2018: A Year in Review

Over the past year, we set out to release exciting features, grow our user base, launch impactful campaigns, and more! As this year comes to a close, let’s take a look back at some of our biggest moments in 2018.

Standout collaborations

We’ve had many standout collaborations this year! Brands like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Boots, Clas Ohlson, Stadium, Simple, Helly Hansen, XXL, and wagamama have all started launching both one-off and long-term campaigns that have generated impressive results and stellar content.

View influencer marketing case studies.

Creators, from left to right: marengronstad, Tobias Becs, http://amwidvey.com, Maria Sandberg, Diadonna, mpiipponen, Kaja-Marie, Scandinature, and Hempsuli. 

New features

We’ve released a number of features to bring more value to our users. Here are some highlights:

• Automated Reporting
  
  Brands can easily measure key metrics (Ie: engagement rate, impressions, reach, etc.) in their campaign in real-time with our Reporting feature. Learn more here.

• Content Library
  
  All the content from campaigns is available in the Content Library. Brands can easily download them to reuse in paid ads on social media. Learn more about how to use the Content Library here.

• Discover Brands
  
  Creators can contact brands in Discover Brands. If they meet the minimum requirements (ie: location, follower size, etc.) set by brands, creators will have the option to send them messages and propose collaborations. 

Subscription Model

We’ve started providing Full Service and Managed Service offers to brands.

For the Full Service offer, we manage campaigns in full, from selecting relevant creators to sending personalized reports. Read more here.

For the Managed Service offer, we manage certain aspects of brand campaigns, such as finding influencers, pricing them, and reviewing briefs. Brands handle the other parts of the campaigns.

We also switched the platform over to a subscription model. By subscribing to our Business plan, brands will be able to access features like the Content Library and Automated Reporting.

User growth

19,000 content creators have now joined our platform, a 50% increase from last year! They collectively have 700,000,000 followers on social media.

We also have 2,300 brands on our platform, which is a 117% increase from 2017.

Expertise

We’ve published blog posts throughout the year to share our insights and tips on influencer marketing. Here are some highlights:

1. Reusing creator content in paid social media ads is a great way to maximize your influencer marketing ROI, as well as generate a high-volume of quality content:
   
   https://blog.inzpire.me/how-to-reuse-creator-content-in-paid-ads/
2. To ensure brands reach a genuine audience, we take extra steps to review and vet creator profiles before suggesting them:
   
   https://blog.inzpire.me/how-to-spot-fake-followers-on-instagram/
3. To find relevant creators to collaborate with, brands should keep 3 A’s in mind: advocacy, authenticity, and affinity:
   
   https://blog.inzpire.me/3-as-of-harnessing-the-power-of-influencer-marketing/
4. Influencer marketing is proven to be an effective form of marketing. We’re sharing our key learnings to help brands build a successful strategy:
   
   https://blog.inzpire.me/how-to-build-your-influencer-marketing-strategy/
5. When brands launch campaigns, it can be difficult to determine what engagement rate and reach they should be achieving in their collaborations. We’ve calculated benchmarks that could be used to determine what metrics to expect: https://blog.inzpire.me/benchmark-engagement-rates-and-reach-on-instagram/

Revenue

In our second year as a company, we hit a huge milestone in terms of revenue! We’ve had a turnover of €720,000 (7 million nok), which is a 678% increase from 2017.

Awards

We were nominated as finalists in the Startup of the Year and Best Newcomer categories at the Nordic Startup Awards 2018.

Expanding the team

We’re growing our team again! We had 11 new team members join us this year:

From left to right: Olivia Darby (UK – Customer Success Lead), Max Rosputniy (UA – Front-End Engineer), Annabel Dangreville (FR – Head of Growth), Nuri Shaikh (UK – Customer Success Manager), Gentry Allen (US – Customer Success Manager), Rebecka Hildebrand Gyllerup (SE – Office Manager), Knut Anders Thorset (NO – Chief Revenue Officer), Mads Kristiansen (NO – Client Partner Intern), Evan Thoresen (US/NO – Business Development Intern), Oonagh Wallace (IE – Business Development Intern), and Carissa Reinsborg (US – Customer Success Intern).

Team bonding activities

We’ve had several team bonding activities over the course of the year! Several of our favorite events include: Having an exercise session at Barry’s Bootcamp, participating in an improv workshop, throwing a summer party in our office, making dumplings, and going cross country skiing in Veggli, Norway.

We continued our tradition of having waffle & beers on Fridays in the office 🎉 We also started a new Friday activity – Adventure Lunch – where the team explores different restaurants in Oslo.

As 2018 comes to an end, we’d like to give a huge thank you to everyone that has joined us on our journey. We can’t wait to share another incredible year with you.

From all of us here at inzpire.me,

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!