let's talk about ambassador programs

heyyyyy you :)

happy friday!! it seems like whatever bug is going around got me this week so I spent a lot of time on the couch working, watching basketball, and tossing back GNGR labs Ginger shots. pretty productive if you ask me.

I did have dinner at Emilio’s Ballato last tonightwhich should be enough to make any New Yorker feel better. IYKYK. They have the best chicken parm in the city and it’s one of the only dishes I’ll sacrifice my lactose intolerance for.

BTW - Here’s your reminder that it’s about to be a new month so if you’re like “omg I didn’t do any social reporting yet” or “omg how do we even do social reporting?????”, I made a free template here. If you used it last month, let me know if you liked it. 

Anywho, today we’re chatting about one of the internet’s biggest conversation in the world of DTC and CPG: attribution. Sorry if i just triggered you.

But, we’re hitting on it a bit when it comes to creators and social media via affiliate and ambassador programs and what it takes to have a program “succeed”. This is going to start scratching the surface of a bigger series of newsletter all around seeding programs, paid partnerships, and more.

We’re breaking down:

• Why Gifting Isn’t Where Your Relationship Should End With Your Creators

• When Is The “Right Time” To Invite A Creator To Your Ambassador/Affiliate Program

• Ways To Keep Your Creators Entertained and In The Know To Further Your Relationship

• My love for RTD Protein Shakes

It’s a bit longer today, but stick with me! It’s worth it 🙂 

BUT FIRST (WITH A HUGE SMILE ON MY FACE)

Before hop we in, I’m am so excited to say that this newsletter is sponsored by SUPERFILIATE!!!!!!!!!

Andy, Anders and the team have been a dream to work with on client accounts such as Graza over the last few months where I have been managing our affiliate program to track our scaling efforts across our paid influencer campaigns, ambassadors, and more. Truly, I don’t think I’ve met a team that answers slacks faster when I have a question or need something.

If you’re a brand looking to:

• have a trusty platform that allows you to run end-to-end affiliate, influencer and referral programs

• increase your conversion rate and work more deeply with the creators on your roster

• handle product seeding, promotions, payout management for comissions, and more

Superfiliate could be your solution.

Now, what sold me on Superfiliate? Well, every link shared by a creator or customer into a cobranded landing page.

These cobranded landing pages create a personalized experience for your next potential customer as every page has its own unique content, curated products based on what your creator love, reviews from the creator, and more, which can help drive higher conversion rates.

SEE AN EXAMPLE RIGHT HERE FOR ONE OF MY CREATORS

The kicker? Their teams builds these out FOR you with no extra effort on your end. Isn’t that wild? I hope you’re shaking your head “yes.”

If you just want to chat with the team, tell them I sent you right here.

Now, let’s get into some unfiltered thoughts, shall we?

GIFTING IS COOL, BUT IT’S MORE THAN JUST SENDING SOMEONE SOMETHING FOR FREE

When it comes to standing out against other brands, there are three things when it comes to forming a solid influencer approach as someone who has seeded out well over 4,000+ packages and has handled over 7 figures in influencer budgets in the last few years,

• Experience → from the first unboxing to trying the product to joining your “program” or “community”

  • Things to Think About:

    • How can you encourage folks to make content when they first see that box land on their doorstep vs. having to follow-up multiple times to ask if they even got it?

    • How can you must equip them with the things they need to speak about your brand? For example, are you just launching in a new retailer? Is this a limited-time drop? How are they supposed to know and how are you communicating that?

    • Shippers should be SHAREABLE. You don’t need to spend thousands either. Creator or customer, the same experience should occur IMO.

After all, “Your unboxing experience is the only marketing channel with a 100% open rate” - Taylor Holiday.

• Your Offer (if there is one) → How can you help your creators in ways that other brands don’t or won’t?

  Most creators want to do anything that can help them get distribution and gain more of a following similar to ourselves.

  • Can you offer them a chance to do a drop with you? Custom Product or SKU?

  • Can you include them on your site, in your emails, on social, etc?

  • Can you allow them to host giveaways on their accounts once a quarter which can help you and them mutually?

  • Can you invite them to local and private events?

  • Can you bring them in for content initiatives?

Just like it takes two to tango, it takes two to make a long term partnership work.

• Community → At the end of day, every single person is human whether they have 5 followers, 50,000, 500,000 or 50 million.

  They want to feel part of something special and know that they are helping in moving that needed.

  If you don’t put in the work to give them the resources they need and the access to you, then how to do you expect them to know the latest to support you and your endeavors?

  If you can’t get them sold on the mission or the vision, they why would they be excited to be an advocate for you?

  Most affiliate programs focus on “we need more online sales. let’s start an ambassador program” before placing a focus on the people who are going to be joining. Hence, this is why I like to control my outreach to creators and those that join in the early days because I know that that first impression matters and they shouldn’t expect anything less.

  That’s why I think about it just like being part of a sports team.

  • I love sending Monthly Check-Ins and Updates. Do creators need more product? Do they have any questions from their own community and can we supply the best answer? Are there initiatives that we can help them with?

  • Celebrate the top performers and players. A little friendly competition never hurts. Perhaps, even surprise them every month with a little gift (a gift card to a retailer, product from a brand we love)

WHEN DO YOU TAKE THE NEXT STEP WITH SOMEONE…

I am not relationship coach so I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you when it comes to your creators, you don’t need to come out of the gate HOT with all of the details and steps that you want them to take.

Good things take time. Good relationships take time. Good partnerships take time. Don’t make it so transactional, pleeeease.

Personally, I like testing the waters.

Exchange a few messages. Get them some product.

Let them test drive it and see how they like it. Ideally, they are sharing it consistently out of their own interest and love for it.

From there, I like to ~circle back~ and thank them for the support and that in return I would love to invite them to an exclusive ambassador program that has all these really cool perks. Shoot them the link. Get them approved. Off to the races.

Too many times upon auditing accounts, brands are trying to sell both their ambassador program AND seeding product for the first time within the same message. I am not saying this can’t not work, BUT IMO, you put pressure on the person to almost like you back before they even know anything about you.

I want people who like the product, who breathe product, and will actually use it on their own. Bonus if they stock up on more with their own money. I rather build a bit slow and steady before spraying and praying. A successful ambassador program isn’t about size, it’s about action.

You can have 400 people who love the product, but you’re missing your monthly goals or literally not having any sales or you can have 100 people who can produce 50-75K months.

Build your basics. Give them the tools they need to be good at repping you. Keep them in the loop. They are a friend to the brand. Treat them like it.

Just my two cents.

I’ll leave you thinking on that one, but would love to hear your thoughts or if you’re even stuck right now, just hit “reply”.

YOU HAVE TO KEEP PEOPLE ENTERTAINED

You cannot always rely on your creators to keep moving the needle for your month over month. Let’s face it, sometimes you’ll have key players and sometimes, you’re best performers, just literally stop performing because their audience got tired or a bunch of other reasons.

In most cases, many creators and people in general do not know how to properly sell and integrate a product to get people to want to click through. Often times, it could even be a problem of not actually doing it enough. Odds are if we think we have done it too much times, it probably hasn’t even been enough. People are fighting for their lives for views nad clicks, flaunt that product proudly.

Affiliate Marketing or building an ambassador program or any of this should allow a person to do three things:

1.  form a relationship with their audience

2. educate their audience to instill trust

3. hit them with a hook (sell)

A one off story with a code with truly no context probably won’t do as well who shows a true (and positive) reaction to the product through a sequence and then hits their audience with a code at the end.

So, What Can A Brand Do To Deepen the Relationships with those in their Ambassador Program?

There is a bigger list than this for sure, but I have to keep that under wraps, but the most obvious are right in front of our eyes given the tech stacks and mediums given and granted to us by these platforms.

• A Monthly Newsletter → Update them with the most recent happenings (#transparency), new updates in the works (beta access to a new product or to become a tester), what can they look forward to in the month ahead, internal “challenge“ encouraging more UGC, opportunities for paid initiatives.

  • I do enjoy that Superfiliate actually has a Klayvio integration so that I can build flows for this stuff because man, the days of Shopify Collabs were TOUGH. I was bcc’ing in Gmail like it was no one else’s business.

• Close Friends on Instagram → Create a ‘Close Friends’ group on Instagram will allow you to highlight BTS and truly allow them to grow as you grow. You can even open this up to “VIPS” of the brand aka those have a high LTV as a Loyalty Perk.

• Custom Landing Pages! Increase conversion, make them feel special and allow them to have fun customizing their own site.

• Connect them with one another! You have all these cool people in one space. Introduce them to one another because it can open other doors. Brands like Topicals have obviously crushed this, but even same goes for community highlights like Snaxshot, who has a great discord where snack lovers who work in the space and outside can just chill and connect at their leisure.

• Pay attention. I know these seem like no-brainers, but these no-brainers are not even performed so I just like to remind people. Literally, pay attention. Pay attention to their lives online and what they are going through. How can you be there in terms of need? times of happiness? times of celebration? I am not saying this in the POV of “we have to insert our brand wherever we can to get in on a moment.” Please virtually punch me if I ever become that person. It’s called just being a nice human and seeing where you know you can make someone’s life just a little bit better or put a smile on their face.

With that said, what puts a smile on my face is the…

BRAND OF THE WEEK: OWYN Protein Shakes

BOTW is when I pick a brand I am enjoying online or in real life and I share it with you because life is short and well, I just need to let the people know.

This week’s brand is OWYN, my daily lifesaver.

OWYN is how I start my day every morning and one of my monthly Amazon shipments, but it’s also 100% plant-powered protein shakes that don’t have any gross ingredients, are allergen-free (shoutout to all my friends with nut allergies as I eat PB right now), and are smooth and are delish.

As someone who counted macros for YEARS of my life and has always understood the importance of protein, these shakes just make it easier to start my day with 20-32g of protein (SKU depending) especially before I sit on calls for a few hours or most of the day. I won’t lie that sometimes I have 2 a day because I love using it as “milk” for my nightly bowl of cereal, which lately has been a bowl of chocolate Seven Sundays.

They also just launched their brand new Double Shot coffee shake line I tried at Expo that has 180mg of good ol’ caffeine to reeeeally get the day goin’. I really love the Mocha.

Woo Protein! Please stop forgetting to eat on your busiest days. We’re all guilty of it, but NO MORE EXCUSES.

THAT’S A WRAP!

You know the deal, folks. Another one in the books. Thanks for spending your morning with me!

BTW where are my fellow Aries at? The days are counting down towards my 29th birthday so it’s time to do all the things I wanna do as I race against the clock.

I thought 28 was a WEIRD one, but man 29 gives me a different type of weird, but staying positive.

As an early birthday present, can you do me a favor??

Can you share the link below with anyone in your life or at work who loves marketing, wants to learn about social media/influencer marketing, or just wants to have a fun newsletter in their inbox?

It would mean the absolute world to me ❤️ 

https://kendalldickieson.beehiiv.com/subscribe

In the meantime, if you’re free on April 4th, I’ll be sitting in and listening in on Superfiliate’s Creator Paid Media and Performance Marketing Panel (RSVP HERE) all about how to optimize creator content on paid social and performance marketing channels via whitelisting, allowlisting, and advertising best practices. Hope to (virtually) see you there!

Until next week…

Peace, Love, and KPIs,

KD

P.S. If you’re in NYC, I am potentially working on a dinner for some social and marketing folks. Is that something you’d be interested in attending? LMK and just reply to this email.

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