Your newsletter can motivate affiliates to showcase and pitch your products and services — but you need to know what to include in a newsletter to make that happen.
Many influencers sign up for more affiliate programs than they can possibly promote. Some of your affiliates may not have shared any of your links yet. Others might have shared a few links and then lost steam along the way.
A regular newsletter gives you the chance to engage your affiliate network — but only if they find your messages useful. Below is a summary of what to include in a newsletter to affiliates.
Start With the Right Mindset
Start with the assumption that your affiliates will be finding your newsletter in their email alongside a dozen others. They won’t be reading everything in their inbox. They’ll open messages from you for two reasons:
- The subject line promises value.
- Your past newsletters have helped them make money.
To hit either of these benchmarks, you need to craft newsletters that are brief and useful to your reader. Think about the way you open emails in your inbox. You probably start by “pulling weeds” — deleting as many emails as you can, based on senders you don’t trust and subject lines that don’t excite you.
The remaining emails might all get opened. But do you read each one all the way through? If a message presents you with a wall of text that doesn’t make it easy to find what you want, you will probably skip that one.
These are the criteria for a strong email:
- The subject line is relevant to their lives.
- The subject line promises a benefit.
- The message is easy to skim through and doesn’t seem too long.
- The information promised is right at the top.
- The rest of the information is well-organized.
- Everything is brief and respects the readers’ time.
Below, you’ll find out how to create emails that perfectly hit all these notes.
Help Your Affiliates Make Money
Some may have signed up for your affiliate program out of pure love for your brand, but you can safely assume the majority joined to make a profit.
That’s why your newsletter — and its subject lines — should be built around giving them tools to achieve that goal. If you don’t have any new or seasonal features to share, highlight an existing tool they may not know about, share a creative idea, or profile a successful tactic.
Here are some example headlines for your top section, which could also double as subject lines:
- 3 seasonal items to boost your earnings this spring
- 4 new products to share with your followers
- Could these images double your affiliate sales?
- 6 ready-made social posts your followers will love
- Earn a bonus rate on [product] this month
- Use this 3-Step plan to get your sales flowing this month
- Want more affiliate income? Try this simple tool
- [Name] shares the secrets that made them our top affiliate last month
- 8 words to include in your social posts that readers can’t resist
This is the most important section of your email, but limit yourself to 300 words or less. If you want to write in more depth, create a blog post and link to it.
Remind Affiliates of Why They Signed Up
Short visual sections keep your emails dynamic. For example, follow up your lead story with a pull quote or captioned image that reminds your affiliate of why they signed up for your program. What should you say? Look at your affiliate signup page and other promotional copy you’ve created to find visual elements or brief statements that are worth sharing again. You could also showcase a brief testimonial or tip from an existing affiliate or customer in this space.
Answer Your Affiliates’ Questions
Most of your affiliates probably haven’t read all the great documentation you created for them. Assume they have basic questions about how to get started or how to reconnect with the program if they’ve let things lapse. Give them answers to basic FAQs, like:
- Where do I find my affiliate links?
- What tools are available in your program?
- What is your affiliate rate?
- Where can I track my income?
- Do you have images I can use?
Choose one or two questions to answer in each newsletter and give a 100–250 word explanation with a link to more detail. Include a general link to your documentation.
Share Brand News With Your Affiliates
If you have brand news that you’re bursting to share — a web redesign, an industry award, a new product — this is the place to do it. Keep it brief, but feel free to link to a more detailed blog post. You don’t want to overwhelm your more casual contacts with too much text.
List Supportive Affiliate Resources
Imagine you’re an inactive affiliate who wants to follow through on the exciting promotional idea at the top of the newsletter, but you barely remember signing up for this program, and you don’t know how to access your links and affiliate tools. What would you do?
Many people will scroll to the bottom of the page and hope to see links to resources. That’s why the last item in every newsletter should be an evergreen list of links to essential resources, like:
- Your affiliate website
- Documentation pages
- Commission reporting
- Link creation and other affiliate tools
Not everyone will scroll to the bottom for information. Some will click on the logo at the top of the newsletter and hope it takes them to a login screen. Others will hit the reply button to ask a question. Make sure both those options work.
Use Tools Built for Affiliate Marketing
You might be wondering, “Is there a tool to help me manage and advertise my affiliate program?”
Be sure to check out LeadDyno’s affiliate newsletter creation tool. It’s tailor-made for communicating with affiliates and lets you share useful tools like social content, banners, and more. LeadDyno’s affiliate software that lets you set up an affiliate program in minutes and gives you all that’s needed to make managing your referral program easy.
