How to Use FirstPromoter to Activate New Affiliates

The short answer: if most affiliates you accept never send a single click, the fix in FirstPromoter costs nothing beyond the $49 Starter plan, because trigger emails with delays, milestone and inactivity emails and an automatic level-up between campaigns are on every plan (monthly billing, checked on 26 October 2026 on the pricing page). The steps: list the quiet promoters, set the approval rule, write a welcome sequence with their link and code in it, add a first-referral email and an inactivity nudge, build a level-up campaign, send a monthly performance email, and recount after 30 days.

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Recruiting fills the promoter list. Activation is the part nobody owns, and an affiliate who joined in March and has not shared a link by May is not a partner yet, just a row. FirstPromoter's email tool is built around exactly those moments: accepted, first lead, a count reached, gone quiet. What the product is and costs overall is in the FirstPromoter glossary entry.

Size the problem before writing a word:

1. Your inactive share, as a number. For example, 40 promoters accepted in the last 90 days with 26 of them at zero clicks is 26 / 40 = 65% inactive. That figure, not a feeling, is what this guide sets out to move.
2. The emails each campaign already has. By default every campaign includes at least one email in each trigger section, per the emails article. Rewrite those before adding new ones.
3. One measure of success. The share of promoters accepted in a month who send a first referral within 30 days. Take it for the last three months now, so the sequence has a baseline.

Before you start

• Admin access to FirstPromoter, and a campaign that already tracks clicks and referrals.
• The promoter's view of your program: the referral link format, any promo code, and the reward.
• For the agent step, a Claude plan that allows custom connectors; the MCP documentation notes that adding one requires a paid plan.

Step 1: List the quiet promoters

Turn on the built-in AI assistant in Settings, on the Others tab, then open AI Assistant and start a new chat, per the assistant article. Ask for promoters accepted in the last 90 days with no clicks, and for those with clicks but no referrals. The assistant respects your team's permissions and cannot delete anything. Save both answers; they are your before picture.

Step 2: Decide who gets in, and when they hear

In the campaign's main settings, Auto-approve new promoters lets everyone in at once; leaving it off holds applications for review, per the campaign guide. With manual review on, the Promoter Pending email tells applicants they are waiting, which matters when review takes days rather than hours.

Step 3: Write the welcome sequence

Under Emails, click New Email, choose the campaign and the Promoter Accepted trigger. Trigger settings take a delay in seconds, minutes, hours or days, so one trigger can carry a short drip: the emails article gives the example of a first email at acceptance and a second after 10 days. Put the work into the first one:

• Their referral link and promo code, using the Referral Link and Promo Code tags, so nobody has to log in to find them.
• The reward in one sentence, using the Per Sale Reward Name tag.
• One concrete first action: the page to link, the audience it suits, the angle that converts.

Step 4: Mark the first referral

Add a Count Reached email that fires when a promoter reaches one referral or one customer. The trigger counts clicks, referrals, customers or cancellations, per the same article. A first sale is when an affiliate decides whether this program is worth a second post, so tell them what it earned and what the next one needs.

Step 5: Nudge the quiet ones

The Inactivity trigger sends after a set number of days without clicks, referrals or customers. Set it to the window you measured in Step 1, and make the email a question with one reply option, not a reminder that they signed up.

Step 6: Build a level-up ladder

Create a second campaign with a better reward, then set Level up to another campaign on the first one so promoters move automatically after a set number of customers or amount of revenue; the campaign guide gives Silver to Gold at 50 customers as its example. Say in the welcome email what the next rung pays and how to reach it.

Step 7: Send a monthly scorecard

The Recurring trigger sends weekly or monthly at a day and time you choose, and the tags can fill in each promoter's referrals, customers, amounts owed and amounts paid. A short monthly note with their own numbers keeps the program in their inbox without a broadcast.

An agent step: draft, then a person enables

Connect Claude to https://mcp.firstpromoter.com as a custom connector and sign in through OAuth, per the MCP documentation. Ask it to map the current onboarding emails and draft a three-email sequence for newly accepted promoters. The tools reference says emails created this way land in draft status with the trigger disabled, and a team member must review and enable them in the dashboard before anything sends. Read every draft against Steps 3 to 5, fix the tone and the numbers, then enable them yourself. The server is experimental, so expect tool names to change.

What the help centre warns about

• Test emails without the tags. Save and send test email shows the layout, but tags do not populate in the test, only in real sends, per the emails article.
• Counting on broadcasts in month one. Broadcast emails are available to paying customers whose accounts are at least two months old, per the emails article, so a launch runs on trigger emails.
• Testing on live data. There is no sandbox; resetting a campaign to test deletes its referrals, rewards and payouts and cannot be undone, per the sandbox answer.
• Silent failures. The Events view under each email shows whether it was delivered or Failed, with the reason on hover, according to the same article. Check it the week the sequence goes live.

After 30 days

Ask the assistant the Step 1 questions again and compare the inactive share with the baseline. If the share fell and first referrals came sooner, keep the sequence and tune the inactivity window; if not, the reward or the audience is the problem, and no email fixes that.

Mind the ladder's cost on Starter, which allows three campaigns, per the pricing page: each rung of a level-up ladder is a campaign, so the plan is full at three rungs and FirstPromoter sells the fourth as Business at $99 a month (checked on 26 October 2026). My view: two rungs make the next reward visible and leave a campaign free for an influencer or referral program.

FAQ

Can a welcome email go out days after acceptance?

Yes. Trigger settings include a delay in seconds, minutes, hours or days, and several Promoter Accepted emails with different delays make a drip, per the emails article.

Will the AI assistant send emails on its own?

No. Through MCP, new emails are created as drafts with the trigger off, and broadcasts and send-now actions are not exposed, per the tools reference.

How do promoters move to a better commission automatically?

With Level up to another campaign in the campaign's settings, which moves a promoter once they reach a set number of customers or revenue, per the campaign guide.