Using affiliate marketing in the Environmental Industry

The Environmental Industry is booming. I went to the trade show of Americana in Montreal last week. I met several companies and organizations interested to network with specialists to export innovative technologies in the United States.

Some of the environmental companies are using the Voluntary Carbon Market as a commercial tool to finance environmental projects. Other groups are building communities on the Internet to identify local environmental issues.

In the past four months, I have met two world class Internet Technology companies and raised their interest to provide their technologies to service affiliate networks on export markets.

I am now looking for third parties interested to venture with us to to link environmental technology companies with social groups and individuals sending opportunities of request for proposals in exchange of sales commissions.

The project will be funded by environmental companies paying 1000$/month to access affiliate networks providing opportunities of request for proposal.

The break even and benefits of this opportunity can be seen on our "partnership" WEB page. . The investment required for the assembly and implementation of the technologies is minimal compared to the huge economic and societal benefits of the implementation that would trigger such affiliate marketing program. 20 companies subscribing to this service will generate 240 000$ to the venture. Therefore, the software licenses would be implemented and paid for through performance: we do not have to buy expensive licenses upfront.

For more information, Email to info@industrialaffiliates.net

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You will find here bellow some of my notes about

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. A partial and quick list of facts and stakeholders in the Environmental Industry

1. Using Affiliate Marketing in the Environmental Industry

Affiliate Marketing allows registered affiliates to reserve opportunities of requests for proposals and to credit their organization in exchange of sales commissions. Once prospects are sent away to manufacturers or solution providers, the technical sales representatives leads the sales process up to the contract and purchase. Manufacturers and solution providers acquire new customers and pay affiliates only when a sale or other qualifying action is completed.

The Affiliate Marketing process is designed to increase sales:
1. Diagnostic and Market mapping
2. Define goals and objectives
3. Implement stakeholders management and map channels
4. Establish communication plan
5. Implement telecommunications
6. Governance and channel management

Some companies are able to finance the implementation of their technologies by themselves at their client's site, taking into account the ROI provided by the carbon voluntary markets. The voluntary carbon market can certainly reduce the costs of remediation to environmental problems.

It is possible to use affiliate marketing technologies to network environmental companies with affiliates submitting opportunities of requests for proposals to re mediate to environmental problems.

2. Quick and partial map of the stakeholders on the environmental markets.

The facts and figures presented in this article can be seen as key elements of the Diagnostic and Market mapping of the Affiliate marketing plan.

In the United States
"The US environmental industry has had a long-standing tradition of developing cutting edge technologies and has hence grown into a major industrial sector in the U.S. According to Environmental Business International, Inc. (EBI) San Diego, CA), in 2001 the U.S. environmental industry represented total revenues of $214 billion and exports of $22.4 billion generated by almost 35,000 private sector companies and about 87,000 public sector entities. It has recently been recognized as a valuable and vital part of the economy, responsible for more than 2% of GNP and employment of nearly 1.6 million people in the United States in 2002. It is no surprise that the U.S. is one of the leading exporters and importers of environmental technologies in the world." www.benchmarkemail.com/newsletters/parlezusa/us_environment.htm

In Canada
There would be over 6 600 private companies directly involved in environmental products and services in Canada.

There would be a total of 105 00 establishments (private and public) who have at least one employee involved in environmental tasks.

The environmental industry would have a total of 503 000 jobs in Canada.

Quebec
In the Province of Quebec, there is 1600 businesses and more than 34 000 jobs related to green technologies and environmental companies with an average growth of 41.4% in the past 5 years.
Investments in this field past from 16,8 M$ in 2006 to 59,4 M$ in 2007. www.mdeie.gouv.qc.ca/index.php?id=84&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1494&tx_ttnews[currentCatUid]=68&tx_ttnews[backPid]=4563&no_cache=1

Ontario
2,467 environmental companies employs more than 62 000 jobs are related to Environment www.2ontario.com/industry/environment.asp

Alberta
Almost 1,330 companies, employing 26,000 Albertans and generating more than $3.5 billion in revenues. www.albertacanada.com/industries/1160.html

British Columbia
Over 1,300 companies with revenues close to $2 billion. The main components of the sector are environmental construction, recycling, and solid and hazardous waste management, consulting services, water and waste water goods and services, renewable energy, air pollution and noise control, analytical services, and green building and sustainable urban planning. www.bceia.com/documents/overview_on_BCs_environment_industry.pdf

State of the Voluntary Carbon Market
Market studies are showing that the Voluntary Carbon Market had had a growth of 165% in 2007 and was valued US$258m. The same market analysis says that The voluntary carbon markets can be broken down into two categories: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and the “OvertheCounter” (OTC) market. The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) beeing the world’s only voluntary capandtrade system.

The Katomba Group published "Forging a Frontier, The State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2008"

Here some interesting information about the members of the environmental industry and the voluntary carbon market:

• Anticipation of regulation is often cited as another major force behind the voluntary markets but that it is currently difficult to separate purely voluntary buys from precompliance buys;
• The vast majority of credit buyers in the 2007 voluntary markets were private businesses (79%). Approximately two thirds of their credits were purchased to immediately offset emissions, with the remaining third bought for investment purposes;
• NGOs comprised 13% of the buyers, individuals 5%, and governmental entities less than 1%.
  In 2007, buyers from the EU represented the greatest share of demand (47%) for credits on the voluntary markets. North American buyers purchased 37% of credits. Demand for credits by customers in Asia, Latin America, and Africa remains low;
• Like last year, corporate responsibility and public relations/branding efforts remained the main purchasing motivations of buyers in the voluntary markets in 2007. Two thirds of customers purchasing offsets in 2007 did so to offset institutional emissions;
• “Additionally” the demonstrable ability to reduce emissions beyond the levels that would otherwise have occurred – remained the primary criteria for selecting an offset provider in 2007;
• Environmental and social co benefits were also ranked highly as a motivation to buy credit.

The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation

The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) include procedures allowing non-governmental organization or person residing or established in the territory of a participating country, to make submissions that a party to the NAAEC is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law.” The CEC has published “Guidelines for Submissions on Enforcement Matters” explaining these procedures.

Stakeholders listed at the Chicago Climate Exchange WEB site

The Chicago Climate Exchange describes itself as "the world's first and North America’s only active voluntary, legally binding integrated trading system to reduce emissions of all six major greenhouse gases, with offset projects worldwide there is over 400 organizations listed in 47 categories on the Chicago Climate Exchange WEB site.

Exporting in the context of the Extended Enterprise

Several specialists agree that innovation is tied to collaboration and coordination between stakeholders. The new economy presents some interesting challenges to organizations in the business-to- business (B2B) environment. In defining the enterprise, prior to the globalization of markets, organizations rarely looked beyond their own doors. This is changing.

While we frequently think of the enterprise as the bricks, the mortar, the salary paid employees, adopting the customer's perspective dramatically impacts our perception about what is our organization. The fondation of the new economy are the networking, partnerships and commercial agreements based on collaboration. This is Industrial Affiliate's framework.

To the customer on Export Markets , the enterprise represents a combination of business organizations and governments that provide good and services. Often called the "Extended Enterprise", this point of view looks beyond our company and represents the complete value chain for good and services.

In defining the extended enterprise, you determine which individuals and organizations you want to keep information about. You identify the kind of information you'd like to capture, and design systems that provide this information to the people who need it to facilitate your business. You might supply information to economic partners, employees, agent and distributors, partners and affiliates and prospective clients, which result in the extended enterprise.”

While we used to think that the most important stakeholders are the employees, the suppliers, the bank, etc., in the new economy the members of the community of practice are getting more and more influence. This point of view can change dramatically the way we communicate on the Internet to export innovative products, solutions and technologies.

We are changing our paradigm from a brick and mortar centric business environment to a knowledge based, clustered and internetworked world where innovation is perceived as the most important way to export and where the members of the communities of practice play a major role in the commercialization of new ideas, new products, new solutions.

To support communities of practices, WEB sites are becoming interactive communication tools where servers and Internet links and WEB addresses are replacing the brick, the mortar, the office behind the door and the street address.

Virtualization of business started more than 30 years ago with the MRP and ERP. The CRM systems increased in popularity in the 90's. Deloitte says that 2009 is the year of WEB 2.0 for the Standard and Poor 500.

The tools are available. This is why Industrial Affiliates currently implements export clusters based on communities of practices composed of economic partners, businesses, consultants, affiliates, prospective clients coordinated through code of ethics, policies and practices and leading their business through agreements, request for proposals, sales and performance based commission.

Welcome Industrial Affiliates new blog

The lauch of this blog in English is a new step in our business developments. This blog is represents in fact the beginning of a large publishing process designed to reach out on export markets.

It is also the consequences of several developments I have made in the past ten years to develop business in the United-States and it represents the conversion in English, of several activities in the past few months in the province of Quebec where I had the opportunities to meet several high tech companies and business associations interested to develop networks of affiliates through the tools available to access opportunities brought in the new economy.

This blog is also the continuity of an other blog launched few weeks ago in French. Both blogs in French and English should flourish in the next few weeks through the contributions of communities of practices composed of sales and marketing managers, export consultants, business association managers.

As this blog is meant to inform the members of communities of practices in the export of innovative products, solutions and technologies, is will highlight a section of the innovation process that is often neglected by small and medium size businesses: commercialization.

Our goal is to convert new ideas, new products, new technologies with a competitive edge and to convert them into benefits.

Finally, the launch of this blog coincides with the begining of the recruiting process of affilaites for several companies. It will be a way to interest whoever wants to be part of an export cluster or launch its own export cluster.

As we have access to databases extremely rich in information and business opportunities, I invite you to contact me for collaboration so you can benefit the most of the work that has been done.

Pierre