Affiliate Onboarding Sequence

Affiliate Onboarding Sequence

Design the sequence that moves a newly approved affiliate to their first tracked conversion. Most programs activate only a small minority of approved affiliates - practitioner estimates cluster around 5-20%, a convergent range rather than a controlled measurement - so the sequence's whole job is to compress time-to-first-conversion while intent is still warm.

Two commitments run through everything below:

• Day offsets are a starting skeleton, not a standard. Documented practitioner consensus is 4-6 touches over 10-14 days, but every sourced practitioner favors behavior triggers - first click, first sale, no-click-by-day-N - layered on top of, and overriding, the calendar.
• An affiliate who cannot get a working link cannot activate. Provisioning and tracking readiness is the pre-condition of the sequence, never a touch inside it.

Two entry paths, both starting with the Interview:

• Build from scratch - "write the welcome emails for affiliates we just approved", "design our affiliate onboarding sequence", "what should new partners get in their first 30 days?" - run the full Workflow.
• Diagnose a running sequence - "our approved affiliates never send a click", "nobody activates after the welcome email" - run the Interview, then jump to Diagnosing an existing sequence before touching the plan.

Interview

Ask one question per message; offer the multiple-choice options where given. Skip any question the user already answered.

1. B2B SaaS or B2C ecommerce? Both means the plan needs two branches.
2. What event counts as "activated": first click, first lead/trial, first paid sale, or first closed deal? Inside what window (days from approval)?
3. Program mechanics: commission model (recurring %, one-time %, flat CPA), cookie window, payout threshold, payout hold period?
4. Which archetypes does the intake actually contain: content/review site, coupon-deal, loyalty-cashback, social creator, email-list owner, sub-network - and in B2B: agency, consultant, tech partner?
5. Which assets exist today vs must be created: tracking links, banners, swipe copy, product one-sheets - and for B2B: sandbox/demo access, comparison and buyer-question material?
6. Tracking setup: are links or coupon codes auto-provisioned at approval? Is server-side (postback) conversion tracking live?
7. Tax and payout collection: which steps (tax form, payout method, terms attestation) - and do they gate payout eligibility?
8. Who sends the touches: an automated program address, or a named affiliate manager? Does capacity for calls and 1:1 exist?
9. How many new approvals arrive per month?
10. By what date must the first activation numbers land? A date inside the next cohort's window deletes every option that needs a build and promotes the near-zero fixes; no date leaves the default ordering intact.
11. A one-off win on this cohort, or a compounding asset? Compounding promotes the automated drip and the persistent asset hub; one-off promotes manual outreach to the affiliates already approved.
12. Effort ceiling: manager hours per week, whether a named AM exists at all, and whether changing a commission needs finance or legal sign-off. Zero AM hours deletes the high-touch and hybrid tiers outright rather than demoting them.

Questions 10-12 set the ordering of every menu in this skill; the answers are what the rankings below get re-sorted against.

Workflow

1. Run the Interview.
2. Fix the activation definition and its measurement window before designing anything. Touch count, nudge deadline, and every KPI depend on it; a plan without it cannot be judged.
3. Verify day-0 readiness: link/code provisioning at approval, tracking that records the activation event, and payout/tax collection wired as a payout gate - checklist in references/asset-kit-and-provisioning.md. Stop and fix gaps before mapping a single touch.
4. Segment the intake twice: by archetype (question 4) and by touch tier. Archetype is a lookup, not a ranking: route the archetypes the intake actually contains. Tier is a ranking, and it decides where the manager's hours go:

• efficiency (activation bought per manager hour): self-serve > hybrid > high-touch
• value (activation rate per affiliate): high-touch > hybrid > self-serve
• recurring effort (manager hours per affiliate): high-touch > hybrid > self-serve
• one-off build before the first send: self-serve == hybrid > high-touch

Self-serve leads because its marginal cost per affiliate is near-zero once built, not because it converts best - it converts worst. Build it as the floor for everyone, then buy activation upward for the segment that repays it. The build tie is real: hybrid _is_ the self-serve drip plus one calendar slot, so it costs the same week to stand up; high-touch needs almost no build and instead becomes a standing job.

High-touch is what this order starves. It tops the value line and tops the recurring-effort line at once, so the ratio buries it every round and a program that only computes efficiency ends up serving its largest partners the same automated drip as its long tail. Promote it explicitly - never wait for it to win - when a single partner's expected revenue exceeds the hours the calls consume, or when the roster is small enough that the drip's build never pays back.

Default: self-serve for the whole intake, hybrid layered on the archetypes whose expected volume repays a check-in.

Delete high-touch from the menu, do not demote it, when no named AM exists or approvals run past roughly a hundred a month. A tier nobody can staff is absent, not slow, and one parked at the bottom quietly reappears as scope the plan cannot execute.

This ordering is a default, not a law, and it shifts with who executes it. Re-rank it against what the Interview already told you:

• An affiliate platform with milestone automation already live collapses the self-serve build to near-zero and widens its lead.
• A manager with no capacity (question 12) deletes hybrid and high-touch both.
• A roster of a dozen partners each worth a large deal inverts the order outright, because near-zero volume makes the per-affiliate hour cheap and the self-serve build never pays back.

Tier detail in references/touch-plan-patterns.md.

1. Map the touch plan per segment: day-offset skeleton plus behavior-trigger layer, patterns in references/touch-plan-patterns.md. Every touch asks exactly one action.
2. Place terms/disclosure attestation in the approval touch, and tax/payout collection before the first payout is possible - never after the first commission is earned. Decide placement only; drafting the clauses belongs to the terms skill.
3. Attach a time-boxed activation nudge inside the first window, when intent peaks. Decide its slot, deadline, and framing here; its rate economics belong to the commission skill.
4. Design the never-activated branch: diagnostic checkpoint at the window's end, re-engagement touches, one final-notice email, then archive. Never use termination threats as the lever - motivation research documents threats as counterproductive.
5. Draft copy for every touch - one action, one CTA, link or code in the first lines of touch 1 - and set the exit, suppression, and re-entry rules, using references/copy-and-sequence-logic.md.
6. Run every drafted email through your preferred humanizer skill; reject raw first-draft model output as final copy. The pass rewrites tone only - the one-action structure and money mechanics stay verbatim.
7. Validate the plan with the user section by section - activation definition, routing, touch plan, nudge, never-activated branch, copy - revising on pushback before moving to the next section.