Back, and straight to it
Been a while. The last few months were heads down: a few team changes, our newest full-time hire settling in, and a new client live across three markets.
The setup work is mostly done, so I'm back.
I want to start with the part that quietly ate the most of my time this year, which is how we find and reach affiliates.
How we used to do it
For a long time, prospecting at JAYGER MEDIA looked like this. Find leads on AffiliateFinder and a handful of other sources. Drop them all in a sheet. Enrich the data. Keep it clean. Import. Export. Hundreds of exports. Assign them to a Lemlist campaign for outreach. Repeat.
That works fine when you run one or two brands.
Add more brands and it starts to crack. Every new program means another sheet, countless exports, more enrichment, more cleanup, more places for things to go stale.
The process doesn't scale. It just gets heavier, and you feel it every single week.
The feature I ignored for too long
I've been a fan of AffiliateFinder for quite some time now. But I never touched their outreach system.
When it first launched it was new, and honestly I didn't want to rip out a setup that was already working. So I kept it at arm's length.
The last few weeks I finally gave the outreach functions a proper go. My honest verdict: it's working really well.
A few things stand out:
Reply and stage tracking is so much easier. I can see who replied and exactly what stage each contact sits in, without constantly cross-checking a spreadsheet against my inbox.
The AI writer is genuinely good. It drafts your outreach emails, and honestly I've been happy with what it comes up with. Most of the time it just needs some minor tweaking before it's ready to go.
You set up your program benefits inside the tool. This is the part I like most. You choose whether you offer free samples, what those samples are, and it builds all of that straight into the outreach.
The part of my week that used to eat the most time and energy now lives in one place, and I'm spending my hours editing and sending instead of cleaning up sheets and work with importing and exporting.
I'm still testing, so I'll report back on what I keep, what I cut, and where the AI drafts need a human hand. They've also just rolled out a Campaigns feature for automated follow-ups, and you can now upload your own templates too. Both are on my list to put through their paces, so more on those once I've run them properly.
I've also started geeking out on their API to see how far I can push this. Somewhere down the line we might even build our own little CRM on top of it. We'll see where it goes.
This week, try this:
Map your current prospecting flow and count how many manual steps it takes to go from finding a lead to first contact.
Start your free trial and set up your account. (Full guide → https://affiliate-snacks.beehiiv.com/p/testing-out-affiliatefinder-ai-affiliate-snacks-6)
Open the outreach section and set up your program benefits, including whether you offer free samples.
Let the AI draft one outreach email and add some minor tweaks (if needed)
Send it, and track the reply inside the tool instead of your inbox.
Talk soon, Jani Gysels
Missed a past edition? Read the full Affiliate Snacks archive here: https://affiliate-snacks.beehiiv.com/archive
Disclosure: this edition includes affiliate links. If you sign up through one of them I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools my team and I actually use in our own workflow, and AffiliateFinder is one we use weekly.