Rob Berrisford.com

Matt Bailey is the Client Director at DGM Affiliates, a Manchester Citeh Fan and a good friend of mine. Last Summer he hit the pinnacle of his football career by playing in goal for the mighty CK Net FC at the Buy.at football tournament.

I thought Matt would be a good interview to do, he is pretty well known in the industry and is doing a great job at dgm. Hopefully some people will find this interesting, if not talk to Matt not me!

Hello mate,
Just a quick one.
I have started building a Blog, thought it would be a good if someone from the “social side” of affiliate marketing wrote some stuff.
I am going to start doing some interviews with the people i know in Affiliate Marketing, via email.
You in?
Let me know and i will think about some questions, just reply via email when you get a chance, the Blog wont go live for a while.
Rob

Of course pal, just let me know what you need.

Good lad, first off how did you get into affiliate marketing, and when was it?

Whilst managing a pub in Nottingham in 2004 I decided that I was getting bored, so paid someone to run the pub for me in the day and decided to get a job in recruitment. I took a role for a small recruitment company that specialised in direct marketing. After being there a couple of months a girl working there and I spotted an opportunity for a specialist recruitment company working in the fast growing online marketing sector.

We went about researching online marketing and the first area that I really got my head around was the affiliate channel. I set about recruiting people into jobs int he affiliate industry and after doing that for a year or so began to get interested in working in it myself. I had previously spoken to Kevin Edwards at DGM and when he mentioned that DGM may be looking for an account manager. I put myself forward for the role (without claiming a recruiting fee!) and was subsequently offered the position. I started here on 17th July 2006 and the rest is history.

You have certainly taken the bull by the horns since you started at DGM, what qualities do you think you need to be a good account manager at a network?

A network is obviously a middle man between the client or agency and the affiliate base. Therefore it is imperative to be able to understand what each side is trying to get out of it and make it as easy as possible in order to achieve that. Whilst a modicum of technical knowledge helps, I think it is more important to possess good business and personal skills in conjunction with having a passionate belief in the industry.

I think it is hard to define exactly what skills you require, as I feel this is a job that suits a good all rounder rather than any specific type. Obviously the skills that make a good account manager in any discipline are vital; good communication at all levels, attention to detail and a strong work ethic. Aside from that a high alcohol tolerance level will also stand you in good stead.

Traditionally staff at different networks didn’t talk to each other, this seems to be changing, I know you are quite friendly with some of the account managers at the other networks. Do you think this helps the industry? Do you think you could benefit from working closely with the other networks?

My relationships with other networks are helped by the fact that there are some ex DGM staff working at other networks with whom I have previously worked, who in turn have introduced me to their colleagues. With us attending all the same events it seems churlish to harbour grudges as we are all just doing a job. Whilst I may not agree with the way that some rival networks operate I am respectful of them.

Looking at the bigger picture, I think there is a necessity going forward for networks to work together in order to protect the interests of the industry as a whole. Whilst we are all competitors it is vital that we present a united front in order that we have an industry to compete in in the coming years. I feel that the current trend of networks competing against each other purely on cost is not sustainable and in the near future the bigger networks will be pitching their levels of service as the key battleground. Networks dropping their overrides continually to win big clients has no long term future as innovation and continued growth of the industry cannot be sustained on some of the low charges we are currently seeing being offered. Perhaps this is something that the big netowrks have to come together to address?

After losing a few clients this year DGM launched 5 new programs recently, is this the start of the return to greatness for you lot?

At DGM, we are not naive enough to suggest that there haven’t been problems in the past but we have spent the last 18 months quietly working away to get things resolved in house and now feel that we are ready to start making a bit more noise about what we do well. We feel that our account management has never slipped and the continued success we have demonstrated for our clients is testimony to this. We are now starting to get a bit more visible on the sales front and the fruits of our labour should be clear to see soon.

Cheers Mate, I am sure i will see you for beers soon.

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