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What Is an Affiliate Email?
An affiliate email marketing campaign promotes affiliate products through a series of emails.
In traditional affiliate marketing, your audience clicks on your affiliate links embedded in website content such as blog posts.
Here’s an example of traditional affiliate marketing from Wirecutter:
Wirecutter promotes affiliate links directly within their blog posts.
However, in an affiliate email marketing campaign, you include your affiliate links directly in your subscribers’ inboxes.
Here’s an example of an affiliate email marketing approach:
The affiliate links highlighted in the example above promote the Ulysses writing app and a Chrome extension called Mindful.
So how does this work? Is affiliate email marketing the same as traditional affiliate marketing?
Simply put, when a reader clicks the affiliate links inside the email content and makes a purchase, the email author earns a small commission from that sale.
Since the email is likely sent to thousands of people, the earnings start to scale.
Affiliate email marketing can be highly profitable, but there’s one important point to remember:
Even if the campaign is based on affiliate marketing, affiliate email marketing is still an email marketing campaign.
That means you need to have a strong email marketing strategy in place to launch successful campaigns and make money from affiliate links.
Whether you're planning to add affiliate promotions to your existing email sequences or create a brand-new sequence from scratch, you must provide value in your content to get your readers interested in the offer.
We’ll talk more about content shortly.
But for now, if you're growing your email list and already have affiliate partnerships in place, affiliate email marketing could be a potential goldmine for your business.
Before we dive into how to do affiliate email marketing effectively, let’s take a closer look at why it holds such strong potential.
Why Is Using Email for Affiliate Marketing a Good Idea?
How to Launch an Affiliate Email Marketing Campaign
Starting an affiliate email marketing campaign can feel a bit overwhelming at first, but don’t worry, you’re about to learn exactly how to do it.
Before we dive in, there’s one thing you must always keep in mind:
Don’t sound like a street vendor.
You’re not selling, you’re sharing something people might find valuable and choose to purchase.
You may be thinking, “But isn’t the purpose of affiliate marketing to sell and earn commissions?”
Yes… and no.
In affiliate email marketing, your role is not to act like a salesperson. Instead, speak as if you’re a happy customer talking naturally about a product you genuinely like.
Make sure every part of your email is written in a friendly, conversational tone. That’s how you build connection. Otherwise, you risk high unsubscribe rates, or even landing in spam.
Now let’s walk through the best practices for affiliate email marketing.
1. Choose an Email Provider That Allows Affiliate Links
First, make sure your email service provider allows you to include affiliate links in your emails. Many email automation platforms are protective over their email deliverability performance.
So, always verify whether your provider supports affiliate links.
If it doesn’t, or if you’re looking for a new email provider that supports affiliate campaigns, here are the top options:
Top 4 Email Marketing Services for Affiliate Campaigns
A. MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the most popular email service providers—and for good reason!
It offers a wide range of features that make affiliate marketing much more manageable. For example:
- Set up custom autoresponders
- Use analytics and email tracking, plus Google Analytics integration
- Access segmentation options
- Use professionally designed email templates
You can also easily collect email leads by using MailChimp’s opt-in form on your website.
B. Drip
Drip is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that also provides powerful email marketing services. It allows affiliate links through its “Product Recommendations” feature.
Drip has confirmed that it permits affiliate links, but affiliate emails must not contain excessive spam-like content.
For best results, it’s recommended to contact their support team and get confirmation before launching your campaign.
C. AWeber
AWeber is another email provider that allows you to use affiliate marketing with your email lists. It’s a beginner-friendly tool and can support your affiliate efforts with features such as:
- Subscriber segmentation
- Autoresponder follow-ups
- Embeddable signup forms
D. GetResponse
GetResponse also allows affiliate links in email marketing campaigns. Some of its useful features include:
- Autoresponders
- Advanced analytics to track leads and campaigns
- Customizable templates
2. Choose the Right Affiliate Links
Before promoting affiliate links, choosing the right ones is crucial. Your links should be:
- Relevant to your niche (so that they make sense)
People subscribed to your email list because they like your content. That level of trust and interest is valuable—don’t misuse it.
Keep delivering valuable content and make sure the affiliate products you promote are aligned with your niche. Think about it this way:
Imagine you subscribed to a recipe email list for a cooking website. One day, you start receiving emails promoting sneakers and unrelated products—and it continues. You’d likely unsubscribe quickly, right? But if the email included an affiliate link to a high-quality kitchen knife instead, it would make perfect sense. You’d probably click it, and maybe even buy it.
- Evergreen
The products you promote should ideally be evergreen, meaning they won’t change or expire over time. This way, you don’t need to constantly update or modify your content. But what if you have a seasonal product or limited-time offer with strong sales potential? In that case, it’s best to create a separate email sequence specifically for that holiday or promotional campaign.
Once the offer ends, you can simply delete or disable the seasonal email series while keeping your main affiliate campaign intact.
- Profitable
Finally, the products you promote should be worth it financially. If the commission potential is low or limited, ask yourself whether it justifies launching a campaign. Considering the average email click-through rate is only 2.6% across industries, make sure the affiliate commission is high enough to generate meaningful revenue.
For example, Amazon’s affiliate commission rates are as follows:
Source: Amazon
Always review the commission rates and calculate your potential earnings before launching a campaign.
3. Build Connection by Personalizing Your Emails
According to a study by Campaign Monitor, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.
When it comes to affiliate emails, personalization becomes even more important for improving open rates.
Here’s a helpful guide: Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines to Boost Email Open Rates
Affiliate marketing efforts are only successful if you build and nurture a relationship with your audience.
Personalized emails help you sound friendly and supportive, rather than salesy, which makes a big difference.
4. Add Affiliate Links Within Your Email Sequence
Your entire email sequence should not be dedicated solely to affiliate links. Why? Because this can lead to several issues:
- If you’re constantly sharing third-party products, your audience may become irritated.
- Even email providers that allow affiliate links may suspend your account if your links negatively affect deliverability rates.
So, what’s the best approach?
- Create emails specifically for affiliate products and add them into an existing sequence.
- Focus primarily on valuable content and subtly embed affiliate links when relevant.
- If you already have a high-performing email sequence (with strong open and click rates), go back and insert affiliate links naturally into the content.
Remember these key principles:
- You must deliver the value you promised in exchange for their subscription.
- Every email should contain unique, meaningful content.
- Maintain a consistent sending schedule.
- Your emails should be more nurturing and informative than promotional.
As you grow your email list, new subscribers will start seeing your affiliate promotions—which means you can generate passive income as long as you continue expanding your list with qualified leads.
Once you find a way to consistently convert website traffic into autoresponder leads, you can sit back and enjoy the cash flow.
💡 We have a great tip for growing your email list. Stay with me, we’ll cover it toward the end.
5. Track Your Affiliate Email Marketing Campaigns
So, you've finally automated your affiliate email sequence and the commissions are rolling in.
But there’s one more thing you need to do. If you want to continue earning commissions, you must actively monitor your campaigns.
Tag and track your subscribers so you can adjust your campaigns in the right direction when needed.
Audience segmentation is essential for monitoring and improving your open and click-through rates.
And just in case, make sure to track your email marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) for every campaign.
6. Take Advantage of Holiday Seasons
As major holidays approach, people tend to start researching products. This can be the perfect time to get creative with your offers.
However, be careful not to overwhelm your audience. Otherwise, you may face high unsubscribe rates.
Also, as mentioned earlier, create a separate campaign for holiday promotions.
Do not mix holiday emails into your regular sequence. Once the season ends, remove or deactivate the holiday campaign.
7. Make Value Your Top Priority
Yes, the goal of affiliate email marketing is to earn revenue, but never forget that value must come first.
Your audience wants to see meaningful content, not just promotional material.
Use different types of media such as videos, images, audio, and podcasts to nurture your leads.
It’s understandable that building trust and engagement takes time and effort.
Just focus on delivering value, and your subscribers will reward you through strong affiliate commissions.
8. Re-Engage With Your Audience
Re-engaging is essential for boosting your open rate (OR) and conversion rate (CR).
Create a segment of leads who consistently show low engagement and resend your emails to them. They may have simply missed your message the first time.
You can easily automate follow-up emails using tools like SureTriggers.
9. Use Social Proof and Facts
Use social proof and facts in your emails to highlight real success stories from people who use the affiliate product you’re promoting.
Thinking about creating a website for your affiliate products?
We’ve reviewed the best website builders for small businesses.
The Secret Sauce to Successful Affiliate Marketing
Now you know everything about affiliate email sequences ,but there’s still one secret ingredient:
Continuously grow your email list using smart subscriber popups.
With Popupsmart’s popup builder, you can create newsletter popups in just 3 minutes, targeting the right visitors at the right time on your website.
It’s a no-code tool, so you can install it easily on any website.
Give it a try and watch the leads flow in.
Create your free email popup today.
Plus, you can seamlessly integrate Popupsmart with all your favorite email service providers.
I hope these tips and best practices help you improve your affiliate marketing efforts through your email list.
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