Influenster

Influenster
Type of business Private
Type of site
 Social Networking
Available in English
Headquarters New York City, New York, United States
Area served United States
Canada
Founder(s) Aydin Acar
Elizabeth Scherle
Key people Aydin Acar (CEO)
Elizabeth Scherle (President)
Employees 60
Slogan(s) Discover. Review. Share.
Website influenster.com
Registration Optional
Launched 2010
Current status Active

Influenster is a product discovery and reviews platform that uses social media analytics to measure its users’ influence on social media. More specifically, Influenster quantifies its users' influence via "Social Impact", which tracks the number of friends, followers, or subscribers a user has. Based on a user’s Impact score and demographic, he or she can then be invited to campaigns run by Influenster featuring digital and material rewards from consumer brands, most popularly the "VoxBox" or a boxed shipment of products to sample and complete a survey about. Influenster launched in 2010. An iOS app for Influenster launched in 2014 [1][2] while an Android app launched in 2015.[3] As of August 2016, Influenster's community consists of more than 2 million users.[4][5] Influenster is also on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the US in 2016. [6]

Features

Social Impact

Influenster uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Foursquare, Google+, a multi-platform blog widget, and friend referrals to determine Impact score. Impact points are largely calculated based on the amount of followers or friends a user has on any given social network. The only exception are the one hundred points rewarded for using the blog widget, and the points rewarded for referrals.[7]

Badges

Influenster allows users to unlock "Expert" and "Lifestyle" badges through completing survey questions about their interests and behaviors, writing reviews on products, answering other users' questions, and sharing Influenster product pages across social media channels. These badges are a part of a gamification system to reward specific types of users with invites to specific Influenster campaigns matching their demographic. Influenster also awards decorative badges to its users for participating in campaigns they are invited to. Depending on the campaign, these badges may have additional prize incentives to unlock them.[8][9]

Campaigns

Based on a user’s Impact score and supplied demographic information, they can be invited to Influenster campaigns. Influenster runs a variety of different types of campaigns, but they generally involve sending invited users a complimentary product or service to sample and discuss on social media.[10] After sampling, the user is asked to complete a final market-research survey.[8][11]

Reviews

Influenster has a platform consisting of over 8 million reviews, with over 1.6 million product pages for users to review, ask/answer questions, and upload photos/videos of. These products represent over 40,000 consumer brands and have received more than 2.6 million reviews.[12][13]

Editorial

Influenster publishes daily blog articles pertaining to product news and the latest trends in beauty, fashion and lifestyle. The platform frequently features articles submitted by bloggers in its community.[8]

Business Model

The primary business model for Influenster involves brands working with Influenster through VoxBox or VirtualVox campaigns. In VoxBox or VirtualVox campaigns, brands will offer complimentary products or digital rewards to Influenster users who meet brand and product-specific criteria.[14] While content creation is encouraged, users are under no obligation to use their social media accounts to promote the brands or the products that they receive. At the end of any given VoxBox program, users are only required to complete a final market-research survey based on their experience with the campaign-featured product or service. Responses to Influenster surveys have held steady at over 82% return due to the gamified elements that drive response rates and eclipse the research industry average.[15]

Series Funding

Influenster raised $8 million in financing from Ebates, a leading online cashback shopping service.[16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Influenster Launches New Social Media-Powered Product Discovery App". Reuters. October 15, 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  2. ↑ "Influenster app review - appPicker". www.apppicker.com. Retrieved 2015-08-24.
  3. ↑ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.influenster
  4. ↑ https://www.brit.co/influenster-founder//
  5. ↑ "Infographic: How Millennial Moms Shop to Fill Their Kids' Lunch Boxes". Retrieved 2015-08-24.
  6. ↑ http://www.inc.com/profile/influenster
  7. ↑ "Influenster: How can I improve my Impact?".
  8. 1 2 3 "About Influenster".
  9. ↑ "Influenster: How do I unlock an Expert or Lifestyle Badge?".
  10. ↑ Christopher Heine (January 7, 2013). "Newell Rubbermaid Enlists Influenster CPG giant boosts social cred with campaign". AdWeek. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  11. ↑ Sarah Ferguson (2013). "Five Ways to Score Free Beauty Products Online". Lucky Magazine. pp. 4 of 5. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  12. ↑ Ben Fischer (August 27, 2014). "Influenster couldn't keep the leash on its testers, which turned out to be a pretty good plan". New York Business Journal. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  13. ↑ Scott Meaney (September 3, 2014). "Influenster Relaunches With New Product Discovery & Social Influence Platform". Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved 9 October 2014.
  14. ↑ Christopher Heine (August 22, 2014). "Shell Shows More Gas Brands Could Fuel Up on Social Media: Viral effort led to 385 percent jump in chatter". AdWeek. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  15. ↑ http://thenativesociety.com/tnspeak/2015/7/30/aydin-acar-elizabeth-scherle-co-founders-of-influenster.html
  16. ↑ Etienne, Stefan. "Product discovery platform Influenster secures $8M in Series A funding from Ebates". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-04-04.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/11/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.