How Ruggable Boosted ROI Through Influencer Allowlisting

Ruggable, the cult favorite homeware brand that retails washable rugs and furniture, has mastered the art of influencer allowlisting (formerly known as influencer whitelisting). Through allowlisting, the brand has been able to consistently increase ad revenue while lowering costs.

We sat down with Janavi Dhawan, Influencer Marketing Manager at Ruggable, to chat about allowlisting best practices. Keep reading for the top takeaways. 

For the full conversation, check out our Ruggable webinar on demand here. 

1. Test and invest

For Ruggable, content performance is top of mind, whether or not the brand plans to repurpose it in a paid capacity. But when running an allowlisting campaign, it’s crucial that the brand knows the content they use is effective by testing and monitoring its performance on organic channels.

Janavi’s advice? Don’t rush into running allowlisted ads right away. Run a traditional influencer marketing campaign first and analyze which influencer content performs the best organically. 

Think about it — if people stop mindlessly scrolling to engage with an influencer’s content, it shows not only that the content is unique and eye-catching, but also that the influencer’s audience is actually interested in the product or brand. This is the type of influencer-generated content (IGC) you want to allowlist.

“One thing we really focus on is organic performance. How did the content perform on the influencer’s own social channel? This is helpful to look at and understand what the incremental benefit is to use that content to reach new audiences for us.”

- Janavi Dhawan, Influencer Marketing Manager, Ruggable

Once you identify IGC that performs well organically, put spend behind it and turn them into allowlisted ads. That way, you can also hyper-target lookalike audiences to increase reach and extend the impact of your best IGC. These assets will continue to perform well as ads, because they’ve already proven to be a great media type for that platform and for that audience segment. 

2. Fairly compensate creators

If you’re planning on allowlisting influencer content, make sure you’re planning your budget accordingly. In most allowlisting partnerships, it is standard practice to offer more payment in addition to the original collaboration fee.

While allowlisting rates are case-by-case with each creator, generally, influencers request ⅓ of what they’re being paid for the entire partnership in exchange for advertiser access to their accounts.

3. Focus on quality over quantity

There are benefits to working with both micro-influencers and macro-influencers. Many micro-influencers create highly engaging content and are more cost-effective to work with. On the other hand, a macro-influencer has a more recognizable face, which may compel more people to stop scrolling and engage with the ad. 

However, at the end of the day, allowlisted ad performance depends more on the quality of content. 

“Something that I’ve noticed is it comes down to the content. It’s the most critical component in how the allowlisted ad performs.” 

- Janavi Dhawan, Influencer Marketing Manager, Ruggable

So, when choosing creators to allowlist, prioritize quality of content over quantity of followers. 

4. Create a sense of exclusivity for creators you allowlist

Don’t just allowlist any and every influencer you work with. Like we mentioned above, invest in creators who consistently produce high quality content and have an audience that resonates with your brand. For Ruggable, many of their allowlisted creators are long-term brand partners, who they have a great working relationship with. 

Creators are on the same page, too. They don’t want to grant advertiser access to every single brand they work with. If they do, they may become the “face” of hundreds of different brands — some of which may be competitors to each other — and their partnerships may come off as disingenuous. 

5. Use an allowlisting tool to streamline your workflow

To get started with influencer allowlisting, you’ll need a process for requesting advertiser access, running the ads, and measuring their performance. 

If you're planning to run things manually, you’ll first need to set up your own brand account through Facebook Business Manager. Use your Facebook Business Manager to request to add each influencer as a Business Partner. Influencers will need to provide you with the Business Manager ID or the links to their Facebook or Instagram account. Once they accept, you’ll be able to use their accounts for your allowlisted ads. 

To simplify this whole process, you can use a tool like Aspire’s built-in allowlisting tool to automate this entire process. We had our Head of Product walk through the entire process, but here are some of the highlights:

• Native, in-platform integration: Allowlisting capabilities are centralized on the Aspire platform through a native and simple connection with Facebook Ads Manager
• Seamless workflow: Allowlisting permissions are directly built into influencer negotiations, and you’re able to directly attribute ad performance to your influencer campaigns on the platform
• Cost-effective: As an Aspire customer, you have proprietary access to the allowlisting tool at no additional cost. 

Make your content work harder

While influencer allowlisting may seem new and daunting, it’s a channel worth testing. By investing more into your highest performing influencer content, you can boost return on ad spend and lower customer acquisition costs in the long run — just as Ruggable did. 

To listen to our full conversation with Janavi, watch the video on demand here. To learn more about how Aspire can help you through your allowilsting campaign, get in touch with us.