Just a quick link to a VIDEO for you. I just did a really fun interview with Mike Filsaime on list building…check it out…

Click Here To Watch This Interview…

One of the mainstays of affiliate marketing is the e-mail marketer. A person or company who owns an e-mail list and knows how to use it can make a great living as an affiliate. In the world of affiliate advertising, an e-mailer is very close to the top of the food chain.

E-mailers have their pick of offers, and most merchants and networks have plenty of e-mail offers available. The popularity of e-mail marketing stems from one main fact – when e-mailers work they make money not only for themselves, but for the advertiser they are representing because they can reach consumers quickly and efficiently through their e-mail lists!

Must-Have Qualifications

The criteria merchants use when evaluating potential publishers is quite rigorous. Many are selected because they have met certain standards for success. Often e-mail affiliates need to show a track record that shows they’ve worked on several other offers successfully, are CAN-SPAM compliant and will scrub their lists against suppression files religiously. These things are non-negotiable.

Here are several valuable tips for e-mail marketers starting out or seeking success in the affiliate marketing world:

#1 - Know your list! Lists segmented by demographic data are worth more money to merchants!

#2 – Develop good relationships with major email service providers. Listen to their advice.

#3 – Get white listed. Yes it’s hard to do, but it can improve deliverability by 25%.

#4 - Quality control is your biggest job. Typos, errors and under performing creatives just increase your un-sub rate, so proofread before your offers go out.

#5 – Don’t over-mail your list and be selective about the offers you choose to send into the homes of your customers. This extends the life of your list.

#6 – Abide by CAN-SPAM. Download suppression lists regularly, keep an in-house “do not mail” list and check that un-subscribe links work before sending offers.

#7 - Test offers. Experiment with new creative and subject lines, measure every response so that you’ll know a winner when you see one.

#8 – To develop your list, remember that opt-in is good, but double opt-in is better.

#9 - Continuously upgrade, add to and grow your email list. Think of your list as a living thing. Your list grows better when you tend it, and dies when ignored.

#10 - You can never have too much new creative material. Deliverability and consumer response metrics are positively correlated to an ongoing stream of fresh creatives.

Finally, remember that successful e-mail affiliates are not sitting back, playing video games and eating bon-bons; they are working hard every day. Merchants and network operators acknowledge that affiliates are the independent sales force they rely on to drive sales.

So our last advice to email marketers is this: go where you are wanted and well treated.

Work with merchants who view you and your list as partners in profitability. This is something that you should never forget.

If you’ve ever seen an “autopilot income” program, you know it can be tempting to jump on board and give it a shot.

The programs appear to produce fantastic results with only minimal work.  But, affiliate marketer beware!

The majority of these programs depend heavily on automated email marketing – building a massive list of leads, pummeling them with email until you get signups.

They’re supposed to be “autopilot” because once you build your list, your autoresponders will do all the work for you… and you just cash the checks. Sad to say, this type of business model goes against the grain of the reality of the web today.

The fact is, today’s spam filters, blockers, and destroyers are making it almost impossible to “autopilot” your way to Internet riches.

Both ISPs and providers of free email addresses (like Yahoo.com and Hotmail.com) now turn their spam filters on to medium – or higher – by default. That means your target market has to be savvy enough to CHANGE their spam settings from the get-go. If they don’t, NONE of your marketing messages will get through.

Add to that the higher expectations of ALL of today’s online markets, and the old-fashioned “autopilot” business simply doesn’t exist any longer. As the vast Internet community – which includes millions of opportunity seekers – gets more sophisticated, they also expect a lot more from the people who market via lists.

The promoters who are doing well today do more than blast endless emails to their lists. These promoters write blogs and articles, provide custom marketing tools, and offer support or even personalized coaching. All that is WORK – and it’s not really autopilot.

This doesn’t mean you can’t automate as much of your online business as possible. There’s nothing wrong with automation — it’s not only convenient, it’s necessary.

But the realities of today’s Internet marketplace requires you to nurture an opt-in list with meaningful messages and relevant offers.  Pre-load your autoresponder with content-oriented emails that are interesting, that focus on a primary product, and be sure to track clicks. This way you won’t be shooting in the dark, and your automation will be working for you, not against you.

Are you getting a lot of bouncebacks? Is your open rate sagging? Does your mailing list seem to have more bad than good email addresses? Maybe it’s time to purge those bad email addresses from your list. Here’s some tips for cleaning your lists…

#1 – Analyze bounces. If most bad addresses come from Hotmail or Yahoo accounts, it’s probably time to start blocking people with these “disposable” email addresses from signing up in the first place.

#2 – Measure size against value. Remember that too many bad or “dead” email addresses can skew your open rates and other stats. A list bloated with useless addresses can make stats look bad.

#3 – Use link tracking. Most autoresponder services will allow you to turn on a feature that sets up a unique tracking link for every link in a mailing. By activating this feature every tie you mail, you’ll be able to collect valuable statistics over time, as well as watch for correlations between subject lines and click-through rates.

#4 – Make purges automatic. If your autoresponder service offers it, turn on the “purge bounces automatically” feature. A good setting is to purge after three failed delivery attempts.

#5 – Create an “inactive” list. Some services will track bounces and allow you to move bounced addresses to “inactive” status list. This is a safe option in case the address was only temporarily unable to receive mail. By separating out these email addresses, you can send this list a mailing at a later date — and purge any undeliverables at that point.

Yes, cleaning up your list looks like you’re “losing” subscribers. But you can’t really “lose” a subscriber who wasn’t getting your emails or opening them. Remember that it’s a trade off between quantity for quality. A worthless address won’t make you any money, so there’s no point in keeping it just to have a bloated list. And after cleanup, you’ll have fewer bounces to deal with.

Next… prepare for the unexpected!

Other posts in this series:

Q4 Affiliate Marketing Checklist

6 Ways to Put Dormant Domains to Use

Which Offers to Keep, Which to Dump?

ROI Tips for Affiliates

5 Ways to Update Aging Sites

Test New Niches

Design Makeover