5 Tips For Effective Affiliate Newsletters

1. Keep it short and sweetWe recommend that you keep your newsletter between 1 and 2 scrolls in length. The reason we send out newsletters is to share relevant information with our publishers, however realistically we cannot guarantee that they will be read and fully digested. It is also important to bear in mind that your partners receive multiple emails and newsletters on a daily basis from the many brands they work with. Therefore we find that just concisely summarising the key points in your newsletter will increase the likelihood of engagement2. Plain text emails are betterNothing boosts open and click through rates as well as an old school plain text email. Plain text emails look more like a personal message than an HTML email, and have a 42% higher click through, according to Hubspot. Although employing the use of imagery may improve the visual appearance of the email, it can also cause deliverability issues. Emails that include images are much more likely to go straight into the receiver’s junk folders compared to plain text emails. Additionally, while email clients will have no problems in displaying plain text emails correctly, images might appear out of margin or not even load at all.3. Subject lines matterThe vast majority of people use the subject line as a means for determining whether the actual content of the newsletter or email is of interest to them or not. Encourage partners to click through by keeping the subject line short – a one line summary of the email; an attention-grabbing question or a call to action. Including the programme name in the subject line also makes life easier for publishers.4. Including tracking linksMaking life easy for affiliates by including deeplinks in your emails will help to get your offers and promotions on site quickly.Most networks allow you to create a text link for your offers to then circulate via their dashboard – the link automatically includes the publishers unique tracking code. If you are unable to do this on your network, we recommend creating a publisher test account and deep linking the product on the test account to get the tracking link for that product. You can then replace your publisher ID or encrypted ID with the publisher’s details.5. A personal messageMaking sure the content of your email or newsletter is specific to the individual publisher is crucial. Once again, partners are inundated with brand communications on a daily basis, and sending out blanket emails to every single person (for example promoting a product review to cashback and voucher partners) will only discourage them from engaging with future communications. Take the time to personalise your messaging. One of our brands has two separate email send-outs; one specially created for bloggers highlighting content specific updates and another for cashback and voucher partners highlighting upcoming offers.These are just a few methods that we’ve found extremely successful when reaching out to publishers. Revisiting the basics every now and then is never a bad idea. What are your best newsletter tips for people who are just getting started in affiliate marketing?Tineal De Jager, Affiliate Account ManagerIf you need help managing your affiliate programme, give us a call on 0203 597 1400 to chat to one of the affiliate management team or get in touch here