Where billboards have fallen out of favour, display ads have risen on every corner of the internet. The hubbub of malls has died out, and online shopping has sprung to life. The radio ads of old have given way to podcast sponsors and pre-roll ads on YouTube. And where product endorsements were once reserved for the likes of Micheal Jordan and Jennifer Aniston, influencer marketing now takes the stage.
In a digital age where anyone with a phone can become a celebrity (or at least a micro-celebrity), influencer marketing is like the evolution of traditional celebrity endorsement deals.
Google tells us that people are 70% less likely to be influenced by a celebrity than a digital “star.”
This is good news for you: Millions of micro-celebrities are eager to promote your products and services.
That’s right. Millions.
That’s also bad news—it can be difficult to cut through the noise and find the right fit for your brand or company.
That’s where the value of having the right influencer marketing software comes into play.
These platforms use automation, smart technology, and filtering capabilities to take the chase out of the goose hunt, ultimately streamlining the process of finding the right influencers and putting hours back into your day.
The core offerings of influencer marketing platforms include:
- Influencer Search: A searchable database with customizable filters.
- CRM: Sometimes called ‘IRM’ (influencer relationship management), this helps you manage your relationships with influencers.
- Campaign Management: The ability to automate parts of the search and outreach process may include a bulk-emailing option with templates and drip campaigns.
- Social Media Listening: Identify opportunities and trends by tracking mentions of, and conversations around, your brand.
- Payment and Product Tracking: Track payments to influencers and the free products you send to them.
- Analytics: Reporting often in the form of personalized dashboards, where you can see metrics like sales, followers gained, and campaign engagement at a glance.
With 150+ influencer marketing platforms listed on G2 alone, there are a lot of influencer marketing tools to choose from. In this article, we’ve whittled that down to eight platforms that we think are worth your attention:
- Upfluence
- AspireIQ
- Grin
- Traackr
- Refersion
- VWA.LA
- Carro
- social snowball
But before we discuss the platforms themselves, let’s briefly examine the criteria for choosing one.
How Do I Choose an Influencer Marketing Platform?
Long-lasting partnerships are at the heart of effective influencer marketing. Which tool will best help you facilitate these relationships? That’s contingent upon:
- Your budget
- Your business model and/or vertical
- Your preferred social media channels
Influencer marketing software can range from free to several thousand dollars monthly. As a result, the software you decide on will be partially determined by your budget, which is largely determined by your revenue and the size of your company.
Some software options also work better for specific verticals or certain social media platforms.
And some platforms are channel-specific. For example, Famebit, owned by YouTube, only focuses on YouTube influencers (which is not surprising).
Best Influencer Marketing Software for eCommerce
Upfluence
Influencer marketing software and services with massive reach, including TikTok and Twitch.
Upfluence is widely accessible and appealing to freelancers and businesses (ranging from small to enterprise). One of its most stand-out features is its project management capability. Want the campaigns done for you? Let their in-house services team take care of it for you. And if you’re running campaigns with dozens or hundreds of influencers, Upfluence is worth a closer look.
Features
- Massive reach; network of 3 million+ influencers and a reach of 82 billion+ followers
- Twitch and TikTok databases
- Speedy communication: you can send an “in-app” email instead of exporting influencers to a mailing campaign
- Intuitive interface and project management
- Robust filtering capabilities when searching for influencers
The sheer size of Upfluence’s network sets it apart (and yet 82% of its G2 reviews are from small businesses, so it’s good software for all kinds of businesses). While this amount of data might intimidate some, Upfluence’s filtering capabilities and intuitive interface make it simple to navigate.
This is among the few influencer marketing tools specializing in Twitch and TikTok. If those social media platforms are relevant to your company, Upfluence may be your best option.
Pricing
Upfluence currently offers four pricing tiers, ranging from about $12k to $40k per year, depending on the number of influencers you want to reach out to. Their pricing is gated, meaning not specifically publicly available, so we don’t have all the details for you. But consider this a high-quality enterprise-level tool.
AspireIQ
Influencer marketing platform for integrated, larger marketing campaigns
AspireIQ is not for the little guy. With clients like Kroger. L’Oreal and T-Mobile claim to be the 800-lb gorillas in the room.
They work well with all the common “influencer” oriented verticals, including:
- Beauty
- Consumer Packaged Goods
- Fashion
- Fitness
- Food
- Home/Family
- Health/Wellness
- Pets
- Tech
They have a database of over 6 million influencers and content creators across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Blogs.
Their real differentiator is in the three-tiered approach they take to influencer marketing. First, with their “Create” package, they help you find content creators who can create and distribute your content; then, with their “Elevate” package, they help you build a community and continue engaging the growing audience. And finally, with their “Together” package, you strengthen the relationships and roll out campaigns for your trusted network of influencers through their platform.
Features
- Connect with influencers that have large followings
- Offer a Managed Services team
- Quickmatch feature (like Tinder for influencers)
- Monitor the social activity of competitors
AspireIQ is one of the better choices for big or high-growth brands and large agencies, especially for those who might also benefit from consultation and content creation services. They have a partner Managed Services team that can work with you to make the most of their proprietary software, strategize campaigns, and even get into the trenches for you and execute.
Pricing
They don’t publicly display their pricing, but we are sure that this is an enterprise tool, and the pricing can easily reach thousands per month. Please contact them for a demo and pricing and tell them what eCommerce Tech sent you.
Grin
Influencer marketing platform emphasizing direct-to-consumer (D2C) and eCommerce integrations.
Grin breaks the use of its software down into five steps:
- Import an existing list of influencers and discover new influencers using the advanced search.
- Integrate your eCommerce store, email, Slack, and other tech stack elements to sync all communications.
- Integrate with Google Vision to analyze content and attribute revenue across your program.
- Run highly targeted campaigns to automate some of the outbound and manage inbound applications.
- Send products to influencers and manage payments at scale.
Features
- Ability to integrate your eCommerce store
- Create affiliate codes and discount links.
- Excellent integration capabilities
- Can ship and track free products within the app
Although newer to the game, Grin’s main appeal is that it caters to eCommerce businesses. They’ve niched down with those Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento integrations.
Pricing
This is another influencer marketing software that doesn’t publicly display its pricing, which is too bad. You must contact them and request a demo to get more insights.
Traackr
Influencer marketing platform for data lovers.
A platform as old as influencer marketing itself, Traackr has been a leading light in social data and analytics. Back when everyone was still stuck measuring vanity metrics like reach and engagement, this was the company expanding the conversation. They even created their own metric—the Brand Vitality Score (VIT), which is a benchmark for how you measure up against other competitors in the market.
Their championing of data and competitor analysis is reflected in their offering.
Features
- Massive data set; over 6 million influencer profiles
- Robust analytics
- Organize influencers based on the stage of your relationship with them
- Brand safety tool to assess influencers and the quality of their audience
- Good for SMB and mid-to enterprise-size businesses (everyone who can afford them)
Serving clients like Coach, Microsoft, Google, and Michelin, Traackr currently operates in 80 countries and in 19 languages. While they don’t offer payment tracking like other comparable services, their emphasis on data is what makes them special.
Pricing
Starts at $30,000 USD/year for their most basic deployments.
Best Influencer Marketing Software for Growing Affiliate Networks
Refersion
Influencer marketing software for growing an affiliate network when you have an existing network.
Refersion is what you want to use when you have an affiliate network and want to grow it. They partner with Upfluence because Refersion is best used as a supplemental effort once you already have a core group of affiliates.
Features
- Go-live checklist means you can get started in >7 minutes
- Supports tracking through unique coupon codes, SKUs and counter emails
- Each affiliate has its own dashboard
- eCommerce integrations
- A flat rate for several visitors to your store
Pricing
Starts at $89.00/month for up to 130 sales. There are three pricing tiers:
- Startup.
- Growth.
- Enterprise.
With a higher per-sale fee, Refersion is worth it if you sell items above a certain price point. Since $89.00 gets you 130 monthly sales, that’s about $0.68 per sale + the commission you’re offering. Crunch the numbers according to your average price point, and you should be able to tell whether or not this is workable for your business.
vwa.la
Best influencer marketing software for automating influencer sign-ups.
Vwa.la is an automated solution that integrates into your store with minimal setup.
Features
- Automated influencer sign-ups with a hosted landing page
- Influencer-specific codes
- Real-time reporting
- Simple setup
- Influencers also get performance dashboards
With vwa.la you can be up and running in minutes. It comes with a widget that automatically sets up on your site. This will advertise your influencer marketing plan to customers. It’s a great way of recruiting micro-influencers already part of your customer base.
Pricing
Pricing starts at $9.95/month for 400 influencers and unlimited tracked sales and goes up to $59.99/month for unlimited influencers and sales.
Carro
Influencer marketing software for leveraging micro-influencers and your existing database.
Venture-backed Carro takes a refreshingly authentic approach to finding influencers: It empowers you to leverage the existing influencers in your database. In other words, you can discover influencers who have already expressed an interest in your product. You’ll need a large and/or growing customer base to use this platform to its fullest.
Features
- Find the best influencers within your existing network, those who have already purchased from you
- Database of 2.5 million+ influencers
- Product gifting and reviews at scale
While most influencer marketing platforms will try to connect you with influencers with large followings, Carro is great for leveraging micro influencers and those who have already purchased your product. Since micro-influencers tend to have higher engagement than larger influencers, Carro can be a wonderful asset for businesses that already have decent traffic to their stores.
Pricing
Carro is free to install. However, some paid features may be available if you elect to use them.
Gatsby
Automated Outreach to Influencers in Your Existing Databases
Gatsby helps identify which of your existing customers have large social followings, and you can set up automatic email campaigns to trigger when a bigger influencer purchases from you or joins your email list.
My favourite feature is the integration of Instagram handles. It’s always better to ask customers for their handle to connect them to their profile. For that reason, this tool is more powerful for brands that focus specifically on Instagram.
Features
- Instagram Handle request pop-up
- Instagram Handle Checkout request modification
- Audience Profile Research
- Auto-Send Email and Text Requests
Pricing
Starts at $99/month for 400 profile matches and goes up.
Social Snowball
Social Snowball is an influencer and affiliate marketing platform designed for eCommerce brands, with strong Shopify integration. It automates affiliate programs, turning customers and influencers into brand advocates.
Social Snowball streamlines affiliate marketing in four steps:
- Set Incentives: Define program rules, commission rates, and tracking methods.
- Automate Communication: Use email integrations (e.g., Klaviyo) for automated notifications.
- Add Influencers: Manually add or segment affiliates based on purchase history.
- Track and Pay: Monitor sales and manage payouts with tools like Tremendous.
Features
- Seamless Shopify integration
- Create affiliate codes and discount links
- Automate communications and payouts
- Manage customer and influencer programs
- Advanced segmentation and TikTok Shop integration (Blizzard plan)
Social Snowball caters to D2C brands, focusing on automation and eCommerce compatibility.
Pricing
Pricing starts at $199/month (Snow Day, +3% affiliate revenue fee) or $599/month (Blizzard, no fees).
Next Steps
When choosing an influencer marketing software, you’ll want to make note of your budget, business model, and preferred social media platforms. Influencer marketing software varies greatly in price, verticals they specialize in, and integrations — so once you’re clear on your specific needs, whittling it down to the best pick will be a fairly simple process.
Influencer marketing is about two main things: content creation and reach. Decide which one is more important for you. Great content is worth paying for; you can amplify that with paid ads if that’s what you need. Or maybe you want to pull on the influencer’s influence and get the product into their hands so they can help their audience discover your brand. Then, it’s all about aligning values, being authentic, and teaching the influencer about your product.
Look for long-term relationships with the influencers who care to work with you. That’s where you’ll have the most success.
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