Affiliate marketing is familiar to most people who spend part of their lives online. It’s a basic term for digital marketers, while affiliate programs have probably targeted every casual internet surfer. Whenever you come across messages like “this post contains affiliate links” or hear a YouTube blogger encouraging the audience to click the link in the video description, affiliate marketing campaigns have reached their objectives.
Similarly, if you have an email, you will likely be targeted by email marketing campaigns. Your email address is required to create profiles on social media platforms, establish banking accounts, and apply for various digital and offline services. Sooner rather than later, it will be used for marketing and advertising.
Affiliate email campaigns are a natural extension of these two marketing methods and their integration. This article explains the benefits of such an approach and suggests how to adjust email marketing tactics for affiliates based on expert opinions in the field.
Businesses often collaborate with other companies or individuals to promote their products and services. The development of digital marketing strategies has led to the widespread usage of affiliate links as a safe and efficient solution for advertisers to increase their sales and marketers and publishers to earn commissions.
Source: <Influencer Marketing Hub>
Affiliates can join businesses' affiliate programs to obtain unique affiliate links for publishing within their content. These links contain special codes activated whenever users click on them to track their buying journey through affiliate marketing software. Typically, the publisher is eligible for a payout once the purchase is completed. However, companies may offer rewards for other conversion types or based on the number of users who click the link.
The passive income promised by affiliate marketing is appealing to various content creators and marketers and incorporates many digital affiliate marketing channels. Here are a few examples:
Blogging sites: Bloggers consistently write about topics that resonate with their audience and incorporate affiliate links directly in their content.
Social media influencers: Social media users are more likely to trust recommendations from influencers they follow than brands.
Video content creators: Platforms like YouTube and TikTok are optimal media for product reviews and tutorials. In this case, affiliate links are placed in the video descriptions or profiles.
Microsites: Small, one-page sites created specifically to promote a product and target a niche audience.
These methods involve creating engaging content that can attract the attention of a broad audience long after its initial publication. Email marketing stands apart from them, offering unique advantages for affiliates.
An affiliate email campaign involves promoting affiliate products through emails. Depending on how publishers incorporate affiliate links, email affiliate campaigns employ two primary tactics.
In direct affiliate email campaigns, unique affiliate URLs are embedded directly into the email content. When recipients click these links, they are taken to the product or service page associated with the affiliate program. An example of direct affiliate email campaigns is emails promoting a specific product with a “Shop Now” button that leads to an affiliate-linked product page.
The key features of direct affiliate email campaigns are:
Explicit affiliation: The recipient knows the link is an affiliate link.
Immediate action: The call-to-action (CTA) is straightforward: click the link and make a purchase.
Tracking: The affiliate programss track affiliate links directly from the email.
The primary goal of indirect affiliate email campaigns is not to drive immediate conversions. Instead, they attract recipients to a website or landing page where they can explore further and possibly click on affiliate links. For instance, an email newsletter with a teaser about a new blog post on “Top 10 Gadgets for Tech Lovers” links to the blog post, which includes affiliate links to the featured gadgets.
The key features of indirect affiliate email campaigns are:
Curiosity and engagement: The email content piques recipients’ interest without overtly pushing them to buy.
Multiple touchpoints: Recipients navigate through the website, where they may encounter additional affiliate links.
Content-driven approach: Emails often contain valuable content (blogs, articles, etc.) related to the affiliate product.
Both approaches have their merits. Direct campaigns focus on immediate conversions, while indirect campaigns build engagement and trust over time. Affiliate marketers choose the strategy that aligns best with their audience and goals.
Affiliate email campaigns have all the advantages of email marketing, such as the ability to connect to over 4.5 billion people and achieving one of the highest ROIs among all marketing channels. Being highly effective, they have unmatched potential to promote affiliate products and brands due to the following factors:
Cost-effectiveness | Creating and sending emails is affordable compared to other marketing methods, boasting an average ROI of 42:1. |
Ownership of your list | Unlike content on other channels (e.g., YouTube or Facebook), email lists can’t be shut down. Consider switching email service providers (ESPs) while retaining all your contacts. This way, monetizing email lists becomes easier, and you have control over its growth and management. |
Targeted personalization | Email campaigns allow you to create personalized content tailored to individual recipients. Segmentation and audience targeting enhance relevance and engagement and ensure that affiliate links are offered to prospects likely to convert. |
Immediate performance tracking | You can track email campaign performance in real time. Email campaign metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions provide valuable insights, allow A/B testing, and enable rapid adjusting of affiliate email campaigns. |
Timely campaigns | Emails enable you to send promotions, announcements, and offers with minimal effort. With email automation software, you’re just one click away from reaching your target audience. |
While affiliate email campaigns offer significant advantages, their efficiency depends on how they are implemented. Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to contact a broad audience worldwide. However, without campaign optimization and specialized affiliate marketing tools, increasing revenue from your email affiliate ventures will be difficult.
Gaining experience in email marketing, finding the products you want to promote, and conducting extensive A/B testing will improve your campaign efficiency over time. The following affiliate marketing tips will help fine-tune your strategy for promoting affiliate products from the start.
Attention to Content
We’ve all heard that content is king in marketing. However, written content is equally crucial in email affiliate campaigns. Its type, quality, and the author’s tone of voice are instrumental to achieving key goals:
Establishing a friendly conversation with the audience.
Promoting your brand’s values.
Preparing users to buy affiliate products.
It’s advisable to leverage different content lengths for different purposes, such as short (less than 50 words) emails for invitations to sign up for newsletters, medium (50 to 100 words) for product reviews, and long forms for articles and newsletters.
Email Personalization
Email marketing offers personalization possibilities like no other channel. With the emergence of social media platforms and highly personalized advertising, users expect to receive content tailored to their interests and pay less attention to unrelated messages.
Although it may sound contradictory, email marketing tools enable the automation of personalization. Despite sending emails in bulk, advanced email software can add personalized elements such as the recipient’s name in the subject line. Deeper levels of personalization involve adjusting content or offers based on the recipient’s geographic location, demographic data, website behavior, or previous purchases.
According to studies, three-quarters of companies that use email marketing incorporate names in their subject lines, believing this approach increases email open rates.
Email Segmentation
Email list growth is essential for affiliate email campaigns, allowing them to reach a broader audience. Capture and store any additional user information that can help promote affiliate products. For example, if you’re using registration forms, ask about their habits, location, and age. If you can’t collect more than their name and email address, track their source — whether they came from Facebook, a product page sign-up form, or a Google ad.
This information allows dividing email lists into specific segments for the following benefits:
Segmentation ensures content relevance to users, allowing you to offer affiliate products that may interest them.
Demographic and behavioral data allow creating personalized messages that better address the group’s needs.
Segmentation allows excluding groups of recipients from certain email affiliate campaigns that promote irrelevant products. This approach minimizes the number of unsubscribers.
Targeting the audience more precisely helps you work in affiliate marketing niches where advertisers offer higher commissions.
Testing Affiliate Email Campaigns
Track vital email marketing metrics, including open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. Analyze how these metrics depend on various factors. The email elements that may impact their effectiveness include:
Subject line.
Length of email.
Layout.
Use of visual content.
Tone of voice.
Placement of affiliate links in CTAs or anchors.
Test how success metrics change by launching two affiliate campaigns, each differing in only one element, to a split group of recipients.
Source <Zapier>
Similarly, study how different categories of affiliate products cater to different segmented audiences. For example, you might find that individuals from specific demographic groups have high click-through rates but rarely buy the product. This may indicate that your emails are well-crafted but that the product offered isn’t relevant to those users.
Tracking campaigns also reveals which affiliate tactics convert better — direct affiliate campaigns with links embedded in emails or indirect campaigns that encourage users to visit a platform containing affiliate links.
Email Automation
Effective affiliate email campaigns require consistency and regularity, especially when working with large databases and networks. These tasks are almost impossible without automation tools. Automation allows marketers to send personalized welcome letters, registration forms, product reviews, and questionnaires to large lists at scheduled times or triggered by user actions.
To step up the game, email automation allows the launch of drip email campaigns, where a series of messages are sent to the recipient at predefined intervals. Based on how the user interacts with the content, the system decides which message to send next.
In affiliate marketing, such a campaign might include an invitation to visit a landing page for a new product. If recipients don’t click through, they receive a follow-up with a product description, discount offer, or another “Final offer” email. If the user converts at any point, the automation software sends a “Thank You” message, feedback form, or other nurturing content.
Transparency in Affiliate Marketing
The best communication practices require affiliate publishers to be transparent about affiliate links. If you’re sending content with affiliate partner links, notify readers about their nature. This transparency strengthens your reputation and builds subscriber trust, which can even encourage purchases.
Avoid overusing affiliate links or sending emails too frequently. It’s best to combine affiliate campaigns with other strategies, such as building social media profiles or starting a YouTube affiliate channel to diversify efforts.
Affiliate marketing is a low-hanging fruit for individuals who understand digital traffic flows. Marketers can incorporate affiliate links into email campaigns to combine the strengths of both strategies — the cost-effectiveness of email marketing and the passive income potential of affiliate marketing.
Despite their simplicity, the success of affiliate email campaigns depends on adhering to key principles and best practices. These include using quality content to engage audiences, creating automated email sequences, segmenting lists to target the right prospects, and maintaining full transparency in communication..
