The

Influencer
Marketing
Automation
Guide

Understand how you can automate your

influencer marketing campaigns to make it highly

efficient and results-driven

Created by Winkl
Table of Contents
The big problem --------------------------------------------------- 3

Need for automation --------------------------------------------- 4

Getting started with automation ---------------------------------- 5

Part 1: Influencer marketing workflow ----------------------------- 6

Part 2: Improving efficiency without Winkl Campaign Manager --- 8

Part 3: Automating campaigns with Winkl Campaign Manager --- 14

Impact due to automation ---------------------------------------- 19

Comparison between execution methods ------------------------ 21

2
The Big Problem
While influencer marketing drives results that are very unique and

differentiated from regular digital marketing in terms of trust

created, relatability, content and engagement,

93% of marketers surveyed found influencer marketing

difficult to scale.

Campaign performance tracking Influencer discovery & shortlisting

10% 12%

Reminders and followups Negotiating prices

33% 28%

Communicating brief and expectations

17%

The single biggest pain point faced by marketers when running

influencer marketing campaigns

61% of marketers think that reminders &

followups along with negotiating prices are

the biggest pain points

Both of which are done manually today over phone calls, emails,

excel sheets and Whatsapp messages.

3
Need for Automation
The pain point is clear and out in the open. Influencer marketing campaigns

are conducted largely manually by marketers with very minimal automation

or a structured workflow resulting in very low efficiency

Influencer marketing automation can reduce manual effort on

redundant tasks by 3x

Automation results in reducing the campaign launch time from an

average of 8 days right now to under 36 hours

The saved time and effort can help marketers focus on being

creative, which directly impacts campaign performance

Automation of influencer marketing results in

increased higher campaign performance,

reduced effort and more time to focus on things that

matter, i.e. strategy and creativity

"Not implementing a marketing automation solution may be the

ultimate career limiting move for today's marketers. If you haven't

gotten started yet, you are already behind the 8 ball"

IDC Group - A premier global market intelligence firm.

4
Getting Started with
Automation
PART 1
Understanding the influencer marketing workflow
Before we try and bring efficiency into the process by automation, it's very important to

understand each step in the influencer marketing process and to design a workflow

from these processes.

PART 2
Improving efficiency without using Winkl Campaign Manager
Before we built our campaign manager, we automated influencer marketing

campaigns using Google forms and bulk emails for brands like Flipkart. While this is not

automation in its true sense, it does significantly improve the efficiency.

PART 3
Automating campaigns using the Winkl Campaign Manager
The Winkl campaign manager is built in a way that eliminates all redundant and

repetitive tasks in order to save time, improve process efficiency and drives better

campaign performance. As a marketer, you will need to intervene only when there are

critical decisions or inputs needed that require creativity and strategic thought.

5
Part 1
Influencer Marketing Workflow

Thinking about the influencer marketing process in clearly defined

steps that form a workflow is very important to streamline the

process and make it more efficient.

STEPS INVOLVED IN RUNNING AN INFLUENCER MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Step 1
Campaign setup - this step involves you making sure you have
all the details in place before starting with the campaign

execution.

Make sure you have information such as campaign objective,

understanding of what kind of influencers are needed, clarity

on budgets and timelines.

Step 2
Influencer discovery & shortlisting - this step involves you
identifying relevant influencers and shortlisting them for the

campaign. If there is a database or a discovery tool available

at your disposal, you can shortlist from the same.

Alternatively, you can use the right keywords/hashtags/similar

profiles and search from platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

Once you have the list of influencers, this list can be further

narrowed down based on quality of engagement, relevance,

content quality etc.

6
Step 3
Influencer onboarding - once you have the influencers
shortlisted, the next step is to onboard them for the campaign.

This includes sharing deliverables, terms & conditions,

executing contracts if required and agreeing on a price for the

set deliverables.

Step 4
Communication & briefs - once the influencers have been
onboarded, the next step is to share a detailed campaign brief

with them all the deliverables, expected outcomes, timelines,

do's & don'ts, links and hashtags to use, reference posts etc.

The objective here is to ensure the influencer understands what

is expected out of him/her.

Once the brief has been shared, staying in touch with the

influencer via reminders/followups is important to ensure timely

delivery of deliverables.

Step 5
Reporting & analytics - as the content starts getting approved
and goes up on social media, it's important to start tracking the

performance of the posts. This could be done via third party

tools or via the Winkl campaign manager.

Step 6
Payments - once the influencers have posted all their
deliverables as decided earlier, payments can be transferred to

their accounts.

Important: The steps mentioned above are the broad level steps and are common to
95% of campaigns. Depending on your organisation, process and campaign, the process

might vary.

Pro tip: All the above steps come integrated into the Winkl campaign manager 7
Part 2
Improving campaign efficiency without Winkl
Campaign Manager
PRO TIP
WHAT YOU NEED

Google Forms - streamlines One of the key things that help

campaigns become more

influencer on-boarding, payments &

efficient is the thinking of the

contracts

campaign manager.

Excel sheets - streamlines

If she is able to think at scale
information and status/tracker
without inclining towards
management
solutions that require redundant

effort, campaigns can be

Bulk email tool - streamlines
scaled to a large extent with
communication with multiple
the tools mentioned on the left.
influencers at once

Bulk payment solution - streamlines

payment to multiple influencers

Analytics and reporting solution -

streamlines campaign tracking and

performance review

Alternative tools can be used

8
Step 1
Aggregate influencer data - as you are discovering influencers or if you invite
influencers to apply to the campaign using a database, aggregate their data in an

excel sheet in a standard format as shown below.

Step 2
Shortlist influencers - once you have all the influencer data at one place, you can
sort/filter them as per your requirements and mention "yes", "no" or "tentative" by

adding a new column. Those in tentative are backup if not everyone who's marked as

yes, agrees to work with you.

9
Step 3
Reach out to shortlisted influencers - filter out influencers marked as tentative/no
and download the CSV file which you will need to upload in the bulk email tool.

You can additional columns in the CSV file if you want to customise the email with fields

such as payment amount etc.

Pro tip:

Avoid negotiating rates with

influencers. This could take

really long and slow you

down.

Instead, speak to 2-3 of

them, and basis your budget,

set reasonable rates upfront.

If the rates are reasonable

for your expectations, most

influencers will accept your

terms.

The consent form is mainly to ensure that influencers have understood all the details of the campaign

and give their consent to be a part of the collaboration.

Pro tip:

Share all the available

information with the

influencer upfront so that

they have all they need to

make a decision.

In the consent form, you can

add a field to take in any

questions or clarifications the

influencers might have.

You can then collate these

questions, create a FAQ doc

and share with everybody.

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Step 4
Tally the responses and repeat step 3 - as you start receiving responses from
influencers, update the excel sheet, send reminders and repeat step 3 till you have

enough influencers as per your requirement.

Pro tip:

Do not send more than 3

reminders as it probably

means the influencer is not

interested.

Ensure at-least 12 - 18 hrs

have passed between

subsequent reminders.

Step 5
Send confirmation email - once you have a final list of influencers who have given
consent to participate in the campaign, send them a final confirmation email with the

next steps, instructions and the content brief.

The campaign brief attached with the email needs to as detailed as possible. We have shared an

example below, but feel free to add more fields if necessary if it aids the influencers to understand

the expectations better.

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 Pro tip:

Please be very clear

with the brief and avoid

changes later.

Multiple versions usually

leads to confusion and

low quality output.

A well written and clear

brief is a superpower!

Step 6
Send reminders - 2 days before the post needs to be submitted for review, send a
reminder.

Step 7
Setup tracking - setup tracking for the campaign hashtags and links to ensure that as
the posts start getting uploaded, you can track campaign performance in real time.

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Step 8
Collect payment information from influencers and feed it into the bulk payments
solution and voila, payments are done!

While this could seem like a task, this is way more efficient when it comes to

executing a campaign end to end as compared to the manual process where

information gets lost on emails, phone calls and personal messages.

There could be exceptions where you might need to call or message an

influencer, in that case make sure whatever was discussed is updated in the main

excel sheet.

13
Part 3
Automating campaigns using the Winkl
Campaign Manager

The Winkl campaign manager enables you to execute the entire campaign from

a single dashboard and eliminates all the work required in Part 2 of this ebook as

described earlier.

Winkl is more than just an influencer marketing platform. It's an entire automated

workflow that helps your run highly scalable influencer campaigns with minimal back

and forth and manual effort. This automation drives measurable results for your business

or your clients.

14
Step 1
Invite applications - enter basic campaign details and roll it out on the Winkl influencer
app. This gets shown to relevant influencers who can choose to apply to the campaign.

15
Step 2
Shortlist influencers - As influencers apply to the campaign, you can shortlist them by
analysing their metrics and required criteria.

Step 3
Share brief - share the campaign brief with the influencers. Influencers will go through
the brief and accept the collaboration from the Winkl app.

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Step 4
Launch campaign - once there are enough influencers in the campaign as per the
requirement, the campaign goes live.

Step 5
Review posts and track performance - as influencers start uploading their posts, you
can review them and start tracking campaign performance in real time.

17
Step 6
Payments - once you are satisfied with the deliverables, you can make payments to the
influencers from the Winkl campaign manager itself.

18
Impact due to automation
At Winkl, we have used all the methods detailed in this document to manage

influencer campaigns for our clients and partners and below is an

approximation of the impact driven due to automation.

The assumption is that a campaign requires 20 influencers for the sake of

easy comparison.

Manually executed
campaigns

Time taken to launch campaign

Using fully manual methods, on average it took us about 8 days
to launch a campaign with all the influencers on-boarded. A large

amount of time was wasted in waiting for the influencers to

respond back and answering their questions and negotiating

rates with them.

Communication
We estimate that it took us about 30 phone calls and 200
emails + personal messages to be able to launch campaigns.

Results
There was a lot of back and forth done to ensure the right

This severely
content was being created by the influencers.

impacted campaign performance and was below par.

19
Campaigns using forms & bulk
emails as mentioned in Part 2

Time taken to launch campaign

With forms, bulk emails and a structured workflow, the campaign

launch time dropped from 8 days to about 4 days. A large

amount of time here was spent in waiting for influencers to fill up

the consent forms and sending multiple reminders.

Communication
We estimate that it took us about 10 phone calls and 80 emails
+ personal messages to be able to launch campaigns.

Results
Because all the communication was structured, we saw much

better results in terms of content quality which directly impacted

campaign performance which was at-least 40-50% better than

a fully manual campaign.

Campaigns using Winkl

Campaign Manager

Time taken to launch campaign

With influencers available on demand, we are able to launch

campaigns within 48 hours.

Communication
We estimate that it took us about 3 phone calls and 10 emails +
personal messages to be able to launch campaigns. These
were largely exceptional cases.

Results
As the Winkl campaign manager has inbuilt tracking in place, it

was much easier for us to track campaign performance. There

was an increase in campaign performance by about 25-30%

as compared to a campaign executed using forms and bulk
emails.

20
 Comparison between
various methods
Campaign
Manual Via forms
manager

Time taken to launch

8 days 4 days 1-2 days
campaign

Time spent in
12 - 15 hrs 8 - 9 hrs 2-3 hrs
communication

Campaign

performance and X 1.5X 1.9

results

Important: These figures might vary on a campaign to campaign basis but at an overall
approximation level, campaigns run using the campaign manager take almost ¼ the time taken to

execute a campaign and performs 2x better.

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Want to run result oriented influencer marketing campaigns for your
business or agency that are highly efficient, transparent and scalable?

Winkl is a pioneer in Influencer Marketing Automation in

India.It's trusted by more than 15,000 influencers and

top brands such s Flipkart, Amazon, Cure.fit etc.

It helps marketers launch, manage and track influencer

marketing campaigns from a single dashboard, without

the hassle of manual and redundant work.

Need help with your influencer marketing? Chat with us!

Mail us: influence@winkl.co

Schedule a call: winkl.co/help

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