Once you come away from reading this post your career as an affiliate marketer will never be the same again for you will have the ultimate secret to making a success out of your marketing campaigns through which to earn affiliate commissions! So what are the hottest niches to target as an affiliate marketer?

Often the advice given to affiliate marketers, even by other successful affiliate marketers, is that you should pursue a niche you’re passionate about because that way you won’t have any stumbling blocks to creating engaging content around which to build your sales offers. That’s one of those pieces of advice which is true by sheer chance though, because the truth is it really doesn’t matter which niche you target.

If you do not harbour even the slightest bit of interest for a niche you want to target you can still make a success out of affiliate marketing for that niche. In fact, you’d be demonstrating some astuteness, because the hottest niche to target is anyone which has proven to have a buying audience. You don’t need to be personally interested in fishing for example if you want to make good money selling fishermen’s tools like rods, lines and the likes to a mailing list of fishermen who already buy those things!

So what should be clear is that focus needs to shift to the process involved with building engaged email marketing lists. Email marketing software specialist Delivra shares with us some of the best practices involved with the process.

The best practices for building a highly engaged email marketing list

Perfect the intake form.

When requesting contact information, you have the opportunity to ask for a few more details that could help you further personalize the subscriber’s experience with you. Ask for a few more relevant details, including birth date, preferences in services/products and other interests.

There’s no need to go overboard; choose questions that make sense for your brand and your products/services. If, for instance, your ideal customer has an annual revenue of $50 million or more, include a field requesting information about their company’s annual sales. Keep it simple with a drop-down menu.

Remember that this step will set you up to start delivering personalized email messages to your subscribers.

Get to know your audiences.

Developing highly engaged email marketing lists requires getting to know who you’re talking to. That’s the No. 1 experience customers said that they want from you, according to the Adobe Experience Index.

The survey revealed that the top customer expectation for successful experiences is to “know me and respect me.”

To get to know your customers better, try using tools like Conjointly’s Text Highlighter Questions in your emails. These are questions that ask customers to select words or phrases in an email that relates to their interests, preferences, likes, or dislikes. The responses you get from this method can help you learn more about your customers and tailor emails to their interests.

With email marketing automation pulling in relevant data about your subscribers, you can increasingly deliver more personalized experiences that increase your ability to connect with them. Use the data to gain those insights to develop more creative, relevant promotions and content.

Further segment your audiences.

More than likely, audience segmentation already is integrated as part of your marketing strategy.

If so, consider further segmenting based on the data you’re constantly gaining about your subscribers. Using features like dynamic content through your marketing automation, you can easily customize your emails to match each of your subscriber’s interests-another critical way to increase engagement.

Personalize content.

As you gain more insights about your audiences through marketing automation, use that information to become more thoughtful about developing your content. Pay attention to the cues that inform you about the types of promotions different audience segments prefer, as well as the design and messaging.

The data you’re gaining from marketing automation can help you further customize your email marketing campaigns to engage with your audience segments. Always keep your customers in mind. Ask how can you delight them, engage them or help them with each of your emails.

Offer a promotion as an exchange.

If you’re in the B2C business, a discount on a purchase can be the incentive a prospect needs to get on your mailing list.

Your offer could anywhere from 10% to 30% off for a limited time. Figure out what moves your targeted audience to make a purchase, the next key to building a personalized campaign. Furthermore, you can take advantage of reputable firms that can assist in creating mailing lists based on your target customers’ area and send them group emails via email management tools. If interested, click to view listing software.

With every purchase your subscribers make, your marketing automation platform is able to capture that data. As a result, your email marketing campaigns can become more and more personalized with every interaction-the key to boosting engagement.

Create valuable content as an incentive.

In the B2B sector, it’s particularly important to fill your email list with subscribers who are interested in your products/services, especially if you’re trying to send qualified leads to your sales team.

One of the keys to attracting the right audience-and encouraging them to join your subscriber list-is through rich, downloadable content. Think of the pains your ideal client is experiencing.

Maybe it’s related to making adjustments to the quickly evolving tech industry or choosing the right time-saving platforms from among hundreds of options.

Develop an ebook, a worksheet or other gated content that can only be downloaded after the prospects have submitted their email address and other contact information.

Prospects who take the time to submit their personal information are indicating that they have an interest in your product/services.

By continuing to offer that type of value through other relevant content, you can increase the likelihood that you will have a highly engaged subscriber list.

However, it’s important to remember that the deliverable should be well executed and viewed as valuable to your audience. Anything less will be a bad reflection on your brand.

If a subscriber downloads your content only to find that it doesn’t live up to the value of submitting their personal information, they may feel like they’re the victim of a bait-and-switch tactic.

Create engaging landing pages.

Devote as much effort to creating engaging landing pages as you do to your efforts to attract subscribers. Invest time into creating visually interesting pages and rich content to further pull your subscribers into their experience with your brand.

Keep the customer journey in mind as you develop emails campaigns. Tailor the experience to ensure that the subscriber is getting more value from your content as they move closer to making a purchase.

Ask questions.

In addition to gaining insights from your marketing automation software, it’s important to solicit direct engagement from your subscribers. You can simply ask them to rate their experience with you. This is a way to deepen the relationship with your subscribers; it shows that you’re interested in what they have to say.