In this week’s edition of company spotlight, we look at how Eatsiebox gathered 600 plus signups using influencer marketing. They have effectively targeted people in exchange for reviews and they have run several contests to promote their band as well. The outcome has generated a good number of email subscriptions. Read on to find out more!
Give us the background of your company – what is it and who is it for?
EatsieBox is a customized subscription snacks box service. I started the company because I wanted something in between “everybody gets the same thing” and “you have to pick out your own stuff”. You tell us what kind of snacks you want and you get stuff you like and still get surprised.
Tell us the background of the influencer marketing campaign?
With a subscription box like this, you really need to get some examples out to reviewers so that customers can see what they’re getting. So the first goal was just to get some reviews under our belt and see what people who review lots of these boxes thought.
What were the marketing goals of the campaign?
I wanted to start getting some initial traffic and signups for our email list, as well as generally raising awareness of our box. It’s a bit more complicated of a concept than a traditional subscription box and less easily explained, so I thought going with bloggers/influencers was the best way to advertise in a sort of long-form concept.
How did you target influencers aka what metrics and information did you use?
I initially started looking for reviewers who post to reddit’s subscription boxes forum, and then I started looking more for “lifestyle” bloggers who don’t normally review these. For these I looked at Passionfruit Ads and contacted some of the bloggers on there (not by buying their ads, just direct emailing.) Passionfruit provides some metrics but they are not frequently updated – a lot of the bloggers do show their metrics on their contact pages though. I generally wouldn’t consider anyone who didn’t have at least a thousand FB fans – I also looked to see if people commented on their posts on the blog and on Facebook. I wasn’t as concerned about traffic as I was about engagement. I also posted a listing on Tomoson, which does provide detailed metrics, and got some people that way. (However, a LOT of these people had very low quality blogs, so I eventually rejected most of them.) I was looking more for people who would provide a really nice review with pictures and a write-up, with the reach being a little less important. Once I got some of those done and people seemed to be saying nice things about the product, I started reaching out to bloggers who might not have the fanciest write-ups but had much better reach (a lot of them focus on giveaways etc so I didn’t think I’d get a good percentage engagement but would get a lot more emails on the list.)
Did you provide anything to the influencers in return for their help?
A few of the influencers got a small cash payment (highest was $50) but most just got a free EatsieBox. I do have a blogger subscription that they can sign up for and get a discounted subscription on an ongoing basis, if they continue to write reviews.
How long did the campaign last?
I started at the beginning of October – I’m pretty much done with this round of marketing but will be ramping up again for our Valentine’s Day promotion. We’ll have a special subscription for Valentine’s Day – felt that was a less crowded time of year for promotions, since everybody piles on around Christmas.
What were the results of the campaign?
We’ve done reasonably well on getting subscribers and have over 600 emails on our list. We still have a number of the contests ongoing so we’re still getting more likes and emails every day. I also am pleased at the number of bloggers who have signed up for our affiliate program because I will reach out to them to let them know about new promotions we’re having and they’ll be more likely to feature us again without an additional payment from us.
Did you use any tools to make your campaign easier?
I probably should have used some kind of CRM to keep track of the bloggers – I was using Streak in Gmail a little, but there are better programs. I am using Gleam.io to run the contests (this is an awesome way to collect emails/likes/etc) and JROX for my affiliate program.
I also have a page on my website for bloggers and I’ve gotten several good contacts through there directly. (Also lots of people who just want free stuff and have cruddy or nonexistent blogs, so you really need to think carefully about who you hand things out to because it gets pretty expensive.)
What was the hardest part of running the campaign?
Keeping track of who’s gotten their box, who’s posted their review, making sure I post them to Facebook, etc. This would probably be a good thing to have a VA for, so I would definitely recommend that!
What was a major takeaway you learned about influencer marketing?
Get started early! Our launch was in late October and I started contacting people at the end of September – but it’s not like blog posts expire. The strategy I eventually settled on was to have all the bloggers run giveaways (which they really like and their readers like) and collect as many emails/likes/follows as I could. I initially thought “Oh, they’ll forget about EatsieBox if I start too early” but really, people get exposed to so much advertising that if your product isn’t currently available, it won’t matter if it’s launched in two days or two months, you’ll still need to re-engage them when it does launch. Plus, you want your product to have some results on Google, and it won’t really matter if they’re a little old when people search for reviews.
