Cold Email for Affiliates? Yes or No?

Summary

In this video, Alex from the Cold Crowd community addresses a question about using cold outreach to sell affiliate offers. He advises against cold emails and DMs for affiliate marketing, as they lack trust-building. Instead, he recommends a long-term approach, creating value and building trust through webinars, training, or communities. Alex suggests offering valuable content to engage prospects and nurture relationships before promoting offers. He emphasizes the importance of giving value (80%) before asking for anything (20%), encouraging the audience to build trust, community, and expertise for better results.

Takeaways

• 📧 The speaker, Alex, advises against using cold email, LinkedIn outreach, or direct messages on social media to sell affiliate offers, especially for beginners.
• 🤝 Affiliate offers typically perform better when there is an established trust with the audience, which cold outreach does not facilitate.
• 🚫 Cold outreach can be perceived as spam and lacks the personal connection necessary to effectively sell products or services.
• 🔍 The speaker mentions an exception to the rule, suggesting that building a community and trust through a series of actions can make cold outreach more effective.
• 💡 An example of building trust is by offering free educational content like webinars or training videos that provide value to the audience.
• 📈 The speaker emphasizes the importance of the Pareto principle in affiliate marketing, advocating for 80% value provision and 20% selling.
• 💼 For beginners, the speaker recommends mastering a skill and offering it as a service rather than jumping into affiliate marketing with cold outreach.
• 💡 Building a community is highlighted as a crucial long-term strategy for trust-building and audience engagement, rather than relying on cold emails.
• 🌟 The speaker suggests that becoming a trusted advisor within a community allows for more effective selling and is a goal to strive for in marketing.
• 📈 The video script underscores the importance of providing value and building trust within a community to achieve success in affiliate marketing and other business ventures.

Q & A

Why does the speaker discourage using cold email or outreach for affiliate offers?

The speaker discourages cold email or outreach for affiliate offers because it lacks the trust necessary for effective conversions. Cold emails come across as spam, and recipients have no relationship with the sender, making it difficult to build credibility and trust in the product being promoted.

What is the importance of building trust when promoting affiliate offers?

Building trust is crucial because it significantly increases conversion rates. When people trust the person promoting a product or service, they are more likely to believe that the solution being offered will address their problems, leading to higher chances of them making a purchase.

What exceptions does the speaker mention for using cold outreach in affiliate marketing?

The speaker mentions that cold outreach could work if it's used to invite people to a valuable educational event, such as a webinar or training. Through these steps, trust can be built, and the audience can start engaging, eventually leading to opportunities for affiliate offers.

What strategy does the speaker suggest for selling affiliate offers effectively?

The speaker suggests building a community and offering valuable content, such as webinars or training videos, to create trust with the audience. Once a relationship is established, the affiliate offers can be introduced as a solution to the audience’s problems.

Why does cold outreach often fail when promoting affiliate offers?

Cold outreach often fails because recipients don’t know who the sender is, so the emails or messages feel impersonal and spammy. Without a relationship or context, it’s hard to convince someone to trust the offer being promoted.

What does the speaker mean by the 'Pareto Principle' in this context?

The speaker refers to the 'Pareto Principle' as an 80/20 approach to content and selling. This means providing 80% value (education, guidance, support) and only 20% promotion or sales. By doing so, the audience receives more value and is more receptive to future offers.

What is the long-term strategy the speaker recommends for affiliate marketing?

The speaker recommends building a community and focusing on providing valuable content over time. This long-term strategy helps create trust and rapport with the audience, which can later lead to more successful affiliate marketing.

How does the speaker suggest you get started if you are new to affiliate marketing?

If new to affiliate marketing, the speaker suggests mastering a skill and offering it as a service. This helps create immediate cash flow. Once you’ve built trust with clients, you can introduce affiliate offers as part of the long-term strategy.

Why does the speaker emphasize building a community?

The speaker emphasizes building a community because it creates a loyal audience that trusts your advice and recommendations. Once you are seen as a trusted advisor, you can sell more effectively, whether it’s services or affiliate offers.

What are some platforms the speaker mentions for building a community?

The speaker mentions various platforms such as email lists, Slack groups, Telegram groups, or even building a community on a BuddyPress or BuddyBoss WordPress site as effective ways to engage and grow a loyal audience.

Outlines

00:00

📧 Cold Outreach for Affiliate Offers

The speaker, Alex, addresses the question of using cold outreach methods like LinkedIn messages or cold emails to sell affiliate offers. He advises against this approach, especially for beginners, because it lacks the trust-building necessary for successful affiliate marketing. He explains that affiliate offers typically convert better when there's an established relationship with the audience. Cold outreach feels like spam and lacks the personal connection needed for trust. Alex mentions an exception to this rule, which he will discuss later in the video.

05:01

🔗 Building Trust Through Community Engagement

Alex suggests an alternative approach to selling affiliate offers through cold outreach by building a community and establishing trust. He recommends creating valuable content like webinars, training videos, or master classes that address the audience's needs. By offering free educational content, one can gather an audience's interest and build a relationship. At the end of such content, a soft sell can be introduced, inviting the audience to join a community or receive further assistance. This method aligns with the Pareto principle, where 80% of the interaction provides value, and only 20% involves selling or promoting affiliate offers.

10:03

🚀 Long-Term Strategies Over Quick Wins

In the final paragraph, Alex emphasizes the importance of long-term strategies over quick wins in affiliate marketing. He advises against the common misconception that affiliate marketing is a get-rich-quick scheme and stresses the need to build trust and community. He suggests mastering a skill and offering it as a service, which can lead to a more reliable cash flow. Alex also encourages viewers to build a community and learn from feedback, positioning oneself as a trusted advisor rather than just a service provider. He concludes by inviting viewers to join the Cold Crowd community for more insights and support.

Keywords

💡Affiliate offers

Affiliate offers refer to promotional deals where one person (the affiliate) promotes another company's product or service in exchange for a commission on sales. In the video, the speaker advises against using outbound marketing methods, such as cold emails or DMs, for promoting affiliate offers because they rely heavily on trust between the affiliate and the customer, which is often missing in cold outreach.

💡Cold email

Cold email is a form of outbound marketing where unsolicited emails are sent to potential clients or customers. The video discusses the challenges of using cold email for affiliate offers, highlighting that recipients often view such emails as spam because they don’t know the sender, making it difficult to build the trust needed for effective affiliate marketing.

💡Trust

Trust is central to successful affiliate marketing. The speaker emphasizes that trust is key in converting leads into sales, particularly in affiliate marketing. Without it, recipients are less likely to engage with or purchase through affiliate offers. Cold outreach fails because there is no pre-established relationship to build this trust.

💡Outbound marketing

Outbound marketing refers to reaching out to potential customers through channels like cold emails, DMs, and LinkedIn outreach. In the video, outbound marketing is critiqued as an ineffective method for affiliate offers because it doesn’t build the necessary trust with the audience and can often be perceived as spam.

💡Community building

Community building involves creating a group of individuals who share common interests and trust the leader or facilitator. The speaker suggests that building a community around shared value is a much more effective strategy for affiliate marketing than cold outreach. Trust is naturally developed over time, making it easier to promote offers.

💡Webinar

A webinar is an online seminar used for educational or promotional purposes. In the video, webinars are proposed as an effective way to build trust and provide value to an audience before offering affiliate products. The speaker encourages using webinars as part of a long-term strategy where the audience can learn something valuable, and affiliate offers can be introduced at the end.

💡Pareto principle (80/20 rule)

The Pareto principle, or 80/20 rule, suggests that 80% of results come from 20% of efforts. The speaker applies this principle to affiliate marketing, recommending that 80% of interactions with the audience should provide value, while only 20% should involve promotion or selling. This helps build trust, making it easier to convert leads into sales.

💡Spam

Spam refers to unsolicited, irrelevant, or inappropriate messages sent over the internet, often in bulk. The speaker mentions that cold emails for affiliate offers often end up as spam because recipients don’t trust or recognize the sender. As a result, they don’t engage with the offer, making cold outreach ineffective.

💡Long-term strategy

A long-term strategy is a plan that focuses on achieving goals over an extended period. The speaker contrasts this with short-term methods like cold email blasts, recommending a more sustainable approach of building trust and value over time. This involves creating content and community before attempting to sell affiliate offers.

💡Trusted advisor

A trusted advisor is someone who has built a relationship with their audience and is seen as a reliable source of information or guidance. In the video, the speaker advises aiming to become a trusted advisor to the audience, rather than simply a service provider or marketer, because this status allows for better promotion of affiliate offers and long-term success.

Highlights

The speaker advises against using cold outreach (emails, LinkedIn, DMs) to promote affiliate offers due to the lack of trust involved.

Affiliate offers work best when there is some trust or relationship built with the audience, which increases conversion rates.

Cold outreach often comes across as spam, as the audience doesn’t know who you are or whether they need the product being offered.

The speaker has not seen significant success with using cold outreach for affiliate offers, except in high-volume bulk spam approaches.

A more effective strategy is building trust and community before promoting affiliate offers through outbound marketing channels.

The Pareto principle (80/20 rule) applies: provide 80% value and limit promotional efforts to 20% to maintain audience trust.

Instead of selling through cold emails, invite people to valuable educational events, such as webinars or training sessions, to establish a relationship.

Cold outreach can be used to push people to value-rich events, such as webinars, where a soft sell can be made after providing value.

Building a community through channels like Slack, Telegram, or email lists is a key to long-term success in affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing should be seen as a long-term strategy rather than a quick way to make money.

The best way to start is by mastering a skill and offering it as a service, building cash flow, and using affiliate marketing for passive income later.

Building trust by becoming a trusted advisor (not just a service provider or freelancer) is essential for long-term success.

Post-2020, building community and trust is even more critical for affiliate marketing and outbound sales to succeed.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of providing value to the community first before asking for anything in return.

By becoming a trusted advisor, you can eventually sell anything you want to your audience with ease.

Transcripts

hey guys alex here uh i wanted to

address another question we got in the

cold crowd community um if you're not a

part of it link is down in the

description of this video i highly

recommend you join uh and jump into the

discussion also subscribe and like the

question today was about affiliate

offers and outbound um marketing or

sales however you want to call it you

know outbound cold email linkedin

outreach dms instagram dms twitter dms

things like this

um

and selling affiliate offers with that

channel my answer to this gentleman was

basically that i don't recommend

especially starting out i do not

recommend doing outbound uh cold email

linkedin outreach dms to sell affiliate

offers um there are some there's like an

exception i guess which i'll go over

maybe a little bit later in the video

but uh overall i think it's a horrible

idea and this is why um because with

affiliate offers you're trying to

people

generally affiliate offers work the best

when there's some trust built with who

you're speaking to okay so you're you

know recommending them a software or a

service or whatever uh and and you're

basically handing this to them hey you

know this this is the solution that you

need this is what you should check out

um

and to do that you know it just it just

increases conversion rates and it makes

everything better when you have some

kind of trust or relationship built or

you've built some kind of trust in that

exchange

that lead them to convert to you know to

buy the product and or to use the

service to use the product um

and cold email linkedin outreach if they

don't know who you are and you're just

coming in as a cold

um you know a cold email or whatever you

know just this random email address and

you're coming in saying hey you guys

should try this out um it doesn't mean

anything right it just feels like spam

it just feels like someone's saying uh

hey i don't know you but check this out

you know what i mean and you're just

gonna like you know

check what out right um and and do they

even know you have like the problem that

this product solved so do you do they

know anything about they don't know

anything about you so how are they like

diagnosing and giving you a solution

right so that's number one is that i

think it's just

um there's no relationship being built

cold traffic is just cold traffic right

so it's just you're not you're not

they don't know who you are basically so

um that's kind of the number one reason

i really think that cold outreach just

doesn't really work for affiliate offers

very well um and the people that kind of

do make it work

i don't know i don't even know i haven't

really seen personally like actually

somebody really making that work but the

ones that claim that they make it work

um they're doing high volume sending i

mean they're sending you know hundreds

thousands you know tens of thousands of

messages um you know a a a month a week

a day or whatever and and they're just

going after this just big bulk volume

play which you know again it is spamming

i mean by definition

uh it is spamming so it's um you know

they they spam and maybe it's somewhat

effective for them i i just can't i

can't really believe that happening you

know you're not building any trust

um

so

so that's my kind of verdict on like

just you know this idea that you can

just kind of like send cold emails to an

affiliate offer okay and you don't have

to jump on a call or do anything you

have to do any work you just send cold

emails and people sign up for these

things i think it's i think it's a pipe

dream okay i think it's a fantasy

however um i will tell you real quick

what i think how i think you could

uh the exception to the role where i

think you actually could sell affiliate

offers with cold email linkedin outreach

things like this vms um and that is you

know build a community build the trust

um

through a series of steps okay i don't i

don't mean a series of steps of emails i

mean a series of steps of

action being taken by the recipients

that get them closer to you that where

you get to know them where you kind of

start to create a bit of a community and

you start to understand each other and

you start to

bring potential solutions to them

knowing that they have like certain

problems right so um an example of this

would be like

um cold emailing you know making a

webinar or making a training video or

making some kind of master class or

making like a an educational

piece of content that you think this

audience may be interested in you offer

that up for free and you say hey join

the free webinar join the free uh check

out the free video uh broadcast check

out whatever the free video training

we're going to show you how to uh take x

to y we're going to show you how to

increase your y we're going to show you

how to um you know

we're going to show you how to uh you

know grow your business with xyz

whatever it is right the promise there

um that they're bringing to the table

um that you're bringing to the table and

so

and so basically you're sending an

invite to a an educational valuable

event

um or video and that video needs to be

truly valuable you need to know your

audience enough to create a video that's

going to teach them some skill that

hopefully you know like a percentage of

that audience will be really into oh

yeah i actually i want to know more

about that right so and you're teaching

them okay and you're getting a sign up

in the process so this is a sign up to

your email list this could be uh to a

slack group this could be a telegram

group this could be to

any number of different platforms you

know what i mean they should that you

could you could build a buddy press or a

buddy boss wordpress site and build a

community there

there's all kinds of ways to to do this

uh in various varying ways but you're

getting them on a list you're getting

you're you're teaching them you're

training them showing them something and

then towards the end of the training

you're kind of you know in true webinar

form you're kind of soft selling that

you can help them with this right that

you can you can be of more assistance to

this you can advise them on this you

have some kind of program some kind of

offer whatever it is or just you know

you can join the community if you

enjoyed this webinar we can you can get

you know support from me and support

blah blah this kind of thing and you can

start to create like a community of

people then you can start to sell your

affiliate offers after you've provided

value so um you know just like the

pareto principle it's like 80 20 right

you want to provide 80 value and 20

selling or promotion or affiliate offers

or whatever that is okay so you have to

find some way to create that ratio and

you're giving more than you're taking

you're giving a lot and over time the

the what you are taking what you are

getting from these people starts to you

know kind of mount up and grow okay so

it's not a short-term strategy it's not

just send out 10 you know 100 000 cold

emails and hopefully get like a 0.002

uh you know click rate and you know .001

of those sign up and you're making five

dollars a month or twenty dollars a

month um you know it can be more of like

building a long-term thing

with a skill that you know or uh or

something that you know that you are

knowledgeable on a niche uh

service a

process a tool um you know and how you

did it uniquely and um you know how you

made all this money and i'll show you

how to do it too right um become me

basically uh in this kind of situation

so um so yeah so at the end of the day

there is more to it than just sending

cold emails in my opinion there is

building trust there is becoming an

asset to the audience there's

supporting the audience knowing the

audience and um you know giving the

audience you know what what they want

and teaching them what they need and

stuff like that um but you can sell

affiliates so the cold email in this

situation would just be to push them to

this event or this video or this uh

training okay so that's the only way

that i see that you know cold outreach

can really sell affiliate offers and in

this case it can work actually pretty

damn well it's a long-term strategy it's

going to take you a while um you know

and again i think affiliate marketing a

lot of times is sort of sold as

something that

is sort of get rich quick kind of

situation so people think that they're

going to just like start you know

selling affiliate like showing affiliate

offers in an email or an ad or something

like that they're just going to

instantly start making cash flow

usually does not work like that there is

trust that needs to be built so

i think if you're you know in the

beginning especially if you're a

beginner and you're just getting started

building businesses

the best thing to do is to master skill

and offer it as a service and do this

same process instead of presenting the

affiliate offer though um you're you're

you know you're actually selling the

service at the end of the webinar you're

saying i can actually help you with this

let me know if you need some external

help or you want to outsource this this

part of your business right something

like this um that that's going to be

your best road forward to create the

kind of cash flow that you need to

survive and live and you know pay rent

and do all the things you need to do pay

your bills um and and in the background

you can be building kind of these

affiliate offers and things and that can

become passive income so you're kind of

getting started in that way but

regardless regardless and you know

post 2020 post 2019 whatever whatever

that was whenever that really happened

you need to be building community you

need to be building trust um people in

your community are going to trust you

and they're gonna they're gonna be

interested in whatever you have to show

them rather than just being another cold

email sending email after email getting

blocked getting spam you know hitting

spam filters and spam folders this is

just a nightmare that you don't want to

get into rather actually do the real

thing okay so uh actionable advice on

this if you're thinking of getting into

affiliate marketing realize that

there are ways to do it there are high

ticket affiliate programs there are

different things where you can actually

make a decent income with affiliate

marketing but regardless no matter what

you're offering you're gonna have to

build that trust and the best way to

build trust is to build a community and

to offer value in that 80 20 pareto

principal way 80 value 20

ask or

uh take taking you know 20 80 giving 20

taking

um

and uh

on that note secondly i mean there's all

these ways to build a community and you

should be doing that no matter what

because the best way to build trust is

to build a community and to have people

that um are getting advice and getting

support from you and trust you as a

trusted advisor it's what jay abraham

talks about a lot you don't want to be

you don't want to be a service provider

or uh

you know a freelancer or a contractor or

whatever you know or or even a partner

you want to be a trusted advisor to

these people okay and once you hit that

status you can sell anything you want

so yeah get out there start building

community if you don't have skills learn

these skills and put them into real

world practice go get clients

build it build a bit of content training

on sort of what the results you you want

to get or you're getting or other people

have gotten with the same system or

whatever you need to kind of figure out

where to start there but skills is

usually where you're going to get

started and then yeah begin to build

that community and you can start to get

into affiliate marketing and get into

offering services you can

get in all kinds of different sorts of

businesses from that community but you

always have that audience that you can

tap into and get their input get their

feedback and you're not just operating

alone as like a lone cowboy cold email

it just hits the spam folder eventually

no matter what all right so if you like

this video go ahead and subscribe like

the video uh and uh and yeah definitely

check out the cold crowd community group

man we're getting questions like this

all the time i'm always making videos

and answering them and uh you know

answering live in the group as well uh

giving uh people feedback and just

helping out in general so thank you for

watching