The number one event for affiliate marketing in Asia
The first ever Affiliate Summit APAC took place over 1-3 October at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. Organised by the creators of the biggest affiliate marketing event in the world and is set to be the number one event for affiliate marketing in Asia.
Optimise and Webgains announced back in June that they had both offered their support to the launch of Affiliate Summit APAC 2018 by coming on board as Gold and Titanium sponsors respectively. This growing commitment reflects the opportunity the event presents to help brands and affiliates better understand and leverage the performance-based marketing model in this emerging market.
C-suite keynote panel
Optimise CEO, Stephen Rumbelow, participated in the C-Suite keynote panel, alongside CEOs from Webgains, Partnerize, Commission Factory and Awin. Highlights included:
- “Asia isn’t behind in its adoption of affiliate marketing. Asia is different, it’s the world’s only mobile-first, mobile-only region, and networks have to learn how to adapt and add value for this region.”
- “Partner marketing. It’s just marketing hype. It used to be affiliate marketing, then changed to performance marketing and now it’s partner marketing. It’s all the same at the end of the day and as Networks, we must focus on driving performance at scale and widen the performance channel mix for our clients.”
- “The absence of exclusivity in Asia is good. It keeps Networks on their toes and helps drive continuous innovation and performance to increase the volume and value of sales for clients.”
- “SaaS platforms have found a good niche and have extremely good tech platforms. We don’t tell clients it’s either us or them. We work with our clients and sit a layer above the SaaS platforms to get the data and provide the insight to our clients to help them increase incremental sales from other channels and increase sales from higher value customers.”
- “Tracking all sales and paying affiliates on time is the number one priority. We need to collaborate to define the standard so that all sales are tracked in a unified way across web and app.”
Building the perfect partrnerships to scale across APAC
Optimise Regional Director for SEA, Ayush Goyal, moderated a panel discussion on ‘Building the perfect partnership to scale across APAC’ with other thought leaders from Collinson Group, Asia Miles, Partnerize and Rakuten Global Market. The panel was an eclectic mix of people covering all the different spectrums of affiliate marketing- client, tech partner, network and publisher. While tracking, mobile and timely payments was discussed, the underlying message was that the Asia market was unique in its own way and one size did not fit all. There is a requirement to be local and work together cohesively with affiliates and other partners to achieve scale and a need to have a conjoined approach across the board to educate the markets on affiliate marketing and its benefits.
Using data as a tool to scale within APAC
Optimise CEO, Stephen Rumbelow, also presented on ‘How to use your data as a tool to scale within APAC’, showcasing examples of how Optimise have used a data-driven performance marketing approach to help their global clients increase sales from incremental channels, as well as increase sales from higher value customers. Combined with some thought leadership around how AI and Blockchain could be applied to the performance marketing channel.