Some marketers view affiliate programs as vaguely regrettable. But marketers who believe so may end up overworking their list of subscribers and driving away clients.
According to the Advertiser’s Guide to Using an Email Affiliate Program, a paper published last week by OPTIZMO Technologies in combination with CPA network Clickbooth, they need fresh leads, and one way to get them is through subsidiaries.
The article states that some affiliates “specialize in email marketing and are specialists in sourcing and converting leads of high quality.” Affiliate programs are simple to monitor, adding that they have broad visibility.
But how are you going to do that? “Building a high-performance and compatible email affiliate program is difficult and involves understanding many facets of the sector,” says OPTIZMO CEO Khris Thayer.
First, choose a business with a reliable network — find out how selective they are with their subsidiaries. Also, attempt to verify the company’s email compliance strategy.
Compliance starts with the 2003 CAN-PAM Act, which requires customers to have the opportunity to opt out. This is quite simple when a company is only dealing with its own subscribers. But the article states that “when affiliates mail on behalf of an advertiser, they also need to include an opt-out connection to enable recipients to unsubscribe from future advertiser-related messages.”
The document provides that “Opt-outs produced by each affiliate mailer must also be gathered and deleted from all future email marketing schemes,” which involves gathering all the opt-outs produced by each domestic and affiliate mailing and adding them to the opt-out list of the advertiser.
In addition, an existing opt-out list must be added to each affiliate mailer by the business.
(We would add one rule: all email lists must be based on permission. CAN-SPAM is just one of the many legislation that come into play).
Once you’re rolling, make sure your affiliate is utilizing these time-honored tools of email marketing:
- Structuring subject lines — Avoid all caps, exclamation points, clickbait lines and other tricks that may attract fleeting curiosity instead of genuine interest.
- A/B Testing — This is the tried-and-true way of determining the best content and approaches to use the accumulated data from the email campaign.
- Limit the characters — People have limited attention spans, so keep your lines short — from 50 to 125 words — and focus on quality over quantity.
- HTML — HTML emails work best — the advertiser can implement images, links, headers, call-to-action-buttons, and other features.
- Promo Driven — Value-driven emails perform best. In addition, semi-frequent promotions can create interest without seeming like spam.
- Personalization — That means tailoring content not only to the email but to the landing page. This enables the advertiser to better target prospects who have clicked through but not converted. Update graphics regularly and use data to create personalized campaigns.
