I came back from Prague Igaming affiliate conference last Friday and I have to admit it was a pretty nice experience for someone new like me into the affiliate conferences. Even if I was tired in making trips all the way back and forth to Greece-London-Prague last month we managed to do a really good job together with the affiliate team of Smart Live , using basically guerrilla marketing tactics.

Those conferences are the perfect idea for managing to meet affiliate from all around the world and registering them up to your system before anyone else does. It can be a really stressful situation especially if you don’t have a stand where the affiliates can see you. So , we had to ambush them. Running around starting a conversation out of nowhere and using any possible skill necessary to convince them to sign up was already a difficult task but a necessary one.

That builds the necessary relationship between the affiliates and the company that hopefully will bring the results you need. Its really difficult to justify those trips from a management point of view. Managers just see expenses, and the payback that you will take from such trips is not immediately visible. You can sign up 10 affiliates in one conference and get little registrations and revenue, but sign just one in another trip and get all the revenue in the world.

However, those are necessary for Brand awareness and relationship building as that is what it mainly is. When you are managing affiliates and you are communicating a customer that you want from them to promote you in your website then that’s what you are looking for, the chance to build a relationship in a place where everyone is under the same roof.

Now from an organising point of view I have to say that it could be better. The space was huge but really far away from the centre of Prague. The event was held in the PVA Letnany Exhibition Centre which is an enormous place but still didn’t offer the “warmth” needed so you can easily meet people and start discussions.

All in all it was one great experience and I would highly recommend to any affiliate manager as a must for his career. Also to any gaming companies that wish to invest in Affiliates that’s the first place to start by sending there affiliate managers and starting to build relationships.