Have you noticed of late how many in the affiliate marketing industry appear to be moving (or should I say running!) away from using the term affiliate, which at the end of the day is just another word for publisher. Affiliates4U market themselves as A4U Performance Marketing Insight and their Performance Marketing Awards consign the word affiliate to the dustbin. Whilst that massive late entry into the affiliate space, Google plumped for the name Google Affiliate Network (GAN) only to rapidly close down this April and the term affiliate with it.

As marketing moves with the fashion, this season Performance Marketing is that eye catching black number that everyone seems to want - with affiliate stuff being cast off into the stockroom only to be re-badged and put back out in the shop window.

However, terminology is a huge, huge, deal in direct marketing - image is everything. The problem with the term affiliate I think, it that its cites a form of marketing that directly puts the publisher in the spotlight rather than the advertiser, channel or purpose - it indicates no whys or hows to the outsider. Whereas performance marketing is clean and focuses on the mechanism that publishers, advertisers and networks all work to. So, as the term affiliate falls from grace and I predict it will soon be consigned to history, we are left with an industry full of affiliate executives, managers and directors.

With the industrys rapid evolvement, maybe its time we all adopted Performance Marketing sooner rather than later to avoid confusing marketers who have enough conflicting terminology to deal with as it is.

Lastly, as the new cool Performance Marketing tends to get banded around everywhere these days, I believe its worth making a distinction. I think the true essence of Performance Marketing is where all those involved (advertiser, publisher, agency, network) are working on a risk performance basis. For me, cost per sale/acquisition (CPS/CPA) marketing is not performance marketing at all, as all risk is taken by the publisher (affiliate!). Lead generation marketing is where all parties are performing to ensure it works for all which is why the term Performance Lead Marketing sums it up perfectly.

Social Media is coming of age and is at the equivalent stage of consumer adoption as telephones were in the 1980s when a useful telephone directory contained every UK citizens contact details. A marketing goldmine no less and the crazy thing is - no-one even minded as it made talking to friends much easier! This triggering a blindingly obvious gold-rush of sales cold calls before the party was abruptly ended when millions of people went ex-directory (i.e. asking for their details to be removed). Can you imagine your phone number being printed in a public directory today?

So turning our attention back to modern social media and inparticular Facebook, what do we find but millions of private information printed in an online public directory. Imagine how crazy were all gonna look in 10 years time when we recall how our identities were shared across social media sites. From a direct-marketing point of view, maybe, the party is already beginning to end (as happened with telephone number directories)? Record numbers are closing their facebook accounts. Over 600,000 of you raced for the exit sign last Christmas with another 2 million no longer wanting to share anymore in March. So thats over 2.5m people effectively going ex-directory.

However, what we are left with is still the largest direct marketing opportunity on earth with some 31 million direct marketing targets in the UK alone. More excitingly still, CPA (cost per action) advertising is now coming to Facebook which brings social performance marketing right to the fore. Other social marketing innovations are also emerging from companies with access to the Twitter firehose developing lead marketing platforms allowing conversations to be turned into leads at the crucial moment of intent.

Direct selling on social media platforms is notoriously difficult with a user base who are more engaged about doing stuff rather than buying stuff. Lead generation is therefore the most purposeful tool in which to turn all that attention into buyers via a lead nurturing programme. The type of nurturing is dependent on upon the product/service being promoted, social media platform and audience. For example, a competition to win a trip to Australia is great for gathering Facebook fans for an airline, whereas a whitepaper for email marketing is ideal to opt-in a Linked-in audience.

By the end of 2013, lead generation opportunities on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in are likely to be more firmly established beyond the standard CPC (cost per click) models meaning pure performance marketing on social media is only just around the next corner. As for the sleeping giant that is Google+, I havent the foggiest idea whats going on with that. If you are into circles and hangouts, please shed some light by commenting below.

Welcome emails are effectively your first-date, so you HAVE to make a good first impression, otherwise youll never get engaged. This blog is a kind of prequel (credit to George Lucas for that word) to the original article I wrote about Engagement in Dont Marry your Leads, get Engaged First.

The welcome email is the single most powerful event in which to grab your new prospect or customer by the collars and scream how great your brand is and how buying from you is going to make their life better.

Its one of those rare occasions when you are potentially speaking to 100% of your audience. Even just using standard messaging, expect opens of 40%+ and click thrus of 25%+ on email. Compare this with regular internal mailings where 20% open is the norm - and you already have 200% uplift. This is clearly a marketing moment not to be squandered, by following some simple rules. Guaranteeing high opens and clicks on welcome emails boils down to three things:

1. Timing
2. Message
3. Audience

1. Timing
Email deliverability plays a key part here as you want to be sure as soon as someone opts-in to your newsletter, a follow-up email arrives in their inbox (every second counts!). Other potential real-time event based messaging include where timing is crucial to performance include site revisits, shopping cart abandonment, Birthdays, etc

2. Message
It is best to keep the initial email clear and welcoming. However make sure you dont waste the opportunity to truly engage the reader. For example, if you only use a welcome email to say hello, thanks, well be in touch again kind of thing, then you should march yourself to the marketing court for crimes against email marketing. Instead, make an unforgettable impact by rewarding the email recipient with some news, free advice, or better still, an exclusive offer (with an expiry date).

Another point worth considering is to guard against email creepiness. Just because you can, doesnt mean you should. Do not stalk your customers! For example, if upon learning that a site visitor has not bought that dress, dont email with a message saying we saw looking at that dress, but you didnt buy. Whats wrong? Instead, to achieve a more positive ROI use we noticed you browsing on our site today, but maybe you couldnt find what you were looking for. Can we help? Chat now or email us

3. Audience
Targeting the right people is essential, getting timing and targeting right with the wrong audience will eventually spell disaster. However, the problem may not be immediately obvious to the naked marketing eye. The problem is that stats do lie, because open rates and even click throughs can remain high when employing the right message at the right time. Ultimately however, targeting the wrong people means those window shoppers are unlikely to turn into a high enough buyers needed for campaign success.

If you are still keen to learn more about the power of welcome emails, check out great examples of customer welcome emails courtesy of those nice people at Smart Insights.

A timely reminder to always remember leads are real people requesting contact for information about your product or service. So, to that end, they deserve to be treated with respect in all marketing communications. The most appropriate way to communicate with tomorrows customer is largely due to a number of factors:

• How expensive your product/service is
• How complex your product/service is
• How your brand is perceived
• How your market sector is perceived