Influencer Vetting Platform Aligns Performance With Brand Values

Influencer marketers juggle many responsibilities at once: they are part digital marketers, part content creators, part social media managers, and full-time relationship builders. In response to the growing needs of social commerce, a number of next-generation digital tools and platform services are being developed that allow brands to source, select, and oversee influencer relationships with comprehensive campaign creation and management tools. Today's future-fit commerce solutions can help integrate creators into existing workflows, and give them more actionable say over marketing roadmaps. These platforms also permit influencers the necessary creative freedom to create compelling content while simultaneously allowing brands to plan, track, and manage these campaigns in accordance with targeted goals and key success metrics.

Data-driven influencer platform Traackr is meant to provide a single system of record for marketers to manage all aspects of their influencer programs, while simultaneously having access to the real-time insights required to make strategic and impactful decisions at every moment. “We’re past the phase of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks — brands want to build nuanced, data-driven, and sophisticated programs,” Traackr CMO Evy Lyons tells PSFK. 

At this stage of the influencer marketing economy’s evolution, it is essential for brands to invest in crafting a compelling influencer experience so they can attract and retain the best partners. The future will belong to the brands that approach their influencers in thoughtful, data-driven and relationship-focused ways. This means that every interaction within a tool, from applying to be an ambassador or a brand’s first outreach, to sharing campaign results and feedback, needs to be influencer-friendly. 

Traackr’s platform helps leading brands and retailers develop impactful, hyper-focused strategies. For skincare and beauty brand Shiseido, Traackr’s specialized metric, the Brand Vitality Score (VIT), was implemented as a framework for measuring the impact of content generated by Shiseido’s influencer marketing program. The VIT score is broken down into three categories the Shiseido team were able to track and actively set goals against: visibility (reach of content), impact (engagement generated), and brand trust (quality of content on brand image). After conducting an audit using Traackr’s platform and professional services team, Shiseido developed a 3-tier strategy to reach its ambitious goals and increase its influencer marketing success in the highly competitive beauty and skincare space. The engagement was a success, and Shiseido increased its VIT score by 54%, placing it in the 93rd percentile in regards to year-over-year growth. More specifically, the brand increased visibility by 36% by investing in video content, increased its potential reach by 36% through VIP partnerships, and produced a successful in-person influencer event that contributed to a 19% increase in sales volume. Shiseido ended the year with a top 3 social engagement rate relative to industry peers and market competition. 

For industry titan Colgate-Palmolive, Traackr helped the multinational giant streamline workflows and reduce campaign costs by 40%, in part by driving greater visibility and coordination between country hubs and agency partners. Traackr was implemented to serve as Colgate-Palmolive's system of record for influencer marketing, uniting regions, brands and agencies on one platform for discovery, campaign management and measurement. With streamlined workflows, data transparency, and standardized performance measurement, Colgate-Palmolive's personal care brands, including Sanex, have delivered significantly better results from their influencer marketing campaigns. 

Popular beauty brand Beekman 1802, which uses goat milk as a natural alternative for many skincare products, balms, and topical treatments, wanted to generate further brand awareness among millennials and elevate its retail strategy in advance of the launch of two new products. Leveraging Traackr’s data-driven influencer discovery and vetting capabilities helped the Beekman 1802 team select beauty and non-beauty influencers who aligned with their brand values, as well as had proven performance in skincare. As a result of the campaign, the brand sold out of the two new products in Ulta, and generated 188 pieces of content (50% more than expected). 

For the next evolution of the influencer ecosystem, Traackr CMO Evy Lyons believes it is vital to provide both brands and creators with intelligent analytics and social commerce capabilities. Intelligent analytics are what help influencers make iterative, data-informed decisions on who to partner with and what content to create, as well as which platforms can generate the most impact. As the influencer marketing continues to evolve from transactional to community driven, the right data can give both brands and creators the knowledge they need to find the partners that are right for them.

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This article originally appeared in the PSFK iQ report, The Influencer Marketing Landscape.