Adrian: So we’re here today with Jennine from Rextopia. Jennine, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do?
Jennine: RexDirectNet is a full service Internet marketing company specializing in Affiliate Marketing (Rextopia) and Lead Generation Services (Rextrack). That’s been our focus for the last four and a half years and going forward, we just finalized an agreement to start a new company, which is a joint venture between Strategic Financial Publishing and Rex Direct Net. With Strategic Financial Publishing we now not only own properties, but we can build new ones.
Adrian: And how many of your own properties do you have right now?
Jennine: Approximately a dozen. If you see them on other networks they’re brokered by us.
Adrian: How big is your business? How many employees do you have?
Jennine: With the combination of Strategic Financial we are nine. Within the next few weeks we will be twelve.
Adrian: And can you talk about revenues?
Jennine: I prefer not to disclose details, however we are a privately held multi-million dollar company.
Adrian: Your company was founded about four and a half years ago?
Jennine: Yes, 2001.
Adrian: And what was it that gave you the idea to do what you’re doing?
Jennine: It really came out of need quite frankly. I worked as a Management Consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers prior to starting the company. Then, I got involved in Internet marketing the summer of 2001 while on maternity leave. I worked two jobs for six months and realized that I preferred owning my own business. It gave me more control over my destiny.
Adrian: That’s a big leap from Management Consultant to running a CPA Network.
Jennine: It is and it isn’t. I was a management consultant for eight years and had many roles. As the President of RexDirectNet, I have many roles. I started out doing programming, then business process re-engineering, then business development. All the skills I acquired then are helpful now. Running a successful Internet Marketing company takes great communication skills, a foundation in technology and the ability to make good decisions quickly – all in the name of keeping clients happy. My hat changes every day. Some days, every hour!
Adrian: Can you talk about how many Affiliates you have?
Jennine: We have a couple hundred Affiliates at this time and growing. Of the affiliate base we represent, around half are active. I am proud of this statistic. A lot of Affiliate Networks boast how many Affiliates that they have but I wonder how many actually produce revenue for them. In fact, I spoke once with an affiliate manager that said he had thousands of Affiliates but only a few actually do anything.
Adrian: What kind of tricks do you use for getting Affiliates to become more active? Let’s say I become one of the top publishers of Rextopia, are you going to be sending me on vacation to Mexico?
Jennine: I’ve played around with incentives for publishers. In my experience it hasn’t really driven more business for us. Therefore, I haven’t really continued to spend energy, time and money on creating these types of programs. I think at the end of the day if a publisher can come into your network, run a campaign and make a lot of money, that’s ultimately the best selling point.
Adrian: Right. It’s all about effective CPM.
Jennine: Yeah. I think that’s the bottom line.
Adrian: So how often do you pull offers you don’t feel are working?
Jennine: We “clean house” at least once a month to keep our campaign mix fresh.
Adrian: If I’m coming to you as a publisher, how do I know that I’m always going to get paid? I mean there are advertisers out there who are smaller and can go through financial problems. And obviously a lot of times CPA Networks put them on credit terms. What happens if you don’t get paid? Does that mean I send you a lot of traffic and I don’t get paid?
Jennine: That’s a good question. Unfortunately, there are advertisers in this business that don’t pay. As much as possible we try and get pre-paid for campaigns and we keep a pretty tight rein on credit limits. For those advertisers that do slip through the cracks, we have kept our commitment to publisher and paid them anyway. We feel it is our responsibility to pay Affiliates. Our solid reputation in the industry is important to us and we’d like to maintain our publishers’ trust. I think the fact that we’ve been around for four and a half years speaks volumes. We have plenty of affiliates that can testify to the fact that we pay and that we pay on time.
Adrian: So what you’re saying then, is that you’ll guarantee payment for publishers?
Jennine: I will not say we “guarantee” anything, except our best effort to make you, our client, happy. I think that’s like saying never or always. But I will say that in four and a half years 99.9 percent of the time we have paid publishers on time, regardless of whether or not we’ve gotten paid by the advertiser. The exception, and I’m not sure if this counts, is when we have suspected fraudulent activity.
Adrian: So if, for example, a lot of leads were sent somewhere and you suspected they were fake and the Affiliate didn’t have a long-term track record with you, in that case you may not pay the publisher? Is that correct?
Jennine: That’s correct. And this goes not only for lead programs but for sale programs too. Unfortunately, we’ve had issues in the past with both types of campaigns. The good news is that it doesn’t happen often. We do our best to pre-screen publisher candidates prior to joining our network so we aren’t dealing with issues like this on a regular basis.
Adrian: You do a voice interview?
Jennine: Yes, we do a voice interview in addition to the regular “standard” checks, like whois lookups. In fact Rextopia rejects up to 80% of the applications we receive.
Adrian: Lets talk about a controversial area. 180 in the news a lot at the moment, have you worked with those guys or companies that are doing spy ware ?
Jennine: Yes and no. We have done some business with 180 Solutions/Metrics Direct. When I approach an advertiser or bring them into the network, I ask them what types of marketing are acceptable. If contextual marketing is something that they’re not interested in, then we don’t allow those types of marketers to promote those kinds of campaigns. I’ve seen and heard mixed results on contextual publishers, in terms of their promotion’s capabilities. Honestly, with the campaigns that I’ve worked on with Metrics Direct, I haven’t had any issues. But I do pay attention to the campaigns they run. Their marketing does work. Whether or not it’s spy ware, I guess that is debatable. And for now, I’ll just leave it at that.
Adrian: Next question – there’s a lot of these offers that are registration type offers that are paying for an e-mail address. And we’ve all seen them. They’re incentivized with $1.35 for just entering an e-mail or a name and an e-mail.
Jennine: Yes, I know the ones you mean.
Adrian: And then they take them through a registration path. If those offers went away and the ffic wasn’t around any more, how do you think that would affect the CPA Networks in general?
Jennine: It wouldn’t hurt Rextopia. I have never been a big fan of the e-mail only zip only type of offers. Maybe back when they first came out we had a few in Rextopia but at that time they were a novelty. Now they are prolific. And because I’ve always strived for Rextopia to have more unique types of campaigns I just never trended that way. So for those types of offers to effectively go away, it wouldn’t affect our network at all. I’m not so sure some of our competitors can say the same.
Adrian: What are the top offers, what are the ones you see the most about?
Jennine: Our top campaigns are really the ones that are exclusive to us or that we have top payouts on or we’ve really gone out to market with first. Some of our top performing campaigns include Survey Mountain, Unclaimed Funds, Slot Machine Mastery. What else is performing well? Debt Solution Wizard, Paid Game Finder and Fast Real Estate Sale to name a few.
Adrian: So as an advertiser, there have seen issues in other networks where the advertisers offers get knocked off by the network. How do I know as an advertiser that’s not going to happen with Rextopia?
Jennine: If we accept an advertiser’s campaign we will work hard to make it successful. However, not all offers are a perfect fit for our publishers. In this case the advertiser is notified and the campaign is taken down. More often than not however, we will work with the advertiser to optimize their offer so it can stay on the network. We do not “knock off” advertiser campaigns. It’s not in our best interest. I am looking for long-term relationships, not short-term wins. Honesty and integrity has been the key to our success.
Adrian: Fair enough. Where do you see this industry going? How do you think the CPA Networks will look in five or ten years time?
Jennine: That’s a good question. I think that there will be some consolidation. I think that others will go out of business. And I think there will probably be some that pop up that are more specialized or niched. For example there are now networks that specialize in search marketing or international offers or business opportunities or education.
Adrian: What do you think about Direct Track?
Jennine: We were one of the first companies to be on Direct Track. I think we were seven or eight. Now there are a hundred and fifty or so. Needless to say, we’ve been around for a while. This technology has really changed our industry quite a bit. Some of it for the good, and some for the bad. On the positive side, a lot of the clients that I used to work with would manage their campaigns on spreadsheets and insight into the numbers was like a black box. You never knew if there was a tracking issue until the end of the month, which could then snow ball into a payment issue. Needless to say it was more difficult to manage relationships. With the advent of Direct Track, it being relatively inexpensive and the return on investment fairly quick, more clients have adopted it and now communication is much easier and better.
Adrian: Would you ever move off Direct Track?
Jennine: I don’t know if I would never move off Direct Track, but for right now I wouldn’t. Certainly it supports our business and it has done for a number of years. One of the big takeaways that I had from management consulting was the whole “buy verses build” decision. Should a company be focused on their core competency or diversify? My answer to this is, stay focused, based on my experience. And since we are an Internet Marketing company, not a technology company, its marketing, not building and maintaining systems, I want RexDirectNet to be focused on.
Adrian: Longer-term where do you see yourself going? Would you be acquired by another network? Do you get buyout offers? What do you plan on doing with Rextopia?
Jennine: I am not entertaining any buyout offers at this time. I have goals for the company that I haven’t achieved yet and it may take me several more years to obtain them. Strategically we’re on schedule to meet them. I’m my own biggest critic. I’m my own biggest driver toward success. Anything I’ve put my energy into, has succeeded. And this company is no exception.
Adrian: So Rextopia is going to stay privately held and privately run? There won’t be any takeovers or investments or anything like that any time soon?
Jennine: Not that I know of. I am set on building the right relationships and continuing to change as the industry changes. To meet head on, new challenges, and serve our clients with the best of what Internet Marketing has to offer. I love this industry and am committed to making it a win-win-win for all that embrace it – especially those that do it via our company.
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