Congratulations to All Pinnacle Award Winners

I wanted to take a minute to both say “Thank You” to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for another phenomenal Affiliate Summit West, and also to congratulate the winners of the Pinnacle Awards, Affiliate Summit’s annual recognition of industry leaders.

RetailMeNot is one of the very first companies with a business model focused primarily on Performance Marketing, to take their business public.

As one of the largest volume generating affiliates in any program they participate in, and with a successful IPO that raised their market cap to $1.71B at the time of writing, this was both a very deserved nomination and victory.  Congratulations to the entire RetailMeNot team – this has been a fun journey to watch, one that we have witnessed from the very beginning.

All three are deserving, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with each, directly, on ShareASale.  VMInnovations.com, managed by Khushbaht Abdulloev, is an up and coming company – in a very competitive niche.  They do things right, and they treat their Affiliates as the valued partners that they are.   Having witnessed this first hand, I want to congratulate Kush for an extremely well done job!

Tied for first, this was my favourite moment of Affiliate Summit.  It is always an honour to receive any award – but what you never realize in the moment is the pleasure that your friends take in seeing you win such an award.  I was sitting near Wade and Joe – both of whom I  have known very well for years and years… seeing them win was like winning myself, and was a true pleasure to see the looks on their faces as their win was announced.   Congratulations Wade, Joe and Erin – it was so well deserved, and thank you so much for all of the support over the years!

Another one where I have personal experience working with all of the nominees, and all are deserving.  I’m reminded every day that Greg represents his company, and his industry, with passion for affiliate marketing, and ethical integrity.  It was a true pleasure to be able to be one of the first to congratulate Greg on an honour that he immediately shared with his whole team – so congratulations to Greg and Greg Hoffman Consulting!

I’m not 100% sure of this, but I believe that BrandVerity is the first back-to-back winner in a category.  Nobody deserves this more than Dave and his team at BrandVerity.  Both with their tools to help Merchants monitor compliance in a complicated industry, and through Dave’s work on the Compliance Council of the PMA (Performance Marketing Association), BrandVerity continues to help raise the bar.  Thank you Dave, and congratulations to all at BrandVerity.

I won’t say too much to congratulate myself, don’t worry – but I wanted to say “Thank You” to first Shawn and Missy for giving me this honour, and also to the entire industry that I work in and try to advocate for.  We’ve been successful, in part, due to our willingness to work together to do things that benefit our entire group – and that isn’t an easy thing to do.  We all have our businesses to run, and our business interests to look out for.  I firmly believe that we have collective interests that can only be accomplished through working together – and I am taking this award as a symbol that you all feel similarly.  I look forward to working with everyone again this year, through ShareASale – and through my work with the PMA – to keep on keeping on!