US shoppers spent a record $9.8 billion in online shopping on Black Friday, up 7.5% from 2022.
If you are a CMO, marketer or business owner, it should be your objective to take a piece of this gigantic cake and maximize your holiday sales this year.
Influencer marketing is one of the best marketing channels to drive conversions during your BFCM campaign, and in this case study, we will explain step by step how we helped one of our clients generate $687K in sales by organising a BFCM influencer campaign.
Before we dive into the details let's take a look at the timeline first. Although you might be thinking it is still early each year retailers are starting their holiday promotions earlier to capture a larger piece of the holiday consumers looking to make their purchase.
According to a survey conducted by McKinsey & Company, retailers start promoting their holiday promotions as early as September with many more following in October.
In 2023, 50% of consumers indicated that they start their holiday shopping in October. That being said, it is important to start your preparations early so you don’t miss out on the biggest buying season of the year.
The reason it is important to start your influencer marketing efforts early is because you want to have identified the influencers which are able to sell products prior to your BFCM campaign to maximise ROI. We will explain in detail why this is the case later in this article.
Now that we know the importance of the timeline for this year's BFCM season, let's get into the case study.
Context:
To fully understand how we achieved $687K in sales during their BFCM campaign it is important to know the full context and all the work which went into building up their influencer program.
We always stress the 80/20 principle of influencer marketing which states that the majority of the sales comes from a small group of influencers. We refer to the process of “influencer testing” to identify the influencers that are able to sell.
The more performing influencers you are able to identify prior to your BFCM campaign the bigger the impact of your campaign.
The reason for this is simple. If you know that a performing influencer sells around $5K per post you can close packages during BFCM to maximize posts from this influencer. E.g. Asking for 4 posts in exchange for $2K which is a realistic offer. Expected sales will be around $20K ($5K X 4 posts) which comes down to a 10X ROAS (ROI).
Without prior posting data you won’t be able to allocate budgets like the example above at least not without optimising for ROI.
9 months before we started the BFCM campaign we already worked with new influencers on a consistent basis. We agreed to the client to work with around 50 new influencers / month. The objective was to identify the top performing influencers with which we could build long lasting relationships.
To identify influencers we used Influencer Hero’s search and discovery tool.
By using filters based on influencer as well as audience location, gender and we were able to specify exactly which influencers to reach out to.
Once we identified the right influencers we bulk outreached influencers using Influencer Hero’s drip campaigns. Through automated follow ups and Ai generated personalized sentences we were able to achieve a 37%+ reply rate. You can access our A/B tested influencer outreach templates for free here.
Navigating this many partnerships isn’t easy which is why it is important to use a structured CRM which helps to keep track of your campaign. Using Influencer Hero’s CRM we were able to also create affiliate links, personalized discount codes and dispatch products directly from one influencer marketing software.
This part is essential for any marketer looking to implement performance driven influencer campaigns. Without tracking your results you won’t be able to identify the influencers which perform which is the whole point of this initial phase of organising first time partnerships with new influencers.
Through the Influencer Hero CRM we created affiliate links and personalized discount codes through which we were able to track the performance of each influencer.
Now that we had the data over hundreds of influencers we knew exactly which influencers were able to sell and which weren’t. We created the following relationship boards within our CRM:
As we knew that BFCM will be a big campaign and to maximise the number of influencers joining our campaign we decided to send gifts to our top performing influencers. It had to be unrelated to the products our client is selling and should purely help to show our appreciation and improve the relationship to the influencers.
We made sure to send the gifts strategically during September. Not too close to the campaign invite which might make it obvious that we are doing this for the campaign and not too far in advance to avoid the influencers forgetting about it when we reach out for the campaign.
Bundling multiple posts into packages is a great way to maximise ROI. As the total compensation looks more attractive you will be able to get more influencers to agree and at the same time lower the rate per post.
The first step in preparing these bundle packages is to clean your data which means to account for un-attributed sales. Having helped clients to navigate over 20K influencer partnerships over the past 7 years we know that the industry average attribution rate for D2C ecommerce brands using affiliate links and discount codes is around 70%.
To get to the actual number of sales generated from the tracked sales (using affiliate links and discount codes) we had to divide the tracked sales by 70%.
Below is a simplified overview of preparing these packages.
Step 1: Divide tracked sales (Column B) by 70% to get to actual sales (Column C).
Step 2: Multiply the number of posts you want in your package (Column D) by actual sales (Column C) to forecast expected actual sales from your package (Column E).
Now that you know what sales you can expect from the package you offer it is time to allocate budgets and determine predicted ROI.
Step 3: Enter the fixed payment and affiliate commission you want to offer in your package
Step 4: Calculate ROAS (ROI) by dividing expected sales (Column E) by fixed payment (Column F) and affiliate commission (Column G).
To account for the affiliate commission make sure to multiply the percentage entered in column G by tracked sales (Column B) and multiply this by the number of posts in the package (Column D).
The reason we multiply affiliate commission with tracked sales instead of actual sales is because you only pay the affiliate commission on attributed sales.
TIP: As a general rule you want to avoid working with affiliate commissions with high performing influencers as you can increase ROI by working with fixed payments.
Affiliate is expensive if an influencer sells a lot of products but can be a great way to hedge risk with influencers which sell less products.
This is why we typically prefer to work with a combination of fixed payments and affiliate commission for medium performing influencers ( 3 - 9 conversions / post).
Now that we have prepared the packages we can start to invite the influencers to our BFCM campaign. Below is the template we used to invite the influencers to the campaign.
Hi {{firstname}},
{{personalized_sentence}}
We have been working extremely hard to prepare everything for this year's holiday season and we would love to work with you again!
We have a special offer prepared which is the biggest sale of the year which we are only sharing with our favourite creators and we would love to offer the following:
* {{ENTER FIXED PAYMENT}}
* {{ENTER %}} Affiliate commission on all referrals (tracked through your dashboard)
* {{ENTER PRODUCT AND RETAIL VALUE}} (you will be the first to receive them)
* {{ENTER RETAIL VALUE}} Additional {{ENTER PRODUCT}} which you can use as a gift :)
In exchange we would like to ask for 1 story post in October (Fall campaign), 2 story posts in November (Holiday campaign) and 2 story posts in December.
As our {{ENTER PRODUCT}} are the perfect gift we see a significant increase in demand which will be beneficial for the affiliate commission you earn!
We are super excited to work with you again! Can I count you in? :)
Best,
(Your name)
Below are some tips to improve your campaign invitation email:
As you can see from the template we actually merged two campaigns into one. To fully utilise the holiday shopping season we asked for one post during our fall campaign in October and 4 posts during our BFCM campaign in November and December.
After we sent the invite the work didn’t stop there. Once the invitations have been sent out there are typically 3 different options:
We have prepared templates for each scenario which you can access here.
Be creative on how to reach the influencers which haven’t replied. Your objective in this stage is to get as many influencers as possible to join your campaign. Below are some tips which can help to increase your onboarding rate:
With Influencer Hero you can send out automated sequences so you don’t have to manually send out follow ups. This will save you a lot of time.
Timing your product send out is important. Offering new products even to influencers who already have a product helps to increase posting rates. It not only helps with negotiations as you can add on free products in your offering but it also helps as a reminder to post when the influencer receives the product.
Through a native integration between Influencer Hero and Shopify we could dispatch products to influencers directly from the CRM.
Now that you have onboarded the influencers to your campaign it is important to prepare everything for the launch. Below is a check list of all the things which you should prepare the day before your campaign launches:
And most importantly prepare your reminder emails to your influencers. The last thing you want after all the work you put in is that influencers simply forget to post. You want to start your campaign with a good spike and revenue in order to grow in confidence throughout your campaign.
Below is a template you can use to remind your influencers the day before the campaign:
Hi {{ firstname|default(influencer_handle) }},
I hope you are doing well!
Just a quick reminder that our BFCM campaign is starting tomorrow!
Your followers will be able to access the X% sale exclusively through your personal code.
Link: {{custom_link}}
X% Code: {{discount_code}}
Could you please share the link to your post once it’s live? We would love to see it!
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Best,
ENTER YOUR NAME
Throughout Q4 the campaign resulted in $687.6K in sales of which $640.7K came from November and December. The chart below shows a typical influencer driven Shopify analytics dashboard indicated by the following:
For this client the only active marketing channel was influencer marketing hence the sharp increase in sales when the campaign goes live. Sales essentially equal the moment influencers post about the brand. By trying to get as many influencers as possible to post on Black Friday and Cyber Monday we were able to generate over $50K in sales in a single day.
For this campaign Cyber Monday surprisingly performed best which we closed with $51K in sales compared to Black Friday with $32K.
Through our Q4 the influencers generated 210.8K clicks which comes down to approx. $3.2 per click ($687,626 / 210,826). Throughout the year revenue per click is around $1 for this brand which clearly reflects the higher willingness to spend during Q4.
The willingness to spend is also reflected in the store conversion rate. Through out the year the average store conversion rate is around 1%. During the BFCM campaign the conversion rate increased to 2.64%.
According to Adobe Analytics $5.3 billion of the $9.8 billion in online sales on Black Friday came from mobile shopping. As our campaign was mainly driven by Instagram influencers with the exception of several Youtube influencers the majority of the sales came from mobile.
Make sure that your website is mobile optimized to maximise conversion rates during your campaign.
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Once your campaign is up and running it is important to keep momentum throughout the campaign. The best way to do this is to thank the influencers for their post and subtly ask for additional posts. Use the template below for this.
Hi {{ firstname|default(influencer_handle) }},
Thank you so much for your amazing post about our BFCM campaign! It has been great to work with you again and we sincerely appreciate your support:)
The sale will remain active until ENTER END DATE. If you’d like to continue providing your followers with access to the offer through another post, your custom link and discount code will remain active until then :)
Link: {{custom_link}}
X% Code: {{discount_code}}
Thanks again for being part of this! We look forward to more successful collaborations in the future:)
Best,
ENTER YOUR NAME
A typical sales curve of an influencer campaign we organize is indicated by a sharp increase in sales when the campaign launches and another sharp increase when the campaign ends.
The reason sales increase towards the end is because we always ask the influencers to share with their followers that the campaign is ending. These posts perform particularly well to drive conversions as it uses urgency / FOMO to maximise sales.
Make sure to align this with your email marketing campaigns and add your influencers to your regular email campaigns as these emails will help as additional reminders to post.
Another benefit is often that you are able to get out a free post from the influencer by explaining that it is the last post of the campaign which can further increase ROI.
Use the template below to maximise posting at the end of your campaign.
Hi {{ firstname|default(influencer_handle) }},
I hope you are doing fantastic! I just wanted to inform you that our BFCM campaign is ending today. It would be great if you could give your followers one last chance to get their gift in time.
You can give your followers final access to the offer by using your link and code below :)
* Link: {{custom_link}}
* {{discount_code_perc}} Code: {{discount_code}}
Let me know if you have any questions!
Best,
ENTER YOUR NAME
Once your campaign has ended make sure to thank all your influencers who participated keeping in mind that you want to work with them again for your next campaign.
You can use the template below to close your campaign.
Hi {{ firstname|default(influencer_handle) }},
Thank you so much for being a part of this year’s Black Friday & Cyber Monday Campaign!
It was a great success, and it wouldn’t have been possible without your amazing support. We look forward to partnering with you again soon :)
Your payment will be processed later this week. I’ll let you know once it has been done so you can check your account.
Thank you again for being part of the campaign!
P.S. Your affiliate account will stay active so you continue to earn affiliate commission through your custom link!
We used Influencer Hero’s payment system to automate the process of paying out all the influencers.
In conclusion, by leveraging strategic influencer testing, early preparation, and targeted communication, we successfully helped our client generate $687K in sales during the BFCM season. This case study highlights the importance of identifying top-performing influencers, bundling packages for maximum ROI, and maintaining momentum throughout the campaign. With the right tools and strategies, like those provided by Influencer Hero, any brand can effectively capitalize on the holiday shopping frenzy and achieve substantial results.
Schedule a Demo with one of our media experts below.
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