You might be one of the many affiliate marketers who promote products primarily via email. If you are, it’s likely that you’d much rather send your marketing emails in the HTML format instead of in the plain text format. It’s not hard to see why.

The HTML format allows you to use colors, images and cool fonts. Your HTML marketing emails look slick and professional, whereas your plain text formats look, well, PLAIN.

But there’s an inherent problem with sending HTML marketing emails.

Two-thirds (66 percent) of email users say that they have images turned OFF by default in their email clients according to a survey by Marketing Sherpa’s 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report.

That means that two of every three of your email recipients see a box with a little red “X” in it rather than the image you sent when they open your email.

There’s an obvious solution. Send nothing but plain text emails, and no recipients will see boxes with red “X’s”. But it’s not the only solution!

Here are two workarounds:

The old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” might be expanded to say “and millions of dollars in affiliate sales.” It would still be true.

Images are powerful! Images have an IMMEDIATE emotional effect on a viewer.

The images on your website are the first things your visitors see. Most website viewers look at images before they read the headline.

The right images on your website draw your visitors in, make them feel welcome, and can even persuade them to buy whatever it is you are selling.

The wrong images have the opposite effect; they repel your visitors, make them feel as though they’re in the wrong place, and cause them to surf away before you can say “cheese.”

Here are three guidelines to help you choose effective website images

As an affiliate marketer, you already know the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You know that when you apply proven on-page and off-page SEO techniques, you drive FREE but qualified traffic to your website. Free qualified traffic is an affiliate marketer’s dream come true.

Successful SEO, though, never occurs by accident or because of “dumb luck.”

Successful SEO is the result of laying a solid SEO foundation and then building a solid SEO structure on it.

The foundation of your SEO house is made up of 4 SEO cornerstones:

Excellent Keyword Research

SEO starts and ends with keywords. Your potential customers will type certain keywords into search engine search boxes when they are looking for products like the ones you sell.

If you haven’t targeted the keywords your potential customers are typing into search boxes, they will find the marketers that did use them and those marketers will make sales. You won’t.

There’s no way to overemphasize the importance of good, solid keyword research.

It’s a well known fact among online (as well as offline) marketers of every stripe that 80 percent of a company’s business is generated by 20 percent of its customers. Customer loyalty is the most valuable asset any business can possess.

The 80/20 rule applies to you as an affiliate marketer, so it is really in your own best interest to consciously, constantly, and actively work to build customer loyalty.

The “secret” of building customer loyalty (if there is one) lies in effective communication.

Here are three customer loyalty tactics you can initiate right now: