For beginners, it’s difficult to launch an affiliate email marketing, but it should not be a cause for worry; in a short while, you should be able to know how to do it. However, there is one thing you have to remember at all times before we move on:

Don’t sound like a street vendor. You shouldn’t sell; just share and raise interest for people to buy.

Isn’t the main purpose of affiliate marketing getting a sale and a commission? The answer is yes and no. In affiliate email marketing, your role is talking about your products naturally just like a happy customer rather than behaving or sounding like any other sales rep.  You have to ensure your emails stick to a conversational and friendly tone at all stages of the campaign. It is a way of building connections, otherwise, you may have to deal with a high rate of unsubscription or your emails ending up in a spam folder.

Let’s go through some of the best practices in affiliate email marketing.

1. Ensure you use email providers that allow Affiliate Links

Most email automation services are concerned about their rates of email deliverability.Always confirm if your email provider allows affiliate links. And if that is not the case or you are forced to look for an email provider to fit into your affiliate efforts.

Deciding on the perfect Affiliate Links to Promote

Choose the right affiliate links you can promote before doing so blindfolded. Ensure your link are:

• Relevant to your niche (this ensures they make sense)

People always subscribe to places they have interest in. In essence, they did so because they found your content attractive. It requires quite a substantial amount of trust and interest. You shouldn’t abuse such trust. You should keep on providing valuable content to affiliate products that are logical to your niche.

Just think about it.

Assume you have subscribed to an email list for recipes on a cooking website. One time, you receive email that is promoting rubber shoes and various unrelated stuff continuously. I guess you would hit that unsubscribe button instantly. If an affiliate link particularly for knives was included, the reaction would be different. There is a high possibility of people clicking on the link which can result to a purchase.

Evergreen

Ensure those products you promote are evergreen, which means they may not change over time. By doing so, you save yourself the agony of continuous tracking, updating, or changing the content.But what about a situation where your product could make huge sales on a particular holiday or within a limited time? It would be better if you created a separate email sequence for the holiday affiliate links to ensure the existing affiliate email marketing series stay and work the same with no need to adjust. When the limited time is over, you can go ahead to delete the holiday campaign.

• Profitable

Finally, you have to promote those products that you consider profitable. For instance, if the affiliate links would most likely provide limited or low earning potential, you may need to ask yourself if that product can bring sufficient ROI (return on investment) in order to make the effort worthwhile.  Considering the click-through rate is 2.6% across all industries, you should ask yourself whether the affiliate commissions would be high enough to give you returns as you wish. Here are some examples of Amazon’s commission rates:It’s recommended that you check the commission rates then calculate the amounts of income you’re likely to get before launching any campaign.

2. Personalize Your Emails to Build a Connection

Recipients are 26% more likely to open emails that have personalized subject lines. And for affiliate emails, personalization is more essential towards increasing the email open rate. Affiliate marketing efforts would succeed more if you build and foster a sound relationship with your base. As such, personalized emails give you that friendly and helpful tone rather than appearing as any other salesperson.

3. Have Several Affiliate Links in the Sequence of your Emails.

Ensure that your entire email sequence is not solely dedicated to the affiliate links. Reason? Several problems can arise;

• Your audience getting annoyed by you continuing to share 3^rd party products.
• Email service providers allowing for affiliate links might close your account if they believe your links are causing low rates of delivery.

So what should happen?

• Create emails targeting affiliate products then add to an existing sequence.
• Add subtly affiliate links which are focused on different set of content.

If your existing email sequence gets high rates of click-through and opening, you should go back to that email copy and embed those affiliate links in the content organically.More importantly, provide the content and value that you promised the recipients in return for their sign-up.

• Ensure your emails have a unique form of content.
• Your send emails should have a consistent schedule.
• Your emails should focus more on educating and nurturing than just promoting.

Thus, as you continue growing your email list, your new subscribers see the affiliate promotions. It means you will get a passive income if you continue to actively expand your list, especially with new leads. Once you have found a way of converting the website traffic continuously into autoresponder leads, you can now sit back and watch as cash flows in. We offer some of the BEST tricks of growing your email list. You just need to be patient for a couple more hacks and we will discuss the trick at the tail end.

4. Track Your Affiliate Email Marketing Campaigns

Finally, you already have your affiliate marketing email sequence automatically working and commissions have started rolling in. However, there is something else you need to do. To keep receiving those commissions, you should play a more active role in it.You need to tag and track subscribers in order to tweak your campaigns in the right direction where necessary. Further, segmentation remains key as you monitor the click-through and monitor rates as well as improve them. Track your campaigns correctly since its better safe than being sorry.

5. Leverage Holidays

People are always on the lookout when major holidays are approaching. This is the right time to get more creative in promoting your offers.Just ensure you do not bombard your recipients with a lot of messages that will overwhelm them. It might lead to a high unsubscription rate. Again, do not forget what we said before; create a separate campaign that targets holidays.Ensure you do not mix up with the evergreen email sequence by deleting the holiday campaign when the season comes to an end.

6. Always Put Value First

Affiliate email marketing lists are supposed to generate revenue, but the value should come first. In fact, your audience is keen on the valuable content that you offer rather than promotional stuff.

There are different forms of media you could utilize in nurturing your leads such as images, videos, podcasts, and audio. But it cannot be lost on anyone that it takes effort and time to engage leads, build trust and even establish a connection.

You just need to offer value and your subscribers would reciprocate by providing you great affiliate commissions.

7. Re-engage with Them

You need to note that re-engaging your leads is necessary if you have to keep your CTR and CR or conversion rate on an upward trajectory.

Segment those leads which consistently record low rates of engagement and send emails to them again. It could be possible they have not even seen your emails.

8. Implement Social Proof & Facts

There is a need to implement facts and social proof in your emails that would show your database as a success story for people who used those affiliate products you promote.

If there is one tool that can help you send affiliate links without any restrictions, then Rubedo is the way to go.

 

The Secret Sauce for Successful Affiliate Marketing

You already know all about affiliate marketing email sequences. But I would give you one secret sauce that you need to know:

To start or continually email lists using optin subscriptions

Just give it a test run then see how leads pour in. I now hope these best practices and tips enhance your affiliate marketing with email lists.