Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to promote affiliate products. By capturing leads and effectively nurturing them with email campaigns, you can profit from your email list indefinitely.
However, deciding which email marketing tool you should use as an affiliate shouldn’t be taken lightly. After all, there are some tools that make growing your affiliate marketing business a breeze and others that you should avoid at all costs.
This post discusses the 6 best email marketing software for affiliate marketing.
But first, what makes an email marketing software good for affiliate marketing in the first place?
What to Look For in an Email Marketing Software for Affiliate Marketing
There are two key criteria to look for in email marketing solutions: the software’s stance on affiliate marketing and the autoresponder feature.
The Solutions Stance on Affiliate Marketing
A select few email marketing services actually allow email marketing. Many are STRICTLY against affiliate marketing and will shut your account down if they detect that you are using the email marketing service to promote affiliate products. In this worst-case scenario, you would lose all of your subscribers’ data (not to mention the relationships you have created with your subscribers over time).
That being said, an email marketing solution’s stance on email marketing is by far the most important thing to consider. After all, what good is an email marketing service if it prohibits email marketing?
The best email sending solutions for affiliates are ones that explicitly state that they allow affiliate marketing.
The Autoresponder Feature
It’s extremely common for affiliates to make money in the following ways:
- Using paid ads to capture leads and then promote affiliate offers through email
- Using forms on a website to capture leads and then promote affiliate offers through email
For affiliate marketers that employ these strategies, being able to effectively automatically follow up with leads through email immediately after capturing them is critical. That being said, the autoresponder is arguably the most important feature you should consider in an email marketing solution.
A reputable autoresponder at the very least should have segmentation options, multiple trigger options, and subscription forms for collection emails.
Additionally, it can be very helpful to see how much email marketing plans cost with automation included. Some services charge drastically more for automation than others.
To get a feel for the automation features, it can also be helpful to sign up for a free trial of a few services to see which one you prefer the most.
Best Email Marketing Tools for Affiliate Marketing
The following software has been selected that are both affiliate marketing-friendly, and have powerful autoresponders.
Email marketing tool | Free version? | Starting price | Pros | Cons |
GetResponse | ✅ | $15.00 | Excellent solution for businesses of all sizes and has many unique features (such as a webinar builder). |
Software that GetResponse integrates with is limited. Third-part solutions like Zapier are needed for many integrations.
|
SendX | ❌ | $9.99 | Simple pricing structure— just one affordable plan that includes all features and unlimited emails |
Isn’t capable of building out super-advanced automation
|
Aweber | ✅ | $19.99 | One of the oldest, most trusted, and well-established email marketing solutions |
Email editor and landing page builder are a bit clunky and can be cumbersome to work with
|
Sendlane | ❌ | $99.00 | Excellent customer service and advanced reporting and analytics |
Expensive starting prices for all plans relative to other solutions
|
Email Octopus | ✅ | $24.00 | One of the most affordable email marketing solutions available |
Features (for the most part) are basic compared to other solutions and there is a lack of segmentation capabilities
|
Convertkit | ✅ | $9.00 | Great features for creatives that want to sell digital products and subscriptions |
High price relative to how advanced the features are
|
GetResponse
GetResponse is a powerful email marketing platform that aims to simplify and automate your email marketing. It comes with built-in lead generation forms as well automations to help you engage and nurture new subscribers. The platform is suitable for entrepreneurs, online marketers, and businesses of all sizes looking for a reliable email marketing tool.
GetResponse openly states that it allows signing up for affiliate programs and promoting offers to your audience. Not only that, but GetResponse integrates seamlessly with affiliate tracking software so that you can see how your email campaigns translate to more sales. You can promote your affiliate offers to your subscribers with its autoresponder feature and drip campaigns.
Speaking of autoresponders, GetResponse allows you to send automated sequences based on time or the behavior of visitors on your website. A few notable features include:
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Set up delivery based on subscription time, with delays, or at exact hours
- Various templates for autoresponder emails
- List and calendar view of your email campaigns
- Send autoresponder emails with relevant upsell offers based on past purchases
- Powerful campaign and autoresponder analytics
SendX
SendX touts itself as an affordable and intuitive email marketing software. This platform allows you to send unlimited campaigns, build your email list with forms, and automate advanced email marketing sequences to help you grow your business.
Among many industries listed on their website, SendX claims to be the email marketing software for affiliate marketers. This solution even offers a starter guide for affiliate marketing to help you earn more from your commissions. You can use popup and inline forms to grow your list as well as landing pages designed to help you capture more subscribers. You can also easily schedule campaigns that promote your affiliate marketing offers, track the performance of each campaign, and even create automated sequences around a specific affiliate promotion.
When it comes to the autoresponder, there are a few notable features to keep in mind:
- Trigger emails based on user behavior
- Use more than 500,000 stock photos to enhance your email and autoresponder campaigns
- Resend campaigns to subscribers who didn’t open your campaign with a different subject line
- Keep track of your campaign’s performance with detailed analytics and performance reports
AWeber
AWeber is one of the oldest email marketing platforms that offers a lot of features as well as a generous free plan. This platform includes landing pages, signup forms, and web notifications as well as automated email sequences. With Aweber, you can easily segment your list based on the behavior of subscribers.
Some of the largest affiliate marketing platforms integrate perfectly with Aweber. This includes Clickbank and JVZoo. This allows you to promote your preferred affiliate marketing offers with every campaign you send with Aweber. You can take advantage of built-in email templates as well as powerful reports that let you track the performance of your campaigns.
A few notable features of the autoresponders include:
- Send your blog posts as automated newsletters via RSS
- Use drag and drop builder to design your email campaigns
- Use tags and segments to organize your list
- Pre-built campaign templates so you don’t have to start from scratch
- In-house deliverability team to ensure your campaigns actually reach your subscribers’ inboxes
Sendlane
Sendlane is an email marketing platform geared towards online stores and online sellers. It’s a solution with both email marketing and SMS marketing features and it has a strong focus on improving your customer retention, driving sales, and automating customer experiences. This solution also integrates with a number of third-party platforms so that you can easily integrate the platform with your existing tech stack.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, Sendlane integrates with Clickbank and JVZoo, making it easy to promote a wide variety of affiliate products. You can set up automated emails to be sent to subscribers based on user behavior and engagement with past emails they have received. Additionally, you can also take advantage of their intelligent pop-ups for your website to drive more signups and increase your affiliate marketing earning potential.
When it comes to autoresponders, there are a few notable features to keep in mind:
- Design autoresponders from scratch or use one of their premade templates
- Drag and drop email builder to help you design conversion-optimized email campaigns
- Excellent deliverability as Sendlane owns its entire email infrastructure
- Optimize send times to ensure your autoresponders with affiliate links are getting delivered when your subscribers are most likely to engage with your emails
- Segment your list and split test your autoresponder campaigns to optimize them for better conversions
EmailOctopus
EmailOctopus is a simple, yet powerful tool to help you grow your email list, nurture your subscribers, and send targeted email campaigns that drive sales. The platform offers a drag and drop email builder, built-in list segmentation, sign up forms, and landing pages.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, EmailOctopus says the company doesn’t prohibit any industry from using their platform but some industries will be under more scrutiny than others. This includes affiliate marketing. In light of this, if you plan on using EmailOctopus for affiliate marketing, make sure you are creating these campaigns in a tasteful way… and not a spammy way that could get your account banned.
As far as autoresponders go, the key features include:
- Intuitive email builder and the ability to use built-in templates or import HTML email templates to use with your campaigns
- Simple drip campaigns to keep your audience engaged with your content
- List segmentation so you can send more targeted campaigns
- Detailed analytics for each campaign you send
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is an email marketing platform built with content creators in mind. It offers landing pages and sign up forms as well as email marketing automation and even the ability to sell digital products like courses and paid newsletters.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, ConvertKit allows some types of affiliate marketing. Namely, you can promote affiliate products and include affiliate links in your campaigns as long as you have your own business and affiliate marketing is not your main and only source of income. The company also notes that the affiliate links and products must be properly labeled and disclosed in your campaigns.
As far as automations and autoresponders go, ConverKit won’t disappoint you. Notable features include:
- Trigger automated responses based on subscriber behavior and engagement
- Set up visual automations based on different rules
- Keep track of your campaigns with reporting and monitor the open and click through rate
- A/B test your subject lines
- Resend campaigns to subscribers who haven’t opened them the first time.
Email Marketing Software to Avoid for Affiliate Marketing
As mentioned before, there are only a select few email marketing tools that support affiliate marketing. In fact, many email marketing platforms say specifically that they prohibit affiliate marketing such as MadMimi. You can take a look at their TOS for reference and to see other examples of prohibited use.
Others are a bit vaguer about their stance on affiliate marketing. MailerLite is one such example. Their TOS states that affiliate marketing is prohibited but affiliate links are allowed. This can be confusing and you may inadvertently break their TOS even though you think you’re doing everything by the book. This can lead to your account getting suspended without notice.
Unless they say specifically they support affiliate marketing, steer clear. After all, it’s better to choose an email marketing provider that makes their stance unequivocally clear even if that means paying more. Otherwise, you could risk losing the email list that took you months or years to build.
Other software to avoid because they do not allow affiliate marketing include Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, and Sendinblue.
Final Words
Earning money with affiliate marketing is a viable source of income and pretty easy to get started with.
However, keep in mind that to get the best results from your affiliate marketing efforts, you need an email list that’s engaged with your campaigns. To keep your subscribers interested and to ensure they continue to open your emails, it’s just as important to focus on building genuine relationships with your subscribers. That being said, not every email you send should be promotional in nature. Consider reserving the emails full of affiliate links for once you have developed trust between your business and your subscribers.
Best of luck!