Appaman is a New York-based children’s apparel brand that produces stylish, high-quality clothing with designs that people connect to. Crafted with unparalleled attention to detail, Appaman creates singular styles that make kids feel cool, comfortable and confident. The company has a robust influencer marketing program built around authentic content whose creators are true fans of the brand.
Piper Parsley, Head of Marketing at Appaman, shares some insights on how the brand engaged Lumanu to help measure and test influencer content in order to move beyond coupon codes to develop more scalable marketing programs with multiple touch points along the customer journey.
Tell us about Appaman’s influencer marketing strategy?
At Appaman, we work with people who believe in the brand and want to post in exchange for receiving product as a gift. We strongly believe in quantifying all of our marketing programs. We are constantly testing what works and what doesn’t to ensure we are as efficient with our marketing dollars as possible. We implemented Lumanu to help us measure and test influencer content in a more organic way.
How do you measure the ROI of your influencer marketing?
Given we do not pay our influencers, the opportunity to make any return is greater. We typically do not think of influencer marketing as a performance-based marketing tactic. It’s the cherry on top of the sundae if they drive conversions. We see new users and fans as our return, and we measure that through referral traffic and or lift in fan numbers after an influencer posts. We have had some influencers receive unique promo codes, but this is not a big sales driver.
“We implemented Lumanu to help us measure and test influencer content in a more organic way.”
Any advice to other brands looking to improve their influencer marketing programs?
Look for influencers who are considered nano and micro. These people have less than 25K followers and tend to be the easiest to work with. In my experience, the most valuable influencers aren’t always the ones with the highest engagement rates or the most followers, but the ones who are creating great content and willing to grant usage rights to amplify content through paid media distribution. This is where Lumanu has been instrumental in helping us evolve our influencer program. We can create a multi-touch point customer journey that exposes consumers to more influencer content and drive them to product pages where we track results and ultimately build towards more conversions.
What are some of your biggest successes since implementing Lumanu?
We’ve moved from being limited to coupon redemption to being able to fully measure the impact of influencer content on our entire e-commerce channel — from product page views to add-to-carts to checkouts and purchases. We’ve never had these insights before, so it’s pretty unbelievable how we were able to turn what traditionally was a branding channel to a fully attributable acquisition channel.
In a space like ours, we also know consumers seldom make a purchase after seeing just one image or post on social. Being able to put our brand in front of consumers who have already been exposed to Appaman has always been a big part of our strategy, and Lumanu allowed us to re-engage with consumers who we know have seen influencer content about Appaman. These “warm audiences” were crucial in helping us drive results throughout our entire marketing funnel.
What’s ahead for Appaman?
Lumanu helps us track our highest performing influencers by last-click conversion and view-through conversion. Based on this data, we’re making informed decisions on several top influencers we will be working closer with over the next couple seasons.
We also want to analyze and highlight the best performing content to make sure we properly brief all of our influencers on the type of content that is proven to drive real purchase intent for the brand. We’re leveraging influencer content on multiple touchpoints — from Facebook feeds to Instagram feeds and stories — and ensuring we are hitting our prospective customers throughout their purchase journey.
Lumanu also allows us to share certain data back to influencers, which opens the door for deeper and more productive relationships, such as event attendance and product collaborations.
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