Pipeline and Keep

Open Pipeline after you save an affiliate.

The nine stages

Every saved affiliate sits in one of nine columns:

1. Found
2. Emailed
3. Replied
4. Talking terms
5. Joining
6. Live
7. Went quiet
8. Said no
9. Later

Drag a card to a column, or use its Move menu with the keyboard. The change saves at once. You have five seconds to press Undo, and the clock waits while your pointer is on the message. Undo changes the status back. It can't unsend an email or reverse an AffiliateRail hand-off.

Said no and Later ask why, in one tap, before the card moves. For example: "Commission too low" or "Asked us to follow up later". The reason is saved with the move, so a teammate knows why the card stopped. Cancel leaves the card where it was. Every other move asks nothing.

Do not contact

Do not contact is your own mark on someone: nobody on your account emails them until you lift it. Find it in an affiliate's profile, and on each row in Saved.

• Pick why from a short list. The reason shows on the row.
• A new campaign leaves them out and counts them under "marked Do not contact".
• If emails to them are already on the way, the mark stops the ones that haven't gone yet. Anything already sent stays sent.
• Lift takes the mark off. They can join the next campaign. Emails the mark stopped don't start again.

It's not the same as unsubscribing. When someone unsubscribes from RecruitAffiliates.ai mail, that's their choice and it holds for every brand that uses RecruitAffiliates.ai. Do not contact is yours, for your account only.

Moves made from outreach

RecruitAffiliates.ai also moves a card when outreach reaches a known result. It reads replies.

• The first confirmed send moves Found to Emailed.
• A yes or a question moves Emailed to Replied.
• A "no thanks", a "you've got the wrong person" or a complaint moves Emailed or Replied to Said no. The reason is saved, so a teammate can see why it stopped.
• A "not now" moves Emailed to Later, with "Asked us to follow up later" as the reason.
• Out-of-office replies and bounces never move a card.
• A finished sequence with no answer moves Emailed to Went quiet.
• A late reply moves Went quiet on by the same rules. The sequence gave up, but the person didn't.
• An unsubscribe moves Emailed or Replied to Said no.
• Marking someone Invited after a yes moves the card to Joining.

A reply never moves a card from Talking terms or later, because by then the stage is your judgement and one email shouldn't undo it.

An old event can't overwrite a later move you made yourself. RecruitAffiliates.ai verifies the stored event and records its ID with the move, so a retry won't move the same card twice. If events arrive out of order, the later event waits up to 72 hours for its earlier move. After that it is marked expired and stops being retried.

An automatic move offers Undo for five seconds. Moving the card yourself in that window ends the offer. Your move wins.

Live is the one stage you can't pick from the menu. The activation sheet is the last step on a deal. There you add them to AffiliateRail, or choose I track them elsewhere so the board knows which system pays the partner and never guesses. Open the deal.

Filters and the four numbers

Filter the board by channel, list, country, owner, tag or campaign. Each column keeps its own count.

A column shows its first 100 cards. Past that it ends with Show more and the number it is holding back, and clicking it loads the rest of that one column with your filters still applied.

Once you connect an inbox, a strip above the board shows four numbers: Replies, Deals agreed, Live and Emails sent. Each has a 30-day daily chart and an all-time figure. Filters don't touch the strip. It covers the whole brand, every card on the board, on screen or not.

Replies are a count, never a percentage. The tile says how many people were emailed. A line under the count gives a plain range in the same units, which shows how little a handful of sends can tell you. So read the count.

There is no Opens figure. Apple Mail opens every email itself, so the number would show nothing.

No inbox yet? Then the strip stays hidden, and in its place is a link that takes you to the page where you connect one.

The board refreshes every fifteen seconds while the tab is visible. An automatic move shows up on its own.

On any paid plan, you can rename and reorder the nine display stages from the board. The underlying stages stay fixed, and Live still requires the activation sheet.

Every move, yours or automatic, adds a line to the activity log: who moved the card, from where, to where, and why.

The new board

The new board is rolling out in October 2026. Until it reaches your account, you see the board above.

The stage names say what happened. Saved is now Found, and Contacting, Negotiating and Onboarding are now Emailed, Talking terms and Joining, while Activated is Live. No reply is Went quiet, Declined is Said no and On hold is Later. Names you chose yourself stay as you set them.

The six main stages fit across a laptop screen, so you never scroll sideways. Went quiet, Said no and Later are side stages, a row of drop zones under the board, and dropping a card on one closes it. Said no and Later ask why right there, under the row. No dialog opens. Show the cards opens the three side stages to see who's in them.

The strip. One strip above the board shows three numbers. The first is how many people are in your pipeline, and the second is how many replied this week. The third counts people who agreed a deal and are ready to add to AffiliateRail, or to the tool you track partners in. The filters sit in the same strip as chips, for example "Channel: All". Press one to pick. Each choice is a link, so you can share a filtered board. Copy the address.

What needs you. A card shows one small label when it needs you, and one button to deal with it:

• Reply waiting: they wrote back with a yes or a question, and you haven't answered. Button: Reply.
• Bounced: the last email didn't arrive. Button: Fix address.
• Follow-up due: a follow-up date you set has come, or an email step is late. Button: Follow up.
• Gone quiet: nothing has happened for a while in a stage where something should. That's 10 days after the last email in Emailed, 3 days in Replied, 5 in Talking terms and 7 in Joining. Button: Nudge.

A Live partner shows Gone quiet too. They're quiet after 30 days with none of these: a click or sale in AffiliateRail, an email from them, or a post that names you. The button is Send the next asset. We note it once in Activity ("Lena went quiet"), not every day they stay quiet. If they wake up and go quiet again, you get a second note.

A card that needs nothing has no button. The page title says how many cards need you, and Needs me shows only those, the ones waiting longest first.

The card. Each card shows who it is, their score, the channel, one status line and how many days it has sat in its column. A card in a campaign shows a step bar, for example "Email 2 of 3". The status line is the label when a card needs you. Otherwise it says why it moved, Invited or Signed up, or when anything last happened. Hover, or press and let go without moving on a phone, to see the tags and the first line of the latest note. After an automatic move, the card says why for a day. For example: "Moved: Lena replied".

Moving cards. Drag with a mouse. On a phone, press for a moment, then drag. You don't have to hit the cards in a column. Let go anywhere level with it, even below its last card, and the card lands in that column. With a keyboard, tab to the card's handle, press space, use the arrow keys to pick a column, and press space to drop it. Escape cancels. A screen reader hears each step.

On a phone. The board comes first. Your three numbers sit above it, and the filter chips and stage settings sit behind Filters and stages. Swipe sideways to move between stages.

Many at once. Tick as many cards as you like. A bar appears at the top of the board to move them, give them an owner or add them to a list.

Lanes. On the Grow plan you can add columns inside a stage. See Lanes.

Keep

Open Keep from the Pipeline section to check on activated affiliates who have gone quiet, then pick 30, 60 or 90 days. On the new board it lives in the Live column. Press Keep them posting.

For an AffiliateRail partner, the card shows clicks, referrals and the last paid payout, read only from the account this brand belongs to. A deal marked Tracked elsewhere has no AffiliateRail activity to read, so the card says you track them outside AffiliateRail and shows no numbers.

Copy their sign-in link copies the address of the page where they sign in with their email. Their link lives there. Paste it into a nudge from your own inbox. We send nothing.

On the new board, Send the next asset opens a short email in your own mail app, ready to edit. Find more like this on a Live partner from YouTube opens a lookalike search from their channel. It costs one search credit. Nothing runs until you press the search button, so you can change the channel first or walk away.

How quiet is decided

A partner is quiet when all three of these have gone silent for the period. One is a click or a sale in AffiliateRail. Another is an email from them. The third is a stored post that names your brand, which we only have once a scan has read it. We count from the newest of the three. None? Then it's the day they became a partner.

Each quiet card says which one went missing. For example, it might say no clicks or sales for 34 days. Today and the board use the same rule. Read only. We change nothing in AffiliateRail.