Today, I'm going to show you multiple ways that you can leverage permission-based email to drive stronger affiliate sales while simultaneously creating a deeper bond with your affiliates.
Definition: An AFFILIATE is anyone who recommends your products or services to their audience and is compensated on a commission basis or otherwise for their promotional efforts that result in direct sales, leads, traffic, etc.
Five Types of Permission-Based Affiliate Email Lists:
First Type: Pre-Affiliate Launch Email Alert List
When to use: Before your affiliate program gets launched. Maybe today you are thinking that your company will be launching an affiliate program in the near or distant future. Create an affiliate alert launch list that allows potential affiliates to indicate to you that they are interested in joining or finding out more about your affiliate program when you officially launch it.
I did this recently. 15 months ago, I knew I was going to have an affiliate program, but didn't get around to launching it till 2 weeks ago. I had 1,600+ members who all double opt'd in to be notified via email the moment my program launched. I don't recommend this long of a time frame (15 months) between mailings, but it's safe to say that you can do this affiliate alert email program 3-9 months before your affiliate program launches.
End result for my 1,600 member pre-affiliate launch list: 147 applications to sell my products (that I didn't even tell them what it was yet), and I accepted 70 of them as meeting my ideal affiliate profile. Do you have any idea how much time it would take me to create and identify 70 qualified affiliates any other way? It would be very time expensive vs. the total of 3 hours that this process took me.
Second Type: Approved Affiliate Email Relationship Building List
When to use: This is your primary email relationship building and communication tool. Your minimum emailing frequency should be once every 3-6 weeks. During a product launch or re-launch cycle, you'll want to mail almost daily or every other day leading up to the release date of your new product or service.
Some publishers/vendors use this type of email list to send a newsletter of tips about how to leverage the tools they made available to improve their affiliates commissions. You may even want to include case studies of your most successful affiliates or other insider information that will help your affiliate to convert more sales.
Third Type: Segmented Affiliate Mailings
If you have more than one product line or you serve more than one geographic, demographic, or any other type of ideal client or product - reach out to the segments of your affiliate base with a more targeted mailing to encourage either more participation or other insider tips how to sell more of a specific type of your products to a specific segment of the market.
Example: If you are trying to increase your penetration in sales from non-USA-based affiliates, send a targeted mailing to your International affiliates giving them either a contest or additional encouragement to promote your products and services.
Fourth Type: VIP Affiliate Mailings
All affiliates are not created equal. There will always be top affiliates or "super affiliates" that out-sell the other 80-90% of your affiliate pool.
Perhaps you even pay these VIP affiliates a higher commission rate. Super affiliates almost always have one thing in common: There is a barrage of attention for their attention because they have a proven history of getting results when doing affiliate promotions. This means you must do something MORE for them than treat them like a normal approved affiliate of yours.
Fifth Type: Sequenced Training Emails For Affiliates
All new affiliates should receive a series of time-delayed or sequenced emails that introduce them to your products and train them how to best represent you, your message or brand, and your products.
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Important Note: Be sure to include in your affiliate program terms of service that your affiliates must agree to receive transactional commercial emails from you in regards to their participation as an approved affiliate of yours.
Lastly, it's assumed that: Your affiliate software already notifies your affiliates via email every single time they make a sale and every time pay-day comes around. If you don't do this, you are missing an opportunity to motivate your affiliates and provide them with instant feedback about the success of their campaigns to promote you. Do not assume your affiliates have the time or can always easily remember their affiliate username and password to check stats.
Where's the future going in terms of affiliate communication and loyalty-building?
As much as I love all of the wonderful uses of permission-based transactional emails to drive affiliate sales, I hope RSS (Really Simple Syndication) will be made available so that I can watch via my RSS aggregator of choice as sales are being made or important communications are available to me. Until then, let the highly relevant emails fly while your affiliate sales soar!
