Aspire’s 2023 Year in Review
2023 was yet another year for the books! We were able to hit some major milestones this year — all thanks to our amazing customers, network of creators, and dedicated team.
In 2023, brands partnered with Aspire to:
- Launch 10.7K campaigns
- Drive $27M in direct sales
- Generate 1.2M+ pieces of branded content
- Pay out over $48M to creators
While so many of our customers ran memorable campaigns, we want to highlight some superstars who showed us exactly how to leverage creators to create impact for their businesses. Despite rising ad costs, tighter budgets, and reduced headcounts, these brands figured out a way to drive sustainable, full-funnel growth through Aspire this year.
Hero Bread 2x its ROAS with influencer-generated content
Hero Bread, the brand reimagining your favorite baked goods, worked hand-in-hand with Aspire’s Agency Services team to launch an affiliate program that not only boosted conversions through influencer links, but also allowed them to source high-performing content that could be optimized for paid placements.
With just one affiliate campaign, Hero Bread generated over 1,200 conversions and boosted AOV by 8% — and by repurposing influencer-generated content in paid ads, the brand increased its ROAS by 2x — all while saving thousands of dollars.
“Between influencer and agency fees, we were looking at around $25K a month for output that didn’t perform well even with paid amplification. Now using Aspire, we’re able to create content that roughly doubled our ROAS, which is outperforming our paid social programs.” - Christina Blaisdell Oyler, VP of eCommerce at Hero Bread
AN Skin projects $1M in sales by EOY with Aspire’s Affiliate Tracking
Sales attribution has been a notoriously difficult task for influencer marketers. But with Aspire’s dependable affiliate tracking and reporting, AN Skin easily measures full-funnel ROI and sales — consolidated in a neat, convenient dashboard. Here are just some of their impressive results:
- $670k sales driven by influencer marketing in 7 months
- 2.3k conversions driven
- $1M projected sales driven by EOY
- 2.3k posts with a potential reach of 54M people
- 50%+ reduction in influencer management work
The accessibility of the numbers empowers AN Skin to be creative and data-driven, without feeling like their data gets lost across platforms and creators.
Monos leverages Aspire’s influencer discovery channels to work with 450+ creators for product gifting
Monos, the premium luggage brand, uses Aspire’s Creator Marketplace and Influencer Search Engine to find and build relationships with over 450 well-aligned creators. By working with them in budget-friendly product seeding campaigns, Monos has saved thousands of dollars in content creation costs while still sourcing over 1,800 pieces of authentic branded content for Monos. These efforts have empowered the brand to boost ROI by a whopping 20x.
“Influencers have been incremental in boosting our content ROI and ROAS. With Aspire, we’ve been able to scale our influencer program and produce high-quality content to supercharge all of our digital marketing channels — at a fraction of the cost.” - Matt Roy, Influencer Marketing Lead at Monos
What’s New at Aspire in 2023
Over the last year, our team worked tirelessly to build new features and improve the Aspire platform — from more ways to find the right creators on autopilot to improved attribution and reporting dashboards.
Influencer discovery
While we’ve always had multiple channels for influencer discovery, we truly took it to new levels this year.
Expanded Creator Marketplace
To start, we expanded our one-of-a-kind Creator Marketplace and opened up access to over a million new creators! This expansion ensures that brands can continually find fresh talent and scale their programs with precision.
Instagram DM Beta Partner
In addition, as a Meta Preferred Partner, we were one of the first to gain access to Instagram’s latest Creator Marketplace APIs. Leveraging this, we built Instagram Direct Messaging (IGDM) capabilities directly into our platform to allow brands to send campaign invitations to creators via Instagram DMs. Now, brands don’t ever have to leave Aspire for these conversations, and creators have these DMs directly in their priority inbox on Instagram — ultimately streamlining communication and increasing response rates.
Free Chrome Extension
Lastly, we built a free Chrome Extension to allow marketers to search, invite, and import creators to your Aspire campaign — directly from your Chrome browser. The extension is compatible with Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Influencer relationship management
We also unlocked new ways to scale your influencer relationships and streamline your workflow.
Inbox Improvements
To make communication with creators more seamless, we’ve completely revamped our inbox. The Aspire inbox now has:
- A new email composer that provides more flexibility to add personalization to each message with new tools like an adjustable text box, attachments, and templates
- App notifications folder that houses any new messages that are triggered by the project workflow applications
- An updated Member Details page that includes a new activity feed with notes, enabling users to have a more organized and clearer picture of their interactions with each member
... and much more!
Creator Product Selection
To make creator product fulfillment easier, we added Creator Product Selection (for Shopify brands) and Product Request Form (for non-Shopify brands). With these two features, creators have the ability to pick their own products from your curated collection, allowing you to handle ordering and product requests directly in Aspire, rather than through individual back-and-forth emails.
Recommended Payment
Lastly, to help you figure out influencer pricing quicker, we built Recommended Payment, which shows you a suggested payment amount for creators, calculated using Aspire’s proprietary pricing algorithm. Recommended Payment is regularly updated to stay aligned with the market and ensure that compensation is fair to both brands and creators.
Influencer content and ads
This year, we also built the following features to help you leverage high-converting influencer-generated content (IGC) across your entire buyer’s journey to drive awareness, engagement, and conversions.
TikTok @ Brand Mentions
First, we launched our first-party TikTok integration for Brand Mentions, which captures both organic mentions and Branded Content on Aspire. This allows brands to tap into creators talking about them on TikTok and take advantage of the video platform’s massive potential for viral moments.
Meta Paid Partnership Ads and Allowlisting
On top of that, we also updated Meta Branded Content Ads, which are now called Paid Partnership Ads! Now, brands can request both Paid Partnership Ads and Allowlisting as Instagram deliverables at the same time within Aspire. With Paid Partnership Ads, you can also access campaign insights and turn UGC into different types of high-performing ads.
What to expect in 2024
Our wheels are already turning on how to help you do even more in 2024 — from automations to deeper ad integrations to affiliate tracking. We’re so excited to bring in the new year, helping you connect with the right creators, manage large-scale communities, and get the most out of all the creative assets from your campaigns.
Join our Slack community, The Coffee Shop, so you can be the first to know about the exciting things coming in the new year!
