Everything You Need to Know About Autoresponders For Affiliate Marketing

In ecommerce, email is massively significant. Social media posts are a good means to communicate ideas, but in the omnichannel spectrum, email remains a very popular marketing tool.

This is especially true for partner digital marketing. This is the case for influencers, bloggers, WordPress wizards, podcast players, content creators, Amazon associates, or another type of affiliate altogether.

However, if you have to remember to send an email to everyone who joins your list, this could result in a lot of missed leads and a good deal of mind-numbing donkey work. It’s an example of business processing you’d do well to automate.

So, this is where an autoresponder comes in. It can revolutionize your marketing tactics. Combine it with a data transfer product like CPAPI and you’ll be really cooking. Let’s see what it does and why you need one. Welcome to the complete guide.

What’s an Autoresponder?

To the beginner, who’s considering what to invest in for their startup, an autoresponder might sound like something that would be very low down the list.

After all, at its most basic, an autoresponder is simply an application that automatically sends emails out. An “out of office” message is a very basic form of autoresponder.  However, for the purposes of partner marketing, a more sophisticated version is in the spotlight.

In this context, an autoresponder is a tool that does four principal jobs for an affiliate network.

Those four jobs are all part of effective lead generation. First, it collects email addresses which are entered onto the affiliate site’s subscriber form (which should be quite high profile, ideally on the landing page), and then puts this information into an email list database.

Thirdly, it automatically sends emails out to database subscribers. The final role of an autoresponder is to provide statistics on email effectiveness. Much as a lot can be learned from call center recordings, it pays to keep a retrospective eye on what’s worked and what hasn’t with affiliate emails.

When a visitor to your website opts in to receiving updates from you, an autoresponder will send an onboarding message straight away. More emails will follow on specific days, as scheduled by you. It can be said that this particular application of an autoresponder is a set it and forget it procedure. With the right wording, this can become a passive income opportunity.

But you can do so much more with an autoresponder. Read on, and see what it can do to help an entrepreneur to retail affiliate products.

Using an Autoresponder to Sell a Product

An autoresponder is an asset to any affiliate marketing strategy. You can set up a sequence that will leverage the subscriber’s buy-in and make them feel valued while you’re selling to them. This is the essence of successful affiliate marketing.

Here’s a step-by-step guide.

Your first autoresponder email should be a simple welcome. Let the subscriber know something about your life and your interests. Keep in mind your target audience and let this dictate your tone. (If you need to create a target consumer profile, tools are available.) The email should tell the reader what they’re likely to receive from you.

It’s a good idea to revisit this email reasonably frequently to give it a dose of freshness, perhaps with the odd topical reference. Nothing stinks the place out like an obviously antiquated and obsolete piece of copy.

You can then start your marketing campaign in earnest. You can schedule an email that poses a common problem and shows a solution. This engenders a feeling of shared experience and trust.

Think of it working in the same way that a fixed VoIP number does to assuage suspicion, giving extra credibility to you and the product or service you’re marketing. Follow this with a scheduled email that gives life hacks. Again, this kind of content marketing will help create a sense of confidence in your intention.

Then you can start really pushing the products. These emails should utilize all the tricks of influencer marketing, such as referrals, product reviews, and blog posts to enhance interest. By all means use coupon marketing, too, if this is appropriate.

Also, there should be a good number of links to your website so conversion rates can be as high as possible. This kind of directing is so much more effective than just pinning your hopes on SEO. There is a lot of data out there to suggest that autoresponders are especially good at optimizing conversions.

Should you need any tips on how you as an affiliate can link better with brands, you could try Affise Reach, which offers numerous ways to secure strong conversions together. It’s important for brands and partners to communicate well and often. Consider virtual hook-ups—perhaps via a free online meeting. Naturally, if you’re using cloud computing systems, this will ease remote collaboration considerably.

Alternative Sequence

Here’s another step-by-step sequence idea you might like to try:

1. Broach a problem and relate it to an event in your life. The reader may have a shared experience. Briefly mention the product at the end of the email.
2. Put out a piece of quality content, maybe a YouTube video, a webinar, or simply a PDF that partially helps subscribers with a problem. We repeat, partially. We’re not talking about offering all your first call resolution tips. Provide a few examples of how the product solved the problem for you. Don’t overdo it.
3. Now talk a lot about the product. Get some input from the company’s product creator. Use articles, reports, etc.
4. Sales time. Seal the deal by upping the focus and using CTA language. This is where affiliate sales are made or lost. Importantly, all the links in the email should be to the page where the purchase can be made. Then watch the payouts mount.
5. If no sale, follow up. Mention how well sales are going and how you wanted to make sure the subscriber had the opportunity to get with it while they still can.
6. At the end of the sequence, a clever online affiliate will revert simply to quality content with no sales angle. The subscriber will not want to be constantly “sold at”. By sending out a piece of content with no apparent ulterior motive, customer retention optimization will result.

There are lots of other sequence models out there so do look around for inspiration. There are tutorials available, too, that will help marketing partnerships get the most out of an autoresponder. Have a look at websites like clickbank for further knowhow.

Research autoresponder plugins and other digital products that can give you more power over your marketing efforts, and result in more online business and greater affiliate income. Finally, consider how you can improve your hit rate. Email deliverability can be enhanced by techniques such as authentication.

Overall, the more successful you become, the more you can look at raising your commission rates, which is a nice thought.

Conclusion

So, there are distinct benefits to affiliate partners in using an autoresponder. It can help you arrive at the very best affiliate marketing. The truth is, there’s only so much action a search engine will provide. An autoresponder drives targeted traffic to your website to benefit your ecommerce operation, with minimum effort from you.

You can reach potential customers many times about a given offer. You can track emails and monitor various data streams, just as with Affise BI, and learn as you go. It’s cheap and effective, and you can leave it to do its marketing work by itself while you count up your affiliate commissions. Looked at like this, it’s an indispensable part of an affiliate marketing program.

Are there any drawbacks? The only serious drawback is that, in going for high commission returns, it’s tempting to use an autoresponder to bombard your list with pitches. It won’t take long to burn out your subscribers if you do this, so be a top affiliate and use your autoresponder with restraint and sensitivity. A good mantra for life in general.

Written by

Jenna Bunnell

Jenna Bunnell is the Senior Manager for Content Marketing at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated cloud-hosted unified communications system that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. She is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility and visualizing how content can be presented in creative and comprehensive ways.