Learn the best affiliate marketing strategies to be successful as an affiliate marketer.
IE 349: Best Affiliate Marketing Strategies with Jessica Evans
Jessica Evans is the CEO of Ultimate Bundles.
She began as a customer, became an affiliate, and in 2017 joined their Customer Happiness team.
In 2022, she purchased the company because she loved what Ultimate Bundles represented and had the experience in the affiliate space to help the partners.
Ultimate Bundles has affiliate options that do not have a lot of rules so that even those without huge lists or smaller social media followings are still able to participate. They believe the quality of the followers is more important.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is promoting someone else’s product or service so that you can earn commission on the sales that you help generate.
Sponsorships and affiliate marketing are not the same thing. There are very different goals for each.
Sponsorships are only paying one fee while affiliate marketing allows you to earn unlimited fees based on how much you sell.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing is a revenue stream for your business. You share things that your customers can benefit from and things that you use and trust.
You earn commission by either launching with the affiliate program or using it as an evergreen affiliate option.
Some of these are recurring subscriptions. Others, such as Ultimate Bundles, are only launched periodically for a limited time.
During that time, you have the opportunity to earn a lot of commission.
Jessica had a blog before owning Ultimate Bundles. She had different types of affiliate options through which she made money.
She earned the most through Ultimate Bundles even though it was a short sales period.
She partnered with subscription base affiliates and reminded her blog and email readers when those subscription options were available.
Some of those examples are Podia and ConvertKit. That income is recurring every month and pushes the needle on your income.
You can also partner with courses and other evergreen options that are always available.
You might add those to your blog posts or emails but might not necessarily push those hard, just have them as options for your readers.
There are lots of affiliate options and you need to work with the brands that will resonate best with your audience.
You will segment your audience by type and share the affiliate options that you feel will be a good fit for that category.
You can narrow the segments into many different areas. For example, you can split your families into those with young children and those without.
What affiliate marketing strategies should bloggers and influencers use to promote their partners?
This will depend on where your audience is. For many people, email is very strong because you can mostly control this.
You don’t have to worry about algorithms or Google indexing your blog posts, rankings, etc.
Where is your audience? If you are strictly an influencer on social media, that is where you will share your affiliate links.
If you have a ton of traffic coming into your website and also have display ads, then you can add this and also blog posts. You do want to show it on social media also.
They say it takes seven views for people to purchase. It also shows people what you have participated with in the past.
If you have a blog, creating a post is where you should start. Using your email, no matter what size it is, is also a great way to market the affiliate program.
Your results will depend on how active and invested your subscribers are. Go where your people are and just start. Get in front of them.
It isn’t as scary as you think it will be. You have to build the know-trust factor so people will take action, even if that is just looking at the sales page.
What is a B2C affiliate marketing example that you could provide?
I think using a variety of options is good. Email marketing is great but you cannot (or maybe shouldn’t) provide a lot of details in depth.
If you can have somewhere to direct them to the sales page of the product that you are promoting, that is good.
This can be a review or just the details of the product. Reviews are a personal way to show the human factor and how much you appreciate the product you are promoting.
The goal is to promote products that resonate with you and your audience. You can push hard on those.
- Start with a blog post.
- Post on social media (but don’t rely solely on this).
- Email your audience.
The team at Ultimate Bundles has the entire promotion schedule planned out for you with options for light, intermediate, and heavy promotion options.
If you are using the heavy option, they recommend emailing a minimum of every day, twice on the last day, and twice at the end of the early bird option.
Everyone panics when they see that because they don’t want to email their audience every day. Owning this, however, and emailing every day can quadruple your income.
Again, this goes back to people seeing the sale seven times before they even take a simple action, like getting a freebie or opting in.
They may not even buy yet. Keeping the product in front of them is important.
Most people don’t open every email, even people they know. Your audience will not be seeing all 10-12 emails that you send over the launch period.
Emails might end up in the regular box, the promotions tab, etc. They may not all get delivered.
Rarely will your audience get upset about this. If they do, they might not be your perfect audience and will unsubscribe.
Pruning your list is okay because it helps your open rate. You don’t want to pay for people just to sit on your list if they are not opening your emails or following through to click anything.
You will also get people who email you to thank you for the last-minute reminder because they forgot and the sale is ending.
What is one affiliate marketing tip for beginners and one for experts?
For beginners in the affiliate marketing area, remember that you cannot sell something if you do not share it.
The easiest way to do this is a blog post because it can be accessed by different means.
Social media, emails, and cold traffic can all be redirected back to the affiliate link.
Direct or organic traffic from Google may see it also.
Promote it to your list, no matter the size. Nurture your list to build the trust factor. The more trust you build, the better your sales will be.
Sometimes, people with smaller lists do better because they have a great audience that is very engaged.
For the experts, emails are important. You have to hit the list hard and have good content and presentation.
For seasoned bloggers and those engaging in affiliate marketing, it is okay to send lots of emails to your audience.
This will help you see more conversions and you will get more income.
Ultimate Bundles and other affiliate programs provide swipe copy which is good for both beginners and experts.
Tweak the swipe copy by giving it an intro and making it personal. Add stories and glimpses of your life to make you human.
The swipe copy works and people are using it with success. It is an easy way to do it when you don’t have the time.
The testing has been done because brands won’t send you swipe copy that doesn’t work. It will be good.
All of the details are in it so you don’t accidentally get the wrong price or product name. Swipe copy is accessible to everyone and it will convert.
What are the biggest mistakes made in affiliate marketing?
The biggest mistake in affiliate marketing is not emailing enough.
As far as the copy goes, you cannot just talk about what the product is.
You need to make sure that copy shows the future purchaser how the product benefits them or even how it benefited you.
Turn it around and give them examples. What will work for them? You cannot just do a hard sell.
You need to include stories and the human touch to ensure the product will work for your audience.
Sales pages alone are cold, lifeless, lack personality, and there is no demonstration of how the product will help your audience.
Emphasize their pain points and make them think you are inside their house watching them and can relate.
You can even do that with your email subject lines. Hit the pain points that your readers can relate to.
Affiliate Marketing Guide
This Affiliate Marketing Guide lists the tips that are proven to work for affiliate marketing. It will help you if you are new or seasoned.
It is a reminder of how many times they need to see your marketing, the places you can share, where your audience lives, and how your products can benefit your audience.
Action Steps:
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