When you promote to people who have already bought from you, they’re much more likely to buy again. It doesn’t matter whether you create the products and services they buy or if you promote products and services someone else created. Once someone has bought from you, especially if it is a good experience, they are going to buy from you again.
It also costs less for you to promote to your current customers than new ones. Of course, you want to do both but don’t forget to market to your current customers too via your segmented email autoresponder.
When you have paying customers, you can find complementary products to promote to them based on what you have sold to them. The best way to do this is to practice good list hygiene and proper segmentation.
Segment Based on Behavior
One thing you should always seek to do is get people on your email list. Whether you’re promoting affiliate products or your own products, building your list is imperative. In fact, it’s more likely that people will buy any product via an email message over any other method of advertising to people. Once you get people on your list, you can start segmenting them based on their behavior.
The first segmentation should be customer versus non-customer. Perhaps someone got on your list because they bought an entry-level product and someone else is on your list because they downloaded a lead magnet. They are different. One is a customer, and one is now a prospect. Once you segment them this way, you can also segment them by product or lead magnet, too.
Now when you send messages to them, you can be very specific about what you send from educational messages to information to product recommendations based on who they are and the problems they have. Segmentation makes it possible for you to get to know them so much better.
Set Up Evergreen Product Promotions in Your Autoresponder
An autoresponder is an essential component any affiliate marketer needs to have. This enables you to build your email list of customers and prospects, plus enables you to provide automated messages to them that you can set up in advance. Not only that, you can schedule one-time emails for time-limited special offers, too.
However, first, go ahead and set up as many evergreen promotions as you can. Most people recommend sending two to three educational emails for every promotional email. However, if you put a CTA in every single email, you’ll find that you get better results. Don’t be afraid to promote to your customers. They want what you are offering.
Find Complementary Products and Services to Promote
Many of the products you set up can be evergreen, but you also want to find complementary products that work alongside your own products or other products and services that are sometimes one-off, one-time offers. For example, if you had customers who bought your 20 content templates, they may also be interested in a course about improving SEO.
Repeat
The key here is to keep doing it. Don’t promote only once and remember to segment your audience at least between being a buyer of a specific product or being a prospect who downloaded a certain lead magnet. This is important so that you can send the right offers to the right people. In some systems this works with tagging, in others you essentially have more than one list going.
Set up your autoresponder evergreen promotions to go to people who don’t buy or don’t open more than once. Set it up so that it will send to those who haven’t responded at least seven times. That may seem obsessive but remember that it’s not likely they’re really seeing it every single time and if you’re segmenting (which should work automatically in the system you choose) it will work out great.
Every time your customer does something – from responding to an email to clicking through to a sales page – after buying one of the products you recommended, track it and segment them further so that you can do it all again. If you keep your eyes open to products that can help different segments of your audience, you’ll be able to add evergreen promotions and short-term promotions often that will get interest from your customers for the long term.
