How to Build an Email List for Affiliate Marketing

You’ve found an affiliate product to promote, you’ve been accepted into the program, and you’re ready to jump in headfirst. Where should you start?

Build an email list!

Having a targeted email list is one of the oldest but most effective forms of making money through affiliate marketing.

Since email became popular, marketers have been using it as a powerful tool to promote products and services. It is easy to reach hundreds or thousands of people simply by sending an email to your list.

In this blog post, we are going to discuss why having an email list is important, what it can bring to your affiliate marketing strategy and how you can build one.

Affiliate marketing is about sales, and email is the best way to turn trust into sales. That means getting all of your email bells and whistles together as early as possible.

For every affiliate marketer, there are hundreds more pushing the same products, and trying to attract the same audience. Success is determined by how you reach your target audience, how you build unbreakable trust with them, and how victorious you are at converting them. 

In any form of business, email campaigns are the key to building an audience that sticks with you. They’re the key to finding a tribe that thinks of you as soon as they’re ready to make a purchase. That leaves the big question: how do you build and nurture an email list specifically for affiliate marketing?

We’ll go over a few proven steps to build an email list to promote your affiliate offers and grow relationships from scratch. 

Why Do I Need an Email List?

Though there are tons that you can research and learn from, there’s one study you should definitely know about. This specific research was done by eConsultancy in 2016. They interviewed companies and asked what types of marketing worked best for them, and which gave them the best ROI. 

Most saw the best ROI from email marketing campaigns. They ranked it even higher than SEO and social media for promoting growth at a reasonable cost and in a reasonable time frame.

Here’s the long and short of it: an email list gives you direct access to your subscribers and control over your voice. Your subscribers have signed up to hear from you, want to read your emails, and trust your voice. Email marketing, when done correctly, gives you an easy way to build trust and a direct line to your audience.

Why an email list is important

Imagine you have 10,000 people accessing your niche website that promotes a particular product. Good numbers, right? Well, what if only 100 of those people are actually interested in your product – perhaps the other 9900 ended up on your site by mistake or accident because they clicked an advert. Out of those 100 people, only a few want to make a purchase and an even smaller amount go through with it.

You will still be making some sales but not many.

An email list consists of highly targeted consumers that do want to read about the product and service that you are promoting. If they have subscribed to your list then they obviously have an interest. If you list consisted of 10,000 subscribers then there is a far higher chance that a greater number will purchase the product or service through your affiliate link because they signed up to read your emails in the first place.

The point is that email lists are an incredibly important part of a successful affiliate marketing strategy because they are much more targeted than random visitors to your website.

Where Do I Set Up My Email List?

What are your goals?

There are so many different email marketing services that this is a personal preference. Something like Mailchimp is quick and straightforward with easy set-up, and it’s free up to 10,000 subscribers. A service like ActiveCampaign allows you to create complicated email automation, tags, and workflows if you’re going to run more advanced campaigns, but it will cost you more.  

Email marketing includes a lot of trial and error. Pick the service that works best for you and offers detailed analytics, a variety of campaign types, A/B testing, and any other tools you need to reach your goal.

What Types of Campaigns Should I Run?

The campaign you run will also depend on what your goals are for your email marketing campaigns. 

As with any type of marketing, you should set specific goals and guidelines for each of your email campaigns. What are you looking to achieve? More eyes on your content? More purchases, a place to distribute sale information, etc.? 

While the goal of affiliate marketing is always sales, there are plenty of ways to get there. The best email campaigns for affiliate marketers are: 

• Drip campaigns
• Welcome email series
• Downloads and ebooks (lead magnets)
• Product reviews and overviews
• News and announcements from affiliates

How Do I Gain Subscribers?

First things first: you do NOT gain subscribers by buying email lists. I repeat, you do not gain subscribers by purchasing email lists!

There are steep and heavy penalties from Google as well as international laws like GDPR that should deter you from buying lists. It’s not as simple as sending mass emails without permission. Buying lists in this day and age will set you up for hefty fines that could tank your business. 

Buying lists can also create tense situations between you and your email marketing software—fines aside. Your email address could be greylisted due to too many bounced or spammed emails. Keep that up, and your entire email account could be banned.

It not only can ruin your reputation, but you also waste a lot of time and effort talking to people who are not interested in your products.

Permission-based email marketing is the only way to go.

Building email marketing lists

The next step is actually building a list.

Starting an email list can be something as simple as having a subscribe option on your niche site where visitors simply enter their email address to get your content.

Successfully creating a list for email affiliate marketing means that you need to not only create killer content (who wants to read average emails?) but you need to give something away. You need an opt-in offer so that a user has to give you their email address to receive it. This can be something like a free eBook that is related to your affiliate product, a coupon code or any kind of giveaway that is relevant to your niche and is attractive enough for someone to part with their email address.

Make signing up to your email list easy. Don’t hide it away on your site. Have it advertised clearly and ensure that you offer something that your readers actually want.

What Type of Content Should I Make for Subscribers?

Exclusive content will attract more subscribers. A great way to build is to tease exclusive emails that will benefit subscribers in some way. This should be high-level content that can’t be accessed without subscribing to your list. 

Most affiliate marketers make money through affiliate link clicks on their websites, blogs, and social media. You can put your affiliate links virtually anywhere on your site, especially with a plugin like Pretty Links that helps you maintain affiliate links (and keep them pretty). 

When it comes to the content you create to promote and house your links, affiliate marketing is about building trust, and your content should reflect that. 

Send emails that amplify your current or recent content, especially content that includes affiliate links to keep your emails in line with your goals. Teach your audience to do things, give them your opinion on products and services, and show off your personality. Once you’ve gained trust, you can send emails that promote your affiliate partners directly.

The more personality your content has, the more likely your audience is to open it. Excellent content comes in many forms, including:

• Courses
• Exclusive content (downloads, ebooks, and guides)
• Exclusive sales
• Stories and personal anecdotes
• Videos
• Updates and interesting facts
• Non-salesy newsletters
• Blog announcements
• Automated emails for abandoned carts
• Coupons
• Seasonal promotions

Always soft sell, and remember to focus most of your campaign on building trust. Don’t just build trust for you—you want your audience to trust your affiliate partners as well. Build your content around boosting their messages, products, and ideals.

Lead magnets are your friend in affiliate marketing! Teach your readers how to do what you do (or what you wish you could do), and they’ll bond with you. Offering downloads that fit your audience’s needs (for instance, a Quick Guide to Setting up Tents for outdoor fanatics) is an easy way to collect emails.

Make money with an email list

Now that you know what an email list is, why it is important to have one and also how to start building it up – how do you make money with an email list?

The answer to this is simple – create fantastic email content that is useful to the reader. If your emails are boring, just contain spammy links to your affiliate products or offer no value then people will simply unsubscribe pretty quickly.

You want to create an email content strategy that sells. Don’t send emails every day and don’t push your affiliate products and services in every email. Offer real, valuable content that is spaced out over the weeks and months of the year. Make sure that your email is the one that your subscribers want to read and if you add in affiliate links every now and again you will see your sales skyrocket. Why? Well you are sending those links out to people that actually want to read your content because they’ve knowingly signed up to your list and are interested in what you are selling – you aren’t hoping that a few people out of 10,000 random website visitors will buy through your affiliate link.

The key thing to remember is that you need to build up a relationship with your subscribers. You want them to trust you so don’t spam them with links all the time and instead focus on creating quality content that will make them excited every time your email pops up in their inbox.

Affiliate email marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest ways in which people make money from affiliates however it is still one of the most effective.

List building can take a lot of time and effort and it isn’t something you will gain overnight (avoid buying lists because they will be full of dead leads). A successful affiliate email marketing strategy is one that focuses on offering something so that the person signs up to your list, keeping them subscribed by sending out consistent and quality content and finally adding in affiliate links now and again so they can buy products which improve their lives.

It sounds really simple. For the most part, the theory is straightforward however putting it into practice will take a long-term approach. Think about your email list as something that will be incredibly valuable to you in the future. It isn’t something you will create and make money from in a week however over time it will become your most profitable and successful method of making a lot of money from affiliate marketing.

How Do I Get the Most Out of Email Marketing?

Stay on top of the performance of your emails!

You must adjust your campaigns when they’re unsuccessful. Something as small as an uninspired subject and preview text could cause subscribers to skip your emails. To ensure maximum ROI, be mindful of the following things:

Understand Your Audience 

Your content should engage readers in a way that is personal and unique to their goals. Make blog posts, videos, infographics, etc. your specific audience needs so they find value in your words. Create and share content that hits the right pain points and then consistently deliver it. Once you’ve built trust and nurture it, readers are fine with getting hard sales for your affiliate products.

Build Trust and Keep Delivering It

The golden rule: be helpful, not annoying.

Optimize Your Emails

Create workflows and segment your emails as much as possible. Test your emails for subjects that get the most opens. If you have the option, make multiple workflows that cover different aspects of your audience, which account for growth. 

Stay on top of the performance of your email campaigns and adjust accordingly.

Stay Engaging

Keep the conversation going by making it easy for your audience to share and promote your work. Add a compelling call-to-action where appropriate. People love exclusive content, so try to fill your emails with personable information that they can’t find anywhere else.

Keep it Simple

No one wants to open an email and be bombarded with a dry 4000-word essay. Keep your email design and copy simple. If you can direct your audience to a longer blog post or web page, that works, too!

Make The Goal Clear

Your calls-to-action should be impeccable in an email. Make it easy for readers to click through and perform the action you want. Don’t hide buttons in the design or ramble on about a bunch of points. Keep it skimmable and within the expectations of your audience.

Link to content that aligns with the message in your emails. If you include your affiliate links in emails, make sure it’s to a segment of your email list that already trusts you.

In Conclusion – Keep on Building!

If you want to build a powerful email list:

• Make content that fits your audience
• Understand your audience 
• Build trust and keep delivering it
• Optimize your emails
• Stay engaging
• Keep it simple
• Make the goal clear

Never stop lassoing people into your email list. 

Email campaigns can be a lot of work in the beginning, but they directly integrate your overall content marketing blueprint. Follow our tips and build a reliable and robust list of subscribers that are ready and willing to click through!

Do you have any radically successful email tricks? Comment below to teach us a thing or two.