How to boost business with affiliate email marketing programs

How to boost business with affiliate email marketing programs

The most successful businesses all know how to extend their customer reach. These efforts start with identifying target markets and developing new ways to build lasting connections. Using an array of channels, such as social media, blogs, and direct mail, marketers can reach prospective and current customers they wouldn’t have been able to with a more limited approach.

Beyond the outreach work of an internal team, there’s always benefit in bringing in fresh perspectives from outside of the business. It’s the same reason that academic researchers collaborate on projects with other experts. While one team might do the lion’s share of the work, the contributions of researchers from throughout the field inevitably bring new insights and raise the quality of the overall work.

One of the easiest ways that marketers can enlist outside expertise to reach more customers is with affiliate email marketing.

What are email marketing affiliate programs?

An affiliate is someone who works independently but is connected to a larger business or organization. From an affiliate marketing email perspective, this means that a business pays commissions to other people who are using their own networks, expertise, and strategies to generate sales (or other conversions such as subscriptions or downloads).

Affiliate marketers have their own email lists and followers. Working symbiotically with a business, they provide new growth opportunities by promoting a brand or product. While this may sound like the basic form of marketing that all businesses do, it’s unique because affiliate email marketers can tailor their messages to an audience that already trusts their content. This means email recipients are more likely to read and respond to the message.

Compensation for conversions varies within email affiliate programs. If you’re an email affiliate marketer, you’ll likely receive a set commission per sale or earn a percentage of the sale value. Either way, it’s a performance-based model that encourages you to work hard and produce consistent results.

One of the biggest questions that arises with affiliate email marketing for beginners is how do you know which leads were brought in by the affiliate versus the larger business? Affiliate marketers use unique tracking links (known as affiliate links) to ensure they’re compensated whenever someone clicks their link and makes a purchase.

To see how this works, let’s consider an example of email affiliate marketing in action. A company that manufactures fishing lures wants to boost sales of a recently released swimbait called the “Mighty Minnow.” They partner with a respected blogger in the fishing world, who includes the Mighty Minnow in her newsletter emails with a link offering an exclusive discount for those who order. Because her followers trust the content she shares, many of them make a purchase and she earns thousands of dollars for her efforts.

Riding this marketing momentum, the brand then decides to partner with a professional bass angler. This fisherman sends an email to his followers that showcases the benefits of the Mighty Minnow and suggests they try it out. As with the blogger’s efforts, this email pays off big time and the fisherman scores a large commission.

If you have the chops, affiliate email marketing with email lists can be an exciting way to increase your income. But to get started, you’ll need a solid list.

How to build an email list for affiliate marketing

Your ability to drive conversions and earn commissions as an email affiliate marketer is reliant upon the quality of your list. If you have assembled a group of people who know who you are, consider your content relevant, and trust what you have to say, that’s a recipe for success.

Here are the seven steps to building a high-caliber list:

1. Identify your niche

The only way to consistently provide relevant content is to stick to a related set of topics. So who is your target audience? If you’re a software guru, that’s a great space to work as an affiliate. Big-time trail runner? You’ll find there are lots of brands looking to collaborate.

Find your niche and then focus on ways to strengthen your presence within it. The more dialed in you are, the more impact your words will have.

2. Qualify your value proposition

What unique benefits do you have to offer? Our world is louder and more saturated with content than at any point in history, so you’d better have something worthwhile to offer if you want to compete with all the other voices out there clamoring for attention.

For the software guru, maybe it’s insider tips gleaned from years of working as a leading developer. And the runner might take more of a lifestyle approach, traveling the country and sharing engaging stories from all the different races completed and trails explored.

3. Create lead magnets

People don’t like giving away their contact information for nothing. Offering something worthwhile in exchange works like a magnet, attracting new people to your email list. It’s not just randomly grasping for leads, because connecting the reward to your niche ensures that you attract individuals who share your interests and will be more likely to engage.

Here are some ideas for free content that can be used as a lead magnet:

• Webinars

• Whitepapers

• Templates

• Tutorials

• Online tools

Make sure the incentive is easy to obtain after people submit their contact information, as it’s your chance to make a good first impression and begin building trust.

4. Design the right forms

Reduce friction and improve your conversions by making the signup form as convenient as possible. Whether it’s a pop-up on an existing page or part of a dedicated landing page, the form should provide a clear call to action and only ask for essential information. If you get greedy and start asking for people to provide their age, birthdate, and eye color, your list-building will suffer accordingly.

This is a prime opportunity for A/B testing. Experiment with elements such as form placement, headlines, and color of buttons to find the most effective composition. Optimization is a never-ending process, so keep tinkering. Each discovery sets you on an even brighter path to success.

5. Manage your lists

Getting people to sign up for your emails is crucial, but the work doesn’t stop there. From the moment a list starts growing, it simultaneously begins degrading as people accidentally submit typos, enter duplicates, or decide to change to a new email address.

These issues will impact your ability to reach your audience by reducing your email deliverability, which also hurts your sending reputation with email providers. A bad reputation can harm future campaigns, so do everything in your power to keep your lists clean and your deliverability high.

6. Take it a step further with segmentation

Even though many of the people in your email list will come from your niche and share common interests, there will also be many sub-categories. Common examples include:

• Age

• Marital status

• Geography

• Time elapsed since signing up

• Engagement level

• Preferences

By segmenting these individuals into smaller lists based on characteristics, you’ll be able to deliver the most timely and relevant content possible. Nearly all the best affiliate marketing email examples use this segmenting strategy to boost results.

7. Craft the messages

Now that you know who you’re communicating with, it’s time to lay out exactly what those communications will look like. The content of each email needs to be good enough to justify its existence. There’s simply no room for fluff and filler in the reputation-heavy world of affiliate marketing emails.

Take time to write compelling subject lines, as they’re the door that must be entered for any of the subsequent content to matter at all. Within your emails, use videos, photos, and other elements to hold the reader’s attention. Most of the best email marketing software for affiliate marketing provides user-friendly templates that will make it easy for you to craft a professional-looking message.

If writing isn’t your strong suit, consider using an AI writing tool. At a minimum, these tools can help spark ideas and structure the message. If you use AI to write every piece of your email copy, be sure to carefully review the text for errors and to infuse your personality into it.

The benefits of partnering with an email platform

Once your emails are ready to roll, you’ll be tantalizingly close to earning commissions. There are some back-end functions that must be managed for effective email affiliate marketing, and you’ll find they go much smoother when you partner with an email platform. For example, you can save lots of time and effort by automating your send schedule. Simply program the dates and times, then let technology worry about every email going out at exactly the right time.

Tracking your email results is also important for a strong campaign. You’ll find that the best email marketing software for affiliate marketing usually has integrated tools that streamline the tracking process. This data allows you to effortlessly monitor your key metrics and make educated decisions when it comes to refining your emails.

Twilio SendGrid is an industry leader when it comes to affiliate marketing email support. Our platform gives you a vast library of email templates to speed up the creation process, while also providing campaign automation and integrated tracking tools so you always have a pulse on your affiliate marketing email efforts.

Try Twilio SendGrid today to see if it’s a good fit for your needs.