Hey y’all, 

I’m going to paint you a picture:

You recruit a new affiliate – and they are so excited. You send them a product and their welcome package, and they can’t wait to get started. 

That first month is heaven. They’re posting with value props you hadn’t even thought of yourself, and the code redeems are rolling in. 

You’re convinced that you’ve just recruited your new star affiliate. 

But then, the excitement wanes. 

Posts drop off. Your affiliate is a little slower to respond. And before long, their code is in a dusty corner, framed in cobwebs. 

It’s been months since your affiliate answered a single email, much less posted content. 

What happened? Everything was going so well. 

We ran an affiliate marketing survey a few weeks ago, so let me drop a stat on you: 

6 in 10 marketers said keeping their affiliates active was their single biggest challenge. 

In fact, on average, marketers reported that only 40% of their affiliates were active at any given time. 

Here’s the thing: You gotta keep an affiliate interested. Creators are busy people – they’re juggling home life, dumb adult things, maybe kids, and probably other brands too. 

So how do we fix this problem? How do we make it so more of your affiliates are active, so you don’t have to spend time (you don’t have) recruiting new, eager creators?

Last time, when I gushed about how Clinique can do no wrong, I mentioned using the brand as inspiration for your own creator regifting. 

I won’t go too deep on it again – but if you have fast-moving products, you have an automatic way to keep your affiliates engaged. Consider regifting when:

Do I think you should do all of them? No. You’d have no product left. But pick a schedule that makes sense for you, and stick to it. 

You can also make it part of your affiliate tiers, too – for example, someone on 

So not only are you making replenishment part of your program’s foundation, but you’re also further incentivizing your affiliates to reach that next tier. 

For affiliate programs, a lot of marketers do the following: 

And that’s about it. 

Take a walk through your inbox. How many unopened emails do you currently have? 

Now look at Teams, Slack, Discord – or whatever other godforsaken app you’re using for work. I bet you don’t have a single unread message. I’d probably also bet you’ve got a cheeky group chat somewhere that you’re always up-to-date on. 

There’s a reason for that. There’s power in community – especially when members can interact with one another. Give them a hub, not only to talk to you, but to each other. They can exchange ideas, memes, and stories that may not even have anything to do with your brand or products. 

But that’s what you want. You want a space where people can connect and begin forming a community identity. It’ll keep them active, interested, and engaged. 

For example, a clothing brand could create a fashion-based affiliate community with regular weekly challenges: who wore it best/who did the most creative styling. A skincare community could focus on beauty, self-care tips, and related topics. 

It makes so much more of an impact than a random newsletter buried in 60K other unopened emails. 

There is absolutely nothing more powerful than one’s own identity. Apple was a masterclass in this. 

Another is Passenger. Passenger is a clothing brand built for people who love connecting with nature and prioritize sustainability. For every order, they plant a tree to give back to nature. 

Their affiliate and creator community is called “Roamers,” which ties back to their tagline, “designed to wander, made to roam.” They have “missions” for their affiliates to accomplish that earn them bonuses. As they progress through the program, they receive even more rewards. 

Not only do you get rewards for promoting their brand, but you also feel like you’re doing good things for the environment. 

What they’re doing is tapping into a certain kind of identity. 

Meaning if you share the brand’s values, you want to be a roamer. You use those words to define yourself because they make you feel good. You want to be the kind of person who connects with nature, cares about the environment, and puts good out into the world.

Who wouldn’t? 

If you can tie your brand and products to tap into someone’s identity, it’s going to be so much easier to turn them into active, loyal ambassadors. 

P.S. If you want to hear more about how Nell Kravitz grew Passenger’s affiliates from the ground up, join us on May 14 for another smashing Modash Live.

There are tons of ways to keep affiliates active. The most important thing is to test what works for you. 

But the reality is that the more time you invest in keeping your affiliates active, the less you’ll spend on searching, outreach, recruiting, onboarding, etc. You know, the most fun parts. 

It all comes back to relationships. It always does. 

Hoping this email finds you before I do, 

Whitney 
Content R&D at Modash. Send hate mail to LinkedIn

I can’t be the only person obsessed with Tofu (the snake) and his beef with Markiplier (a human YouTuber)

Who they are: Taylor Nicole Dean, @taylorndean on Instagram, quickly climbed to 1M followers, showcasing her strange little white snake, Tofu, whom I discovered when he just wouldn't leave his bath. Taylor owns several snakes, but recently it’s Tofu that’s gained popularity – mostly with his inexplicable beef with YouTuber Markiplier. 

Why she’s worth a follow: Taylor is hilarious – and the recent beef between Tofu and Markiplier is actually kind of groundbreaking. I don’t know a whole lot about snakes (or snakefluencers?), but apparently they’re not meant to recognize human faces. Her other snakes show zero reaction when presented with the YouTuber, but Tofu immediately squares up against his image on the screen. 

Dream collab: Bring Netflix in on this one. I need to see a full, dramatic crime-investigation-style documentary about how and why Tofu hates this YouTuber. I also think a collab between the two creators could actually be really interesting (so long as it doesn’t distress Tofu too much).