Strategies, research, industry trends — your pulse on the marketplace
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Strategies, research, industry trends — your pulse on the marketplace
 

How brands can get the most out of the Influenster App

influenster app

November 18, 2022

By Emmy Woodthorpe

If you want to increase sales, consumer trust, and brand awareness, you must start a dialogue with the right consumers, and leverage their voices and opinions to build up their authority. A great place to strengthen and grow these crucial relationships is with the Influenster App — a community of over 7.5 million engaged shoppers, eager to share authentic feedback. 

What is Influenster?

Influenster is an end-to-end influencer and creator marketing platform, powered by everyday consumers. You might know of Influenster from their coveted VoxBoxes. Who better to explain it than Influenster themselves:

@influenster Allow us to reintroduce ourselves 📦#greenscreenvideo ♬ Chrysanthemum Tea – Prod. By Rose

The Influenster community’s love for product discovery has led to over 55 million product reviews, growing on average by a million each month. This makes the Influenster App second only to Amazon in the online product review space. And with 98% of that content added organically and non-incentivized, Influenster App members are genuinely passionate about sharing the brands and products they love. 

influenster app
The timeline of the Influenster App

The Influenster App empowers everyday shoppers to be influential for your brand. By tapping into the Influenster community your brand can build a solid, transparent relationship with the shoppers that matter most and empower them to become your biggest advocates.

Influenster App benefits for brands

Here’s a few ways your brand can utilize the Influenster App and connect with the everyday shoppers who are actively raising their hands to engage with brands, and empower your future customers to buy with confidence. 

Take advantage of existing, organic content 

Influenster’s wealth of user-generated content (UGC) includes shopper reviews, photos, videos, discussions, polls, and more — across a variety of product categories from beauty to baby to food and beverage.

Whether sharing their opinions on a new eye shadow purchase or finding the best organic pet food for their beloved cat, members are using the Influenster App to research and review products that make up their daily lives. 

Over 50,000 pieces of UGC are added to Influenster everyday but this activity doesn’t have to be siloed to just the Influenster App. What makes Influenster unique is the ability to take this content and syndicate it across different channels that inform their customer’s next purchase. 

For example, Pacifica Beauty used the Influenster App to supply 12 retailers with thousands of new, high-quality reviews. Within just months of leveraging existing UGC, Pacifica gained over 2,000 reviews across nearly 200 products.

Capturing UGC organically can be a challenge, but the Influenster community is highly engaged, and we saw this as a good way to drive purchase intent.

Michael Kremer, Chief Marketing Officer, Pacifica Beauty

Those organic reviews were distributed to become more than 10,000 syndicated reviews with a 4.5 average rating across 12 retail sites such as Target and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Find and connect with your brand advocates

The Influenster App provides an easy way for brands to foster advocacy through the ability to activate hyper-targeted audiences and form one-to-one connections that can be scaled across social and onto your product pages.

Members don’t pay to be a part of Influenster. Instead, by filling out a profile of age, interests and shopping habits, linking their social channels and reviewed products, they’re connected to the brands that matter most to them.

Brands can leverage this hyper-targeted network that stretches across a variety of categories to segment the exact shopper they are looking to reach. Using over 900 data points per member, brands can activate both loyalists and competitive users, members who shop at key retailers or those with specific dietary or skincare needs, to test their products and share their feedback. 

By connecting your products with the exact, desired audience your brand has top of mind you will not only bolster your UGC strategy with authentic content, but will build life-long brand fans. 

Activate the Influenster community with product sampling

Consumer trust in influencers has dwindled over the years. A study from Bazaarvoice reported that 47% of customers are tired of influencer content that appears inauthentic. And according to our recent survey of 10,000 shoppers, it’s actually the every day social media user, like you and I, that reigns supreme.

In today’s market authenticity is key. Shoppers are turning to social media to inspire their purchases but are much more likely to trust recommendations that come from voices like their own.

Hyper-targeted sampling solutions help brands connect with their ideal consumer and lets these engaged Influenster members build brand awareness for them. Not only do these turnkey solutions drive social content and reviews, but through a post-campaign survey, brand’s can get a look into their target consumer shopping behavior and preferences.

Product Sampling is customizable for brand OKRs, whether you’re sending product to their doorstep in a dedicated box or scoring valuable space in a non-competitive shared campaign.

In addition to building up brand trust, sampling helps create a strong relationship with your target consumer. Since the majority of members are everyday shoppers, they aren’t receiving PR packages or getting paid to review products.

When members receive your product at their doorstep, they’re engaged and excited to share their opinions. Creating this branded experience helps build relationships that last long after the program’s end. 

For example, L’Oreal brand Redken wanted to generate buzz and authentic word-of-mouth for a new hair care product. So they activated Influenster members via the app to target a specific audience, including women ages 20 to 46, who have oil-prone hair, frequently hit the gym, or have busy schedules. 

Redken sent out over 2,5000 boxes to these everyday influencers, and in return generated:

  • 7.7 million impressions
  • 1,700 organic reviews
  • 84,000 posts, shares, and likes

But most notably, the campaign generated $567,000 in earned media value. “We didn’t spend that much, so the performance was incredible,” said Monique Salas, Director of Marketing for Redken at L’Oreal.

Better understand shopper preferences through data

Customer ratings and reviews are a crucial component of the shopping experience, impacting everything from sales to SEO. But, unlocking the meaning and trends behind UGC is often time-consuming and labor extensive. In fact, according to Bazaarvoice research, half (49%) of brands and retailers report that they don’t have the resources or tools to collect insights from their UGC.

With 50 million product reviews, Influenster can source robust first-party insights on brand and products. From an in-depth review analysis that helps brands better understand their target audience to custom surveys that help fill in data gaps, insights can help guide and improve brand strategy and inform product innovation.  

Shopper data from the Influenster App can also help inform and enhance ad campaigns and marketing efforts. Brands can leverage post sampling campaign insights to create testimonials and claims that bolster brand credibility.

Also, brands can leverage Influenster’s robust targeting capabilities and high-quality member content to power their paid media strategy. ReviewSource turns their top reviews and UGC into highly-targeted digital and social ad units, bolstering brand reach, and credibility. 

The Influenster App: Your next favourite thing

For brands not yet utilizing the Influenster App, there’s a goldmine of engagement and data waiting for them to take their business to the next level.

The ability to hyper-target consumers based on behaviors and other characteristics beyond typical demographics was a key benefit in choosing Influenster

Elizabeth Northrup, Associate Brand Manager, Kraft Heinz

Bazaarvoice can help you create and customize targeted campaigns that connect with the right audience of shoppers to build brand awareness, generate authentic UGC, and create lasting brand loyalty. Learn more about the Influenster App here. Or get in touch below to get started.

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Emmy Woodthorpe

Emmy Woodthorpe

Senior Brand Strategist, Content Acquisition

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