Are you an affiliate marketer using ClickFunnels? If so, then you’re probably brainstorming the best ways to help kickstart your email marketing game. A lot of gurus and experts say that affiliate marketing is easy. You and I know otherwise.
The problem is that competition is fierce these days. That’s exactly why I’m always ranting about the power of email marketing. Even in our world of social media, I think that email marketing still reigns supreme, especially for the tiny one-person-marketing teams of the world like me, and maybe you.
Let’s spend a few minutes brainstorming 5 of my favorite email marketing tips for affiliates using ClickFunnels.
Because I know how depressing it can seem when you bend over backward and try your best to promote your favorite offers, but your promotions still fall flat! I honestly think that email marketing is your secret weapon as an affiliate!
Rant aside, let’s brainstorm my 5 favorite email marketing tips for affiliate marketers in any niche:
5 Email Marketing Tips For Affiliate Marketers Who Use ClickFunnels
- Share free courses and memberships with your subscribers that pre-sell your affiliate offers
- Remember that different subscribers enjoy different content formats
- Try to split test different lead generation funnels
- Consider automatically following up with your subscribers
- Recognize the power of webinar marketing funnels even for affiliates
After email marketing extensively over the years, these are 5 of my favorite tips to help kickstart or enhance your affiliate marketing promotions.
Let’s spend a few more minutes going into much more detail, and I’ll unpack some of the nifty affiliate marketing nuances.
5 Of The Best Email Marketing Tips For Affiliate Marketers Using ClickFunnels:
# 1 – Share Free Courses And Memberships With Your Subscribers That Pre-Sell Your Affiliate Offers
I honestly believe that teachers make the best affiliates. When you teach a course you have a chance to build strong relationships, rapport, and authority. All of these branding attributes are helpful for affiliate marketers!
I also think that if you share fantastic content and teaching material with your subscribers, they’re much more likely to appreciate and love your email newsletter.
For those reasons, I think that if you want to promote an affiliate offer, then creating an entire course that showcases your offer is a fantastic idea.
For example, let’s pretend that you want to promote AWeber (an email marketing software) as an affiliate.
There are so many nifty course lectures you could create around the topics of email marketing.
Here Are A Few Course Ideas You Could Create:
- You could create a lead generation course.
- Teach a course that teaches about lead magnets.
- Teach a course about email copywriting.
- Teach an email marketing home study course.
- Teach a course that teaches how to build a fantastic lead capture page.
- Teach a course that shows how to generate leads with content marketing.
- Teach a course that teaches how to drive traffic with paid Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram ads.
As you can see, there are so many creative course ideas you could teach in the email marketing niche. You could then launch an awesome membership funnel using ClickFunnels.
At the end of each video, you could gently promote your AWeber affiliate link or any other affiliate link that you wish to promote.
The idea here is to give massive value first and to supplement and augment the offer that you want to advertise by creating educational content around that product, topic, or offer.
Naturally, creating course lectures and courses requires effort! However, at the very least, your students and email subscribers will appreciate your effort!
Besides, I’m a lazy human (lol) and even I have managed to create dozens of online courses. If my lazy self can push myself to teach a few online courses, then you can too!
I’m a firm believer in karma. I think that if you create fantastic course content, your subscribers will at the very least appreciate your hard efforts, and I think if your course content is helpful then it can help enhance the product that you’re teaching and showcasing. Teaching is a win/win/win!
# 2 – Remember That Different Subscribers Enjoy Different Content Formats
Remember that not all of your subscribers like all formats. For example, let’s pretend that all of your emails contain links to your latest blog posts. The problem is that not everyone likes to read!
What happens if your subscribers would prefer audio? Or video? Or an infographic? Or social media content?
Take me for example. I loathe listening to long Podcasts. I can’t stand how some Podcasts last for over an hour, or sometimes for many hours! I would much prefer to read a blog post than listen to a Podcast.
That said, many people love long-form Podcasts and despise reading blog posts! Some of the most popular podcast episodes on the planet are extraordinarily long and they go on for hours.
The point to this rant is that not everyone enjoys content in the same format. So, try to switch up the emails that you send to your email list.
That’s another reason I’m a huge fan of ClickFunnels. You can easily test and tweak different landing pages and marketing funnel formats that showcase text or embedded video formats so you can test to see what your audience likes.
One simple thing to experiment with is a simple bridge page funnel. This can be a great way to showcase a new tutorial, a course lecture, a special announcement, or a promotion.
Another big reason why I love bridge funnels is that you can easily use them to promote just about any offer under the sun! Also, just food for thought – you can always post transcripts below your video just in case your subscribers don’t like to watch long videos!
# 3 – Try to Split Test Different Lead Generation Funnels
What’s your bread and butter lead generation method? I love to use traditional email course funnels. The main reason I love email course funnels is that I love to write.
What about you? If you’re not sure which lead generation funnel you love the most, it’s probably a great idea to split test and experiment so you can find out which style resonates the best with your prospective subscribers.
Here Are A Few Cool Marketing Funnel Formats To Experiment With And Test:
- Bridge page funnels
- Book funnels
- Course funnels
- Hero funnels
- Reverse squeeze page funnels
- Membership funnels
- Survey funnels
The best part about all of these funnels is that ClickFunnels makes the entire funnel launching process elementary with zero coding skills required.
Even if you don’t enjoy the graphic designing or copywriting aspects of lead generation ClickFunnels makes the entire process very simple. That way, you can create a wide variety of lead generation funnels and experiment to your heart’s content.
# 4 – Consider Automatically Following Up With Your Subscribers
One of the most frustrating things in the world is when you have fresh leads coming in but you lack the motivation to send followup content manually.
That’s exactly why I build massive email autoresponder sequences. Because I’m terrified of running out of things to say!
A few of my colleagues have been a little hesitant to write lengthy email autoresponder campaigns because they’re not sure how the email campaign will convert. Can you relate?
If so, then relax! The great news about email followup sequences is that you can get the data from your campaigns as your subscribers subscribe and interact with your emails.
After promoting your campaigns you’ll then have plenty of data so you can extrapolate data and then figure out what messages work, and which don’t. Ask yourself which emails make your readers open. Most importantly, ask yourself which emails generate sales!
# 5 – Recognize The Power Of Webinar Marketing Funnels Even For Affiliates
A lot of people think that webinar marketing is dead. In my opinion, webinars still rock! The reason why webinars rock, is because they’re one of the most versatile marketing tools in your quiver.
Here Are A Few Things That Webinars Help To Accomplish:
- Webinars help to generate leads
- Webinars help to tell your story
- Webinars help to showcase your expertise
- Webinars help to promote your affiliate products
- Webinars help to serve your existing subscribers
- Webinars help to serve your future subscribers
Remember earlier in this document I talked about how not all subscribers like similar content formats. That’s another reason why you might want to integrate an affiliate marketing webinar now and then. That way you can keep your subscribers guessing and switch things up a little.
If you always send blog posts? Try promoting a webinar! Hopefully, even if your subscribers don’t buy whatever you’re promoting during your webinar, they’ll at the very least appreciate your efforts and your brand will strengthen as a result of your earnest efforts to teach.
Email Marketing And Affiliate Marketing FAQ
I’ve experimented and brainstormed with affiliate marketing and email marketing a ton over the years. I’d love to spend a few minutes answering some of the most prevalent questions that you may encounter.
# 1 – Does ClickFunnels Work For Affiliate Marketers?
Yes! I think that ClickFunnels is one of the coolest tools for affiliate marketers for three reasons.
The first reason is that ClickFunnels has one of the best marketing communities on the planet. If you love to hang around with like-minded professionals who understand what you do and what motivates you, then I think the ClickFunnels community is second to none.
I also think ClickFunnels training is some of the best out there, and I’ve seen a lot of training.
If you want fantastic training on the topics of email list building, lead generation, copywriting, and building a powerful tribe, then ClickFunnels boasts some of the best entrepreneurial and digital marketing training on the planet.
Finally, the ClickFunnels software itself is out of this world easy to use. If you don’t like the technical frustration of manually coding lead capture pages, integrating marketing funnels, and strenuous graphic design, then ClickFunnels makes the process of building beautiful affiliate marketing campaigns a piece of cake.
# 2 – What’s The Best Funnel For Affiliate Marketers?
I think that any lead generation funnel is the best way to go. In my opinion, email marketing is still one of the easiest ways to spread the word about your business. That said, I think that different personalities resonate toward different types of funnels.
For example, I’m a writer. I love marketing funnels where I can exploit my love for writing tons of content. I love email course funnels, email newsletter funnels, book funnels, and other funnels that let me flex my writing.
Your mileage and preferences may vary based upon your niche, your style, your talents, and your preferences.
# 3 – Is ClickBank A Good Affiliate Network For Newbies?
Absolutely, yes! ClickBank is still one of the most popular digital marketplaces on the planet. ClickBank prides itself on being one of the most prominent affiliate marketplaces and they generally welcome beginner affiliates and vendors alike.
Their flagship training program, ClickBank University boasts itself as one of the best affiliate marketing training systems around. I’m a huge fan of ClickBank and encourage affiliates and vendors of all experience levels to check out some of their training if given the opportunity.
# 4 – What’s The Best Way To Promote Affiliate Links?
Make no mistake about it. Promoting your affiliate links is tougher than the experts say! If it were easy, then everyone would be a successful affiliate. As you know, they’re not.
That said, I think that the best way to promote affiliate links is dependent upon your style, talent, and preferences. Also consider your existing audience, if you have one.
Let me give you an example. I’m a writer who loves to write! So, I can promote affiliate links via blogs, via email marketing, and e-books. I publish thousands of words of content on my blog all the time. It’s simple for me to plug affiliate links into my blog because I create so much content.
I also love to teach digital courses. I can easily insert a call to action promoting affiliate links at the end of my course.
The main point I’m trying to draw out here is that you need to take inventory of your talents and assets. Do you run a Podcast, manage a blog, host a website, or do you have any following?
If so, then your existing content and audience are probably one of your easiest ways to promote your affiliate offers.
If you don’t have an audience, then it’s important to figure out how you can reach your prospective subscribers. Do you want to reach them via paid advertising, or with content marketing? These are critical questions to ask yourself and consider going forward.
# 5 – Does Affiliate Marketing Work For Obscure Niches?
I’m a big fan of popular niches because there are more prospective buyers, there’s more website traffic, and there’s also more demand within the big mainstream niches.
If you’re operating within the boundaries of a dreadfully small and obscure niche, then it’s much more difficult to find your ideal prospects. There are also fewer people searching in the big search engines for your content.
I’m not saying that small niches are bad by the way! There will also probably be much less competition in a small niche! So, I think there are pros and cons to both situations.
Conclusion
I want to let you know that I’m madly in love with email marketing.
I still love email marketing, even though a lot of gurus and experts swear up and down that email marketing is dead. I think email marketing is well and alive, and I hope that you had fun reading this blog post.
As always, if you ever wish to brainstorm or ask me questions, then don’t hesitate to drop me a line.
I’m always happy to brainstorm with you, and I love to hear feedback from students and readers.
Thanks again for reading, and please have a divine day!!!
Cordially and humbly yours…
Mike “The Affiliate” DeVincent
MrComputerScience.com
