It seems that as the recession has pushed retailers toward focusing on results, those retailers have looked more and more toward direct-marketing and retention. And the direct-marketing darling of the online marketing world is email marketing. As AdAge reports:

E-mail has emerged as a recession darling, as retailers look to proven programs that are cost-effective and results-oriented. That’s led to increasing investment in technologies that better target customers and serve up more enticing messages.
[...]
Thanks to its cost-effectiveness and retailers’ recession-era emphasis on retention — Shop.org says that the number of companies focused on retention has nearly doubled in the past year [...]

Many affiliates are focusing on offering consumers increased saving these days. So if you’re promoting deals that have an expiration date, email is a great way to reach those users who might not visit your site before that deal expires.

Indeed, email marketing is a great retention strategy because it reminds consumers that you still exist. So this makes it a great time for affiliates to start looking at how to better leverage their email lists. And if they don’t have an email list, it’s a great time to consider how they can start collecting targeted and qualified email addresses.

A little while back, we posted an interview with Wade Tonkin on affiliate trends in 2009. This is the second part of that time we caught up with Wade at Affiliate Summit West 2009.

In this interview, Wade discusses how he thinks the current economic climate is going to affect the affiliate marketing industry. Essentially, Wade sees a lot of opportunity for both merchants and affiliates in a downturn economy.

Wade is widely known for his work through GTO Management and the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association.

To watch this video in HD, just click on the HD button on the YouTube player once the video starts playing.

We recently had the pleasure of sitting in on Chris Brogan’s session at Podcamp Toronto 2009. It was called “Heresy, Hypocrisy, and SIn,” and it was about how (1) money isn’t a bad thing, so (2) there’s nothing wrong with trying to make money from your blog, community, or whatever have you. In fact, one of Chris’ concluding points was to give affiliate marketing a second thought — or a first one if you haven’t yet considered it.

Chris segwayed segued into his session by talking about the economy. He discussed unemployment projections, and how the economy is affecting oil, journalism, and IT. These are the highlights from those introductory remarks. You can also watch his entire 30 min session here.

This is an interview with Andy Rodriguez, an affiliate marketing consultant. We caught up with Andy at Affiliate Summit West 2009 and sat down to chat about the upcoming year in affiliate marketing. One noticeable point he argues is that he doesn’t see the economy as a problem for affiliate marketers in 2009.

There’s a lot of background noise because the blogger’s room was so busy when Andy was free to sit down for a chat, but if you listen closely, you can make Andy out.

This is the third and final installment of our interview with Jeremy (Shoemoney) Schoemaker. Here, Jeremy discusses how he thinks the current state of the economy is going to affect affiliate marketing as a whole. Overall, he seems pretty optimistic, and articulates a very good reason to be so.

You can also check out Part I and Part II of our interview with Jeremy. And if you like these, you might consider subscribing to the Share Results YouTube channel which features all the other content that we brought back with us from Vegas.

Another of the great guys that I was able to catch up with at Affiliate Summit West 2009 was Scott Jangro, affiliate marketing blogger who actually has a hockey feud with one of our affiliate managers. Well, Scott and I stopped to chat about upcoming trends in the new year (video and mobile) and how the economy might affect the industry, and this is the video that came out of it.

Of course, quite a few other videos came out of the Summit, so you might want to subscribe to the ShareResults YouTube Channel where we’ll be posting them for some time to come.

The recent Economic climate has made me ponder the age old question: Is it better to have all your eggs in one basket, or to have a variety of different eggs in different baskets?

As the economic climate in the US continues to fall into a tailspin, it seems the only way to protect yourself is to diversify your portfolio.

There’s something to be said for affiliate marketing at a time like this: With no guarantee that any business will survive the rough economic climate, putting a variety of eggs in a variety of different baskets seems the logical choice.

I was reading an article about Yahoo’s CEO stepping down over coffee this morning; Jerry Yang – who also co founded the company is being branded the scapegoat by the Yahoo Corporation and its shareholders.

Granted, Yang rejected countless offers from Microsoft that might have helped the company get out of the hole it’s currently in (Yahoo shares have fallen 65% this year). But, Yang or no Yang, Yahoo was struggling to find a way to make money as advertisers scaled back amid a wider economic downturn.

In Yahoo’s case, People who had all their eggs in one basket are finding themselves fresh out of chicken. But, Yahoo is a tech company, so I suppose I could argue that it’s safe to trust a business if as long as it’s … an investment bank? A trusted brand name? A US institution?

Not quite. The United States is in the midst of such an economic recession that there don’t seem to be any safe bets anymore: An old Faithful like Morgan Stanley cut 4% of its workforce this year – in addition to selling 20% of its equity would be sold to Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.. RBS plans to axe 3,000 jobs from investment bank division. DBS, south-east Asia’s largest bank, is cutting 6 % of its workforce. Goldman Sachs is becoming a bank holding company.

What do you think? Does affiliate marketing diversify your portfolio? Or, are all your accounts just different branches of the same tree? Do you feel protected as an affiliate marketer, or do you feel the need to promote companies in different industries and across different verticals?