Something that is not totally understood is email marketing?
So basically it’s just what the name suggests it is. In the following post we are going to give you some insight into affiliate email marketing so that you understand how powerful it can be as a promotional tool for your online business and what not to do when trying to grow your email lists.
So What Is Email Marketing?
It is the form of marketing that takes place over email. It sounds pretty simple and perhaps even mundane, but when you take into account the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on this form of online marketing every year the term seems to set off a few sparks in the mind.
As far as plugging the term down to a straight and easily comprehensible definition it’s both easy and hard. An argument can easily be made to say that the term can refer to any electronic mail sent out to any customer on your subscriber list, current or potential. The way the industry tries to use the term though is somewhat more specific.
The following points aim to sum up their way of using it:
- An advertisement added to the email communications of a third party company
- Any email sent with the intention of forming or cementing a business relationship with a potential customer, or even a customer from the past
- Any email sent to current or potential customers (Subscribers) with the intent of getting them to buy something right away
Email marketing campaigns can and have been launched by businesses of virtually every size. In fact, when done efficiently it can be seen as one of the most inexpensive forms of advertising that exists today. The smallest business operation can easily afford to send out emails to their clients alerting them of current promotions that they are offering.
Sometimes Using A Third Party Email Marketing Service Is Best
There are many companies that actually specialize in offering email marketing services such as Aweber and GetResponse. Some of them go so far as to design and execute the campaign from the ground up. Many services merely hire out a portal that helps manage the email marketing messages, sending them out in a timely manner and then monitoring responses.
This sort of thing isn’t necessarily easy for a company to handle internally, all on its own, because recipients of the emails have to, by law, be able to easily take their name off a recipient list. That’s where a lot of the managing comes into play.
Setting Up Email Marketing Newsletters Is A Very Traditional Tactic To Get Subscribers
One of the most common types of email marketing tactics is to setup a regularly send out newsletter. Customers are given the opportunity to sign up for these during visits to company websites, and then get the benefit of regularly receiving information about the company’s events and promotions.
And this is exactly the point that many seem to fail out, they know how to get the subscribers by offering something useful to them but the minute they have the email is when it all falls apart.
Do Not Overwhelm Your Subscribers With To Many Product Offers At The Start
You see many marketers are so eager to sell there products through email marketing and after all you have to admit that everywhere you look online about this subject people are telling you how much money they are making right…
So its only natural for you to load up your autoresponder with product offers that will earn you a commission.
However once you start doing this you find that you are losing more subscribers than you are getting.
Keep Your Subscribers By Building Trust First
What you need to to do when you first set up your autoresponder is set up at least seven to 10 email messages that are not selling anything at all but are actually giving you subscribers the information they have requested without the pressure of having to buy anything. Then once you have earned the trust of your subscribers you can then start slowly adding helpful products to your email while still sending helpful information.
One of the best people in the industry and who is a real email marketing guru is Ewen Chia and his Opt-in Profits course it is well written and very easy to follow to get your opt-in list working the way it should be. And rather than losing subscribers you will now be holding them and growing your email lists.
While there are a lot of benefits to this type of marketing, there are a lot of disadvantages to. Unfortunately a lot of the disadvantages stem from complete misinterpretation of what email marketing actually is. That’s a result of mass misuse of the internet for marketing purposes in its earliest days.
Misuse still continues but it is easier to keep at bay, but consumers are still very wary of any email that’s trying to sell them something.
Spam and affiliate scams are amongst the biggest turnoffs on the internet and a lot of email marketing gets associated with that. As this association dies down and people become more accustomed to accepting that form of marketing, it’s likely to only get more popular.
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Ron: Thanks for your articles. I have looked at a number of promotions by affiliate marketers, which are virtually all presented on videos that are overly-hyped; information-deficient; and time-wasting. Most border on unethical and dishonest. None tell about all the costs up front, nor does one know about the onslaught of increasingly expensive upsells that will ensue after an initial purchase until the initial purchase is made. Although they are presented as “optional,” the verbiage strongly implies that these upsells are really necessary to ‘make the system work.”
I have made inquiries to affiliate marketers of Clickbank programs and some others, but seldom receive a response, an honest response, an adequate response or anything else. I have been redirected to sites that really don’t say anything, or that are worthless otherwise. I have been told that my question has been “sent to experts” for review, which means that no one cares to spend time answering a legitilmate question, and that no one will answer anything. All of the above has left a bad taste in my mouth for affiliate marketers – especially those with Clickbank or similar programs.
Paul
Hi Paul
Sorry about the delay in responding I was away for five days and then we got hammered for 3 days with extreme weather and flooding at Tweed Heads, Australia where I am located.
I can understand exactly what you are saying here, there are just to many exaggerated claims being made online and in most cases by people that have never actually used the product or services they are promoting )Affiliates). It is only about the sale for them nothing more and at any cost to their customers. To me this is a very short sighted attitude to have and even though the internet is a large place in the eyes of many social media has made it very small and bad publicity can travel very fast.
As for Clickbank vendors and I might add this is not the fault of Clickbank but some who promote their products and services who are very unreliable again claiming to have support and will answer you within 48 hours or less but in most cases you receive nothing. This is not an isolated case just for Clickbank vendors there are many vendors online right now that are doing the exact same thing when it comes to poor support for their products or services another place you will find this is the Warrior Forum.
As an example I purchased a product from Warrior Forum and also took the up-sell that promised to make the software even more powerful and effective. The up-sell which by the way cost more than twice the price of the initial product I had purchased was nothing more than videos showing you how to use the product. To me this should have been included in the initial purchase not as an up-sell at twice the price. So I promptly asked for a refund on the up-sell which took more than five days to process after having to send five additional emails to 3 different emails.
Then something happened that I had never seen before, since I had asked for a refund from this vendor on the Warrior Forum they then blocked me from ever buying another product from them again, which to me is really bad business. The intention here is to lower their refund rate giving them a good rating in their selected affiliate network, when in actual fact if they decided to add value for money rather than making you pay additional money for the training videos they would have a much better response.
As for your email requests being bounced around I experienced that about seven years ago with a product I bought from a very influential marketer that had a 30 day money back guarantee, this product cost over $600 USD and promised everything (complete web and marketing system) but it was still in beta testing and very buggy which was never mentioned on the sales page. When I brought the problems the product had to their attention they asked if I could help them sort it out and what recommendations I had which being completely naive I did. I was told I had a direct contact with the developer of the product or so I thought anyway still to this day not sure if I did or not as none of my recommendations were ever implemented and the product died a very fast death with in six months of being released.
I also asked them for a refund during the course of the emails and was told that was not a problem so I continued to assist them to make the product better for everyone. The reason I continued helping them was firstly because they seemed sincere and had allowed me to speak with the developer to make things better and I also knew it would take some time for my credit card statement to show the return of funds and I really had no reason to doubt what I was told after all this guy was a really trusted marketer online or so I thought.
After around 45 days and no refund I again sent them my refund request this time their response was very hostile and I was declined a refund due to the reason that it had been more than 30 days, as you can see I was sucked in by their tactics and after a lot of emails I had no choice but to use my credit card provider to retrieve the funds. Doing it was very time consuming as I had to provide all correspondence between me and the vendor and it left a very bad taste in my mouth about many of the so called marketing gurus and their services. FYI – It took nearly 8 months to get my funds back.