Ecom Access

There is a lot more to affiliate marketing than just banners and text advertising. Email marketing campaigns can prove to be very profitable, if one is willing to put in some work and follow a few simple steps.

Build a List That Matters
Get the best value out of your campaigns by making sure that you have as many email addresses as possible on your list. It may be difficult to achieve any kind of success without a large number of email addresses. That said, unsegmented or unverified lists are unlikely to lead to conversions, and are therefore seldom worth the monetary investment.

The best policy is to make sure that you are reaching your target audience by having qualified email addresses. If you want to launch a marketing campaign for a specific brand, solicit email addresses from a site that targets that specific market through a newsletter signup link. This way you have qualified customers that you can send an email to that have expressed an interest in your product.

Do the Right Thing: No SPAM!
Once you have your list of email addresses, you’ll be ready to go. However, before you start in earnest, make sure that you are familiar with SPAM laws in your particular region. It is vital to make sure that all of the users who have subscribed to your newsletter go through a double opt-in procedure. This means that there is a two-step process by which they must verify that they wish to receive your email.

The process is really fairly straightforward.  It starts with the submission of the email, then they must click on a link in an email that you send them that verifies that they, indeed, want to receive the email. This is added to keep malicious persons from signing up people to newsletters they may not want to receive, thus filling their Inbox with unwanted mail.

Ensure that every newsletter or email that you send contains a link to a page where users can unsubscribe.  This system has really become quite commonplace, so most subscribers will be used to the process—which is relatively quick and painless.

Qualify your Traffic
One of the first rules of face-to-face sales is to qualify your traffic. What do they need? Who are they? What do they want to spend on your kind of product/service? Sales is all about asking questions to ascertain whether or not you can meet each other’s needs (i.e. The need for a sale and the need for a product). The same principles apply no matter what you’re selling, and email marketing campaigns will most certainly benefit from this kind of qualification as well. In an effort to target your traffic most effectively, ask a few other questions on the newsletter sign up page that will give you an even better idea about who your customers are.

Include three of four optional questions that can be answered during the signup process. Getting some information like age, gender, hobbies and more can help you to segment your list and increase your conversions.

Involving Affiliate Managers
Once you have a good segmented email list, and products to promote, getting in touch with an affiliate manager will help you to put together the best possible sales message. Affiliate managers can point you to creative and tips to optimize your campaign. In addition, you should be able to get a suppression list from your affiliate manager. This is a list of addresses that have already opted out of any in-house newsletters.

You also want to make sure that you are meeting the Terms and Conditions set out by the merchant. In fact, some merchants do not allow their affiliates to promote their products or services through email marketing campaigns, so make sure that you have all of the facts before getting started.

Email marketing campaigns can be very effective. With qualified recipients, you have already done half the sales work you need to have done. Making use of creative from your affiliate managers will get you a long way towards running a successful marketing campaign.

Tags: email marketing

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