Why Equine Affiliate Programs Fail: 8 Costly Mistakes
By Jamie Birch, Co-Founder and CEO of EquineRevShare
Over the years, I’ve watched affiliate programs from large and small companies – inside the horse world and outside of it – open, languish in a sea of mediocrity, and then quietly shutter without so much as a whimper.
The same pattern is especially common in equine affiliate programs, where retailers launch the technology without building the relationships and operating systems needed to make it work.
Many brands chalk the failure up to a lack of performance. They decide the right partners simply didn’t exist, or they didn’t get what an affiliate network or salesperson promised them.
But almost every time, the brand made the same mistakes as everyone who came before it.
And that’s a shame.
The result is lower sales, fewer new customers, smaller market share, and higher customer-acquisition costs across every other marketing channel.
In our previous article, we explained why equine brands should be leveraging affiliate marketing. The opportunity is huge, but the mistakes are many.
Here are the biggest ones I’ve seen during nearly 30 years of building, managing, and fixing affiliate programs.
In my next article, I’ll outline what equine retailers need to build an affiliate program that actually works.
Why Do Equine Affiliate Programs Fail?
Equine affiliate programs usually fail because retailers launch the tracking technology without assigning ownership, recruiting the right partners, communicating consistently, or helping those partners create activity.
The problem is rarely a complete absence of influence or opportunity. It is usually a lack of program management.
1. “Build It and They Will Come” Does Not Work in Affiliate Marketing
Now I’m going to date myself.
This idea comes from the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams, where he is told that if he builds a baseball field in his cornfield, people will come.
Affiliate marketing does not work that way.
I cannot tell you how many unsuccessful programs I’ve taken over that were launched with this exact mindset. The company opened the program, added an application page to its website, and waited for sales to appear.
Sometimes a few people found the program. Some applied. A smaller number created links. Then almost nothing happened.
The company provided no meaningful recruitment, training, guidance, resources, or ongoing support. Eventually, leadership concluded that affiliate marketing did not work.
But the program never really had a chance.
Affiliate marketing is an amazing tool, but it requires resources, time, and attention.
The best way to think about an affiliate program is as a distributed sales organization. Your salespeople may be horse trainers, creators, publishers, associations, educators, or other trusted voices located all over the country – or all over the world.
You still have to recruit them.
You still have to teach them about your products.
You still have to give them useful information and materials.
You still have to provide incentives, encouragement, management, and consistent attention so each partner can reach their potential.
Open a program, let it sit unattended, and you will probably get exactly what you put into it: nothing.
2. No One Owns the Affiliate Program
This one competes for first place among the reasons affiliate programs fail.
A senior executive decides the company needs an affiliate program. The program gets approved, the technology is selected, and someone launches it.
But no single employee is made responsible for its success or failure.
The marketing team assumes ecommerce is handling it. Ecommerce assumes someone at the network is managing it. The network assumes the company is recruiting partners and providing offers. Leadership assumes the program is running because the tracking is turned on.
Meanwhile, week after week goes by with no one responsible for moving it forward.
No one is recruiting new partners.
No one is helping existing partners.
No one is reviewing what is working.
No one is reaching out when a promising partner stops producing.
No one is accountable for growth.
Technology can track activity, but it cannot take ownership of a relationship. If no person inside the company is responsible for making the program successful, it will almost certainly become an afterthought.
3. The Brand Stops Communicating With Its Affiliate Partners
Successful affiliate programs treat their partners like a sales force.
Great salespeople thrive when there is regular communication. They need to know what is new, what is selling, what customers are asking for, and what the company wants to promote.
Failing affiliate programs do the opposite. They communicate with their partners rarely – or never.
They do not reach out individually to their largest or most promising partners.
They do not work with up-and-coming partners to see whether they can build something together.
They do not provide the larger partner team with regular information about products, promotions, new creative, coupons, seasonal opportunities, or top sellers.
They simply go dark.
Then they wonder why their partners stop talking about them.
Your partners have other options. Other brands are sending them useful information, giving them ideas, answering their questions, and providing reasons to talk about their products.
Silence does not create loyalty. It makes it easy for partners to move on.
4. The Company Treats Every Affiliate Partner the Same
I’ve managed hundreds of affiliate programs across many different industries, and the most successful ones understand one critical principle:
An affiliate program is not one big partnership. It is a collection of individual partnerships.
Every partner reaches a different audience in a different way.
Every partner has different strengths.
Every partner needs different things to be successful.
Some partners need a steady supply of product information. Others perform best when they have discounts and coupons to offer. Some need giveaways. Others need samples, exclusive access, custom landing pages, or content created in cooperation with the brand.
A horse trainer answering client questions through text messages does not need the same support as a large publisher producing product-comparison articles.
A creator making short-form videos does not need the same materials as an association communicating through a member newsletter.
If you treat every partner exactly the same, you make the program easier for your company to administer, but much harder for your partners to use successfully.
The best programs learn how each valuable partner reaches customers and then help that partner do more of what already works.
5. The Program Recruits the Wrong Partners
Every affiliate program is different, but they should all begin with the same question:
Who is the customer we need to reach?
That answer should determine which partners the company recruits.
You want websites, trainers, creators, personalities, educators, associations, and other partners who can reach your ideal customer while that person is considering what to buy.
But too many programs simply recruit whoever is popular, visible, or immediately available.
They pursue someone with a large following without determining whether that audience buys the company’s products.
They accept hundreds or thousands of partners without identifying which ones have genuine access to the customers the brand needs.
Then they are surprised when the program produces clicks without meaningful sales—or produces nothing at all.
Reach is not the same as relevance.
A horse professional with a smaller audience may have far more influence over a purchasing decision than a general creator with a much larger following. The right question is not simply, “How many people follow this person?”
The better question is, “Does this person reach and influence the customers we want while those customers are making purchasing decisions?”
6. The Brand Waits for Sales Instead of Creating Activity
Many companies judge their affiliate programs by sales while ignoring all the work required before a sale can occur.
They wait for partners to create content, share links, introduce products, and send customers to the website, but they do very little to create that activity.
Someone needs to recruit new partners consistently.
Someone needs to welcome them.
Someone needs to help them identify the right products.
Someone needs to notice when a promising partner joins but never takes the next step.
Someone needs to help an active partner become more successful.
Sales are the result. They are not the first step.
Before a partner produces a sale, that person must understand the program, see a fit with the audience, choose a product, create or retrieve a link, and share it in a way that earns attention and trust.
If the company is not helping partners move through those steps, it is not really managing the program. It is simply waiting for an outcome.
7. The Technology Does Not Match How Horse Professionals Recommend Products
Affiliate platforms are built around links, tracking, reporting, and payments.
Those things are necessary, but they are not how people make recommendations in real life.
A horse trainer does not begin the day thinking, “I need to create affiliate content.”
A client asks which fly spray works.
Someone wants to know which boots to buy.
A horse owner needs a blanket, bit, supplement, saddle pad, or piece of barn equipment.
The trainer answers because answering product questions is already part of the relationship.
That recommendation may happen during a lesson, in the barn aisle, at a horse show, through a text message, or in a private social-media conversation.
If your program requires a busy professional to learn a complicated system, browse through hundreds of offers, understand industry jargon, and create promotional campaigns from scratch, it does not match the way that person already works.
The best programs fit naturally into existing behavior. They make it easy for someone to find the right product, send it to the customer, and receive credit if the recommendation results in a purchase.
When companies design the program around the limitations of the software instead of the behavior of the people using it, participation will always suffer.
8. The Affiliate Program Has No Operating System
A functioning affiliate program requires more than tracking technology and a list of approved partners.
It needs a repeatable operating system.
The company must know:
- Who is responsible for the program
- Which partners it wants to recruit
- How new partners will be welcomed and trained
- What information and materials partners will receive
- How often the company will communicate
- How individual relationships will be developed
- How inactive partners will receive help
- Which activities will be measured before the sale
- How the company will learn from successful partnerships
Without that system, every effort becomes reactive.
The company recruits when someone remembers to recruit. It communicates when there is a promotion. It helps partners only after they complain. It reviews results only after leadership asks why sales are down.
A successful program cannot depend on occasional bursts of attention. It needs consistent daily and weekly activity.
What Active Affiliate Program Management Can Produce
This is not just theory.
The team at JEBCommerce, the affiliate marketing agency I founded and later sold, recently published a case study showing what can happen when a brand actively manages its affiliate program instead of simply waiting for sales.
Working with Revival Animal Health and CJ Affiliate, the JEBCommerce team intentionally expanded the company’s partner mix, introduced new types of partners, improved tracking, and used different commission rates to reward the acquisition of new customers.
The results included:
- 38% year-over-year revenue growth
- 20% growth in new customers
- A 19% increase in channel return on investment
- A 9% reduction in customer-acquisition cost
Read the complete Revival Animal Health case study from JEBCommerce.
That kind of growth does not happen because a company opened an affiliate program and waited. It happens when the brand, its management team, its partners, and its technology are all working toward clearly defined goals.
How EquineRevShare Addresses These Affiliate Program Problems
EquineRevShare connects equine retailers with horse professionals who already recommend products to their clients.
Traditional affiliate programs are usually built around the technology and then ask horse professionals to change their behavior to fit it.
EquineRevShare starts with what already happens in the horse world.
A client asks a trainer what product to buy. The trainer recommends the product. The client purchases it.
That behavior already exists. The problem is that the trainer’s influence is rarely tracked, recognized, or rewarded.
EquineRevShare gives horse professionals one place to search for products from participating retailers, create a trackable link, and send that product directly to the client. The trainer does not need to join and manage a separate program for every retailer, learn multiple systems, or become a conventional online influencer.
For equine retailers, it creates a way to reach customers through the professionals they already trust.
EquineRevShare does not eliminate the retailer’s responsibility to support the relationship. Retailers still need to provide accurate product information, compelling offers, dependable tracking, current product feeds, and communication.
What EquineRevShare does is remove much of the friction standing between the retailer, the horse professional, and the customer.
The goal is simple: make it easier for horse professionals to recommend the right products, easier for customers to purchase them, and possible for everyone to see when those recommendations produce results.
If your company wants to reach customers through trusted horse professionals, learn more about working with EquineRevShare or email me directly at jamie@equinerevshare.com. I’ll be happy to talk with you.
The Opportunity Is Still Enormous
None of these problems means affiliate marketing does not work.
They mean affiliate marketing cannot succeed on autopilot.
Equine retailers have an especially valuable opportunity because horse owners routinely rely on knowledgeable professionals when deciding what to buy. But reaching those customers through trusted recommendations requires more than launching a program and distributing links.
It requires ownership, recruitment, communication, individual relationships, relevant partnerships, practical support, and a system that creates activity consistently.
The companies willing to do that work can build an important source of new customers and sales.
The companies that launch a program and wait will continue getting exactly what they invested in it.
In my next article, I’ll outline the specific structure equine retailers can use to build and manage a successful affiliate program—from assigning ownership and recruiting the first partners to onboarding, communication, activation, and ongoing growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do equine affiliate programs fail?
Equine affiliate programs commonly fail because the retailer launches the tracking technology without assigning someone to recruit, support, communicate with, and activate partners. An affiliate program requires ongoing management and cannot succeed on technology alone.
Who should manage an affiliate program?
One specific employee or outside partner should be directly responsible for the affiliate program’s performance. That person should have clear responsibility for recruitment, partner communication, activation, problem-solving, reporting, and growth.
How often should brands communicate with affiliate partners?
Brands should maintain consistent communication rather than contacting partners only when there is a sale or promotion. The exact schedule can vary, but partners should regularly receive useful product information, promotional opportunities, creative materials, program updates, and individual assistance.
Should equine retailers recruit influencers or horse professionals?
Equine retailers should recruit partners based on their relevance and influence with the retailer’s ideal customers, not simply their follower count. Depending on the product and customer, the right partners may include horse trainers, creators, publishers, associations, educators, or other trusted equine professionals.
What do affiliate partners need from an equine retailer?
Affiliate partners need clear onboarding, accurate product information, useful creative materials, reliable tracking, regular communication, and individual support. Different partners may also need discounts, samples, giveaways, exclusive offers, or help creating content.
How does EquineRevShare help equine retailers?
EquineRevShare helps retailers reach customers through horse professionals who already recommend products. It gives those professionals a simpler way to find products, create trackable links, share recommendations, and receive credit when those recommendations lead to purchases.
About Jamie Birch
Jamie Birch is the co-founder and CEO of EquineRevShare and the founder of JEBCommerce, an affiliate marketing agency he later sold. During nearly 30 years in affiliate marketing, Jamie has built, managed, and repaired affiliate programs across multiple industries. He created EquineRevShare to help horse professionals receive credit for the product recommendations they already make and to help equine retailers reach customers through trusted professional relationships.