Tips for Digital Account Managers
Programmatic account managers often at times have as many as 100 accounts with multiple points of contact, ad inventory deals and wide range client expectations and personalities to manage. It can be daunting for one person to manage the day to day tasks of running a programmatic publisher portfolio such as ad quality, volume fluctuations, IO extensions and general housecleaning, while simultaneously looking to grow revenue for their publisher through new incremental revenue products such as rich media high CPM ad units. An outlook inbox can turn into a nightmare and should not be treated as task queue – many new account managers make this mistake and drown in a sea of unread and unimportant emails. This can lead to insanity and a decrease in productivity!
Here are tips to manage your publisher portfolio effectively and keep your client happy:
1. Organize publisher portfolio by publisher in email folders- If you work with a large number of clients and cannot name them all right now, you better have a great system of organization to track communication and understand the the history of an account. A simple method to achieve a strong foundation for organization is to make a folder for every single publisher. Every time a publisher emails you, move the email into the respective folder and also move your response into that folder as well. This way you will know what the publisher pipeline looks at and build a historical timeline of communication
2. Know important information about every client- Create an excel sheet that lists your publisher portfolio out. This should include the point of contact and the geographical location of each client. It is especially important to understand where your publisher lives so you can invite them to industry events and the time of the day they are most active with emails. Having a consolidated sheet will save you precious time clicking around looking for the information. This also makes it very easy to send gifts to clients who are your top revenue generators.
3. Understand the short and long term trends of each website- Become one with your publisher portfolio. Wow each client with deep knowledge of their business model and understand the daily, weekly, monthly quarterly traffic, revenue and content trends. Certain sites are more popular during specific times of the year and you may only have a small window of opportunity to media buy their inventory. Every client has a different story and understanding how the website gained its prominence is key to building a successful partnership.
4. Present opportunities to the publisher – Many publishers focus solely on producing engaging content and building traffic and less time on optimizing their ad placement and revenue streams. Successful ad networks constantly reach out to their publishers to let them know about expected increases in CPM, new ad units, or country specific traffic that revenue can be optimized for. Keep following up with your publisher to get IO’s signed and new deals live.
5. Be responsive – Nothing is worse for a publisher then being ignored and having to constantly follow up to get a response from an ad network. Understand which publishers need constant attention and who are on auto-pilot. Review all emails that you send out and always be respectful. Some requests such as ad quality violations require immediate reaction while other inquiries can be answered in 24 hours. This ties back to knowing your client. Manage expectations accordingly.