Even though a lot of marketers are turning to social media to ‘tweet’ their message, email is still a powerful way to promote your ClickBank products. With over 100,000 subscribers on our mailing list, Affilorama has to wield the power of this medium carefully. Emails that are overly promotional quickly turn potential customers into irritated readers who won’t think twice about hitting the delete button or, worse, reporting it as spam.

By providing value to subscribers we’ve been able to prove the ‘money in the list’ axiom true (we can’t release exact figures but sales improve around 300% with a good email newsletter) and we’d like to share a few secrets we’ve learned along the way that you can use to market ClickBank products or create newsletter collateral for your affiliates.

Beware of these 3 dangers!

Before we talk about what you should be doing to promote products using email, here’s a little checklist of things which can help you avoid being tagged as a spammer. Sure, they might be common knowledge, but they are important enough to be repeated.

• Beware of honeypots – Honeypots are a form of spam traps. Spam traps are specifically set up with the aim of catching spammers. They are email addresses “hidden” on a web page, but which can be found by address harvesting programs, commonly used by spammers. Unfortunately it can affect legitimate email marketers, too. In one case, a prominent email marketer lost 100,000 email addresses after a honeypot email address was added to their list by a competitor. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, choose an email service that offers a double opt-in option. This way any email address has to be verified with a confirmation email before being added to your list.
• Get familiar with the law – Laws on emailing people vary from one country to another so make sure that you are familiar with the legislation that governs electronic messages. For example, the CAN-SPAM act introduced in the US in 2003 dictates how businesses should follow certain protocols when sending emails to avoid prosecution. The FTC provides a good explanation of what it means for commercial email marketers, such as affiliates.
• Make it easy to unsubscribe – Sure you don’t want to actively encourage people to leave your list after you’ve worked so hard to sign them up, but if you make it difficult, complicated, or hide unsubscribe options, not only will you lose them mentally but instead of unsubscribing they’ll probably report you as spam. And make sure your process unsubscribes within a week (most email services do it automatically).

Enough of the ‘shalt nots’, time to move on to some good ideas for getting ‘bang for your buck’ out of your email newsletter.

4 secrets of effective email marketing

I’ve picked 4 because it’s a nice even number, not because there are only 4. In fact, there are plenty more and I invite you to add your own in the comments, but for now here’s a quick rundown of four ideas that will get your email promotions off to a good start.

• Kick off with a fantastic subject line – Some people have to deal with so many emails that they often make a decision on whether to read an email based on the subject line – so think of it as your one shot at glory. Give them a great reason to read your email, such as “1-day 50% off sale” or “5 reasons why your dog doesn’t listen to you.” The better you know your audience, the more effective your subject lines will be.
• Remind them why they signed up – Sometimes people sign up in a moment of weakness. To keep them on your list, you’ll need to regularly remind them that it was a good choice. By listing reasons why it’s good to be a subscriber (exclusive offers, secret links to valuable resources, etc.) you’ll not only make them feel good about being a subscriber, they’ll actually look forward to your next newsletter and may even encourage their friends to sign up.
• Create valuable content – This point probably suffers from a bit of overuse but it can’t be stressed enough, particularly when you have a commercial overtone. Some successful email marketers will only send a sales email every 4^th or 5^th email – the rest will just be useful content that they give away for free. When promoting ClickBank products this should be easy, since you quite likely have good information on the niche from the merchant, PLR content, or your own research. This can easily be packaged into an email to give your readers value.
• Set an expectation for frequency – The key with frequency is to strike a happy medium. With email frequency, this is more about setting expectations, rather than a particular interval. For example, if you offer a free six-day mini-course then obviously your subscribers will be expecting an email a day for the next six days. Beyond that, a weekly email might be the right frequency, particularly if your emails are short, relevant, and to the point. The other extreme is not emailing them for weeks, then surprising them (not in a good way) with something out of the blue. By that time, there’s every chance they will have forgotten they subscribed in the first place!

Build, test and tweak!

As you spend time writing your emails, you may run into questions about whether to include direct links to the vendor or send people to your own website. Like other issues you may face with your emails, there’s often no right or wrong answer, and it may well depend on your audience. If they don’t click through to your website, then it may be better to try sending them direct to the vendor instead (remembering to track your HopLinks with a unique TID so you know how effective your emails are).

It’s all about testing to find out what works, and then tweaking so your emails hit their target.

Using email to promote ClickBank products is a great investment for times when organic traffic to your site drops off. This could be due to any number of reasons, from increased competition to poor ranking for an important keyword.

If you have a list to promote to, you won’t just be sitting back hoping buyer traffic will find your site – you will be proactively reaching out to them. Do it right and you’ll find it an effective way to increase your ClickBank sales.

So if you don’t already promote ClickBank products by email, what’s stopping you? Have you found a winning formula for writing effective emails that provide value to the reader but also promote your ClickBank products?

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. You can follow them on Twitter.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Acquiring Leads: How to Capture Visitors’ Email Addresses Before They Leave
2. 7 Steps to a Killer Newsletter Strategy
3. Choosing the Best Keywords to Promote ClickBank Products Using Search Engines

I need to get something out of the way…I am a Twitter fanatic. In fact, it would come as no surprise to me if my wife was spending every free minute she has in order to learn how to become a hacker so that she could take it down and have her husband back (I’m really not that bad, but you get the idea).

So considering that fact that I spend a lot of my time learning how to master the art of Twitter marketing and that I’ve even created my own Twitter products, what I am about to say might be a little too close to the bone…even for me.

However, the truth is the truth and if we try to hide from it, then we end up dying because of it. And here it is:

99% of the affiliate marketers on Twitter have zero idea how to market correctly.

Furthermore, many of those that don’t get it are teaching new users how not to get it too, leading to a cycle of spam, crappy auto-DM’s, and accounts that get suspended or marked as spam before they have even had a chance to flourish.

So, what are they doing, and why are they doing it? Let’s tackle the former first.

1. If you want to sell an affiliate product on Twitter, you cannot expect to be able to do it in 140 characters, and yet, that’s what many marketers try to do. Their Twitter streams are filled with blatant sales pitches, so much so that you start to wonder if there is a real person behind the curtain.

Look, if I don’t know who you are, I don’t know where you are linking to, and I don’t see anything but pitches in your Twitter stream, then I am not going to click through. If I do, if you get lucky, you will see me hit the back button before the page even finishes loading.

2. You cannot take over someone’s DM’s (Direct Messages) and have them send out spam on your behalf. Aside from the fact that it is extremely annoying, it takes advantage of people that don’t know any better. You are actually hurting your customer in the process. Hit-and-run business tactics are shameful and will not help you in the long run.

3. Creating a product that only teaches people how to make money on Twitter by promoting your “make money on Twitter” product is, well, just sad. Sure, you might make a few bucks, but what does that get you? Again, it is this type of short term thinking that turns Twitter into a madhouse and creates an environment where marketers are no longer trusted. At that point, you’ve ruined it for all of us. Thanks.

4. Perhaps the most blatant offender is the reply spammer, which is relatively new to the scene. These people reply to popular Twitter users with an affiliate link, and try to trick people into clicking. These reply spammers also try to trick the popular person’s followers, because at first glance, it looks like the Tweet is coming from them. Considering most of these tweets look identical, I simply click the block button and move on. Get blocked often enough and you’ll be suspended. Good luck getting your account back.

So Why Are They Doing It?

1. Most affiliate marketers on Twitter are doing this because they are too lazy to learn how to effectively sell affiliate products. You shouldn’t try to sell someone in a PPC ad; you bring them to your sales page so that your sales letter can do the selling. It’s the same with Twitter. To do this, though, you’ve got to be relevant, which means that not everything you say can be a sales pitch. When it is, though, it has to address the needs of your list. Sending out blanket replies just doesn’t work.

2. Sadly, many people buy systems that tell them that these methods work. To make matters worse, many of them use viral friend adders that help them get recognition and more marketers promoting their products. Eventually, regardless of how faulty the system is, it spreads like wildfire. Everyone gets caught, no one wins.

3. They aren’t interested in helping people. The last category is comprised of marketers that use the same tactics in other venues. They use software to generate new accounts by the dozens, so they don’t care if they get suspended. They aren’t interested in helping people…they simply want to make an easy buck.

So How Do You Sell on Twitter?

I’ve written about this extensively because it is a matter that I am extremely passionate about. I am tired of shady marketers ruining it for everyone and more importantly, I’m tired of seeing new people get taken advantage of.

So here’s the truth:

If you want to sell on Twitter, you have to build relationships and create targeted lists based on interests. Once you learn how to build these networks (which really is easy to do), you can link to relevant affiliate offers without having to worry about getting unfollowed or blocked. The key is to let the content, not a Tweet, do the selling. If everything you say on Twitter is a pitch of some sort, it won’t work. However, if you learn to be relevant and helpful, your random pitch will not only be noticed, but will be appreciated.

People love to buy…we love to consume great content. However, we have to be warmed up before we do it. On social networks, it’s the relationships that sell, not the message. It’s really up to you, though. You can spam people and make a quick buck (maybe), or you can build credibility and build a successful business. In my opinion, taking the latter route is much more efficient.

About the Author: Nathan Hangen writes about web entrepreneurship at NathanHangen.com, and about how to use social media to fuel your brand at Making It Social . Follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Follow ClickBank on Twitter
2. Promote ClickBank Products Using Twitter: Part Two
3. Promote ClickBank Products Using Twitter: Part One