Mike Sisto, director of performance marketing at MediaWhiz, answers questions on email acquisition and lead quality.

1. Ask The Performance Marketer
EMAIL sales@text-link-ads.com | CALL 877.480.9755 | VISIT www.MediaWhiz.com | FOLLOW @MediaWhizInc
Mike Sisto
Director, Performance Marketing
How do you ensure accountability of affiliates for campaign and
creative materials compliance?
We first establish accountability with each affiliate by employing a suite of external and internal tools
to monitor advertisements.We hold publishers accountable for compliance violations. Once our high
standards are made clear, the possibility of losing out on business due to compliance violations exerts
pressure on affiliates to comply with advertiser guidelines.With adherence, publishers have the
opportunity to cultivate a long-term business relationship with MediaWhiz as they continue to pro-
vide quality traffic via compliant marketing practices.
My company isn’t very familiar with email acquisition marketing. Where
does MediaWhiz get its opt-in subscribers and what are the
CAN-SPAM-compliance steps we need to adhere to?
Our WhiteDelivery™ list management division has arrangements with thousands of publishers
to monetize their opt-in email data.These publishers range from finance, dating, news, travel, etc.,
and each list’s characteristics are segmented in a manner to match each audience to each adver-
tiser in the hopes of acquiring the most customers from each mailing.The tens of millions of
records we have access to generally are available on a pay-for-results model, making branded
acquisition campaigns extremely scalable and immediately profitable for marketers.
CAN-SPAM-compliance for both WhiteDelivery™ and the advertiser’s brand are of critical
importance.While federal law requires certain timelines for suppression files and unsubscribe
language within email creatives, our standards offer higher degrees of respecting consumer
privacy requests.This level of compliance reduces advertiser complaints, improves our reputation
with the major email Internet service providers (ISPs), and maintains brand integrity — all of
which produces the greatest amount of consumers with genuine interest in particular offers, and
Ask The Performance Marketer
EMAIL sales@MediaWhiz.com | CALL 877.480.9755 | VISIT www.MediaWhiz.com | FOLLOW @MediaWhizInc
Mike Sisto
Director, Performance Marketing
We first establish accountability with each affiliate by employing a suite of external and internal tools to
monitor advertisements.We hold publishers accountable for compliance violations. Once our high standards
are made clear, the possibility of losing out on business due to compliance violations exerts pressure on
affiliates to comply with advertiser guidelines.With adherence, publishers have the opportunity to cultivate a
long-term business relationship with MediaWhiz as they continue to provide quality traffic via compliant
marketing practices.
My company isn’t very familiar with email acquisition marketing. Where does
MediaWhiz get its opt-in subscribers and what are the CAN-SPAM-compliance steps
we need to adhere to?
Our email management team has arrangements with thousands of publishers to monetize their opt-in email
data.These publishers range from finance, dating, news, travel, etc., and each list’s characteristics are segmented
in a manner to match each audience to each advertiser in the hopes of acquiring the most customers from
each mailing.The tens of millions of records we have access to generally are available on a pay-for-results
model, making branded acquisition campaigns extremely scalable and immediately profitable for marketers.
CAN-SPAM-compliance for both MediaWhiz and the advertiser’s brand are of critical importance.While
federal law requires certain timelines for suppression files and unsubscribe language within email creatives, our
standards offer higher degrees of respecting consumer privacy requests.This level of compliance reduces
advertiser complaints, improves our reputation with the major email Internet service providers (ISPs), and
maintains brand integrity — all of which produces the greatest amount of consumers with genuine interest in
particular offers, and opts them out quickly when there isn’t an affinity.
How do you optimize the lead quality over time?
Web traffic is not a one-size-fits-all pool. Having thousands of disparate audience segments to market an offer
to, MediaWhiz’s media planners take the first step of strategic campaign analysis.With more than a decade of
past performance metrics to cull from, our team has the directional insights for each category of offer from
the outset, thereby placing new campaigns into environments where profitable acquisitions have historically
occurred.These placements, over time, could further be whittled down to the cream-of-the-crop with
frequent collaboration with the advertiser on their lead-nurturing efforts per traffic source. Our employment
of industry-standard URL, subID and transaction ID recordkeeping makes for a start good and ensures our
clients receive high-quality leads.
Mike Sisto, MediaWhiz’s director of performance marketing, has worked in perfor-
mance marketing for 14 years. He’s seen it all, from the earliest days of the industry to
the current evolution in which media, mobile, content, SEO and many other digital
media channels are mixed together. Needless to say, he knows how to help his clients
How do you ensure accountability of affiliates for campaign and creative materials compliance?