From manual to automated: Scaling your influencer gifting program

Building relationships with creators and creating powerful marketing campaigns are a few of the great things about influencer marketing. But there’s no time for any of that if you’re trying to scale a program while buried in outreach, discount codes, gift distribution, and content tracking.

We’ll be looking at the challenges faced with influencer gifting for eCommerce brands and how automation can help drive scalability.

The power of influencer gifting

Influencer gifting involves sending products (gifts) to nano and micro- influencers (under 50,000 followers) for free, with the hope they create and share some content about the product with their followers. It’s a powerful strategy for generating authentic content, raising brand awareness and reaching a targeted audience. However, the manual process of managing these campaigns can be daunting.

Challenges of manual gifting

Time consuming

Running gifting programs manually involves numerous tasks such as sourcing influencers, distributing gifts and discount codes, ongoing communication, and tracking. These tasks are time-consuming and can become overwhelming as the number of influencers increases.

Lack of data and insights

Tracking and analysing campaigns manually is hugely time-consuming and ineffective. Having to search for each piece of influencer content or requesting the data from influencers to then analyse it in spreadsheets is a pain. Without accurate and up to date data, it becomes difficult to understand the impact influencers have and make informed decisions for future campaigns.

Scalability constraints

As your gifting program grows, so do the time and resources spent meeting the high demand. The more influencers you work with, the more complex and time-consuming the management becomes, limiting your ability to scale effectively.

Benefits of automation

Automating influencer gifting allows brands to streamline repetitive, time-consuming tasks to optimise and grow your influencer gifting campaigns. These tools usually include:

• Influencer discovery and recruitment: Access a database of influencers and identify who you want to work with.  
• Influencer communication: Outreach to influencers and distribution of discount codes at scale.
• Analytics tools: Collecting and analysing influencer and audience data in real-time.
• Tracking and reporting tools: Generating insights and comparing the performance of your campaigns and influencers against your objectives.

Efficiency and time saving

Automation streamlines the entire gifting process. Tasks that previously took hours can be completed in minutes, allowing marketing teams to focus on strategic activities rather than admin work.

Scalability

Automation allows you to manage influencers collaborations more effectively. By implementing automation, one person can go from manually managing 100 gifts to 1,000 gifts a month, freeing up more time for more valuable and important tasks. 

Data analytics and reporting

Automated gifting platforms come with advanced data analytics and reporting capabilities. These tools provide insights into the performance of gifting campaigns, including engagement, ROI, and influencer reach. With accurate and real-time data, brands can say goodbye to requesting screenshots and spreadsheets and instead, make data-driven decisions, optimise their strategies, and identify best performing influencers on one platform. 

Affiliate program 

By leveraging automated influencer analytics, brands can gain valuable insights into influencer performance, including reach, engagement and the number of orders and sales delivered. This data-driven approach enables brands to identify top performing influencers and create and/or optimise an affiliate program for maximum impact and ROI by solely concentrating and rewarding their top performing influencers.  

Shopfluence’s influencer gifting platform

Shopfluence’s automated influencer gifting platform process enables eCommerce brands to manage their influencer gifting programs. Below are a few benefits of using Shopfluence:

Streamlined influencer communication

Shopfluence allows brands to communicate with influencers at scale. With automated outreach and follow-up emails, you can easily send outreach emails, content briefs and distribute discount codes to a large number of influencers simultaneously. This not only saves time but also ensures consistent communication.

Advanced analytics and reporting

With Shopfluence, you gain access to tools that automatically find the content then track and analyse the performance. The platform provides real-time data on engagement rates, ROI, and audience reach, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your influencers and campaigns accurately. These insights enable you to make informed decisions and continually refine your influencer marketing strategy.

Scalability

Shopfluence’s automated platform empowers brands to scale their influencer gifting programs. By automating repetitive tasks, brands can manage more influencer partnerships and focus on more important tasks.

Conclusion

Influencer gifting is a valuable strategy for eCommerce brands looking to leverage the power of social media influencers. However, the manual process can be time-consuming and challenging to scale. Automation transforms this process, providing efficiency, scalability, and data-driven insights. Platforms like Shopfluence make it easier to manage influencer gifting programs, allowing brands to focus on building meaningful relationships with influencers and creating impactful marketing campaigns.