Influenster

Influenster
Type of business Private
Type of site
 Product reviews
Available in English
Headquarters New York City, United States
Area served US, Canada
Founder(s) Aydin Acar
Elizabeth Scherle
Key people Aydin Acar (CEO)
Elizabeth Scherle (President)
Employees 70
Website influenster.com
Registration Optional
Launched 2010
Current status Active

Influenster is a product discovery and reviews platform for consumers. Influenster uses social media analytics to measure its users’ influence on social media. Influenster launched in 2010. An iOS app for Influenster launched in 2014 [1] while an Android app launched in 2015. As of January 2018, Influenster's community consists of more than 4 million users.[2]

Features

Influenster has a platform consisting of over 11 million reviews (99% of them not generated from product trials) and 880,000 new reviews generated each month.[3] These products represent over 100K consumer brands with over 1.7 million product pages for users to review, ask/answer questions, and upload photos/videos of.[4][5]

Based on a user’s Impact score and supplied demographic information, they can be invited to Influenster campaigns. Influenster runs a variety of different types of campaigns, but they generally involve sending invited users a complimentary product or service to sample and discuss on social media.[6] After sampling, the user is asked to complete a final market-research survey.[7][8]

Influenster offers coupons and offers from partner retailers and brands that users can access through their product discovery experience on the platform.[9] It uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Foursquare, Google+, a multi-platform blog widget, and friend referrals to determine Impact score. Impact points are largely calculated based on the number of followers or friends a user has on any given social network.[10]

Influenster allows users to unlock "Expert" and "Lifestyle" badges through completing survey questions about their interests and behaviors, writing reviews on products, answering other users' questions, and sharing Influenster product pages across social media channels. These badges are a part of a gamification system to reward specific types of users with invites to specific Influenster campaigns matching their demographic.[7]

Business Model

The primary business model for Influenster involves brands working with Influenster through VoxBox or VirtualVox campaigns. In VoxBox or VirtualVox campaigns, brands will offer complimentary products or digital rewards to Influenster users who meet brand and product-specific criteria.[11]

Series Funding

Influenster raised $8 million in financing from Ebates, a leading online cashback shopping service.[12]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Influenster Launches New Social Media-Powered Product Discovery App". Reuters. October 15, 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  2. ↑ "Infographic: How Millennial Moms Shop to Fill Their Kids' Lunch Boxes". Retrieved 2015-08-24.
  3. ↑ http://www.happi.com/contents/view_online-exclusives/2016-12-19/positive-influence?123
  4. ↑ Ben Fischer (August 27, 2014). "Influenster couldn't keep the leash on its testers, which turned out to be a pretty good plan". New York Business Journal. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  5. ↑ Scott Meaney (September 3, 2014). "Influenster Relaunches With New Product Discovery & Social Influence Platform". Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved 9 October 2014.
  6. ↑ Christopher Heine (January 7, 2013). "Newell Rubbermaid Enlists Influenster CPG giant boosts social cred with campaign". AdWeek. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  7. 1 2 "About Influenster".
  8. ↑ Sarah Ferguson (2013). "Five Ways to Score Free Beauty Products Online". Lucky Magazine. pp. 4 of 5. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  9. ↑ http://corp.influenster.com/
  10. ↑ "Influenster: How can I improve my Impact?".
  11. ↑ Christopher Heine (August 22, 2014). "Shell Shows More Gas Brands Could Fuel Up on Social Media: Viral effort led to 385 percent jump in chatter". AdWeek. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  12. ↑ Etienne, Stefan. "Product discovery platform Influenster secures $8M in Series A funding from Ebates". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
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