Summit Promotion #1

Summit Promotion - Speakers & Affiliates

Hi friend.

I think the glaringly obvious elephant in the room when it comes to publishing a summit is that you want to cyphon some of your speakers subscribers onto your own list.

That’s why you see so many summits with a huge number of speakers. The host is hoping some of them promote the event and they get a boost in their own numbers.

And I must admit, I am indeed hoping my speakers do send some of their loyal tribe to check out my summit.

In fact, one of the entrepreneurs I approached voiced his concerns about this.

Which I completely understand and it’s why I don’t insist the speakers promote like many hosts do. Other hosts sometimes write into speaker agreements the level of promtion they expect.

I’d rather have a brilliant event with the right speakers than just the ones with huge lists. And respect the speakers enough for the time they already gave me.

So, I don’t insist they promote, but I do give them all the resources they need and also hope they recognise that everyone wins when we promote an event like this.

The speakers, the host and most of all the attendees.

With that in mind I needed to create an affiliate tracking system for speakers and also for anyone else that wants to promote.

My intention is to have a mix of speakers and affiliates promoting and in exchange I give a big percentage of any upgrade sales away.

And it was a giant headache setting this up!

We’re going to talk affiliate programs for a minute.

1. What does the affiliate program consist of

2. How do they promote

3. How do we track sales

4. How do they get paid

Those are the main things. I am not new to affiliate marketing and have used it effectively to help clients boost their businesses into the millions.

So I knew what I needed - but there were some bumps in the road….

Big ones.

I was unprepared for the issues I faced. I was going to use the built in affiliate tracking in HeySummit. However, at this time their sotware is not the best for building a funnel with upsells and order bumps. Something that I felt was crucial to the finanical side of this summit.

They also don’t have a particularly good link with zapier for automation. Meaning you can’t automatically import registrants but you can export. Which means I had to use HeySummit to register attendees to avoid manual upload, even though I wasn’t using them for the funnel.

In other words there would be a break in the tracking. Not good for an affiliate program.

I also bought a system called Partnero. Looks great and lots of great reviews and enterprise level clients. But it never worked and the support was shocking. I’m sure there was an element of user error on my part but it would take a week between support requests.

So I had to rip that up and start over.

Then I realised Zenler did everything I needed when I looked into things. That meant moving everything from a wordpress site I had already created to Zenler for the funnel, affiliate tracking and hosting premium content and courses.

Soooo. Once the headache of tech was sorted out it was onto the affiliate program.

The program.

I have two tiers to the affiliate program. The speakers get a slightly higher commission than those who wish to promote. There is no minimum list size to be an affiliate but I will have affiliates in the digital marketing, consulting and copywriting space mainly.

The mechanics of the affiliate program are I pay 40% of VIP upgrade ticket sales revenue away to non speaker affiliates. Speakers get a boosted commision though.

I decided that they would get the affiliate commission on the whole funnel which consists of:

1. VIP upgrade sales ($67 for extended pass and $97 for VIP pass)

2. A new online course about revenue share (the summit subject) for $97

3. After the event a new cohort for a small group program at $597

That means if someone bought each part of the funnel the affiliate can get 40% of $97, £97 and $597.

That’s a potential of $316 in commission if you’re a mathlete like me. 😉 - more if you’re a speaker.

I’ve also set the cookies to track the sales to 90 days. This means the affiliate can get a sale attributed to them if their referral buys through this funnel in the next 90 days.

Which is longer than most as it’s often 30 days window. After that time the affiliate doesn’t get the credit and no mullah.

How do they promote?

I set up a google drive for affiliates and speakers with their tracking link, any promotional creative like video and images as well as swipe copy for social media posts and email.

I haven’t set a promotional window, but I’m hoping they will promote it over a few weeks before the summit. I know hope is a poor strategy, but I don’t want to rely on this route entirely as you’l see in future emails. (for example, cold outreach is starting today!)

So I will encourage promotion and remind them of how they are doing and what the conversion rates are like. If they are confident their efforts get results then they will promote more.

If they need any other resources I will get them created.

How do we track sales?

As mentioned I changed the tracking system. It was a right pickle, but NewZenler has a great way of tracking links. I can send people to HeySummit to register on a subdomain for the summit itself. That gets them access to watch the summit and all the built in reminders. It’s a great platform for the summit itself. (summit.remarkablecreators.com).

The Zenler tracking link tracks registrants in HeySummit and sale via Zenler itself on another sub domain (learn.remarkablecreators.com (on zenler). This was the most robust way of tracking the sales as I have all my upsells in Zenler.

So, now we can track sign ups and sales effectively inside a dashboard for each affiliate, which they can access to see how they’re doing.

The affiliate program works on a last click to basket, which means if two affiliates sent the same person to the event and they buy, the person who sent them closest to the purchase gets the sale. That seems fair and also encourages affiliates to promote frequently and leading up to the event and beyond.

How do they get paid?

The affiliate tracking tool has the speaker sales tracked in a dashboard. I will make payouts after 30 days in case of refunds. This will be paid either by PayPal or Wise. Depends on the affiliates preference.

If you’re reading this and thinking, I wouldn’t mind promoting this awesome (ahem) event, then hit reply and let me know.

Thanks for reading

That’s all for now.

See you soon.

Tim

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