Why Email Marketing is Still the Best Methodology For Affiliates

There is a myth permeating the affiliate marketing world that is costing many marketers huge profits. This myth is that email marketing no longer works for affiliates and should be avoided at all costs. This couldn’t be further from the truth and could even be harmful to an otherwise successful campaign. Email marketing is by far the best methodology for affiliates and that fact has been so for some time. The fact is, nothing captivates, engages and makes consumers feel as special as email tends to do. If you want big things this year, don’t let the email marketing detractors keep you from achieving your dreams. If you’re still not convinced, here are seven reasons why email marketing for affiliates just makes sense.

1. Captive Audience

Affiliate email marketing is one of the rare occasions where you will have a chance to engage prospective consumers one-on-one. No longer are you forced to deliver your marketing message to large groups of people. With affiliate email marketing, you can target your messages to each recipient, making it one of the most superior forms of marketing we have today.

2. Permission-Based Marketing

Email marketing for affiliates presumes that your target consumers have opted-in to receive your messages in the first place. In this way, affiliate email marketing is again superior to most other marketing disciplines. By opting-in, consumers are communicating to you that they want to receive your messages; that they are looking forward to what you have to say. Just make sure you don’t let your readers down by delivering affiliate email marketing content that they actually enjoy reading.

3. Segmented Lists

Email marketing for affiliates allows you the option of segmenting your contacts according to characteristics you identify. You might separate your list by consumers that are interested in buying your products, those that are semi-interested and those that have shown zero interest as of this time. This segmenting ability will allow you to deliver more targeted messages, thus improving conversions; but you will also be able to test your affiliate email marketing approach, which we will discuss in further detail in a moment.

4. Personalization

Today’s email marketing platforms allow you to personalize your affiliate email marketing messages in a variety of exciting ways. With this ability, you can address your recipients by name, you can discuss their previous purchases, their birthdays or their locations. Your recipients will feel special and part of the club, which is exactly what the successful affiliate marketer wants. Personalization solidifies the bond between you and your target audience, and that can lead to higher conversions, more sales and improved customer loyalty all around.

5. A/B Testing

Earlier we discussed the ability to segment your affiliate email marketing contacts. It was also mentioned that this ability allows you to send targeted messages to each of those segmented lists. This is also a perfect environment for A/B testing.

Email marketing for affiliates must be done very carefully. You can’t just send out a bunch of links to a bunch of people and expect to get rich. You need to finesse your target audience, nurture your relationships and this requires a familiarity with your audience and confidence in your abilities. To perfect your email marketing skills, test subject lines with various segments, change the body of the emails to see which ones convert better and make other subtle changes until you find the perfect combination of elements that your audience truly responds to.

Successful marketers use testing all throughout their campaigns and email marketing for affiliates is one of the rare cases where testing becomes easy.

6. Easy to Replicate Success

Email marketing for affiliates is something that you expect to do for the long term. If the prospect of continuing an email marketing campaign for months and even years is a little too tough to swallow, you can make the process easier by copying those emails that enjoy the most success. Don’t copy the best performing emails word-for-word but do copy their styles. Really analyze what you think your audience most responded to and keep that type of content coming for greater conversions and profits in the coming year.

7. Never Ending Affiliate Email Marketing Success

If you can replicate your success, email marketing for affiliates provides you with unlimited opportunities to rack in the commissions month after month and year after year. The people who say that affiliate email marketing no longer works are probably hurt by the recent blocking of affiliate links from most email marketing networks. It’s understandable; too many affiliates have ruined it for the rest of us by spamming email networks and causing consumers’ opinions of the practice to turn sour. With the proper affiliate marketing techniques and if you adhere to the tips above, you will soon see just how powerful email marketing can be for the ambitious affiliate.

So if anyone tries to tell you that affiliate email marketing is a thing of the past, just smile and let the comment go. It’s up to you if you want to steer the person who tells you such nonsense the right way. No other form of marketing allows you to keep such a captive audience; the people you are emailing have given you permission to contact them, and no other form of marketing allows for such ease of testing. If those facts don’t convince you to go with email marketing for affiliates, the other points on this list should. Give your affiliate campaigns the boost they need and use email marketing to its maximum effectiveness if you haven’t implemented this technique already. Your audience is sure to reward you.