How to Use Email Marketing to Give Your Affiliate Income a Boost

So, you want to use affiliate email marketing to take your income to the next level. Good call. Email marketing is one of the most effective direct marketing techniques. You can use email marketing to deliver targeted messages to your audience and generate revenue cost-effectively. For every $1 you spend in email marketing, you generate an average ROI of $36.

In essence, email marketing is the boss when it comes to conversions. That’s not to say you won’t do anything else apart from send emails. You still need a solid affiliate marketing strategy to execute a successful email marketing campaign. How do you do this? Let us get down to the details.

Before we start, it is essential to reiterate the basics. After picking an affiliate product and signing up for its affiliate program, build a relevant email list. Whoever is on that email list should see great value in the product you have chosen to sell. You can ensure your email subscribers can be converted into paying customers if you screen them with a relevant lead magnet in exchange for their email addresses. 

For instance, if your affiliate product is email marketing software, you could make your lead magnet an ebook on email marketing tips. This will help ensure the people who give you your email addresses in exchange for access to the ebook may actually purchase your email marketing software. Think about it. People interested in email marketing tips are typically email marketers or business owners who practice this type of marketing. In other words, they’re people who may actually need the software you’re selling. 

You can promote your lead magnet on your website through pop-up windows. Minimalist Baker follows this strategy. Spend a few seconds on its homepage and something like this pops up:

Like Minimalist Baker, include copy that will get people to subscribe to your email list in the first place. On its pop-up, the food affiliate website emphasizes that its recipe ebook (lead magnet) is free and contains 20 recipes foodies love. That’s a pretty good deal that. Imagine giving just one email address in exchange for 20 good recipes for free.

If you’re selling more than one affiliate product, you should also segment your subscribers from the get-go. This will help you determine which affiliate product to promote with your emails. If you send affiliate emails that cater to subscribers’ interests from the start, you increase your chances of conversions.

You can segment your email list by making users choose the types of emails they’d like to receive from you when they sign up. Gear Patrol, for instance, offers a wide array of affiliate products ranging from productivity software to watches. So, on its email list sign-up page, it has a subsection that allows would-be subscribers to specify the types of emails they’d like get in their inboxes:

Gear Patrol even asks for the website visitor’s first name. This will come in handy when writing the affiliate marketing emails later on (we’ll talk about personalization later). Complement email segmentation with a good CRM solution and you can ensure your sales and marketing strategies will be effective. 

Let’s say you’ve built a good email list with these strategies. Great! Now it’s time to craft those emails that will prompt your subscribers to buy your affiliate product.

There are affiliate email marketing tips you should follow to ensure your emails are effective in the first place. Follow these tips and avoid email marketing mistakes for the best results:

When it comes to writing your emails, you need to understand that hard selling is not always the way to go. You need to build your relationships with your subscribers first before you sell the affiliate product directly. How better to build that relationship than by sending a welcome email to new subscribers? People want to be welcomed when they join a community. 

Here is an example of a welcome email:

It’s a good welcome email because it doesn’t just welcome the new subscriber. It also explains what the new subscriber can expect for signing up.

Like the example above, your welcome email should include other crucial information like:

If you don’t have time to write your email, generative AI can help you produce effective copy. Just insert the right prompts and specify your brand guidelines. You can also use video for your welcome emails. A video in your email can increase your email clickthrough rate by up to 300%. 

As a final tip, to create an excellent first impression, you want to send a personalized email. Use your subscriber’s first name in the subject line and throughout your email if you can. You can end your email with your personal signature and your position rather than with just the name of your brand. You want to make your subscribers feel like the CEO of company X, for example, took the time to message them personally.

Some affiliate programs like Amazon don’t allow affiliates to share product links directly on their emails. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use email to promote your blog posts containing those affiliate links. With these kinds of emails, you don’t just get people to your website. You also increase your chances of getting them to purchase the affiliate product. Plus, you get to position yourself as an authority in your niche. So, when people need some actionable information and advice, they’ll turn to you.  

When writing your email, though, you can’t just write whatever comes to mind. Your goal, after all, is to get your subscribers to click on your blog post link in the first place. The key to getting them to take action is to let them see how much value your resource can give them. For that, you’ll need to know what your subscribers’ pain points are. 

You should have a general idea of what these pain points are at this stage. After all, your subscribers became your subscribers in the first place because you promised them you’d resolve their problems with your marketing emails. 

It follows, of course, that your blog content should offer the value it promises to offer. You wouldn’t want your subscribers to get to your blog post only to be turned off by its poor quality. Don’t just insert product affiliate links in your blog content without providing the actionable advice you said you’d give. 

If your chosen affiliate program allows you to embed your affiliate links directly in emails, then you can take advantage of this opportunity. Some email marketing platforms allow you to do this with some restrictions. With ActiveCampaign, for instance, you’re also not allowed to promote affiliate offers or send messages about affiliate marketing. Sending emails related to getting rich or making money from home is also a no-no. It’s against ActiveCampaign’s Acceptable Use Policy.

Whichever email marketing platform you use, apart from the platform’s additional restrictions, you’ll have to follow one general rule when including affiliate product links directly in your email. You’ll need to always provide context. In other words, you’re not supposed to just embed the links without adding email copy. You want to place the link organically in the quality email content you said.

There are many types of content you can create to make the affiliate product link sound natural. You can write any of the following:

Whether you’re including your affiliate product links directly in your email or promoting your blog post containing affiliate links, offering value is just one side of the coin. You’ll want to add bonuses to sweeten the deal, too. People want to know clicking on your link is worth their time and effort.

For example, the email may contain various discounts and additional products/services, so that subscribers feel the value of the offer, click on the link to the affiliate product and buy. Bonuses can be the final nudge you need to get people to take your desired action. Use them to your advantage.

Whether it’s to promote your event or for affiliate marketing, you should leverage the Fear of Missing Out to get your email subscribers to click on your link. Complement this with your nice offers and you’re likely to see results. No one wants to miss out on good deals and offers, after all.

But how do you create a sense of urgency? It’s as simple as including words like Now in your email copy. Check out this example below:

Notice how the affiliate marketer uses the word to prompt the email recipient to immediately watch their video training (which includes their product affiliate links). Another way you can create a sense of urgency is to make your offers run for a limited duration. You may also include a countdown timer in your email. 

As an affiliate marketer, you can (and should) leverage email marketing to promote your affiliate product. Email marketing can help you reach your potential customers directly. It can help you get them to click on your link so you can earn your commissions. But you need to leverage affiliate email marketing the right way.

In this article, you learned five affiliate email marketing tips. Send welcome emails, promote your posts containing your affiliate links, and/or embed your affiliate links in your emails. You should also add bonuses to sweeten the deal. Finally, create a sense of urgency. Follow these tips and you’ll reap the best results.

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