4:16 pm admin

We wanted to just revisit some common questions that we get asked about frequently (and it's a good refresher for seasoned marketers).

So... for the next several weeks, we're going to address a different question each week to keep the snippets short, simple and actionable for you! If you have any questions you'd like to see answered, please submit them and we'll be happy to add them in to the list!

Q9. How Does Affiliate Marketing Impact my Reputation?

If you’ve done any kind of affiliate marketing, chances are you’re probably guilty of simply copying and pasting the swipe copy into your email client and hitting the send button. We’ve all done it!

That’s the whole point of swipe copy anyways, right?

While this can impact the product owner, it can also impact you… the affiliate!

In fact, we’ve had more than a handful of people come over to Emaildelivered when their previous ESP shut them off instantly because of an offer they mailed out. I get that sounds unfair, but when you’re sharing resources with other senders, sometimes it’s the only way to protect the majority of your clients.

Here are a few things that can happen:

All of your emails for a particular promotion wind up in the spam folder (in which case you’ve made little to money and wasted time and resources on promoting an offer).

Your domain and/or IP winds up with a bad reputation, which can result in long term deliverability problems.

You lose valid subscribers due to soft bounces and/or complaints.

Ultimately the person SENDING the promotion is the one responsible for what’s going out to his/her list and testing the copy and the offer BEFORE sending it out. Three weeks ago we sent out the Troubleshooting Inbox Placement process which is a good resource to review when getting ready to participate in an affiliate promotion or even a product launch.

There are essentially three common types of affiliate promotions…

1. Personalized endorsement - You personally know Mike the Marketer and/or have used the product or service you’re recommending. This type of promotion generally reads more as a testimonial and has some credibility coming from you since you have first hand experience. These tend to do the best because the approach is normally “genuine” and the copy is custom to your experience vs. standard swipe.

2. Industry-wide product launch - These promos can cause some delivery issues due to both the content of the email messages AND the reputation of the senders. Consider sending your subscribers to an intermediary page where you can presell them on the offer with a personal video from you. You may also want to pay careful attention to the copy and make sure the email is in your “voice” rather than just copy and swipe!

3. Affiliate networks - Lots of marketers use affiliate products in their long term autoresponders (and in some cases, even for short term promotions). The problem here is with the reputation of these networks and the fact that the links are present in your email and often send your messages directly to the spam folder. Too many of these emails may cause long term delivery issues for your email program.

Next week…
Q10. Should I pay a service to clean my email addresses before mailing to them?

 

For over a decade Heather Seitz used email marketing to build successful companies and had to solve the biggest barrier to consistent profitability: deliverability. Today she is the Co-Founder and CEO of Email Delivered.

Does affiliate marketing impact reputation? Know how by visiting http://www.emaildelivered.com/does-affiliate-marketing-impact-reputation. Remember to sign up for the FREE Email Delivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources for email marketers.

July 27, 2016