4 Influencer Outreach Tools That Encourage Sales

To have influence is to possess the power to enact change. The more influence you have, the greater the power, whether you’re looking to move hearts and minds, start new trends, or simply get the word out about a new product or service.

It’s no wonder, then, that influencers have come to play an integral role in connecting companies with their ideal customers. How well your influencers communicate with your customer base can directly and significantly impact your reach as well as your revenue. As many as 49% of consumers rely on influencer recommendations when choosing what to buy next. As such, it’s imperative to ensure your influencers have everything they need to relay your brand’s messaging effectively. The right influencer outreach tools can make all the difference in whether your next influencer marketing campaign is a hit or a miss.

4 Influencer Outreach Tools Needed to Succeed

There are a few obvious things influencers need to use in order to get your message across, like a social media platform and a reliable internet connection. But beyond that, what influencer outreach tools should your influencers be using to widen their reach and grow your customer base as much as possible?

	Analytics Tools	While most major social media platforms have some built-in analytical functions, standalone tools offer more robust functionality and actionable insights. These will allow your influencers to gain a deeper understanding of who their followers are and what appeals to them. With these insights, they can adjust their marketing strategy for the better.
	Social Media Management Platforms	Social media management tools offer an array of useful functions, such as allowing influencers to schedule and publish posts (even across multiple platforms at once), create and automate a regular publishing schedule, monitor feedback, and more. Frequent posting is critical to staying top-of-mind for followers—most of whom are likely following other brands’ influencers too.
	Email Outreach Tools	Believe it or not, email outreach still has a role to play in social media marketing. Newsletters offer a means of relaying longer or more complex messaging in a single missive. And, the right outreach tools will help influencers not only create and schedule newsletters but also track engagement and manage individual responses.
	SMS Marketing Platforms	Text messaging may seem like an unlikely marketing method for an influencer, but given that 86% of consumers now prefer SMS over other types of communication, it could easily be the most powerful outreach tool your influencers may not be using—yet. SMS marketing brings influencers and their followers closer than ever before; with an open rate of 98%, it’s the most reliable way to make sure messages are not only sent but received.

It may be tempting for influencers to seek hybrid solutions that combine the functionality of multiple tools—or even all-in-one platforms that attempt to cover all angles at once. However, the best approach is often to look for standalone platforms that integrate with each other instead. Why? Platforms that specialize in one area tend to provide greater depth and flexibility than multifunctional solutions, which tend to focus more on the breadth than the depth of their features.

It’s also important to note that most “all-in-one” influencer marketing solutions are actually missing one of the most valuable tools of all—text messaging.

Why Use SMS for Influencer Marketing Campaigns?

If you have never used one, an SMS marketing platform might seem like a “nice to have” outreach tool for influencers, rather than a necessity. After all, a text seems a bit more private than a post on social media, right?

But, that’s the magic of text message marketing. Texting feels more personal than a public Twitter post or even an email because it’s a form of communication we associate with more meaningful correspondence. Because it feels more personal, people feel more inclined to respond or otherwise engage with a text—as many as 45% of people, to be exact—even though a text blast can reach just as many people as a post on social media.

Supplementing social posting with text message marketing also allows influencers to:

• Notify followers of new posts that might otherwise get lost in a sea of other posts.
• Create an exclusive subscriber “fan club” where they can offer special promo codes, exclusive deals, and more.
• Share premium content, including photos or short videos, which followers can then easily share with others simply by copying or forwarding messages.
• Set up text-to-win contests in which subscribers can participate simply by replying with a keyword.
• Facilitate text-to-pay, or text-to-donate, options that make remote transactions easier than ever for your customers.

This last point is especially important for brands looking to substantially grow their revenue (or donations).

Using Text-to-Pay for Influencer Marketing: A Closer Look

Of all the benefits of using SMS for influencer marketing, text-to-pay is among the most valuable. This feature facilitates a wide range of possibilities for remote commerce, including making purchases, paying bills, donating money to a good cause, and more.

The difference between text-to-pay and other ecommerce options is that it allows users to make payments without having to exit the original text that sparked their interest. Instead of clicking a link that will lead them elsewhere, they can simply reply with a keyword and a payment amount.

In addition to being an incredibly convenient payment option, text-to-pay offers an easy way to incentivize future transactions. Autoresponders can easily be set up to send “thank you” replies to payments that include discount codes or coupons that may inspire future purchases or donations.

Even for individual influencers, texting can be a great way to forge deeper connections with followers that will yield greater engagement rates and revenue. If you have a team of influencers on your side, of course, the rewards will be even greater—provided they know how to use text marketing effectively.

Text Messaging Platform Tips for Influencer Marketing

Before your influencers begin using SMS texting for marketing purposes, be sure they are familiar with text marketing best practices, including legal obligations such as only texting followers who have opted-in to SMS communications.

Utilizing the right text marketing platform can also greatly impact the effectiveness of your influencers’ text outreach efforts. The ideal platform will offer a variety of features to ensure campaign success, including automated responses, unlimited user groups and keywords, and text-to-pay options. Payment plans should be simple and straightforward to avoid hidden fees and unexpected charges, and the interface should likewise be user-friendly. A platform that offers an extended character count (a standard text only allows for 160 characters per message) provides an added advantage over those that do not.

All of this is not to say that your influencers should only be using SMS, or even that they should focus on texting over posting to social media platforms. However, using text marketing in tandem with other influencer outreach tools can amplify your influencers’ voices—and, therefore, that of your company—to a significantly greater degree than any other approach.

After all, the easier it is to engage with someone, the more likely we are to do so—and few communication methods are as quick, easy, or simple to use as texting.

Jeff Winaker

Jeff Winaker is the CEO of NorthText. He’s passionate about helping clients reach their customers faster with SMS marketing. He resides in the Bay Area with his family.