What is the Best Email Autoresponder for Affiliate Marketing?

In the world of online money-making, affiliate marketing sticks out as one of the best methods available.

After all, you’re not creating a product; you’re just selling someone else’s.

This has been a major driver in the number of people using affiliate marketing to make passive income online because the bar for entry is so low. You don’t have a brick-and-mortar business, you don’t have a physical product, and you don’t have to pay to get started. All you need is an internet connection and some marketing knowledge, and you can start making money online today.

One of the more advantageous affiliate marketing tactics is the email list, which allows you to gather your own following and promote many products to them instead of just blasting ads on Facebook or YouTube.

It does take a while to build an email list, but when you’ve got a good amount of subscribers, it’s a serious driver for sales.

Of course, with so many subscribers, automation is a major topic. After all, if you’re doing all the list-building activities yourself, you’ll find you don’t have any time for the other stuff.

One tool that many people use to lighten their workload and generate more revenue is an email autoresponder.

However, with a plethora of options available in the market, choosing the best email autoresponder for affiliate marketing can be a daunting task.

In this article, I’ll explore the top contenders and help you determine the ideal solution to maximize your affiliate marketing efforts and drive conversions.

What is an email autoresponder?

An email autoresponder is a piece of software that allows you to automatically send emails to subscribers once they’ve opted into receiving emails from you. Instead of doing the job yourself, an autoresponder handles it for you no matter how many opt-ins or emails you receive.

To elaborate a little, I’ll give an example of a use case where an autoresponder would be useful.

Imagine you’re working on building your email list and posting content of all types with embedded newsletter sign-up forms. You end up getting several people who opt into receiving emails from you, and as a courtesy, you want to send them a welcome email.

While this wouldn’t be too bad of a job to do manually if you’re only getting a few opt-ins at a time, when that number scales up, it’s much more efficient to use an autoresponder.

That’s the tagline for autoresponders: automate the repetitive tasks, so you can spend your time elsewhere.

Overall, an email autoresponder is a necessary tool for any affiliate marketer planning on building an email list or with an email list already, and I’d highly recommend using one right now. Many are free as well (as I’ll discuss more below), so you don’t have to spend anything if you’re just trying one out.

Why use an email autoresponder for affiliate marketing?

In very short, an email autoresponder is a great thing for affiliate marketing because it helps build a relationship between you and your subscribers even if you don’t reach out to them personally, and it can save you both time and money that could be better spent elsewhere.

I’ll go into more detail below, but that’s the SparkNotes explanation of why you should use an email autoresponder for email marketing.

Building relationships

Once a new subscriber has joined your email list, it would be a faux pas not to give them a warm welcome and introduce them to the content they’ll get from being a part of your email list. You could do this welcome email manually, but an autoresponder can do so at a much larger scale and much more sustainably than you could do yourself.

When you have an autoresponder set to respond to new subscribers joining your email list or when they have inquiries about your offerings, it creates a sense of connection between them and your brand by virtue of getting a response in the first place. This can be crucial in building trust in your brand, as without a personalized experience, subscribers are less likely to make a purchase from you or based on your recommendations.

Cost reduction

Having one (or several) autoresponders running can replace the need for extra staff that would otherwise be managing your email list for you, thus saving you money by using an autoresponder instead of hiring an extra set of hands.

This is even further proven by the fact that not all autoresponders even cost money in the first place; some are totally free.

What should I look for in an email autoresponder for affiliate marketing?

Let me say this straight-up: the difference between a good autoresponder and a bad one is significant, and can impact your bottom line if you choose poorly.

Luckily for you, that’s why I’m here: to help you choose a good email autoresponder.

However, if you want to do your own research, there are some very important factors to consider when choosing an email autoresponder for affiliate marketing, listed below:

Ease of use

This one’s simple: if you find it unwieldy, don’t use it. If you find an autoresponder where the interface is intuitive and easy to navigate for you, then use it!

Email deliverability

Answer me this: what’s the point of an autoresponder if those automated emails don’t arrive in your subscribers’ inboxes?

That’s right – there isn’t one.

Email deliverability is very important and varies between email marketing services, so do your research on the email deliverability rates of the platforms you’re considering.

For reference, 95% deliverability and up is considered good.

Affiliate links

This one is something you should be very careful about, as some platforms will outright ban you from using hyperlinks in your autoresponders. The biggest culprits of this are the following:

• Mailchimp
• ActiveCampaign
• Benchmark
• MailerLite
• Brevo (previously SendinBlue)

In short, if you choose the wrong platform for your autoresponders, you could be in some trouble with that platform in the future.

Pricing

As I’ve said several times in this article already, there are free email autoresponders that you can use for affiliate marketing.

Don’t pay for something if you don’t have to.

However, there are instances where free autoresponders are limited feature-wise, and it would make more sense for your use case to pay for full access to those features. This all depends on you, though, so consider that when choosing an autoresponder.

Now, for the important question…

What is the best email autoresponder for affiliate marketing?

There are literally dozens of options when it comes to email autoresponders, and I’ve gone through most of them and put the three best of the lot below.

Aweber is a reliable email marketing platform that offers user-friendly tools for email creation, automation, and subscriber management.

Its 20 years of experience and over 1 million customers make it a trusted choice for businesses of all sizes.

Aweber is one of the platforms where you can use an autoresponder for free but with a caveat: you can only create one email automation on a free plan.

For example, if you wanted to create a welcome email sequence, you could do that. However, if you also wanted to create an email sequence for when an email subscriber reaches out to you, you would have to buy into Aweber’s plans.

Granted, as email marketing platforms go, Aweber is fairly inexpensive. If you exclusively used Aweber for their email autoresponder capabilities, you could go with their “Lite” plan for three total email automations or their “Plus” plan for unlimited email automations. You could create as many email autoresponders as you want, for whichever situations you find necessary.

Overall, I’d say Aweber is the best email autoresponder for affiliate marketing, even if you’re limited to one autoresponder when using their free plan. The rest of their features are also very good, and I’d recommend you check out my Aweber review if you want to know more about Aweber as a platform and not just its autoresponder capabilities.

Pricing: As mentioned earlier, Aweber’s free plan only allows you to create one email automation. Their paid plans, starting at $14.99/mo, allow you to create three email automations. From there, the next plan up the ladder allows you to create unlimited email automations starting at $29.99/mo.

GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing platform that provides email marketing, landing pages, webinars, and marketing automation. Its advanced segmentation options, drag-and-drop email editor, and integrations with e-commerce platforms make it an attractive choice for businesses looking to grow their audience and revenue.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that does email marketing, marketing automation, e-commerce, and more, then GetResponse is your best bet.

While affiliate marketing doesn’t really correlate with e-commerce, if you ever wanted to create your own product (e.g. an info product), then GetResponse has all of the features you need to set up and run an e-commerce store.

GetResponse offers a free plan for users to try out the platform, which includes basic email marketing features with up to 500 subscribers, a website builder, landing pages, signup and contact forms, and more. It’s a very robust free plan, but it does still limit you feature-wise to entice you to get their paid plans.

Unfortunately, GetResponse’s free plan doesn’t include any automations, so you’ll have to pay for that feature.

Pricing: GetResponse has a free plan that includes , but doesn’t include any autoresponder capabilities. Their paid plans, starting at $19/mo (which also have a 30-day free trial), allow you to create welcome email sequences among any other autoresponder sequence you want.

EmailOctopus is a cost-effective email marketing platform that offers automation, analytics, and integrations with popular tools like Zapier and Shopify. Its user-friendly interface makes it ideal for small businesses and startups.

Out of every email marketing platform I’ve tried, EmailOctopus is by far the simplest.

That’s because their platform is designed to be simple and barebones, meaning feature overload will never be a factor when using EmailOctopus.

This is a double-edged sword, though; having a low-skill floor means that even beginner email marketers can create autoresponders and other automations, but having a low-skill ceiling as well means that as you increase the complexity of your operations, you might find EmailOctopus somewhat limiting.

On a different note, EmailOctopus is another platform where you can create autoresponders for free, and you can create up to three advanced automations with their free plan. Their automation builder is incredibly simple and intuitive, and while that is a good thing for new users, there isn’t much in terms of advanced automation.

Overall, if you’re looking for a simple autoresponder or a simple email marketing platform in its totality, then EmailOctopus will suit your needs perfectly.

Pricing: EmailOctopus has a free plan which allows up to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month, and allows you to build up to three advanced automations for your autoresponder needs. Their paid plans start at $8/mo, including unlimited automations.

Conclusion: what’s the best email atuoresponder for affiliate marketing?

In short, that depends on you. Whether you want to pay for an autoresponder, whether you want any more email marketing features on top of an autoresponder, whatever.

In my opinion, Aweber is the most convenient autoresponder to use, but GetResponse offers more features on top of autoresponders and EmailOctopus is the simplest platform to use overall.