Mary Ruth's

Having used a different influencer platform for years, the brand knew that switching platforms would come with a learning curve. Meltwater Influencer Marketing offers different features and includes end-to-end influencer management, which meant Mary Ruth's would have to make a few tweaks to how they run their influencer program.

Here’s a closer look at how Meltwater provided Mary Ruth's with a better way to scale their influencer marketing and create a smooth transition to a new platform.

Turning Affiliate Marketing into 8-Figure Sales

Sales are the life force behind every product-based business, and Mary Ruth's relies on influencers to help the company flourish. The company has set a high bar of 8-figure revenue directly from influencer partners. To reach such heights, its influencer program includes over 1,000 content creators to help them get in front of more prospective customers.

Managing such a large affiliate base is no easy feat, especially when processes rely on manual efforts or inefficient platforms. One of the benefits Meltwater Influencer Marketing offers is the ability to scale influencer programs easily and quickly, regardless of the number of participants.

The brand uses Meltwater Influencer Marketing's Recruit feature to create an inbound stream of interested influencers. This helps internal teams save time by not having to manually search for new influencer partners. Plus, it can improve influencer quality because they’re receiving inquiries from creators who are already interested in the brand.

Overall, Meltwater has helped Mary Ruth's create an always-on influencer program that has scaled to more than 1,000 creators and growing.

Overcoming Change Management Challenges

When Mary Ruth's came to Meltwater, they had been using another popular influencer marketing platform to find and manage influencers. The platform offered some of what Meltwater Influencer Marketing can do, but the brand wanted to take advantage of Meltwater's proprietary features, including the world’s largest database of 30 million+ creators.

The company knew that even with similar features, it wouldn’t be a copy/paste process. Rather, a successful transition hinged on change management, which was a team effort between Mary Ruth's and Meltwater Influencer Marketing. 

Switching to Meltwater required an understanding of the influencer marketing tool and how to best utilize it to achieve the brand’s objectives. With the help of the Klear team’s strategic and tactical guidance, Mary Ruth's has improved the influencer experience while reducing influencer resignations and the cost of acquiring new influencers.

Gaining Visibility into Influencer Performance

Visibility challenges were vital to Mary Ruth's decision to switch to Meltwater Influencer Marketing. In-house teams needed a better, faster way to get their products into influencers’ hands. They also wanted to see which influencers were providing the best ROI and know which ones were worth investing in. The brand also sought to improve tracking of ROI and influencer payouts. 

Meltwater's data-fueled dashboards provide insights at a glance. In-house teams can now see campaign-level and influencer-level totals to measure the program’s impact.

Also of note is Meltwater Influencer Marketing's Connect feature, which streamlines communication with the influencer population. Before Meltwater, Mary Ruth's was spending countless hours fielding inquiries from creators about sales commissions and payments. Connect manages communication at scale while giving influencers visibility into their own sales performance. This cuts out a lot of back-and-forth emailing between creators and in-house teams.