Email traffic for affiliates: get in touch and keep them engaged
Email marketing is one of the traditional promotion channels that involves targeted bulk messaging. This channel is mostly used as an addition to other traffic types or as a seasonal tool to warm up the audience. Email traffic can be rather beneficial for your campaigns if you master it, yet there is a chance of wasting your budget and ruining the advertiser’s reputation if you are too aggressive in your approaches. This article is about why you should use email marketing in your campaigns and how to get it right.
Who’s your audience?
First of all, to do email marketing you need a database of email addresses to send the letters to. There are two main options: you can collect the emails yourself or buy a ready-made database.
It is always wiser to collect your own database and build it from scratch because you know the audience within the database. How to build a database? For example, you run a flower shop campaign with a purchase as the target action. Add an email lead form alongside the “Buy now” CTA button, so that people who are interested in flowers but not ready to buy on the spot could access more information/subscribe to a newsletter/get discounts, etc. Please pay attention to this bit, users have to share their contact information willingly, and they also need to know what they are signing up for including all the terms. This ensures you to be compliant to the various personal data regulations.
Or, you can license a database created by a 3rd party. By doing so, you save time and effort but get an untrustworthy tool that can fail at any moment. You can’t be sure about the audience and, therefore, you have little chance of finding a matching offer for this database.
One more option is to ask your affiliate network manager for an email database or for a reliable provider. Managers at Yep Ads are always willing to assist you in every way possible. And finally, some ad networks allow affiliates to use their in-house email database.
Verticals and angles
A well-thought email campaign can become a valuable additional tool for virtually any vertical. However, it can play the first fiddle within such niches as lead generation, e-commerce or nutra, gambling, and info products.
Combining lead generation and email campaigns is a traditional marketing approach because lead generation forms usually require user’s email address. With lead gen campaigns, email can take many forms: welcome emails, local news, regular updates, best offers — these are only some options. It is important to balance your message on the verge of usefulness and entertainment. Don’t try to hard-sell an offer — keep it light and native.
Info products such as educational courses and webinars are a perfect example of a funnel with a drip email structure. Users receive a cascade of offers depending on their place within the funnel, such drips also have numerous incentives to increase the chances of attracting the customer.
Finally, email marketing is an essential part of a promotional strategy for any online store. These may be service messages: thank you for joining, here is your password, your order has arrived, etc. Seasonal promotions and sales are wonderful opportunities to remind the existing clients of the bargains and best-selling products.
To better optimize your campaigns for sales season and to leverage the full power of email marketing for e-commerce, check out our article on Black Friday — Cyber Monday.
These are just a few examples of what you can do with email marketing. This promotion channel can benefit many verticals if you have a well-structured conversion flow and approaches relevant for your audience.
Email marketing tools
When it comes to handy tools for your campaigns, a bulk messenger is the biggest one you need. Sending letters by hand may be alright when you start out with up to 50 people in your database, but even this will soon become a real day-to-day torture. So, automate to save time and effort. Such services as YNOTMail and Jetmail or all-in platforms like Kartra and others allow marketers to configure the rules, timing, design, layout, and all other details when it comes to letters. Most messaging platforms also provide access to a database of templates that is wiser to use as inspiration only (because soulless mails don’t convert well). Another feature to take advantage of is smart variables or tags that are replaced by relevant data (e.g. user’s name, location, product name). This, on the contrary, will give your emails more personality. Among the advanced features you may also find A/B testing, auto response, targeting, reporting, audience segmentation, landing page editors, quiz builder, etc.
Do’s and don’ts
✓ Make sure that your offer matches the email database, otherwise you will be selling Mercedes to grandmas who signed up for gardening lifehacks. The best ways to ensure the quality of your database are to collect emails yourself, buy the database from a trusted partner, or license it from a network/advertiser.
✓ Provide the audience with reliable information about the product, terms of service, delivery, promotions, etc. Misleading campaigns are not the right way for a wise affiliate.
✓ Use lean design for your messages and do not overload them with bright pictures or animated banners. Such letters will be easier to load and understand.
✓ Apply multiple CTAs strategically positioned throughout the message, so that users could convert with ease any time they are ready for it.
✓ Make use of automated email services that take care of daily bulk messaging.
✗ Don’t use letter templates for your campaigns. These messages lack personality and your audience is likely to stay indifferent to the offer. Instead, use engaging copy and describe the competitive advantages of the product and the issues it solves for users.
✗ Don’t be pushy, neither in copy nor in timing of your emails. Too many letters will avert even a positive lead from your offer.
✗ Think your timing through. For example, emails with dating offers will not be welcome at 10 AM on Monday when most people are surrounded by colleagues.
✗ Avoid long reads. Today, users are overwhelmed by the number of emails and advertising, and attention span is waning dramatically, too. Sure, email format provides you with much space for personalization, but it is better to be clear and concise.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a handy tool for almost any campaign, and it can also be a powerful promotion channel on its own. If you wish to venture into this niche, start collecting a database of email addresses as a side project in the course of your current campaigns. Select a suitable offer that will make your audience happy. Make your letters personal but to the point. Apply automation to keep track of multiple emails. And, of course, test a lot — no tool can provide you with such valuable insights as your own A/B campaigns. If in doubt, reach out to the Yep Ads team, we are always here for you!