Influencer Marketing Platforms

Welcome to our Influencer Marketing Platform Reviews - we are in the process of reviewing all the leading influencer marketing platforms to give agencies and brands a better overview of features, benefits and pricing of the different solutions on offer

Services Offered: Search/Discovery, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Relationship Management, Content Review, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance, Fake Follower/Fraud Detection, Payment Processing,

Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitch, Blogs


Still, what truly stands out about CreatorIQ is how it relies on tech to not only simplify the influencer marketing process, but also to solve some of the problems that have long plagued the industry as a whole: follower fraud, inflated reach metrics, and inauthentic/mercenary influencers. How they’ve done this will be explained in The Details; for now it’s enough to know that CreatorIQ as a company seems tireless in its pursuit of building a better platform.

These efforts haven’t gone unnoticed, either. There’s the impressive roster of clients, which includes some very big names—like Disney, Tiffany & Co., Unilever, Dell, and Ralph Lauren. There’s the $15m in venture capital they’ve received through two rounds of funding. There was the small matter of being named the Best Influencer Marketing platform at the 2019 MarTech Awards. 

Clearly, they’re doing something right, and there’s no time like the present to see what that looks like.

In 2014, influencer marketing was a whole different scene. How different? Let’s put it this way: when Influencity started up in November of that year, its focus was on connecting brands with some of the most influential people….on Twitter.

Yes, long before Instagram was the platform for brands to be seen—and before Twitter essentially became the unofficial customer service channel for major corporations—influencer marketing was growing and thriving, 140 characters at a time. Of course, these days the landscape is far different (see: the earlier comment about Instagram being the platform), and Influencity has evolved right along with it. 

First and foremost is the platform’s shift in focus. In the early days, CEO Daniel Sanchez described Influencity’s hook as “a system of automatic publication of tweets written by influencers.” It was a good way to go, maybe, back then when Hootsuite and dozens of other companies were doing the exact same thing. Really, the novelty in 2014 and 2015 was the ability to find compatible and relevant influencers to represent brands. And that’s the big feature that Influencity’s heavily leaned into, to excellent effect.

Discovery with Influencity relies on Instagram data now—and on a mass scale. There are currently over 55 million Instagram accounts indexed within the platform. With that many profiles, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the profiles are light on information. But that’s where Influencity’s novelty lies these days: an incredible amount of data on an even more incredible number of influencers.



It’s a long way from where Sanchez & company began—in 2014 with “about 100 influencers” on Twitter to choose from. The depth of what you can learn about influencers and their audience is remarkable. Add to this a campaign management module and in-depth reporting, and you can see why Influencity appeals to brands like Samsung and Kellogg’s and agencies like Dentsu and WPP.

Pricing

You can see from both Influencity’s pricing and the way they structure it that they’re trying to appeal to clients both large and small. Customers can personalize their own plan by selecting the features that suit them best by creating a  Custom Bundle.  Customers can also choose from the Fixed Plan options that are available at: 

  • Starter: $48/mo
  • Basic: $98/mo
  • Professional: $298/mo
  • Business: $698/mo

Like many SaaS platforms, there are multiple levels of subscription that run the gamut of features:

  • Starter  — One user can run unlimited searches and discover up to 1,500 results per month, save up to 25 influencers, analyze up to 10 profiles per month, fraud detection feature.
  • Basic — One user can run unlimited searches and discover up to 5,000 results per month, save up to 100 influencers across 1 list, analyze up to 25 profiles per month, fraud detection and audience overlapping features.
  • Professional — 3 users can run unlimited searches per month and discover up to 10,000 results per month, save up to 300 influencers across 100 lists, analyze up to 75 profiles per month, fraud detection and audience overlapping features, manage 5 campaigns (more features), and run 5 campaign reports (50 post analysis per month)
  • Business — 5 users, unlimited searches and discover up to 20,000 results per month, 1,500 influencers across 100 lists, analyze up to 150 profiles per month, fraud detection and audience overlapping features, manage 20 campaigns with all features, run 20 campaign reports (150 post analysis per month).

We used to say that there were two kinds of developers of influencer marketing platforms: those who saw an industry need and created software to address it; and those who saw a growing industry and wanted to cash in on it. Well, we can now add a third kind of developer: those who built out platforms that had nothing to do with influencer marketing, but still addressed that industry’s needs anyway.

Refersion belongs to this third group. Founded in 2015, the platform was addressing a marketing need, just not with respect to influencers. Instead, it helped brands create and manage vast affiliate marketing networks, tracking the thousands of small transactions brand affiliates were generating, making payouts and reporting more streamlined than managing the whole thing with an excel spreadsheet. Sound familiar? That “No more spreadsheets!” mantra was a big one with influencer marketing platforms four and five years ago.

It’s an evolution that makes sense. Affiliates, after all, were largely just regular people who maybe owned well trafficked websites and large social accounts. But instead of collaborating with brands to create advertising campaigns and content for them in exchange for a fee, affiliate marketers eschewed upfront payments (and collaborative efforts) in exchange for commissions on all sales conversions they were responsible for.  The line between affiliates and influencers is becoming increasingly blurred as influencer platforms integrate with e-commerce more and more, moving beyond simple “awareness” campaigns to actually drive sales. While these platforms are working to fold affiliate marketing features into their influencer tools, platforms like Refersion only really needed to add the word “influencer” to their web copy to make a similar transition. 


Of course, Refersion did more than simply update their branding to increase its appeal to influencer marketers. They launched integrations with Upfluence, #paid, and Cohley to their already impressive list of apps and platforms they can connect with. They are exploring more influencer specific features, like discovery and campaign management, to include in future updates, as well. But marketers don’t need to wait on that to happen to start mashing up their affiliate and influencer programs. Refersion already has them covered.

Pricing

There are two different plans offered by Refersion: the one with limits and the one without.

  • Professional, $89/mo — You can have an unlimited number of affiliates and influencers on your roster, but you’re limited to tracking on the first 130 affiliate sales each month. Additional features include setting commissions by SKU or product; sales tracking by referral links, coupon codes, emails, and SKUs; and custom integrations.
  • Enterprise, Custom Pricing — All of the above, with unlimited affiliate sales tracking, plus professional services (onboarding, dedicated account manager), multi-shop support, custom development, white labeling.

Frequently Asked Questions

Refersion is an affiliate marketing platform that connects to your ecommerce store to help manage all aspects in one place. It helps brands create and manage vast affiliate marketing networks, tracking the thousands of small transactions brand affiliates were generating, making payouts and reporting more streamlined than managing the whole thing with an excel spreadsheet.




Frequently Asked Questions