Using Email to Market Affiliates

One rule about marketing to e-mail. You need to make sure your not breaking any anti-spam laws.
If your interested in marketing in this area. You need to.

• Build or Buy a targeted e-mail address list. Buying an address is actually a shady area. You need to make sure that the e-mail address on that list where obtained in a legal fashion and that the customer base that you e-mail have a sure way to opt-out of any future communication that you send them.
• Get Creative for your e-mail from your affiliate marketer.
• Create an attractive HTML page that you can import into a email mailer application. (I wrote a simple e-mail .net smtp application that pulls a template HTML and plugs in the email from a e-mail database and processes it that way. )

Disclaim the email to identify that it's not being sent by the company, that it is an advertisment. Be upfront about what you are sending.

Link the email link back to your site, not the company that you are affiliates with.

Redirect that with a META redirect tag to Commission link.

(This is a great place to tag the HTTPUtility information to a database to record the traffic information.)

Please make sure you read you e-mail contracts with your affiliates. Most will outline what rules and disclaimers you need to follow.

If you really want to be upfront. Create opt-in forms on your websites to allow users to accept email for caterogies they are interested in. This will also help you understand what your users want to read. It builds you a solid targeted user based to promote different promotions.