Building Successful eCommerce Influencer Partnerships for Your Business

If you’re an eCommerce business and you’ve never run an influencer marketing campaign, you’re missing out! Teaming up with relevant influencers will boost your brand awareness and sales, elevate your positioning, and build credibility.

The only catch is that you need to be smart about it – choosing the right partners, measuring their performance correctly, and avoiding typical mistakes like a pro.

Today, we’ll share how to do all that, plus more.

What are eCommerce influencer partnerships?

Influencer partnerships, or influencer marketing, are a powerful way for eCommerce brands to collaborate with influencers and thought leaders to promote their products to the influencer’s audience.

This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, as the influencer is getting a commission for all conversions their promotion generated, and sometimes they get additional benefits, such as a lump-sum payments and the products for free.

Typical eCommerce influencer partnership usually involves several key factors:

• Unique content generation by the influencer
• Targeted collaboration, i.e., specific products or services
• Performance tracking by the eCommerce brand
• Cross-platform promotion

It’s highly unlikely that an influencer will recycle their old content in the campaign with an eCommerce company. In fact, as part of this partnership, the business may even allocate additional budget to support the influencer in their creative process to ensure top quality and timely delivery.

Also, certain influencers are chosen to work with for the specific target audience they cater to or geolocation where their followers are based.

Among the other criteria is the influencer’s engagement rates (comments, likes, shares) which is often more important than the total count of followers. Before, brands would look at the big numbers of followers and line up to work with those social media influencers. These days, it’s far more important what the portion of active audience is, meaning the people who engage with the content.

For example, Kylie Jenner may have close to 396 million followers on Instagram, yet her engagement rate is about 0.46%. It is still 18 million people in her case, but in many other situations that would not be the most optimal use of your marketing budget.

Tip: In the face of small engagement rates with a big following, many eCommerce brands turn to smaller influencers. The so-called micro-influencers have up to 100 000 followers often demonstrate much better conversion rates compared to macro-influencers. That’s often caused by stronger bonds with communities that smaller influencers have. They respond to more comments and chat with people in DMs, and they often are more picky in terms of products and services they choose to advertise. The same applies to niche influencers.

Why is working with influencers important for eCommerce brands? Key benefits

Running influencer campaigns makes sense regardless of your target audience and the social media channels you’re working with.

These partnerships offer many benefits and perks that are hard to replicate through other marketing channels. For example:

Increased brand visibility and awareness

Influencer content reaches people all over the world, and part of their audience are unique leads who you would have never reached through Google Ads or similar promotion methods.

Improved trust and credibility through authentic recommendations

Although many people are sort of disillusioned with content creators, and especially celebrity influencers, they still trust a few influencers who they feel are being genuine and vulnerable with their audience. Seeing your brand being recommended by a real person, someone the user has strong para-social relationships with is much more efficient than showing them five YouTube ads while they’re watching the video of that creator.

Boosted sales and ROI metrics

Campaigns and long-term partnerships with influencers drive sales and generate additional income for eCommerce with a comparatively low budget. Influencer campaigns work on a performance-based structure, meaning partners only get paid for the revenue they generated. There can also be a fixed payment that they get in addition to that, but it depends on the type of the partnership and on brands’ influencer marketing strategies. With traditional ads, however, the business pays every time someone viewed their ad, regardless whether it resulted in a sale or not.

Shopify shared that every dollar spent on an influencer relationship generates, on average, close to 6 dollars in media value, and it goes up to 18 dollars in some cases.

Tip: In addition to working with popular influencers on different social media platforms, eCommerce brands can also utilize user-generated content to attract potential customers. Professional content creators are not the only ones who can come up with viral and good quality posts, regular subscribers and customers are good at it too. Ask them for permission, and share or repost their content to your page. As a bonus, you can send them temporary discount codes as a Thank You.

Finding the right influencers for your eCommerce brand

With the current abundance of influencers, how do you choose and select the ones who match with your brand the best?

Step #1: Define your goals, preferences, and expectations

Start with yourself. Before you reach out or even google the options available, sit down with your team, look over your strategy, positioning, and plans, and sum them up briefly.

1. How do you position yourself in the market?
2. What are your current business goals?
3. What is the long-term vision of the business?

These questions are something you should know already, but launching influencer marketing is a good opportunity to review what’s been going on, if all your pre-agreed objectives are still relevant, and make adjustments where necessary.

Tip: This is a good time to work out the budget you’re willing to allocate to influencer marketing. You don’t need to have an exact number just yet but a rough estimation. With the idea of your financial resources, you’ll be able to make better choices for your particular situation.

Step #2: Decide on preferred partnership formats

Also, it’s critical to understand what types of partnership models you are looking for. There are many ways to collaborate with influencers, including:

• Affiliate marketing where they share an affiliate link for users to click on and make a purchase.
• Sponsored posts where you pay for influencer posts, where they create the visuals and the text specifically to promote your products.
• Giveaways where you partner up with an influencer, and they run a giveaway of your products among their audience in return for a one-off payment.
• PR packages that you send them without financial compensation and obligation for influencers to post and share those products. Here, you’re investing a little (your product cost + delivery fee) and hope that the influencer will show it in one of their unpacking videos or stories on social media platforms.

Also, consider the timeframe of your relationship – would you like to work with partners on a one-off basis primarily or establish a long-term partnership with a selected few?

Both strategies have the right to exist and work for different companies. Perhaps, you can start with single campaigns with all influencers to see who is a better watch for you, and then suggest deeper and more personalized on-going relationship with them.

Step #3: Influencer market research

There are many approaches to finding potential influencer partners for your future campaigns.

First, you can start by remembering and looking up the top content creators that everyone in your field know about.

Knowing those core talents, you can look for more niche and up-and-coming influencers by viewing social media platforms’ suggestions that come up if you check out the core influencers. You can also use AI to help you generate lists of similar content creators.

Another way is to engage with your audience and ask them who their favorite influencers are. If there are any obvious leaders in your poll results – they’re your primary candidates.

There are also many marketing tools on the market that can generate influencer lists and help you find the ones that match your specific criteria.

Tip: Don’t rush to finalize the list. Give yourself a few weeks so you can browse, ask around, and google without a tight deadline that stresses you out. With more time, you’ll be able to stumble upon perfect candidates who you might have to dismiss if you rush and have no time or budget left for these hidden gems.

Step #4: Analyze the influencers on the market

Once you do a bit of digging and create a list of potential influencers you might want to work with, look at them closely and analyze their:

• Content: the visuals, creativity, relevance of the things they talk about, whether they keep up with zeitgeist or not, if their storytelling is compelling or not.
• Tone of voice (TOV) – how they talk with their audience and if it matches with your corporate communication style.
• What they’re communicating – thoughts, beliefs, and values that they share don’t have to be a 100% match with your company, but it’s helpful if there is a lot of intersection as it will make the partnership look more natural and sincere.
• Audience demographics: how old they are, where they live, the interests they have, their lifestyle, gender dropdown.
• Reputation. Browse their comments to see what followers are saying, reach out to brands they’ve collaborated with before, google their name and read what people on the forums are saying. Also, check if they disclosed previous ads properly and whether or not they’re promoting unhealthy or dangerous lifestyle, products, and actions. It’s also worth checking if they’ve ever purchased fake followers or used other unethical tricks to boost their content.

Ways to attract partners to build the best eCommerce influencer partnership

Once you’ve looked through potential influencer partners and properly evaluated them, it’s time to reach out to the finalists.

How do you do that to maximize your success rates?

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How to measure influencer performance

You’ll need to evaluate your influencer campaign performance to be able to make better business decisions moving forward.

Here are a few tips on what to focus on.

• Engagement levels over follower count – views, comments, saves, and forwards paint a much more accurate picture.
• Key performance indicators or KPIs must be clear and defined in your contract, otherwise you won’t be able to demand anything if the partner underperforms. Lack of transparency with KPIs upfront opens the door to lots of uncertainty and ambiguity.
• Use third-party tools to evaluate, such as Upfluence, Aspire, and Social Blade, to track influencers’ performance before you start working with them and during your partnership. Note that they’re not always accurate, but they can give a rough idea.
• Focus on conversion metrics – sales, clicks, downloads, signups, or anything else you expect your partners to lead prospects to.

Tip: Make sure you’re using affiliate dashboards provided in your influencer marketing management software. They will give you real-time updates on progress and help understand the overall performance better.

How to retain top influencer talent: best practices

Long-term influencer partnerships are similar to romantic relationships. You need solid foundation and on-going support and respect to make them work.

Here is what you need to pay attention to if you want to retain the best influencers as your partners.

• Trust should be your number one focus. Don’t try to trick your influencers, and don’t let them trick you, either.
• Transparency will make your relationship better. If something is concerning you – say it. Something you don’t understand on their end? Ask them.
• Creative freedom is often more important than lucrative commissions. Being able to present the product in the way you feel is best is something many influencers, big and small, cherish and expect from eCommerce brands.
• Clarity with expectations on deliverables. If you want certain results and have a particular vision, you need to be explicit about it. Influencers can’t read your mind, and they live in totally different universes. Something that is crystal clear to you is not necessarily obvious to others. Also, put everything in writing and share the summary of any calls or chats with partners. If it’s not in writing, it doesn’t exist.
• Continuous monitoring and tracking of performance is the way to success. Partner programs shouldn’t be babysat too much but you need to keep up with everything that’s going on. This will allow you to identify positive or negative trends, spot rising stars and motivate them additionally to keep the momentum going, and make ad-hoc changes to something that might not work perfectly.
• Constructive feedback that goes both ways is another must-have aspect of a partner program. Be prepared to give and receive feedback on the commissions, the progress, and anything else.
• Reward top talent with extra bonuses, higher commissions, and anything else you see fit. This will make them even more motivated to perform well, plus it will encourage everyone else to work a little harder to get extra bonuses too.
• Work with the least successful influencers, don’t ignore them. Try to figure out why they’re underperforming and how you can fix that. Have honest conversations with them and try different perks to transform how they interact with your influencer program.

Overcoming common challenges of eCommerce influencer partnerships

An influencer program can change your eCommerce world by boosting your sales, brand recognition, and ROI. There is a catch though – relationships with influencers are not always easy.

Here is how you can tackle the common challenges and not waste your influencer marketing efforts.

1. Partner activation can be hard, especially if you’re only starting out and there is not a lot of hype about your products. To speed things up a little bit, you can introduce heightened bonuses for the first conversions they bring in. For example, you can offer them $40 instead of $10 for the first sale they bring in. Don’t be afraid to go in the negative here, as the goal is to get the ball rolling so that future conversions will compensate for the initial investment.
2. Fraud is almost inevitable, no matter how hard you vet your partners. Timely monitoring will help spot program abusers and call them out and kick them off the program. Make sure you have an extended chapter on fraud in your T&Cs including everything that’s off the charts and the penalties for breaching the rules. Also, don’t forget to update it every time you discover a new fraud method.
3. Giving and receiving feedback can be another pain point, especially if the things you receive or need to communicate are criticisms. Make sure when you share negative feedback, it always comes from a place of respect and care. Don’t blame, but share your concerns and how you suggest to improve the situation. If you are on the receiving end, listen to them, make changes to improve the program whenever criticisms are valid, and communicate kindly why certain claims are not true or aren’t the way the partner sees them.

Overall, if you want to kickstart the relationship with a bang, offer creative support to partners. From extra budgets to help with campaigns (videographer, makeup, etc.) to creative assets available on your influencer partner portal to educational calls and webinars where you help them understand the products and positioning better.

It’s also good if partners have access to you every day. Share your contact information so they can reach out and make use of in-platform communication in your influencer management software.

eCommerce influencer partnership examples

Let’s look at some real-life examples of eCommerce brands partnering with influencers to elevate and facilitate their business growth.

Michelle Choi x Marshalls on Instagram

Metrics Media x Shopify on YouTube

Julia Fei x Amazon on YouTube

Emelie Lindmark x NA-KD on Instagram

How to choose the best influencer marketing solution

To make the most of the partner program, you need a proper influencer marketing platform.

Here is the checklist that will help you make the right choice among the many options that exist on the market:

1. Make a list of must-have functionality. Think of all the repetitive tasks that have to be automated, that are time-consuming and critical (tracking, attribution, and payout, for example).
2. Ignore the shiny, trendy tools that look good or that everyone is using, but they are actually useless for your program. For instance, everyone is obsessed with AI right now, but most of the time, the built-in AI functionality doesn’t serve any particular purpose other than showing that the vendor keeps up with the times.
3. Look at several solutions, don’t go with the first thing that pops up on Google. At the same time, don’t dive deep into 10+ solutions. Choose 2-3 that match your criteria the most.
4. Do the testing. Make use of the trial licenses that vendors provide. Simulate program and campaign launch, play with all the options, ask your sales representative questions, and pitch your core needs to them. Many dislike talking to salespeople, but those are the best guys to save you time and guide you on the product.
5. Evaluate the company as a whole. Is the software vendor on the market for a while, or is it a startup? What kind of clients are they mostly working with? (check Success Cases or Our Clients sections on the websites). What are their reviews on independent review portals, such as Capterra or G2?
6. Look into post-sale support. This includes the type of technical support they provide and the client-exclusive content, such as user guides, manuals, and client portals. Also, see if they produce how-to and other helpful content on their website, including blogs, videos, and webinars. You might need to look into this content as a client, so it’s important that it a) exists, b) is high-quality, and c) is regularly updated.

Final thoughts on eCommerce influencer marketing

If there is only one thing you can leave with after reading this article, let it be the understanding that you need to give your eCommerce influencer marketing strategy time. Developing strong and mutually beneficial relationship takes time, and you shouldn’t rush through this step.

Focus on nurturing the relationship rather than looking for ways to generate as much money as soon as possible.

Shift your perspective from “What can I get from them” to “What can I give them?”.

Influencer marketing industry is over-saturated with eCommerce brands looking to find partners to promote their products. If you want to stand out and have loyal influencers work with you, you need to keep in mind that this partnership is a two-way street.

Lastly, don’t wait too long to start. Building trust takes time, don’t miss out on potential influencer sales because you’re spending too much time thinking through the details and nuances.

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