The best affiliate email marketing programs available in 2023

Affiliate marketing is often praised by many expert marketers. In affiliate marketing, an achievement-based marketing technique, companies pay affiliates for each client they bring from their targeted marketing activities. In simpler words, affiliates find a powerful solution in their niche, promote it to their audience, and enjoy part of the profit per sale.  

According to in-depth research, email campaigns boast a solid 14.7% open rate. From this, it’s easy to see that email marketing is not going anywhere.

Besides, ecommerce has continued to boom in the post-pandemic era. If you’re an affiliate marketer, you should start looking into affiliate email marketing for great products and high profits.

So let’s take a closer look at affiliate marketing, its benefits, and the top email marketing affiliate programs you should consider.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate email marketing is a modern twist on email marketing. Instead of promoting your own products in your email marketing strategy, as an email affiliate, you include promotional links for other products via targeted and engaging emails.  

These emails are created to captivate subscribers, which, in turn, helps improve the conversion rate and organic traffic. 

Affiliate email marketing is a great option for high-conversion marketers, since they know their audience well, can find the best-fit tools for that audience, and can create engaging content to communicate this perfect fit. 

Affiliates can include bloggers, social media influencers, YouTubers, or other individuals or companies with an online presence. 

Other than expanding your business’s reach and increase sales without the need for large advertising budgets, affiliate programs are a great way to get a passive income by promoting products or services that align with your niche or target audience.

While commissions you can earn vary, most affiliate programs offer recurring commissions ranging from 20% to 40% per referral.

Why should you use email for affiliate marketing?

Often, affiliate marketing is overshadowed by SEO and social media marketing. However, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways of connecting with your target audience. 

Here are some stats that highlight the power of email marketing:

• According to an in-depth study, for each dollar you spend on email marketing, you enjoy an incredible average return of $38. 
• According to our latest research, automated emails perform better than traditional campaigns and generated 31% of all email orders.
• Email marketing influenced the buying decisions of up to 59% of participants, which reflects its overall effectiveness. 

This behavior provides marketers with the perfect opportunity to increase outreach by generating sales.  

As you can see, email marketing is an excellent way of reaching out to your audience.

The benefit of email for affiliate marketing is that marketers don’t concentrate on increasing sales via social media content or organic search engine traffic. Instead, they curate targeted email lists to market affiliate products to past customers. In turn, marketers benefit from direct and personalized access to their audience. 

In this way, email lists allow you to engage your audience and drive conversations actively. Typically, people on your email marketing lists are already involved with your niche and voluntarily offered their email addresses.  

For this reason, converting them to purchase the service or product your brand is promoting will be comparatively easier—especially compared to conventional affiliate marketing, where marketers have to post various links across their blogs, YouTube descriptions, and websites. 

How to choose an affiliate email marketing program?

An easy way to select the perfect email marketing affiliate program for you and your brand is by remembering which program makes it easier for you to promote and commission. 

Here are some pointers to keep in mind when choosing your affiliate program:

• Does the program have a good or established reputation?
• Does the product match your niche?
• Does the program have an excellent conversion rate?
• Can you get access to unique tools and techniques in the program?
• Can you track sales in the program?
• Does the program boast a good cookie life?

Other than these, look at the program’s payout frequency and the minimum threshold to receive a recurring commission to ensure that it aligns with your cash flow needs.

The best email marketing affiliate programs

• Omnisend — Best for beginners looking for comprehensive support
• Moosend — Best for affiliates looking to earn lifetime commissions
• ConvertKit — Best for YouTubers and bloggers with a large audience
• Hubspot — Best for affiliates looking for a low payout threshold
• GetResponse — Best for affiliates who want a generous cookie shelf life

1. Omnisend

The first on this list is the ecommerce marketing automation platform Omnisend. If you want to drive better revenue and generate organic traffic, while providing a top-notch solution to your audience, this is the way to go.

• Your commission: 20%, monthly, recurring
• Time to get payout: 30 days
• Dedicated account manager: Yes

Omnisend’s affiliate email marketing platform allows affiliate marketers to earn at least 20% monthly recurring commissions for each new referral that joins the platform on a paid plan.

The affiliate email marketing program also offers:

• A dedicated account manager that will provide materials and priority support.
• Ready-made packs of banners, ads, and other types of content that you can share in your campaigns as soon as you start.
• Above-average ratings from users on popular review sites is a testimony to Omnisend’s credibility. This boosts confidence in the company and prospects’ willingness to do business with them.

Even better, affiliate marketers can also benefit from Omnisend’s new partner program that comes with such perks as new revenue share opportunities, including bounties, percentages, and potential one-time bonuses & access to value-add services.

👉 Become an affiliate 

👉 Learn more about Omnisend

2. Moosend

Moosend, a leading email marketing platform, offers an affiliate program that allows creators to earn a steady stream of passive income by building a strong audience base and mastering email marketing skills. The process of joining Moosend’s affiliate program is straightforward and helps you connect with an engaged audience.

• Your commission: 30% to 40% recurring commissions
• Time to get payout: 20 days
• Dedicated account manager: Yes

Moosend’s affiliate program stands out for its attractive commission rate, which ranges from 30% to 40% and is paid out as a lifetime recurring commission. Additionally, Moosend offers a 90-day cookie duration, which means that affiliates will continue to earn commissions for 90 days after a referred customer signs up. The payout method for Moosend’s affiliate program is through PayPal and Stripe.

One of the best features of Moosend’s affiliate program is the opportunity to earn up to 40% lifetime commissions. Signing up for the program is free and can be done by visiting the Moosend Affiliates website.

In addition to the commission rate and cookie duration, Moosend’s affiliate program also offers bonus benefits such as a dedicated account manager, promotional and educational materials, real-time reporting and analytics, and a dedicated coupon code. These resources will help you effectively promote Moosend and earn more commissions.

3. ConvertKit

A leading email marketing platform, ConvertKit helps creators earn a smooth stream of revenue by building a robust audience base and strong email marketing skills. 

• Your commission: 30% recurring commission
• Time to get payout: 60 days
• Dedicated account manager: No

The joining process of ConvertKit is simple, and it assists you in connecting with an engaged audience. The revenue sharing is stricter than Omnisend’s, but still quite appealing and stands out as one of the top email or autoresponder affiliate programs. 

ConvertKit will send affiliates a 30% commission for every person who signs up to ConvertKit through your affiliate link. This 30% will be paid monthly for the entire time that the referred account is active on ConvertKit. 

Unfortunately, ConvertKit does not offer creative assets and banners. Affiliates will have to manage with ConvertKit’s various logos and produce the rest of the creatives. 

4. HubSpot

Another popular platform among marketers is HubSpot. This state-of-the-art platform offers a combination of incredible marketing tools to enhance your outreach. 

• Your commission: 15% recurring commission or a flat rate of 100% of the first month’s revenue
• Time to get payout: 30 days
• Dedicated account manager: No

Moreover, the platform allows you to earn good passive income. Affiliate marketers can stand to make $276 per sale on average, depending on the product the customer buys. Similar to Omnisend (and unlike ConvertKit), Hubspot offers free resources to affiliates that they can use in their affiliate email marketing campaigns. 

However, there are some important things to consider. Hubspot’s affiliate program can’t track commissions on any domain other than .com, and no commissions are paid for HubSpot for Startup or Entrepreneur purchases. Furthermore, Hubspot’s 15% monthly payouts only extend for up to one year, with annual commissions occurring thereafter.

5. GetResponse

Another comprehensive email marketing platform that offers one of the best email affiliate marketing programs is GetResponse.

The well-known platform helps businesses of all sizes create effective email campaigns and grow their audience.

• Your commission: 33% recurring or $100 upfront flat fee
• Time to get payout: 30 days
• Dedicated account manager: No

Like others in this list of the best affiliate email marketing programs, GetResponse offers both upfront and recurring commissions. Affiliate partners can get a continuous commission of 33% every month with the recurring program or an upfront flat commission of $100 per sale.

GetResponse also offers a 120-day cookie policy, longer than most other affiliate programs including Moosend and HubSpot. 

The platform also offers support in the form of content, tools, and selling guides. However, unlike Omnisend, there’s no dedicated account manager or priority support to guide you through the process.

How to launch a successful affiliate email marketing campaign 

Let’s consider the steps to launching a practical and profitable affiliate email marketing campaign. 

Choose the right affiliate links to promote

When choosing the perfect affiliate link you wish to promote in your affiliate email marketing campaign, look for these main qualities.

Profitable

For your affiliate link to be effective, it must be profitable. For this, you need to spend some time estimating the ROI of the promotion to ensure it‘s worth the effort. 

While you don’t have to spend extra cash integrating affiliate links into your emails, you still have to invest time and effort. For that reason, it’s always a better idea to concentrate on affiliate links that promise a better earning potential.   

While you should choose affiliate programs with a higher commission rate if possible, also consider products with a lower commission rate if they have a higher conversion rate and are more likely to result in increased sales.

Relevant 

Your email affiliate list includes people who have willingly provided you their email addresses. Most likely, they’re already engaged with your content, products, and niche. 

If you want to increase your affiliate email marketing campaign sales, you must promote products and services to your affiliate marketing email list that align with their interests. You can also attempt to provide beneficial solutions that suit the audience’s pain point. As long as you follow this golden rule, you can be sure that your chances of generating more sales will also go up.

Based on Trust

If you are creating email sequences for your email subscribers, avoid placing affiliate links in the initial email.

Instead, focus on building a relationship of trust with your subscribers. For instance, if your email campaigns involve sending monthly newsletters, limit affiliate links to just one per newsletter.

Use website triggers

Prompt viewers to take action by making use of website triggers. For instance, if a viewer visits your website twice, you may automatically offer them a discount or coupon. 

This technique is perfect for an affiliate email marketing campaign since you can link your website visitors to their email. Here, you can send automated trigger emails based on browsing behavior. 

For example, if a reader reads your recent articles on a particular subject, you could set up a website trigger that automatically sends related promotional emails to that user.

Personalize emails to foster a relationship 

Emails with personalized subject lines tend to enjoy high open rates in our experience. Personalization not only helps you increase the open rate, but it also helps build a deep relationship with your customers as well. 

Affiliate marketing focuses on garnering trust and creating a robust customer base. The more your viewers trust you, the greater the chance of them following your recommendations. Personalized affiliate emails portray you as a knowledgeable and helpful friend rather than a salesy marketer. 

Affiliate email marketing programs: Wrap-up

Launching an effective and successful affiliate email marketing campaign can be a daunting and challenging task. However, with the right tools and best practices, you can benefit from your affiliate list and promote your products. In turn, you’ll notice your commissions increasing steadily. 

When it comes to affiliate emails, the best way to market is by staying genuine. Seek products that you believe in and promote them to users who will benefit from them. You can bet your sales will go up significantly and your subscribers will be happier.