Woodloch Resort

Unlocking the Value of an Always-On Influencer Program

Woodloch Resort has always seen value in using influencers and brand ambassadors. Prior to 2017, the resort partnered with 24 “mommy bloggers” to grow brand awareness. In this program, they offered their blogger partners two-night, all-inclusive stays at the resort, then tracked engagement on the content the bloggers created. It was an all-manual program, and even though it was successful, the analysis and reporting time it required didn’t allow the brand to scale.

Erica Bloch, Associate Director of Communications for Woodloch Resort, shares that using Meltwater’s influencer marketing solution completely changed the game. Now, when the resort partners with brand ambassadors, the communications team can automatically track engagement on the social posts that those ambassadors create. “We have seen our own social media channels grow as well as our earned press,” Erica says. “It has proved to be a very effective relationship management tool.”

Within a year, the brand ambassador program earned the resort over $70,000. Thanks to streamlined influencer discovery and vetting, better tracking, and Meltwater’s influencer CRM, the resort has been able to partner with more than 250 influencers and counting.

Finding the Best-Fit Influencers — Fast

Before Woodloch Resort implemented Meltwater’s influencer marketing solution, working with content creators felt like a risk. The resort’s marketing team didn’t know what they would get out of the deal. Finding and vetting influencers manually took a lot of time, and it wasn’t a perfect science. In some cases, the resort would spend a lot of money with no ROI simply because they chose the wrong partners.

As the influencer program grew, Erica knew she would need a software solution to help manage the process. She wanted to choose influencers with confidence and get the best chance of reaching an engaged audience. With Meltwater’s advanced social influencer analytics, she was able to streamline the search for influencers, cutting down her discovery and vetting time by 70% every week.

“Now we have a trackable agreement as well as posts where we can view analytics on those posts,” shares Erica. “It has definitely increased my productivity in that everything is streamlined into one easy-to-use program.”

Because of the difference Meltwater has made, Erica is looking to grow Woodloch Resort’s influencer program even bigger.

Earning $250K+ in Earned Media Value in a Single Campaign

In a recent masterclass co-hosted by Woodloch Resort and Meltwater, Erica details how they achieved more than a quarter-million dollars in earned media from a single holiday campaign. This big success started with Meltwater’s influencer marketing solution. 

Erica and her team leveraged the Find Influencers feature to recruit seven influencers for a three-month campaign. Between the seven influencers, the brand received 89 published posts spanning 71 Instagram Stories, 12 Instagram feed posts, four Facebook posts, and two posts on X (formerly Twitter).

Collectively, the posts reached 251,900 users and made more than 8.1 million impressions. Each one earned an average of 179 engagements and generated an average of $2,800 in earned media value (EMV). In total, the campaign earned the brand an estimated $251,800 in EMV.

Using Meltwater data, Erica dialed down into the analytics to learn that 78% of the content’s audience was female, most of whom were from the United States. She could also see details like engagement, EMV, and reach per channel, easily combining all of these figures into a single report to share with organization leaders. Overall, Meltwater grew Woodloch Resort’s brand awareness, which led to a 2,100% increase in traditional press over time.