who is MyAffiliate Coach?

Jamie Birch

“Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity.” What a great quote isn’t it? I’ve tried my best to live by that quote for as long as I can remember and it has served me well since starting out in performance marketing over ten years ago. Preparation is the key to taking advantage of the opportunities laid out before you, not only in affiliate marketing, but in your career and life as well. Affiliate marketing has been my focus since before 1999 and I’d love to help you take advantage of the opportunities you have in front of you. – Jamie Birch

More About Jamie and MyAffiliateCoach.net

Jamie Birch is currently the owner and principal of JEBCommerce, an online marketing and affiliate management agency. For the past ten years he has designed, managed, and executed successful SEO, SEM, and Performance Marketing campaigns for over 40 merchants and retailers.

As Jamie’s college career came to a close, the career opportunities seemed endless. Not knowing exactly which direction to go, finance, retail, management…he decided to take a position as a “Search Engine Guru” with a small medical ecommerce and political community building company in North Idaho, called Netivation. The interview was simple: “Do you think you can do this job?” “Yes” was the only answer that seemed to fit and a career in online marketing was launched.

After achieving a good deal of success as the company’s chief SEO, Jamie took on their online and offline affiliate programs. It was in that role where Jamie found his passion: performance marketing.

Stephen Robinson

“In today’s digital age of email, Facebook and now Twitter, you can’t underestimate the value of picking up the phone.” I totally agree with this quote and can’t emphasize enough the importance of picking up the phone. Whether in life or business, I think it is safe to say we are quickly losing the personal touch and in this changing economy this (picking up the phone) is an easy step to set yourself apart from the competition. This approach has served me well since I began in this industry in 2005 and I’d love to share this approach with you to help you grow your affiliate program.

More about Stephen and MyAffiliateCoach.net

Stephen Robinson is currently the Director of Affiliate Marketing of JEBCommerce, an online marketing and affiliate management agency. For the past five years he has designed, managed, and executed successful SEM and Performance Marketing campaigns for nearly 20 merchants and retailers.

Prior to coming to JEBCommerce, Stephen was an Affliate Manager where he found his passion, recruiting and activating affiliates. During this time, he was able to successfully grow several existing retail affiliate programs consistently by 40-60% year over year. He found that a personal touch often was the difference in developing and maintaining long standing relationships that he has brought with him to JEBCommerce.

Jamie and Stephen have worked with over 35 programs, here are a few you might recognize:

And Now Some “Blue Chip” Stories

We all have a “blue chip” story. These are examples of the success we have had over the years. Here are a few of Jamie’s Blue Chip stories:

Coldwater Creek: Starting out with only a few thousand dollars during each of its first few months, the Coldwater Creek affiliate program reached heights of over $35 Million in revenue by its third year. Using niche recruiting, a pro-active activation and merchandising strategy, Coldwater Creek not only saw a healthy increase in sales, but also a good percentage of new customers.

A Multi-Brand Toy Retailer: If you have moved your affiliate program from one network to another, have multiple brands under one roof, or run a program on in-house technology, then you know the struggles and obstacles facing this type of program. This toy company had more than 5 brands and was running only one as an affiliate program when they decided to move things in house. Jamie helped this company launch an additional 4 brands within their affiliate program and grew sales by over 600%. Targeted recruiting to niche affiliates within each program’s demographic was key to this growth. You can read a press release about this success here.

An Online Novelty and Gift Site: Many programs face difficult decisions that sometimes require the removal of top partners and still you need to increase your overall sales. That is exactly where Stephen started with this program. The two top partners generated over 40% of sales, but due to some unique circumstances, they needed to be removed from the program. Even with that 40% of sales removed, Stephen and his team were tasked with growing the program an additional 40%. An aggressive re-activation campaign combined with a shift to a more individual product centric focus lead to an overall increase in sales of 69% in year 1 and 140% in year 2!

Leading US Hotel Chain: Is your company incredibly protective of its brand? Do you have a long list of affiliates you can’t work with, a short list of ones you can, and a number of activities your affiliates are not able to engage in? Jamie did too. Growing a program with so many restrictions can be tough; Jamie and his team were able to grow this program to several million dollars a month within these limitations. Solid recruitment and active affiliate communication was the key to this program’s success.

Leading Table Top Retailer: Having tracking down for 9 months can more than aggravate your affiliate base. It can outright make them never want to speak to you again. This major tabletop retailer had to suspend its tracking due to new site development for a long period of time. Jamie and his team were tasked with re-launching the program in August and were able to generate 80% of the last years’ sales by the third month! Fourth quarter that year was not lost and the affiliate program was a vital piece in this retailer’s success that year and beyond.

Online Catalog retailer: Many programs face difficult decisions that sometimes require the removal of top partners and still you need to increase your overall sales. That is exactly where Jamie and Stephen started with this program. The two top partners generated over 40% of sales, but due to some unique circumstances, needed to be removed from the program. Even with that 40% of sales removed, Jamie and his team were tasked with growing the program an additional 40%. An aggressive re-activation campaign combined with a shift to a more individual product centric focus lead to an overall increase in sales of 69% in year 1 and 140% in year 2!

Leading wireless company: This program had many challenges. It was a pre-paid phone carrier in a very competitive space; they weren’t nationwide and they didn’t offer coupons. However, Stephen was able to quickly identify affiliates that had success in the prepaid vertical and leveraged his relationship with these partners to help this program grow by up to 200% year over year. While these are eye-popping numbers, this growth came after a difficult decision was made to remove the top performing search affiliate in the program that was typically generating 90% of overall orders. Aggressive recruiting and pro-active efforts led to the overall growth of this program.

Leading flatware merchant: Nothing frustrates affiliates more than links that don’t track and even worse is when a program doesn’t track right before the busiest time of the year. This is exactly when Stephen took over, during the hang over period, after the program had been dormant for months. Q4 was on the horizon and tracking was back in place and it was time to get affiliates back on board. Needless to say affiliates weren’t in the mood to discuss this program. Stephen went right to work, picking up the phones and taking his licks as he tried to coerce affiliates into promoting this program again. Patience and persistence paid off as this program quickly recovered and generated over $100,000 in revenue each month during the holiday season.

iFloor.com : After going through a bankruptcy, it’s hard to get an affiliate program back up and running.  The trust you build with your affiliates is the most important thing you can have in an affiliate program.  iFloor relaunched their program in June of 2009.  We were able to build that program up to pre bankruptcy levels within 60 days.