While many marketing technology tactics have changed the past two decades to reflect a faster-paced society and advances in technology, the use of affiliate marketing channels has remained relatively the same in terms of system and structure. “It is a business development channel that has never truly been optimized by use of technology,” said Matt Gilbert, CEO of Pepperjam, an affiliate marketing technology and services company. “There hasn’t been any automation built into this channel.”

According to Gilbert, the straightforward, last-click attribution model for coupon and cashback partners in affiliate marketing remains immutable to change, but that stability has been a benefit since the COVID outbreak as it remains a dependable, if outdated, system. However, some things have changed. “The most effective affiliate marketing programs now make partner discovery easy for marketers,” said Gilbert. “They do this by using data to recruit and not relying solely on traditional interactions.”

Improved attribution, along with automation and personalization are modernizing affiliate channels, and helping them scale quickly to meet increased consumer demand.

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Change has come to define the past year, and it will probably define the next one, too. Some marketers are exhausted from pivoting from one surprising development to the next. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Operating with agility can help you succeed today, stay ready for anything, and even save both time and money. Join this webinar to learn more.

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SAP’s new CDP, generally available in November, will ingest customer data from any source within the organization, and resolve it into customer profiles, and offer the ability to segment and activate the data in real time, supporting in-the-moment personalization.

Like Salesforce, SAP has invested a considerable time in developing this capability, which will ingest data not only from its CX engagement solutions, but also from the back-office functions served by the S/4 HANA ERP. Explaining, SAP CX Head of Strategy Adrian Nash told us: “In the enterprise space, there’s a complexity of data. I was talking to one customer that has 250 million known identities and four billion consent identities. You can only deal with that with technology that has been set for that kind of scale. That’s why it’s been a challenge, but also why it made sense to come from a Gigya background.”

At the core of the CDP is technology which originated with Gigya, historically a B2C-scale first party identity solution acquired by SAP in 2017. Gigya (as SAP Customer Cloud) currently manages around three billion identities.

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Join us online December 8-9 for expert-led search marketing training, featuring just-announced keynote speaker Areej AbuAli, SEO Manager at Zoopla!

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TikTok’s advertising division TikTok for Business announced a global integration with Shopify Tuesday that makes it easy for Shopify merchants to promote their products on the short-form video social network. The two companies also announced #ShopBlack to amplify Black-owned Shopify merchants on TikTok.

Why we care. This marks the first major commerce integration for TikTok and opens up its ad business to Shopify’s 1 million-plus merchants. Merchants can manage their campaigns from their Shopify dashboards and TikTok is offering a $300 ad credit to eligible merchants. Shopify already has integrations with many search and social ad platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, Microsoft Advertising and Google. 

“The pandemic has thrown us into a largely virtual world, and now we need to review what good communication looks like. We need to sustain connection and alignment for virtual teams, not just for the sake of productivity but to carry us through the tough times.” Pam Ashby, agile marketing coach and trainer.