Whether it’s an affiliate newsletter, a recruitment e-mail, or any other piece of correspondence you are sending to your affiliate(s), you want to remember the following three P’s which will save you a lot of headache:
- Proofread – Nothing kills a piece of marketing text worse than typos, and outright mistakes in the text. They discredit brands, and bury relationships without even giving them a chance to start. I’ve learned it the hard way. Proofreading is a must.
- Preview – Before sending the text off, make sure you test it on yourself first! Email it to your own address, see how it looks, and whether it can use improvements. Just as we never get a second chance to make a first impression, so do we never get a second chance to correct a sent piece of email. Of course, you can re-send it with apologies, but you know how it will make you look.
- Provide options – When possible, provide your affiliates with an option to choose the format in which they prefer to receive your messages. Some like HTML, others plain text. If you cannot customize things in such a way that every affiliate receives the message in their preferred format, provide both an HTML, and a plain text version, and they will choose the one they want.
All of the above points apply to affiliate program descriptions, and any online correspondence.