Guest blog post written by Morgan Simon, UnsubCentral Marketing Manager.
We may be a little biased, but here at UnsubCentral we love email. Our team has many years of experience in the affiliate marketing industry and has worked with hundreds of clients on how to remain compliant while running successful email programs. Below are 5 of our favorite reasons to add email as a channel to your affiliate program.
- Email outshines almost every other channel. The Direct Marketing Association reported that email has a ROI of 4300% and ExactTarget says that for every $1 spent, the average return on email marketing investment is an astounding $44.25. With facts like that, it’s difficult to imagine why anybody wouldn’t include email in their affiliate program!
- Email is trackable – all around. We all love performance marketing because it’s pay to play. As great as that is, sometimes it is just as valuable to see the negative impact of affiliate performance as it is to see the positive. With email, you not only get to see affiliate impressions, clicks and conversions but you also get to see the unsubscribes generated on an individual affiliate basis. By knowing who is unsubscribing from affiliate emails, you can gain valuable insight as to the quality of the partner and their list.
- Email is Segmented. Publishers today are savvy, and have highly segmented databases of users. Rather than targeting based on a previous action, email is focused on an actual person. The best email partners will have segmented email lists, meaning your offer will only be sent to high quality prospects that match your target market.
- Better Targeting. With other channels, there isn’t a good way to enforce that publishers don’t distribute offers to your current customer base. This is a recipe for disaster, as there’s nothing more frustrating for a consumer than receiving a ‘New Customer Offer’ when they’ve been a loyal customer of a company for years. With email, you simply upload your current customer list to your suppression file, so affiliates don’t send them acquisition offers.
- Ease in Management. Managing affiliate email is as seamless as any other channel, due in large part to the automation between systems. Full integration between UnsubCentral, CAKE and your Email Service Provider means that once you have everything in place for your email affiliate program, a big part of your job will be completely automated.
Do you have any questions about how to add email to your affiliate program? Not sure where to start? We’d love to help! You can reach out to us here or read more on our blog.
Written by Morgan Simon, UnsubCentral Marketing Manager
