Email marketing software is one of the most lucrative products for an affiliate marketer. The added bonus?
Most email marketing affiliate programs pay recurring monthly payments.
It makes sense. Almost every online business can benefit from an active email marketing strategy. As the saying goes, “The money’s in the list.” And almost everyone who has an email marketing strategy uses an email service provider (ESP).
Todays’s email marketing platform is also typically a marketing automation platform. They typically support email marketing campaigns, landing pages, email templates, free promotional materials, and other online advertising solutions.
There are email marketing solutions and platforms for both large enterprises and small business owners.
The advantages of email marketing affiliate programs are …
- Large initial commission — many programs have a bounty system where you are getting a one-time fee of 2-3 months commissions.
- Recurring Commissions — The ones that do not have a bounty will pay a % of the fees they receive every month. Usually 25% -40%
- CPA — Often the bounty affiliate payers will have a CPA of a few dollars. This is paid on free trials.
Email Marketing Affiliate Programs
Active Campaign
Automizy
Autopilot
Aweber 
Benchmark
Constant Contact
Convertkit
Email Octopus
GetResponse
Gist
Mailerlite
Mailgen
Mailjet
Ontraport
Pabbly
Rocket Responder
Sendinblue
Sendlane
= Affiliate Friendly
Want a quick look at pricing? Jump to the pricing & commission comparison chart
Since everyone needs them, the email marketing service business is huge with a very high customer lifetime value. Almost all of the major providers have an affiliate program.
It is much like the hosting affiliate niche but not quite as competitive. Another benefit is that with so many providers there are many content marketing opportunities. You can look for industry specific solutions offered by email service providers, write comparison articles, offer templates and other bonuses etc.
The commissions are large enough that you can consider strategic long tail Google Adwords and other paid advertising tactics.
Since most email marketing affiliate programs pay a recurring commission there is a passive income stream. Something that few affiliate programs can boast of.
The price points can vary quite a bit. Many have free email marketing plans and almost all have free trials. This makes your affiliate marketing efforts easier as getting started requires no financial commitment.
- Recurring commissions
- Used by every on-line niche
- Not as competitive as hosting
- Many content marketing opportunities
Go to our page of over 125 recurring affiliate programs for more monthly earners.
Best Email Service Providers Affiliates Programs
There are lots of email service companies out there — most have affiliate programs. We looked at scores of them and put together our big list of ESP affiliate programs. You will almost always get better conversions when you focus on a short-list of services to represent. Build a cluster of content around your target industry’s and audience needs in email marketing.
If you are marketing to bloggers or other content marketers, it is important to know which email marketing providers are “affiliate friendly”. We highlighted those that will allow affiliate links in email campaigns.
There are lots of great affiliate programs in this niche. All of the email marketing service companies below offer at least a 25% recurring commission or generous bounty to affiliates.
1 — Active Campaign Affiliate Program
Product Features: Email marketing, automation, messaging, and CRM
Product Features: Email marketing, automation, messaging, and CRMCommission Rate: 20%-30%
Cookie Length: 90 days
Affiliate Info: Active Campaign in-house affiliate program
Active Campaigns is one of the companies that does much more than just email marketing but where they really shine is automation.
Many email marketing tools have some form of automation. Typically events that trigger an email sequence. A simple version would be an email sent when it is a list members birthday. Active campaign takes this all to the next level with its use of tags.
You can tag members of your list for their interest. For instance on a finance site you may have interests like retirement, equities, crypto etc. You can then have campaigns built with ActiveCampaign’s visual automation editor to create super-targeted email sequences.
Pricing 1000 Subscribers — $29/mo, 14-day free trial
Affiliate Details
The ActiveCampaign commission plan is tiered. In this case there are three levels ranging from 20% -30%. They reward high-volume and active affiliates with higher commissions …
- Silver — 20% This is the level for new and occasional affiliates. It pays a 20% recurring commission to all affiliates.
- Gold– 25% This is the 25% level. You must either generate $100 in new business or have $500 worth of active renewal business. All on a trailing 3 month basis.
- Platinum — 30% For Platinum you need $500 of new business or $2,000 recurring over 3 months.
ActiveCampaign has some unique features, like its use of tags. This makes for good material to develop a content marketing strategy about. You could even make some sample workflows and do some vlogging.
There in-house affiliate team offers dedicated partner support and lots of marketing assets to promote their marketing and email solution.
They have a 14 day $1 trial. I really like these super low cost, but not free, trials. It weeds out the tire kickers and lets you focus on real buyers.