copy points and your own custom URL to refer your listeners to. If your subscribers visit your URL, they will receive a FREE audiobook download and a 14-day free trial of the AudibleListener Gold Plan. Podcasters have seen success with promoting Audible because people who listen to podcasts also have an affinity for listening to audiobooks.

For more information about the sponsorship program and Audible, listen to our very own Sal Conca’s interview with BlogWorld radio. He really killed it on here.

BlogWorld was the perfect place to find podcasters because they had a ton of sessions on podcasting. For example, there was a session specifically about how to sponsor your podcast!

In addition to the podcasting stuff, overall this was definitely an interesting conference because we met so many unique individuals and learned about new social media companies and tools. For example, at the BlogWorld party on Thursday night, we met Nomadic Matt (a blogger who records his journeys all over the world) and Benny the language hacker who goes to different countries with the goal of mastering the language of each.  What fun jobs!

One innovative social media company is Paper.li, which is great for Twitter users (like me) who have trouble keeping up with all of the links that their friends share.  Now you can turn your twitter  into a daily newspaper that makes content easily digestible by categorizing your articles. Additionally, we were happy to be “booth neighbors” with Plixi (formerly TweetPhoto), which is a photo sharing network that integrates with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and FourSquare!

BlogWorld party at Liquid

Val, Sal, Noelle & Regina at the BlogWorld party at Liquid

Finally, the closing keynote made me really consider the “New Media” industry as a whole.  As Penn Jillette put it, “there is no new media.. it’s people.” He believes that, despite what critics may say, Twitter and social media actually INCREASE intimacy. They give people an outlet to talk about the things that matter the most to them and share their own opinions. His thoughts definitely made me reflect on how some businesses solely use social media to promote themselves or participate just because “everyone is doing it.” Instead, they should really learn to love New Media since it’s the closest they’ll ever get to their customers. A word of advice: embrace your followers, listen to their requests, and most of all: be honest.

BlogWorld Expo 2010 in my opinion was a great success and I hope to get the opportunity to attend next year. Thanks, Audible!

PS: Congrats to JohnnyJet for winning our booth giveaway – a brand new Amazon Kindle 3G!

Filed in Affiliate Marketing, Events, NETexponent Clients, Social Media | Tagged , , |

LinkShare Symposium East 2010 – A Success!

Friday, June 25, 2010

On Tuesday I attended my first ever LinkShare Symposium, representing our clients: Nick Jr. Boost and Shockwave ! Overall, it was a great event with a perfect balance between education, networking, and fun.  Since it was my first time, I just wanted to reflect on everything I experienced, as well as provide a brief overview for those who couldn’t make it.

To kick off the event, several members of the LinkShare team (including CEO Yaz Iida) welcomed and thanked all of the attendees. They introduced us to some of the great developments that LinkShare has been working on:

  • Deep Linking Controls (For advertisers that do not allow linking to certain pages, but would like to allow deep linking on all other pages)
  • WordPress Deal Feed Plug-In (LinkShare would like to make it easier for publishers of all sizes – including bloggers – to plug & play. They’ve seen over 5,000 installations thus far!)

And…the most exciting development (in my opinion) is the ALL NEW Advertiser Dashboard! The new advertiser interface is a lot cleaner and simpler, making it easy to find everything you’re searching for:

  • New Trend Chart with Year over Year Trending Reports
  • It is now easier to enter dates when pulling a report
  • Link Section enables you to see just how well your creative is performing
  • Publishers are a lot easier to locate

After we learned about all these new developments, Sucharita Mulpuru (Vice President of Forrester Research and Symposium 2010 Keynote Speaker) talked to us about how eCommerce can succeed in every economic condition. Some key notes (ha.. no pun intended):

  • Consumers shop online because it’s convenient (#1 reason: it saves time and #2 reason: deals & coupons -> Remember this important stat, advertisers!)
  • Successful brands compete up or across! Instead of fighting over whose value/dollar menu was the best, McDonald’s challenged Starbucks by highlighting a new product: McCafe.
  • React to people power: Get your customers involved! Social web activity is a global phenomenon. EventBrite allows customers to share information about their tickets via social media.
  • Expand your IT team – new technological developments & innovation breed success.
  • Multi-Channel: Many buyers are now on more than 1 device – embrace the mobility revolution.

Next up: Panel Discussion! This year’s panel included: Siva V. Kumar (TheFind.com), Diana Gee (The North Face), Jeff Nobbs (ExtraBux), David Lonczak (Drugstore.com) and Kenneth Dayley III (crocs). This discussion was interesting because it allowed us to get perspectives from both advertisers and affiliates! It was great to hear their thoughts on these topics:

  • Conversion Rates: Some affiliates (including ExtraBux) are going to have dynamic featured ads that will change to fit the customer. It’s also important to make sure there are clear Call to Actions. Additionally, don’t include too much info! We wouldn’t want to overwhelm visitors.
  • Data Feeds: What’s missing? Unique identifiers: Sku #s, Bar Codes, Brand & Model #. Tax and Shipping information is also a plus for TheFind.com!
  • Coupons & Discounts: crocs found that product-specific coupons performed much better! Siva from TheFind pointed out that virtual discounts (e.g. Facebook Credits) are great for those advertisers who are brand sensitive and prefer not to offer coupons.
  • Mobile Commerce: TheFind also found that their peak mobile day was Black Friday due to customers comparing online deals to in-store.
  • Global Plans: Try to develop sites that are accessible to those around the world.
  • Getting Ready for Q4: Prepare ahead of time and make sure you keep your affiliates posted on your deals. Ideally, letting affiliates know when a product is out of stock would be great too (especially to help conversion rates)!

After all this great learning, it was lunch & Golden Link Award time! The Golden Link Awards were hosted by the Upright Citizens Brigade who certainly kept things fun.  I especially liked their piece on the creator of the Pop-Up Ad – “Mr. Popup.” The Golden Link Awards were really nice because they rewarded all of the innovative and successful players in the affiliate marketing space. Congrats everyone!

Next came “DealMaker,” a place for affiliates and advertisers to walk around and chat. Some had booths with great giveaways (Erica won a hat from KarmaLoop.com) and some just had great information.  This was one of the most successful parts of the Symposium because I was able to meet a lot of our clients’ awesome partners in person!

Lastly, the after party at the Biergarten at the Standard Hotel – who doesn’t love free beer & pretzels? The photobooth also made things really interesting.

This concludes my successful trip to LinkShare Symposium. I learned a lot, and got to connect with all kinds of people – merchants, agencies and affiliates alike! Thanks everyone for this great experience.

Valerie Russo

Media Coordinator – Affiliate

Filed in Affiliate Marketing, Events, Media Partnerships, Meet Us, Online Marketing, Research | Tagged , , , |

The Furture of Mobile As Told By the Giants

Friday, May 28, 2010

This week, our friends at TechCrunch.com hosted Disrupt in New York City, a conference dedicated to web innovators disrupting media and technology and the handful of executives successfully navigating these disruptions to talk about how to turn change into opportunity. At one roundtable, Facebook’s Chris Cox, Google’s Vic Gundotra, and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley chat up a storm regarding the future of mobile, privacy controls, and the hit or miss nature of this new leaf in consumer technology.

“Your phone should be a personal assistant. That’s clearly where we’re going,” says Chris Cox of Facebook. ‘Ambient awareness’ was used multiple times to describe device relationships (rather, the necessity thereof) in our near future. But when quizzed on specifics for what phones of the future will look like and how consumer interaction will differ in the coming years of innovation, Cox had this to say:

“People overestimate what’s possible in a year, and underestimate [what's possible in ] 5 years. These devices are going to be magical in 5 years.”

Some even speculate that ‘mobile’ will be come a meaningless word soon because we are inherently always connected. “The real frontier is what’s local,” speculates one commentator, citing the popularity of groundbreaking platforms like FourSquare. “I think Foursquare has done some amazing work with check-ins, but it’s early,” says Gundotra when asked if there is a clear winner in the location game.

“I think we’re building great stuff — there is no winner,” pipes FourSquare’s Crowley. “Think of where we are now to where we were 2 years ago. We’ve made the space more interesting. We’ve pushed things in a different direction. It’s experimenting in the space.”

Speaking of experimentation, Gundotra was asked what he thought Google TV will do what for mobile apps and his answer reads a bit like an upsell, stating that “the most exciting thing about it is that the same Android apps you use will work on the TV. Like Pandora, play it on the TV.”

Facebook’s Chris Cox got a little heat regarding the ever changing privacy controls pleging the platform. He was happy to report, though, that this week, Facebook will be rolling out “drastically simplified” privacy controls in an attempt to remedy what Facebook CEO Zuckerman has publicly called “missed marks.” Facebooks next challenge? “It’s hard to know what to invest in — a better Android app or Facebook Zero.” Facebook Zero is their new, “fast, free, global and mobile” data service.

Filed in Creative Development, Display Advertising, Events, Online Marketing, Research, Social Media | |

Eileen Ciravolo Wins Our First Annual NCAA Client Pool

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Eileen Ciravolo, Audible’s audacious Traffic Coordinator, is the winner of our First Annual NCAA Tournament Client Pool! Moving ahead of 28 other hopefuls, we recently presented Eileen with a silver plated basketball trophy to share with her office, friends, and family. She also got to take home a little something extra – a brand new iPad! What’s the first thing she’ll be doing with her new gadget? “There’s a the Kindle app, so I’ll definitely be using that. And, of course, the Twitter app, too!”

When asked how she came up with her winning round up, blind luck was attributed. “It took me about two second to pick my teams,” she claims. “I think Duke is good.’ So I picked them. ‘I think Texas is good.’ So, I’ll pick them! That was it. I got very lucky.”

Eileen shares a little more about herself with us:

Eileen Ciravolo Wins!

Audible's Eileen Ciravolo Wins!

Audible has been a part of the NETexponent crew for just over 5 years and we hear it’s a great place to be. Tell us more about your life over there: “I’ve been here for almost 2 years and it truly is a great place to work. I’m the traffic coordinator for the creative department. I’m in charge of making sure all the projects that need copy and design work are scheduled with designers and track the progress from kick-off through to completion. My day to day can be a bit hectic since I’m usually chasing someone down for more information or giving them status updates on things. I’m a very organized planner, so I’m able to stay on top of all the moving parts of various projects while keeping things on track.”

We’ve witnessed your basketball prowess. Are you a big into sports? “I’m a hardcore baseball fan – the Mets are my team. I even play fantasy baseball! The MLB app is one that I’ll surely be using on my new iPad to keep track of the Mets and my fantasy players!”

We can’t help but think that being a part of Audible.com would be a dream for any book lover. “Sure is!”

Give us your top 3 Aubible audio books recommendations: “There are so many great books it’s hard to choose just 3! My first listen was President Obama’s Dreams of My Father, which he narrated himself.  Dave Cullen’s Columbine was a harrowing look into the Columbine Massacre. It was a scary but interesting listen.  And to be a bit lighthearted, Waiter Rant by The Waiter was very funny – you’ll learn the secrets of what really goes on in the kitchen and what your waiters really think of you when you’re out to eat!”

Eileen talks about discovering her big win!

NETexponent would also like to send a shout out of Honorable Mention to Joe Crowley of Total Gym. It was close!

Filed in Awards and Honors, Events, NETexponent Clients, NETexponent Fun | |

Top Takeaways from SES NY

Friday, March 26, 2010

Here are my top discoveries from SES NY ordered from “Hey! Good idea that’s interesting” to “Boom!  What was that?! That was my mind being blown!”

  • No two advertisers have the same attribution model. Use attribution to see what media mix gives the highest ROI for your product.
  • Don’t just measure a video’s success on CTR – do an engagement analysis.  How many people started the video?  How many people hit the :30 mark, 1 minute?  How many people rewound, fast forwarded, paused?
  • When it comes to link building it’s more important what others say about you than what you say about yourself.  This is true in real life too by the way :)
  • Successful link building comes from finding the authority on your keywords, seeing who links to them, and then getting those sites to link back to you.
  • CTR increased 94% if the user was exposed to social media before searching.
  • SEO results are moving closer and closer to the fold.  Search for ‘lamp table’ and expand all the product boxes, you’ll see what I mean.
  • YouTube is the #2 search engine.
  • 4% of internet users never search.  Don’t ask me what they’re doing.  I guess they have a URL directory in their brain which updates in real time.
  • And….a glimpse into a crystal ball……There’s an app for everything why would anyone open a browser?!
Filed in Events, Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Video Ads | Tagged , , , , , , , , |

Affiliate Summit West Here We Come

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The NETexponent crew is off to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West. In fact I am typing this from my Virgin Atlantic flight (gotta love wifi on planes).

Are you going to be at Affiliate Summit West? Want to connect with our team? Here is how you find us.

1. Visit us at the Total Gym Direct meet market table. Our staff will be representing one of our great affiliate marketing clients, TotalGymDirect.com, and would love to see you.

2. Stop by the PMA members meeting.

Or just wander around and you are sure to see one of our friendly crew.

Who will be there?

Sal Conca, Erica Myones, Valerie Russo, Noelle Huter, Chris Kramer, and Me (Peter Figueredo)

see you in Vegas!

Filed in Affiliate Marketing, Events, Meet Us | Tagged |

Search Engine Strategies NYC Features NETexponent

Monday, February 23, 2009

I am happy to announce that NETexponent CEO, Peter Figueredo, has just been asked to join an SES panel at the upcoming NYC show.

So if you are attending SES NYC feel free to stop by and enjoy his panel (described below) on Wednesday March 25th 4 – 5pm

Dealing With Affiliates: A Roadmap to Success
Join this panel for a no-holds-barred discussion where performance marketing’s top contenders square off. As SEM evolves, marketers find themselves competing head-on with affiliates. Marketers want more leads/sales, increased affiliate-generated leads/sales, and less cannibalization of search campaigns. How can this be achieved in a world filled with increasingly hostile rhetoric on both sides? Join a panel of experts as they break silence on taboo issues and work through the finer points. You’ll walk away with fresh, new perspective and the ability to collaborate profitably.

Moderator:
Jeffrey Rohrs, VP, Marketing, ExactTarget

Speakers:
Kristopher Jones, President & CEO, Pepperjam
Jeff Ferguson, Director of Online Marketing, Napster
Lori Weiman, CEO, The Search Monitor
Peter Figueredo, CEO, NETexponent

Filed in Events, Meet Us, Search Marketing | Tagged , |

Have You Seen This Man…at CJU?

Monday, September 15, 2008

If you are attending CJU in Santa Barbara this week and see this man…

Please say “Hi”

Sal Conca will be representing the NETexponent team at Commission Junction University. (lucky guy) If you have a hard time tracking Sal down you can always visit the NETexponent table during the CJU Expo session. Be sure to pick up some free pens (the smoothest pens you will ever write with).

Enjoy the conference and safe travels to all.

Filed in Affiliate Marketing, Events | Tagged |