Interview: Troy Vertigan, VP Global Reseller Business, PC Tools

DP: Troy, I have had the pleasure of working with you and PC Tools team for over 5 years now. In this time I have seen many changes in the business, and with PC Tools. What is the main reason you attribute to the overall success of your affiliate program?

TV: The key to a successful affiliate program is simply to provide best of breed (top rated & award winning) quality products, along with the right tools to successfully market them. PC Tools flagship product Spyware Doctor, and the popular Registry Mechanic – both have won over 100 awards & reviews, which cements them in the market as best of breed. When the PC Tools’ affiliate program was launched, there were clear objectives in place which have been the catalyst to its success:

• Affiliate partnerships must be win/win – understanding that if we help them grow their business, they grow ours in return.
• Providing affiliates with as much flexibility in promoting our software as they need – for example by having a flexible policy on search terms that affiliates can bid on.
• Rewarding those successful affiliates, by providing higher revenue share for affiliates that drive significant sales.
• Providing special offers such as discount coupon codes to large affiliates to assist with increasing conversion rates.
• Providing pre-approved creative content to affiliates for easy and effective website & email campaign distribution.
• Providing timely responses to affiliate queries (via both phone & e-mail).

DP: Registry Mechanic has sold very well and won many awards in the past, and you just recently launched Desktop Mechanic. What is the main difference between the two products, and what tips can you give to affiliates for successfully marketing this product?

TV: Desktop Mechanic was produced to provide the basic computer user with optimization and cleaning tools that normally only the advanced user knows how to access. It combines the features of both Registry Mechanic and Privacy Guardian and adds other useful computer system optimizing & monitoring tools (such as disk defragmentation, process tasks list etc).

DP: What does PC Tools do to go “above and beyond” in helping their affiliates succeed?

TV: There are a number of key differentiators that the PC Tools’ affiliate program offers its partners:

• Full creative & marketing support – A full media kit to get affiliates started which includes banner ads, text links, images, graphics, and relevant content. Then once the campaign is live we constantly work closely with our affiliate’s to ensure their websites are optimized to produce high conversion rates.
• Timely response rates – We had a global affiliate team at hand ready to respond in real-time to affiliate requests.
• Flexible policy on search marketing – as mentioned previously, apart from the PC Tools trademarked company name and our software titles; affiliates can bid on any search marketing terms.
• Best competitive revenue share/commissions – We offer a competitive base commission rate of 35%, even higher for successful affiliates.

DP: You surpassed the 150 million download mark which puts you in the same class as the other “big dogs” of software. Congratulations on that. By doing so, you have built a household name with PC Tools. How can affiliates work with this to their advantage?

TV: Using the success of our product downloads (over 150 million world-wide) along with reinforcing credibility through our reviews and awards and using our own website content should be part of all our affiliate’s marketing campaigns – these are the ones that convert best.

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Denise Purtzer
Affiliate Development Manager
oneNetworkDirect

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