Email Marketing: The Forgotten Tool in Affiliate Marketing

When people are putting together their affiliate stacking ecosystem, they often miss email out.

While it’s often considered old school by new kids on the block (a poor cousin of social media and YouTube marketing) email delivers a pretty strong return on investment and is a lot easier to implement nowadays with a range of online tools.

Get it right, and you can superpower your affiliate marketing strategy, build a strong rapport with potential customers and even tailor your sales pitch to individuals, making them more likely to convert.

5 Reasons Email Marketing Works for Affiliates

Email gives you a direct route for communication with your potential customers. People can miss your social media post on their timeline or not find your website on Google. If you have their email, you have a 2-way communication tool that is going to be seen more often than not.
In the bad old days, people were inundated with spam emails and tended to ignore them. Nowadays, with many marketers focusing their attention elsewhere, it’s a great opportunity to connect with people and has strong opening rates and a healthy return on investment.
Email allows you to tailor your messages to particular groups which increases your marketing power.
It also means that you can contact your potential customer more than once. You can keep customers who are not quite ready to click on your affiliate link in the loop until they are primed and set to go.
Emails also get shared. You could find new customers if you are sharing relevant and interesting information with recipients. If it’s good, they will forward your mail to their colleagues and friends.

How to Build a Strong Email Marketing List

The big key to a good email strategy is having a strong list and this can be the most difficult part for affiliate marketers. This is a simple database of people who are interested in your product.

The first thing to consider is what information or support your email friends want to see. You then need to make it easy for them to subscribe. There are several ways you can do this.

If you run a blog relating to your affiliate marketing, you can add a tab to get people to subscribe for updates such as when you have a new post out.
If you offer something like a free ebook or download, asking for an email address is often standard practice.
You can add popups that appear on certain pages such as the home page of your website encouraging people to subscribe.
You can use what is called a squeeze page that asks for certain information to view certain content.
You could run a competition, poll or special offer in exchange for a potential customer’s email address.
You can use social media to encourage people to visit your sign up page.

Some affiliates use the opportunity to collect more information about their customers. This cause people to be reticent and not give their details at all. While it’s useful extra information the trade-off can mean you don’t build the contacts that you need for your marketing campaign.

What’s Your Email Marketing Strategy?

As with any part of your marketing, you need to understand the landscape and how email works. There are lots of hints and tricks online and it’s a good idea to become familiar with these.

Signing Up to an Email Provider

The first job is to find an email marketing service that accepts affiliate marketers. There are several of these including MailChimp, Drip, AWeber and GetResponse.

Most of these not only allow you to send bulk emails but can handle all the metrics such as opening rates and the like so you can measure performance. Others allow you to segment your emails so that you can tailor particular messages.

Each service has its pricing depending on your needs. For example, MailChimp has a free option for up to 2,000 contacts which gives you a chance to try the service out before you go for a premium option if you need it.

Creating Email Content

Creating email content is something you may also have to learn. It’s a little different to other forms of marketing and can take some getting used to. Things like the subject are important for attracting attention and encouraging higher opening rates, for example.

You need to be aware that people are often very busy so keep your email concise and to the point. It’s critical and this is no place for long tracts of text. The good news is that you can now include video and images in your emails to make them look more attractive.

It’s key to have a purpose when sending out emails or you’ll soon find people unsubscribing. Think carefully about what your potential customer is looking for and how you can deliver on their wants and needs.

A simple way you can personalise is by using the person’s name in the initial line of the email. Another great tip is to use power words that are likely to galvanise the individual into action. Finally, you want them to click through to somewhere important, either your affiliate link or a specially-designed landing page, blog post or video.

Try to keep each email focused on one subject only. A mistake that many novice marketers make is trying to force too much into their message. It makes things confusing and is less likely to get a response.

How Often Should You Send Emails?

This is another area where newer affiliate marketers can get it wrong. If you bombard your email list with constant messages you are going to lose their attention and maybe even their respect. Email should be used sparingly and the message should be powerful. In short, keep it relevant and don’t pester your customer.

Measuring Results is Key

Another part of email marketing is the metrics. Measuring your results is critical in not only understanding how people are responding but revealing how you can make changes to improve performance. The good news is that most services provide opening and engagement metrics that give you useful insights. Our advice is to make good use of these.

Learn How to Send Affiliate Marketing Emails

Would you like to create a powerful marketing approach? The Ambassador Program affiliate stacking ecosystem course teaches all you need to know about how to turn your email list into a powerful marketing tool.

Find out more here.