New member at Aspect for you to meet
Hello! My name is Michael and I recently joined Aspect as an Email Marketing Executive.
My route here has been pretty varied – over the last decade I have worked in Spanish hotel entertainment, retail, hospitality, web content marketing and even a stint as a football commentator on Tenerife. My desire to begin a marketing focused career has lead me to Aspect, and in the last few months I have learned a lot about the industry thanks to a great deal of hands on experience and constantly badgering my colleagues for information.
In my spare time I subject myself to watching Liverpool lose football matches all across Europe, as well as writing, laughing at things other people fail to see the humour in and eating pie. Occasionally I will enter the local gym, where I hang around in the steam room for 20 minutes before convincing myself I have worked out hard enough to go home and have a bit of a sit down. My dream was to learn to fly, until one day I forgot to close the door properly and it popped open at 2,000 feet – since then I haven’t really fancied going back up.
The latest addition to the Aspect Web Media team is….
Over the past couple of weeks, we have been introducing you to the Aspect Web Media team – please take a few moments to familairise yourself with Martyn Carver, who joined Aspect this month as an executive in the Sales team.
Hello. My name is Martyn, and I am completely new to marketing apart from a few marketing modules in my degree. I have been working in the insurance industry since 2004.
I started working at Marsh Insurance brokers, the world’s No. 1 insurance broker where I had two client account (fiduciary) roles, first in UK Retail for 2 years and then in wholesale group accounts. This gave me great experience in dealing with all kinds of companies here in the UK and from all round the world as well as brokers and account/client executives within Marsh.
After 4 years I went to another insurance giant, Aviva, as a client manager which meant working on the Barclays Finer (High Net Worth) contract in the service department. On a daily basis I was dealing with client queries and underwriting household insurance. The underwriting was varied and challenging however I was unable to develop as I would have liked so after 2 good years headed back to a Senior Accounts Technician position at Capita (Marsh has outsourced its fiduciary operations to Capita). As a senior accounts technician I was given some very challenging accounts in my portfolio for example South Korean Clients and middle east clients where I really had to muck in to complete tasks.
I eventually decided to leave insurance and the opportunity arose for me to join Aspect Web Media. The change of scenery and pace has been great so far and I’ve got plenty to learn so I’m really looking forward to the coming months.
I now have to cycle to work which is great for fitness and also play a fair bit of football. During my younger days in high school and 6th Form I travelled to Sweden twice to play in the Aros Cup in Vasteras and the USA to play in the USA Cup in Minneapolis and the Dallas Cup (players who featured in this prestigious tournament, Dallas Cup XX, include Wayne Rooney, Landon Donovan, Robinho, Peter Crouch…. the list goes on…. Not sure how I got there!!)
You can contact Martyn to find out more about how he and Aspect Web Media can help your business to grow.
Meet the Robinsons
Scott Robinson joined the email team earlier this year….here are a few words to let you know a little more about him.
My name is Scott, I’ve been working in Digital Media for the past 2 and a bit years.
I graduated in 2009 with a Graphic Communications degree after which I started Freelancing for a year. After that I started work as a Junior Project Manager and Technical Developer for a Digital Outsourcing company based in Norwich and London, I got to manage and work on worldwide brands and with national advertising agencies.
In my spare time I enjoy training at CrossFit Norwich [which involves Olympic lifting and Gymnastics performed at high intensity] and I also do my bit of running.
My dream would be to visit Los Angeles and I’m saving up every penny for that to happen!
I’ve been at Aspect for a while now and I have learnt loads, from optimising HTML to building my own HTML email from scratch. I also dip into the design every now and again which is always fun.
To find out more about Scott, why not give him a follow on Twitter.
Peformance marketing awards 2012
Tuesday 15th May 2012 saw representatives from across the performance marketing sphere don their finest for the sixth annual Performance Marketing Awards.
Presided over by comedian, Miles Jupp, this year’s Awards took place at The Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair and were attended by more than 800 people from across the performance marketing industry. Formerly known as the A4U Awards, the event has re-branded itself this year as the Performance Marketing Awards to encompass a wider range of marketing categories than just the affiliate sector. This allowed entrants from areas including social media, mobile, email, search and display. This and the introduction of several new categories resulted in a record number of entries! Over 30 winners scooped up awards in areas such as Best Use of Data, Best Lead Generation, and Best Use of Email.
Following a Champagne Reception and photo opportunity from the balcony overlooking the main venue, guests settled at their tables for the main event. Following a speach from A4U’s Matthew Wood, Miles Jupp took to the stage to unleash his affiliate mareting repertoire whilst the guests began a delicious 3 course meal.
Aspect sponsored two awards on the night, and no sooner had the starters been cleared from the table than Managing Director, Jonathan 
Erwin, was invited to present the award for Best Lead Generation Campaign to winners Arena Media for Red Instructor Training and Aspect’s Chairman, Steve Whatley was next up to practice his presenting skills, handing the Best Use of Email award to Vouchercodes.co.uk for The Body Shop.
Other lucky winners included 7thingsmedia for Best Agency; NHS Blood and Transplant for Best use of Social Media; Criteo for Best Consumer Targeting and Trade Doubler became the first network to take the Publishers’ Choice of Network award from five-time winners, Affiliate Window.
With the formalities over, the celebrations began! Guests enjoyed their dessert and the occasional glass of wine before preparations were underway for the spectacle that is 
Rockaoke (that is live band karaoke for the uninitiated) and festivities continued into the night. The Performance marketing awards brings affiliates, merchants, agencies and networks together and so often proves a fantastic networking opportunity in a relaxed environment.
All in all a good time was had by all, particularly the winners, though there were almost certainly a good number of sore heads on Wednesday morning.
Planning Prevents Poor Performance
At Aspect Web Media, we pride ourselves on planning – ensuring that when we execute a promotion, we call on all available assets in order to provide the maximum return for our clients. Nothing highlights this more than a recent Grand National campaign with Paddy Power.
In 2011 we achieved significant success on this campaign and a decision was taken in March 2012 to ensure that we were well prepared ahead of the race on 14th April. The team analysed the performance from April 2011 to ascertain what had worked especially well and most importantly, when it had worked. The focus for this year was to achieve a 100% increase in sales delivered the year previous, whilst spreading the risk where possible. Last year, 74% of all volume delivered by Aspect Web Media originated from the day of the race.
During the weeks prior to the Grand National we spoke with many publishers and data owners with a view to acquiring access to a large number of email records at a cost effective CPM. This was essential considering that any revenue generated by Aspect would be via a CPA and so would pose a risk. We selected a mix of data partners to offer exposure via CPA, CPM and CPO coupled with regular email broadcasts to our internal data base, starting on the Thursday and gradually building to the morning of the race when most of the sales would be expected. Knowing that hitting an inbox on Saturday would already give a high probability of success, we chose publishers who could also offer a route to prospective customers on the Thursday and Friday to help spread the risk and increase overall sales volume.
Over Thursday and Friday we executed a number of email broadcasts, applying the logic that the end of week wind down plus likelihood of office sweepstakes would generate interest in the campaign. This approach, along with the beginning of our in house promotion and CPM buys increased the return for Friday compared to what was seen in the previous year (26% vs 25%), yielding more than 900 sales – over 60% of the total volume delivered last year.
On the day of the race itself, all publishers were advised to apply maximum effort and combined with a successful in house campaign a further 1900 sales were delivered taking the total over three days to over 2800. On average there were just over 3 sales per minute from our top performers between 8am and the beginning of the race; with the busiest period between 1pm-1:30pm (9% of all volume) and half of all sales generated coming between 11am and 1:30pm at a rate of almost 4.5 per minute.
In 2012 not only did we reduce the emphasis on volume from Saturday (down from 74% to 68%) but total volume for the three day period was just short of double what was seen before – an increase of 99.3% on 2011.
