Instead of attending every affiliate conference around the globe, our team prefers to save up all the networking/partying (sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference) for Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. After a year of countless all nighters analyzing traffic & stats the timing couldn’t be better every year for a trip to Sin City. Since we love what we do, working in Vegas on how we’re going to scale our business over the next few years is always a great time.
This year our main goals were to strengthen the relationships we already have, and to bring new deals to the table. Our biggest meetings were with OkCupid/Match.com, Speeddate, eLove, Coaction Media, and Media Magnetic.
Since the actual conference hall doesn’t provide any real ROI for us, we arrived a day early, and left a day early. Meetings on Saturday 1/7 were over several cocktails at Planet Hollywood and The Cosmopolitan with Jason Dalrymple of Coaction Media and Nick Abromovick of Match.com/OkCupid.
On Sunday night multiple meetings were held at private tables in XS, a club at the Encore. There we met with Monica O’hara and Patrick McGrath who run the marketing at SpeedDate.com. Business was discussed over loud repetitive techno music (manufactured superstars are awesome BTW!). A bit later a quick meeting was had at the bar with Tim Wisner who runs Media Magnetic.
After missing our flight back Monday morning, we were able to meet up with Stephen Happas at the Planet Hollywood restaurant, who handles the marketing at eLove; an offline matchmaking service.
Overall, without the distraction of the expo hall at Ceasar’s Palace, this may have been our most successful Affiliate Summit yet! Only 2 weeks after we are already optimizing campaigns we’ve started from meetings we’ve had over that 2.5 day period.
Come get at us next year!
