Affiliate marketing Email marketing Passive Income

September 7th, 2021

Affiliate Marketing by Email – is it Legit?!

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Recently, there have been a few cases of bloggers and online business owners being kicked out of email marketing platforms such as Mailerlite just for using a few affiliate links which has understandably led to some concern amongst the blogging community

Affiliate marketing by email is one of the most lucrative ways that online business owners and bloggers can make passive income. So it’s understandable that many bloggers & affiliate marketers panicked when they read about recent issues. 

So in this article, I will be addressing what type of email affiliate marketing is allowed (and even encouraged) and what type isn’t so that you don’t land in hot water with your email service provider (ESP)!     

Can You Put Affiliate Links In Emails? Is it allowed?

The good news is that email affiliate marketing IS legit and is still a great way to make money online providing you follow some basic rules… 

Some email providers are more tolerant of affiliate marketing than others and some email platforms have totally ambiguous affiliate marketing policies leaving bloggers feeling totally baffled!

(Mailchimp I’m looking at you!)

You also have to be mindful of specific policies for each individual affiliate program. Most will allow you to use affiliate links in emails and some even supply email swipe copy for your benefit.

However, others (like Amazon Associates) do not allow you to use affiliate links in emails at all. Fortunately, there are very few affiliate programs that take issue with it and most actively encourage you to promote their products in your email newsletters!

Now where things get confusing is that some email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and Mailerlite specify that whilst they allow affiliate links, they don’t allow affiliate marketing. 

Okay… who’s feeling confused now?! 

What they actually mean (when you read into the small print) is that whilst affiliate links are absolutely okay to use inside your emails, your email list shouldn’t be used purely to promote other brands. 

What they don’t want is people building lists purely with the intention to spam them with any offer regardless of whether it is relevant to the reader.  Emails like that tend to get high spam scores and reduce the deliverability scores for email service providers.  Hence why they wish to discourage you from sending those sorts of emails.

What you ARE allowed to do is to send emails and newsletters which include affiliate links within the content as long as your email is not JUST about the affiliate link. 

Instead, provide value inside your newsletters. Value can come in many forms. It might be a funny or interesting story, a useful tip or an update about something relevant to your niche.

It’s good practice to make sure that not every link you use is an affiliate link. Instead, mix things up. Sometimes promote a blog post or suggest your subscribers follow you on social media. Or if you sell your own digital products or Etsy store, you can promote those instead. 

As long as you are providing value in your newsletter content then you shouldn’t have a problem with affiliate marketing by email and it can be a great way to earn passive income in your business.

The other thing you should know is that some email service providers screen your emails for links to specific banned affiliate programs. Usually, these are companies with high spam scores, for example, a betting site. 

Unfortunately, the platforms which mention these ‘black lists’ in their terms and conditions also don’t publish these lists. Therefore you could link out to one accidentally without realising it was banned. 

That’s why I recommend avoiding any ESP with ambiguous T&C’s like Mailchimp. Instead, choose a platform that actively encourages non-spammy affiliate marketing via email such as Convertkit.   

Email marketing for affiliates – best practices to avoid any Issues!

Follow these affiliate marketing email best practices to avoid getting in trouble with your email service provider whilst earning plenty of those affiliate commissions… 

  • Don’t ONLY share affiliate links. Make sure you mix up your outbound links including links to your blog articles, links to new freebies, links to your own digital products or links to other relevant content.
  • Keep to your niche. The more niche your emails are, the higher your open rate and engagement will be. If you keep your subscribers happy then your ESP should be happy too!
  • Give more than you take. Make sure every email provides some value such as a story, anecdote, tip or learning point. 
  • Don’t link to anything remotely spammy such as betting sites or loan companies.
  • Before choosing an email service provider, read the small print and understand what their policy is on affiliate links. Avoid any with ambiguous or vague policies. I personally recommend Convertkit, a platform built by bloggers for bloggers.
  • Always, always disclose your affiliate links! 

Benefits of affiliate marketing by email

Email affiliate marketing can be even more lucrative than using affiliate links in blog content. That’s because your subscribers will come to know, like, and trust you over time. 

People are far more likely to trust your recommendations and sit up and take notice when you send an email. Therefore, conversion rates can be pretty high! 

The average open: click-through ratio for email is around 1 in 10. Compare that to an average click-through rate of 1-2 % for blog posts. You could get 10X as many click-throughs and many more commissions. 

It’s also a great way of earning passive income with a set-and-forget approach.

If you create affiliate email funnels, all you need to do on an ongoing basis is to drive traffic to it by promoting your freebie across your social media channels to get people into your funnel.

You can automate this with tools such as Smarter Queue and Tailwind. You could also consider running Facebook ads if your funnel is converting well.

Promoting links to your affiliate articles to your email list is a great way to give a brand new article a little traffic push with lots of eyes on your article early on helping you to share it far and wide. You don’t have to wait for a search engine to discover your article or hope that the Pinterest algorithm is your friend that day! 

Finally, email marketing is a channel that is safe from algorithm changes unlike social media marketing. So even if Facebook or Pinterest throws a wobbly, you can still get eyes on your affiliate links via your email list. 

2 ways to make money with your email list with affiliate marketing

There are two main ways to earn money with affiliate marketing by email. 

1. Create affiliate email funnels. These email campaigns start with a lead magnet that is relevant to the affiliate product you will ultimately be promoting. You then warm them up with a series of high-value tip-based emails before sending promotional emails to a nicely warmed-up audience.

2. Include affiliate links in your weekly newsletter. This could be something as simple as a PS my favourite [X] are on sale, check them out here before [X date.] Or you could create your whole newsletter around the topic of your affiliate product!

How to build an email list for affiliate marketing

Step 1: Create an incentive to get email addresses

These days, we are all signed up to a LOT of newsletters, right?! So to get your reader to part with their email address, you need to offer them something enticing in return.

This is usually in the form of a freebie which your reader can download. This is also known as a lead magnet. 

Ideally, the freebie will be somehow related to the affiliate product you wish to promote. However, it could also be something that the same audience would be interested in. 

For example, if you are promoting a pair of hiking boots, you might giveaway a buying guide to help someone choose a pair of hiking boots. That leads nicely to promoting the boots. However, a free PDF guide about hiking for beginners could also appeal to the same audience. 

When someone signs up for your newsletter, you send them the freebie inside your welcome email. 

Without lead magnets, you will probably find list growth a real uphill battle. But the right freebie can do wonders. In fact, some of mine get 8-10% page views to sign up conversions! 

Freebies or lead magnets are usually displayed on inline forms where someone can submit their first name and email address. 

You can also display your freebie on ribbon banner ads or as pop-ups. Pop-ups often get the highest conversion rates but make sure you set yours to show up once someone is already engaged with your page (not the second they land on it) and make sure they are easy to close down to avoid annoying your readers.

I use Convertbox for the pop-up messages that you’ll see from time to time on this site. 

I also like to create a landing page just to promote my freebie and I’ll mention that everywhere on social media. Pinterest can also be a great tool to drive traffic direct to your lead magnet.

Step 2: Warm them up with your welcome sequence. 

Once you have someone on your email list, you need to nurture that relationship helping them to know, like and trust you. 

Start with a welcome email where you deliver your freebie, tell your audience what to expect from your newsletters, how often you’ll be in touch and perhaps share a bit of your back story. 

It’s also good practice to advise them to add you to their address book or reply to a question. That way you are more likely to get into their primary inbox in the future and skip the promo folder!

After your welcome email, send them a few emails packed with value and tips related to the lead magnet they signed up for. Be generous with these emails as you want to get your readers hooked and keen to read more.

I tend to send around 3 warm-up emails. My schedule looks a bit like this: 

Day 1: welcome email + lead magnet delivery 

Day 2: Warm-up email 1 

Day 4: Warm-up email 2 

Day 7: Warm-up email 3

(See how the spacing increases over a few days?!)

Step 4: Send them through an affiliate promo sequence 

Now your audience are warmed up and excited to open your emails, it’s time to put them through a mini affiliate sales funnel using email automation. 

The goal of this affiliate email campaign is to get people interested and clicking through to the product you think they may be interested in.

But as we’ve mentioned already, it’s super important that these emails remain valuable.  

So think about how you can lead into promoting the product by telling a funny story or sharing a useful tip!

My affiliate funnels are usually 2 (max 3) emails long. One email to intrigue and the next to encourage the reader to take action. 

Having more than one email in this sequence also means more people will see it because not everyone will open every email you send.

Step 5: Add them to your newsletter

If you have other relevant offers, you could continue this funnel. In which case, make sure you sandwich any affiliate funnels with high-value education/ inspirational/entertainment emails. 

The other option is to tag this new subscriber as ready for your newsletter. 

I like to do it this way so that I don’t bombard my subscribers with too many emails when they are still going through my funnels. They only receive my weekly email when they have finished going through my funnels.

You can also include affiliate links in your newsletters.

I find sharing links during sales/discount periods converts well as the element of urgency helps readers become action takers. 

The key to being successful with affiliate marketing by email

1. Follow the rules. Don’t be tempted to spam affiliate links every 5 seconds or miss off your affiliate disclosure. Apart from anything, your audience will get fed up and stop reading your emails. And of course, there’s the possibility your email marketing provider will flag you as spammy. Always give more than you take and play by the book!

2. Give your audience a good reason to know, like, and trust you. Your audience will be far more likely to make purchases based on your advice if they start to think of you as a friend. So treat them as a friend.

Keep your emails light and jovial and stay authentic and true to yourself at all times. Also, try to respond to email replies – these are your most loyal followers and you want to nurture those relationships especially well!

3. Show up. If you only email once in a blue moon, your audience will forget who you are and will be less likely to trust your judgment (and also more likely to unsubscribe.) 

Not every email needs to be a masterpiece.  Sometimes just checking in with your audience to ask if they have any questions is enough for an email. Other times you might link to your new blog post or talk about how you show up differently on another social platform.

Just make sure you are showing up at least once every 2 weeks to keep that relationship going and make sure that your name and your business stay front of mind. 

4. Explain your reasoning. Saying ‘buy this, it’s great’ just isn’t going to cut it. You need to be very clear about why the product you are promoting is better than its competition.  

5. Focus on the benefits more than the features. Rather than just outlining the features of a product, focus on how each of those features will benefit you. Will they save you time or money? Help you achieve a goal. What will that look like? What can you do with that extra time/money? Get descriptive and paint an ‘after picture.’ 

6. Don’t go for the hard sell. It can seem pushy and annoying and you may find you get lots of unsubscribes. Your emails should feel more like a letter from a friend, where you have their best interests at heart.

7. Choose your affiliate program wisely. Choose an affiliate program with a decent commission rate and a fair cookie period. Focussing on high ticket products will also help you earn bigger affiliate commissions faster and with less effort! 

8. Focus on solving problems with affiliate products. People buy into solutions not products so you are far more likely to persuade readers to become customers if you can show them how your product can solve a specific product that they have!

Which email marketing platform to choose for email affiliate marketing 

If you plan to use affiliate marketing as one of your main ways to earn income with your email list then choose your email service provider wisely! 

Mailchimp has always been pretty ambiguous and I have heard of people running into issues using affiliate links. Therefore, I recommend that most bloggers avoid using this platform. 

Mailerlite is historically a better option however this is the platform where some bloggers ran into issues recently. On reviewing the latest terms and conditions, I’d argue that they are almost as ambiguous as Mailchimps with mention of a black list that isn’t published anywhere. 

Mailerlite is, however, free for your first 1000 subscribers which makes it very appealing for beginner email affiliate marketers.

The email marketing platform that I do recommend for affiliate marketing by email is Convertkit. 

It’s an email service provider created by  Nathan Barry who is also a blogger and who has built a platform around the needs of other bloggers.  

Convertkit even posts articles on their own blog feed training bloggers how to use affiliate links effectively in their emails. So it’s pretty safe to say that affiliate links are allowed and even encouraged. 

The other benefit of using Convertkit is that it offers an excellent system for creating email funnels or affiliate campaigns using simple workflows. 

You can even reuse email sequences in different funnels so if you want to put two groups of subscribers through the same funnels advertising your affiliate product then you can do. 

For example, if you are a US-based travel blogger, you may have lead magnets specific to US locations e.g. a New York packing list or a guide to the best restaurants in Chicago. But both sets of subscribers would probably be interested in how you book cheap flights. 

Convertkit lets you re-use your affiliate promotional sequence without risking the person getting the emails twice if they happen to sign up for both your packing list and your restaurant guide.

Clever, right?! 

This was one of my favourite things when I moved from Mailerlite to Convertkit last year. As well as the useful tagging system.

So if you plan to use affiliate links in your emails, then I would encourage you to opt for Convertkit.  They do have a free plan if you are just getting started but please note that to set up automated affiliate email funnels, you will need the Creator plan. 

How to protect your email list

Unfortunately, even when you are obeying every rule, there’s still theoretically a chance you will be incorrectly flagged as using affiliate links inappropriately.

If this happens, you should contact them and appeal the decision. But in the unlikely event that they shut down your email account with them, you need to know that your email list is protected.

Firstly, make sure you have a copy of your email funnels somewhere so you don’t have to re-write all your funnels when you move platforms. ]

Secondly, every week or so, download a CSV file of your subscribers. If you had to move to a new email platform, you could upload that list and retain your list of email subscribers.

I want to stress this is VERY unlikely to happen to you. But I’d still like you to be protected should the worst happen!

How to learn more about email affiliate marketing 

Affiliate email campaigns and funnels are covered inside my course Affiliate Marketing Superstars. This course also covers other advanced topics such as Pinterest affiliate marketing and promoting open-close cart sales.

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Have you tried using affiliate links in your emails? How did you get on? Let us know in the comments section!

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