Influencer marketing is booming right now, and it isn't going to slow down—not yet. From the early days of celebrity endorsement to the growth of micro-influencers creating authentic content, the journey of influencer marketing has been enthralling. 

The State of Influencer Marketing 2023 Benchmark Report mentions that the influencer market has grown into a $21.1 billion industry. 

This means that more and more businesses are creating marketing budgets for influencer marketing. 

However, finding the right influencers, tracking their performances, and managing campaigns is no easy job. 

That’s where influencer marketing automation comes in. 

Brands use tools and software to automate and streamline various aspects of influencer marketing. 

In this article, we’ll learn everything about influencer marketing automation — the what and how of it.

What is Influencer Marketing Automation?

Automation plays an important role in the success of influencer marketing. Using various automation tools, brands can automate repetitive tasks and streamline workflow. 

For example, by enabling automation in influencer outreach and performance tracking, influencer marketing can become more efficient and data-driven. 

Importance of Automation in Influencer Marketing Program

Using automation, you can benefit your influencer marketing in many ways. Some of these include:

Better efficiency

Automation of repetitive tasks using influencer marketing software like InsightIQ can improve efficiency.

For example, with InisightIQ, you can easily find creators from a comprehensive database whose audience matches your target audience base. You don't need to scout various platforms to find the right influencer manually. You can start your campaign from day 1!

Improved ROI measurement

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) is essential in any marketing effort, and influencer marketing is no exception. 

Automated influencer marketing platforms let you pull out analytics to help you understand what's working and what's not. 

Backed by these data, you can identify the right influencers to collaborate with who can drive revenue generation for you.

Scalability

Manually tracking campaigns can be tedious, especially when working with multiple influencers, yet it's crucial. 

An influencer marketing platform is handy for tracking campaign data. When campaign tracking becomes automated, you can scale your influencer marketing efforts faster. 

Ways to Automate Influencer Marketing

Marketers can automate and manage the entire influencer partnership lifecycle by choosing the right tools and technologies.

Different steps that you can automate in an influencer marketing campaign:

• Searching for the right influencer
• Creating and managing the contract
• Audience segmentation
• Scheduling content publication
• Metrics analytics and ROI tracking
• Payments and compensation of the influencers

What  to Automate in Influencer Marketing

Automating specific steps in influencer marketing can help you scale up, measure ROI, and track the campaign's effectiveness. We asked these influencer marketing experts about what they recommend.

Influencer Search

One key area to automate is finding the right influencer for your campaign. As Daniel Bunn, Managing Director of Innovate, mentions, “ Automating influencer discovery helps sift through vast databases to find the right influencers quickly, saving time and resources. Outreach automation enables efficient and consistent communication, especially when managing large-scale campaigns.”

Verifying Backgrounds

Through various APIs, you can automate different aspects like:

• Verifying the social data (KYC) of the influencer and giving them badges
• Build exclusive curations of influencers as per any campaign brief across different platforms
• Scan all social profiles and content posted by the influencers and analyze their profile across platforms in minutes

Shortlisting Influencers

Automation also works well when you need to shortlist influencers based on various criteria like demographics, track mentions, etc. John Pennypacker, VP of Sales & Marketing @ Deep Cognition, mentions, “We use various automation tools to shortlist influencers based on specific criteria such as demographics of the audience, different content themes, and engagement rates. This saves time for manual searching and allows us to cast a wider net.”

Campaign Tracking and Reporting

Automated tools help us monitor campaign performance in real-time, providing us with immediate insights into engagement rates, reach, and conversions. Using automation tools helps us save time and ensures we don’t miss out on suitable candidates.

This allows us to adjust strategies and improves overall campaign efficiency.

Using influencer marketing automation platforms for these influencer marketing tasks has significantly reduced manual work and increased our ability to scale our influencer marketing efforts. 

For instance, we’ve seen a 30% increase in influencer marketing campaign efficiency and a 25% improvement in influencer response rates since implementing automated outreach with marketing automation tools”, mentions Kate Ross, Hair and Beauty Specialist of Irresistible Me. 

Onboarding Tasks

Automation makes it easy to onboard influencers quickly. Once you are ready to onboard an influencer, you can automate sending the contract, sharing any briefs, and creating a step-by-step workflow that can be plugged into an influencer marketing platform. This workflow can go out automatically once an influencer is on board with you. 

Automating Outreach Follow-Ups

While the first message to the influencer should be personalized, the follow-up messages can be automated. You can create an email funnel to send out follow-up emails if the influencer doesn't respond in 3 days, five days, one week, and so on. That way, you can have a clear headspace and will not miss any, especially if you deal with hundreds of influencers. 

Writing Responses to Frequently Asked Questions

If you’re getting too many DMs from influencers about your influencer program/brand ambassador program, then automating answering some of the fundamental questions can be the best solution. 

Performance Analytics

If you’re running performance-based campaigns, you might need to generate coupon codes that influencers can give their followers. You can automate the process of generating coupon codes using automation tools. 

So, each time an influencer joins, you can quickly generate a personalized code for them. You can also measure the influencers' performance based on the leads/clicks generated by each personalized code/URL. 

Campaign Management

Ashwin Ramesh, the CEO of Synup, mentions that he and his team use automation for some areas of influencer campaign management.  “We use automated tools to streamline outreach, content approval, and performance tracking, enhancing efficiency and scalability. By automating these processes, SaaS companies can save time and resources while gaining actionable insights from real-time analytics, improving campaign ROI, and maintaining consistency in influencer partnerships.”

What Not to Automate in Influencer Marketing

While automating certain aspects of influencer marketing can streamline operations and improve efficiency, too much automation can kill the charm of collaborative content, especially more strategic tasks. 

So we asked these experts what not to automate, and this is what they said.

Influencer Relationships Management

Building and managing authentic relationships requires a human touch, and no automation software can do it for you. Writing a personalized appreciation note or wishing someone a happy birthday with a custom message takes some effort and is better when done in person. 

Sending an automated note doesn't convey your intentions behind it. 

As Rongzhong Li, Founder and CEO of Petoi, mentions, “ I steer clear of automating relationship management to preserve authenticity and nurture genuine partnerships with influencers, which are vital for sustained campaign success.”

John Pennypacker, VP of Sales and Marketing at Deep Cognition, also agrees. He mentions, “ We never automate direct communications with influencers. Personal interaction is key to building lasting partnerships. For example, we once turned a one-off campaign with a tech influencer into a year-long ambassadorship simply because of the rapport built through personalized communication.” 

Influencer Outreach

Another area where automation doesn't work is influencer outreach. 

An exception can be when you need to reach out to a whole database of influencers urgently, you may want to use automation to save time. But as Adele Grigunaite, Influencer Marketing Manager at Omnisend, suggests, “The influencer outreach results are always better when you take the time to learn about the influencer's content, style, and audience. A genuine connection with the influencer is more important, even though automation sometimes can help you save some time.”

How to Automate Influencer Campaigns Using InsightIQ

Ready to automate your influencer campaigns? With InisghtIQ, you can automate creator search, campaign management, and ROI measurement. Here’s how.

Creator Search

Use InsightIQ’s creator search feature to find the right influencer for your marketing. For example, you can set filters like choosing a platform, audience demographics, contact options, etc., to find the right influencer quickly. More filter options give you more choices to narrow down your search and choose the right candidate. 

Here’s the detailed list of filters you can opt.

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Campaign Tracking

With InsightIQ, you can automate campaign tracking. The dashboard for every campaign will give you a quick view of its performance, including total views, comments, impressions, engagement, shares, and views.

You will also be able to measure ROI for your campaign. The dashboard gives detailed metrics like cost per engagement, cost per millie, cost per view, and total media vallue.

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You can get a detailed analysis of your comments to understand the effectiveness of your campaign. 

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Creator Onboarding

Automating creator onboarding with InsightIQ is easy. From the dashboard, you can directly invite your shortlisted creators. You can view all the details, such as when you invited them, the platform, contact details, and the action taken. 

Are you ready to automate your influencer marketing campaigns? 

Try it for free today!

FAQ:

Can influencer marketing be automated?

Yes, certain aspects of influencer marketing can be automated. These may include finding the influencers, campaign management, analytics and reporting, and content approval.

How to use AI in influencer marketing?

You can use AI in influencer marketing in various ways, such as influencer discovery, analysis and tracking, audience segmentation and targeting, content insights and optimization, fraud detection and compliance, etc. 

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