If you’re on a few internet marketing email lists, you ought to know the common practice of affiliate marketing via email list. You know, every week there’s a couple of new products and you get emails how great they are and that you should buy them immediately.
No wonder that it’s often associated with spam. It is a terrible practice and is one of many things that puts bad name on affiliate marketing, and internet marketing in general. Some of those marketers must have inexhaustible sources for new leads and don’t care that with every such broadcast they lose a big part of their list; others are plain “uneducated”.
But there are ways to promote affiliate offers and stay cool doing so, and I’m gonna cover one right now.
The reason why most marketers send those canned emails is because they are disillusioned by the promise of commission, or they are indebted to do it (they had their product promoted so now they have to do the same). Have you noticed that many affiliate programs use the same marketing tricks to attract affiliates as they do to sell “get rich quick” products? Affiliate “spam” is then the result of this. If you have a list, don’t fall for that.
By making just a little effort (not much at all) you can send an affiliate offer that won’t be seen as spam and will be much more responsive. The idea is… promoting the products you use yourself! How shocking is that?
All you have to do is tell in your message that to do something you use a particular product and you recommend it. It’s an age old concept that seems to be often forgotten, but it works and you keep your conscience calm knowing that you promote something that you use yourself and know it’s good.
Better yet, instead of a direct promotion, write a honest review from your own experience and send them to the review. That’s as soft selling as it gets.
So the plan is:
- Select a product you use yourself
- Write a review on your blog
- Send a link to the review to your list (or add it to an autoresponder series)
Perhaps it won’t yield in as high results right off the bat as promoting a hyped up launch, but if you take into account the refunds and lost subscribers, in the long run it pays off.
Same thing applies in any promotion, really, not only in email marketing.
Good post. An honest review is always more welcome than a sales pitch. At least that way your customers know you have tried the product yourself before pitching it to them.
That is so true. Being on a list that promotes every other product each day is downright annoying. I click unsubscribe real fast when that happens….
At least, if you try the product first, then promote it on your list, your message will carry more weight.
Honest advice is so valuable! And it is quite hard tio find one in the internet. I’m just beginning to make my own business, so you understand how it is inmportant to me. And this thing about trying any promoted products by myself I’ll remember. I so this only in one more place – it is Mike’s blog There is also many honest advices for entire newbies, like me. So don’t think I’m a spammer, I’m just thinkikng about the same newbies as I am!
P.S. Sorry for my English – it is not my native language…
Great post ! I’ve found even a simple image of your self with the products works really well, I thinks it shows that you trust the product enough to spend money on it, which in turn makes your readers more willing to part with their cash