Affiliate Summit West (ASW) is arguably the best event in the world for affiliate marketers and digital marketers alike. ASW isn’t just a great place to learn about what’s going on in the industry, it’s the top place to connect with affiliate marketing professionals, advertisers, digital marketing specialists, and other key industry players. If you’re in digital marketing or are looking to get involved in the industry this is an event you should definitely be attending. During our time at ASW 2020, our team was sure to take advantage of everything the summit had to offer. If you’re interested in learning more about the events held at Affiliate Summit West or are interested in hearing about our experience, we’ve outlined it all below!
AFFILIATE SUMMIT WEST MEETINGS
Meetings are by far the number one reason Today’s Business attends the Affiliate Summit every year. Affiliate marketing is an industry that is very relationship-oriented. Yes, you can certainly build relationships over the phone and email, but there is no substitute for sitting down with someone and having an in-depth face to face conversation about their business goals, strategy, challenges, etc. If you plan to build your affiliate business, you need to be spending time with your partners and building relationships.
The Today’s Business Affiliate Team scheduled a number of meetings prior to arriving in Las Vegas for ASW. Our team met with both existing partners and potential partners. ASW 2020 was hosted at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel, which offered plenty of places to host meetings.
Some of the companies our Affiliate Team met with include our technology partners, such as Pepperjam, Awin, Tune, Avantlink, and Impact Radius. We also met with a variety of publishers, such as Buzzfeed, The Daily Beast, DotDash, CBS Interactive, HighSnobiety, PerkSpot, DealNews, Digital Remedy, and many more. In addition to our Affiliate Team, our Business Development Team attended the summit as well to meet with potential new brand partners such as GNC, Tenergy, and Acceleration Partners.
AFFILIATE SUMMIT WEST EVENTS
If you don’t have many connections or are having a hard time scheduling meetings prior to the event, there’s no need to worry! ASW has plenty of events that you can register for and attend. These events are great ways to have conversations with people in a casual and friendly networking setting.
This year our team participated in a number of exciting events such as the First-Timer Speed Networking and Pub Crawl, Upsellit and Befrugal’s Charity Hockey Game benefiting Face Off With Cancer, the Performance Marketing Association’s Annual Networking Brunch, Tee Off with Tune at TopGolf, the Affiliate Ball, and an exclusive event hosted by SlickDeals at their Cosmopolitan suite. We made a lot of new friends at these events that we will be doing business with!
AFFILIATE SUMMIT WEST EDUCATION & SEMINARS
While networking and meeting with partners was the primary reason for our attendance, we still found value in attending educational seminars and round tables. This year’s event had over 75 expert speakers covering a wide range of topics from SEO, Compliance, Q & A’s, Affiliate Strategy, and Industry Trends just to name a few.
Two of the best events we attended included a keynote session by Alona Rudnitsky and Amber Spears of East 5th Avenue and an Influencer Marketing Roundtable. The keynote was useful as the speakers reviewed both good and bad examples of affiliate webpages live on the stage. We will definitely be using some of their tips as we continue to build out our affiliate pages. The Influencer Roundtable was great because it provided for a more intimate setting where influencers, advertisers, and agencies could discuss the successes and challenges that they have experienced in an open forum. This allowed us the opportunity to hear what others were doing in the industry and see where we could improve our service. We also had the opportunity to discuss our most recent influencer campaign and position ourselves as a thought leader in the room. After the roundtable, multiple people approached our team because they were interested to hear more about what we do at Today’s Business and how we might be able to work together.
Overall, the event was a huge success for Today’s Business. We got to enhance our relationships with our existing partners, meet tons of potential new partners, and learned a lot along the way. It also didn’t hurt that we had a lot of fun!If you’d like to learn more about our experience at ASW or talk with our team about our services please contact joe@tbsmo.com.
We look forward to seeing you at Affiliate Summit East in July!