Are you struggling to increase your affiliate income? In this article, you'll learn how to use email marketing to increase affiliate sales and bring you more money on the table.
Affiliate marketing is more than a new buzzword that promises a lot and leads to nothing. It's a method that has been proven to work time and time again, helping people generate some passive income, and businesses take their ventures off the ground.
An affiliate program offers commission to those participating for every successful sale they make or deal they close in its most basic sense.
Now, if you're looking for an affiliate program that can help increase affiliate sales and help your business - and your income - expand, you're looking for something that can be combined with email marketing. And here's why:
Email marketing is one of the most lucrative channels, not only for its ROI, but also for the fact it can increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).
Suppose you're interested in participating in an affiliate program. In that case, you should give email marketing a shot, as the metrics above - and the fact that affiliate programs are amongst the most sought-after features of most Mailchimp alternatives - make it pretty clear that you won't lose.
This is why you need to check out Moosend's affiliate program. But let me be a little more specific on how you can use Moosend's email marketing services to score more sales.
Note: This article contains affiliate links. When you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, we get a small compensation at no cost to you. See our Privacy Policy and Disclaimer for more info.
How Does an Affiliate Email Marketing Campaign Work?
Generally speaking, an affiliate email marketing campaign is the act of offering leads the opportunity to find your affiliate links through your email content instead of your website content.
That way, your affiliate program will find its way to a prospect's inbox, which is much more efficient than wait for them to discover your affiliate program organically.
The larger your email list is, the better the chances for more people to discover your affiliate link. And with great content marketing and a timely and relevant email sequence, your affiliate link will look non-intrusive and actually entice people to click on it. And the more people click on it, the better for your recurring commission.
Your email marketing list - provided that it's pruned and segmented correctly, of course - can power up your passive income goals way better than your blog or your social media content could. After all, your subscribers aren't cold leads, and sending out an email costs nothing.
Since receiving an email with a great subject line and personalized content is like someone calling your name, the recipients will already be interested in what you have to say. This gives your affiliate marketing efforts a lot of potential, to say the least, as you've got the opportunity to convert people already involved.
The standard procedure is for an affiliate program - such as Moosend's, for example - to give you a standard commission that is recurring for every plan one of your referrals purchase. Moosend's specifically is 30%. If you want to make things move faster and have a more rewarding experience as an affiliate, best look for a program that offers an extra commission for any plan upgrade a referral decides to purchase.
Get started at Moosend for free.
How to Create an Affiliate Email Marketing Campaign
The core principle of affiliate programs is that pleased customers will talk about their experience with a product to others. It differs from both cold outreach and cold and warm calling.
This principle will shape the way you create your affiliate email marketing campaign.
As I mentioned in the beginning, it's crucial to pick out an email marketing and marketing automation platform that allows affiliate links. But your work isn't done here.
- Don't waste your email marketing campaign's potential with a weak link. Since your subscribers will read your content, you need value all the way. And this goes for your links as well.
- Don't just use any affiliate link. Again, you need valuable content that will make the link feel natural and will hold value for your readers. They've trusted you with their email address, after all. The least you can do is promote links relevant to your interests and theirs. For example, one of the best ways you create income on the side using email marketing or blogging is by starting and offering email courses that will help you improve the results of your audiences. The good thing with courses is that, as far as you’ve got something working for you, then chances are that thousands of others are looking forward to such results. But if your audience hasn’t signed up for this, then you’ll be in for an unpleasant surprise.
- Don't use links with limited time potential. Seasonal products and affiliate links with time-sensitive offers are very limiting and will have you spending time and resources on creating separate email marketing campaigns just to promote an affiliate link that could very well fall under the first category of wasted potential.
- Don't waste the potential of your content strategy in emails that will revolve around your affiliate links per se. Again, it's a breach of trust when it comes to your audience. Instead, create the content your prospects will find valuable and exciting and make sure that it corresponds with the link you want to use.
And now that we're done with the basics...
Adding Your Links
You can either add affiliate links in a pre-existing email newsletter - provided its content is fitting and relevant, of course - or you can create an email marketing campaign from scratch.
Using a pre-existing email newsletter campaign or email sequence that has potential can help you score more sales, provided your link is relevant and will lead your prospects naturally down the sales funnel. Just make sure not to add too many, as this will take all the attention away from your content.
If your link is useful and relevant, the users will feel like you're giving them the solution to a problem. This will lead to better CTR, as well as increase your authority as an affiliate and boost your audience's trust.
On the other hand, creating an email marketing campaign from scratch that will serve your affiliate link specifically may sound a little counter-intuitive, but it can prove to be a goldmine.
Just make sure to create content that will be timely and relevant to your audience and their specific needs. Invest in some personalization and segmentation tools and use A/B testing to determine the content and triggers that work best for your audience.
The Takeaway
Affiliate sales are not an easy thing to do if you don't have the right email marketing platform and the methodology to make it work.
Before you create email newsletters that can convert, you must keep your email list clean and tidy - remove dead addresses and people that won't interact with your emails - and take advantage of tools that aim to segment and personalize your content.
Lastly, invest in a tool that can offer both the functions mentioned above, and can help you with reporting and analytics, so you can make good use of your data and base your decisions on them. Like Moosend can.