Intro.

One of the biggest sayings in affiliate marketing is this, ‘the money is in the list’. Many new bloggers or affiliate marketers may not know what I’m talking about. It basically means the long term success of your affiliate marketing efforts will be secured should you build a list of subscribers. To build a subscriber list you’ll need to sign up to an autoresponder service. So, what is the best autoresponder for affiliate marketing?

The Benefits of Building an Email List

This List is Yours

When somebody signs up to your email list, they’ve effectively given you permission to email them. Having said that, you don’t want to abuse this privilege or they will just as quickly unsubscribe from your list.

The fact that they’ve passed their email address on to you should not be taken lightly, but they are part of your nurtured and crucial email list. This list is yours for you to use as an extra way to bring in revenue.

A List For Promoting

Once you begin to create a decent sized list, you can then start to promote offers or information that interests your list. It doesn’t mean you can send irrelevant information. For example, this website is to help beginners learn how to build a website and monetise it.

If I was to send an email promoting fishing gear, you’d be bemused wouldn’t you. On the other hand, I may have found a great deal about an online presentation maker that could help with adding images. This would be ideal to send to my list, especially if the program has an affiliate program.

A List to Communicate

Similarly, paid promotional material is not all you want to send to your list. It’s also important to email them useful information that can help with why they signed up in the first place. Things such as links to other great websites that can help or tips and tricks that have been learned along your own journey.

Communication is a great way to gain authority and authenticity in the niche you’ve chosen. The more informative content that comes from you, the more your readers will resonate with the messages you’re trying to get across.

Who Doesn’t Have Email

It’s the best way to contact anybody and will last for a long time to come. It’s one of the only private options people have to contact others and receive messages. Email will not go away, as it’s been a trusted source for a long time now.

Collecting a long list of emails of a particular targeted area (beginner bloggers in my case) will pay off big time once established. I say targeted, because an email address of somebody with no interest in what you have to say, is useless. If they are not interested in what you have to promote, you will never get a sale from them.

You also have the option to send a single email out for a one-on-one conversation, as opposed to a bulk email send. Although a bulk email campaign is the easiest and most extensive to capture the attention of your whole list, there may be times when a single email is required, possibly for one-on-one coaching.

How To Build an Email List For Marketing

Create Your Website and Rank It

Before building an email list, the general process to capture emails is to build a website. Having your own blog, like this site, is your starting point. Here’s my case study on how to begin building a website to make money.

You’ll then need to build this website up with a good amount of content. This should be done by learning SEO and using a keyword tool. That way your posts will get ranked in search engines such as Google and Bing. This is how you’ll get traffic to your website for free.

Without visitors to your website, there’s no point capturing emails. How can people view what you’re blogging about if they can’t get to your articles? SEO (search engine optimisation) is the way to do this.

Choose an Autoresponder Service

Once you have achieved this, it’s time to invest in an autoresponder. This is an email capture service that will cost you a few dollars each month. There are a few email autoresponder services that allow you to start for free. You need to be careful with these and make sure you know what you’re getting into.

Years ago I signed up to MailChimp on the free plan. I didn’t understand that they don’t appreciate affiliate marketing. I started a campaign to promote an affiliate marketing company.

One week later, I was advised that my account had been deactivated. I was still able to login so I did this and removed the campaign in question. I also contacted them to say I had deleted the campaign. They never got back to me, as the free account does not included support.

My account remained deactivated for over 6 months, even though I could login. Finally it was shut down by them, without contacting me at all. Live and learn.

So, do some due diligence when deciding on an autoresponder. I have my favourite and will advise on this soon.

Capturing Your Visitors Email

There are multiple ways that you can capture a visitors email address but they’ll all be through an autoresponder. This is the platform that will work in the background for you, doing the majority of the work once you are setup.

However, you need to think about why a visitor will give you their email address. Usually this is by offering your audience something of value such as a newsletter, guide or tutorial. Maybe you can offer daily deals or specials which can be emailed straight to your list subscribers inbox.

There’s also placement to think about. As you can see, I have mine in the right sidebar which works well for me. Many others have a pop-up opt-in, which some people find obtrusive.

It’s also possible to setup a competition where you can offer a prize of value. These are all known as lead opt-in’s. You create a lead magnet that will trigger your reader into giving their email address for something of value in return.

Another way you can get emails is via social media. Many autoresponder services can provide you with an email opt-in form to add to a Facebook fan page or other social platforms.

What is the Best Autoresponder for Affiliate Marketing

Okay, now I’m going to announce my top autoresponder for affiliate marketing which is also the most popular by the majority of internet gurus. It’s called Aweber and after using multiple other services, I’ll never change again.

Why is Aweber the Best Autoresponder for Marketing

I’m not going to show you how to use Aweber in this article but I will show you why I think it’s the best autoresponder around.

Unfortunately, there is no free membership at Aweber. However, this also explains why it’s such a great program. You get what you pay for, and Aweber know they have the best resources and service.

For me, the layout is more simple to navigate than the other autoresponder services I’ve used in the past. Previously I’ve used Campaign Monitor, SendinBlue and Mailchimp. Whilst these services offered either cheaper or free initial setup, they also had me running around in circles attempting to find where all the features are stored.

The free and/or cheaper models are also limited in terms of customisation of their sign-up forms. Aweber offers hundreds of templates to easily get started.

You’ll also find, that integrating the forms into WordPress is simple, by copying a piece of code and pasting it into your HTML section on WP.

When it comes to building a campaign, the drag & drop method is easy to implement and allows you to build follow-up sequences. I really like the interface of Aweber which just makes using the service that much more pleasant.

But the reason Aweber is the best service for affiliate marketing, is that they are not going to ban you for promoting affiliate marketing services. In fact they are very internet marketing friendly and encourage the practice of affiliate marketing. Which only makes sense as they have their own affiliate program.

How Much Will Aweber Set You Back

Aweber offer a 30 day trial, which is ideal because you want to know what your getting for the cost. Sign up and navigate around the interface and check out all the services on offer. You can either opt out after this time or pay the $19 per month as the lowest category membership.

This membership will offer you every feature available at Aweber. The limitation comes in the number of subscribers you have. Once you reach 500 subscribers, you’ll be asked to up the ante to $29 per month. This will take you up to 2,500 subscribers and the cost continues to rise with more and more subscribers to your lists.

Having said this, I’d imaging you should be creating campaigns that would be bringing in enough money to cover this extra cost.

Wrapping Up

You can get by in affiliate marketing without an autoresponder, but you’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table. Building an email list is future proofing your business for if and/or when your website rankings take a hit. Business doesn’t always go to plan.

Choosing a great email responder program such as Aweber will give you all the tools you require, and if you’re getting started in the affiliate marketing space, you’ll also find it easy to use. There’s so much else to learn, don’t make it any harder than it needs to be.

Take the 1 month free Aweber trial here.