Melinda Maria Drove Millions in Attributed Revenue and Earned Media Using Nano & Micro-Influencers

L.A.-based jewelry brand Melinda Maria believes that fashion should be fun and luxury should be accessible. Over the last few years, the brand developed a loyal community of passionate customer advocates and influencers.

Melinda Maria had seen success working with one-off influencers and gifting key customer advocates but wanted to scale their efforts into a word-of-mouth marketing engine. Its goal was to gift key creators, achieve more cost-efficient impressions, and support their biggest brand advocates in driving as much attributable revenue as possible.

Melinda Maria engaged LoudCrowd to develop an ambassador program focused on:

• Scaling word-of-mouth and influencer marketing at a cost-efficient CPM
• Driving measurable revenue from members’ audiences using Creator Storefronts
• Gifting, managing, and engaging its creator community at scale

After being accepted into the program, members receive a voucher for a welcome gift, a bespoke affiliate code, and a personal, shoppable Creator Storefront on melindamaria.com.

Creator Storefronts

Any member can completely personalize their Creator Storefront. They can curate special collections, looks, or edits of their favorite Melinda Maria products.

UGC from Instagram or TikTok automatically populates onto the Storefront. Creators then tag any featured products, to create shoppable UGC directly on their Storefronts. Members can generate direct links to pieces of shoppable content.

Creators reference their Storefront in posts to their followers, delivering a personalized, seamless transition between browsing social media and shopping on melindamaria.com.

Community

Through the addition of this ambassador program, Melinda Maria strengthened its community of brand advocates, who now participate in monthly virtual workshops, in-person meet-ups, and exclusive social media groups to share content and sales tips.

 

Incentives

Members can earn additional vouchers for posting and tagging Melinda Maria on Instagram and TikTok twice each month. Members can also earn commission on any sales through their personalized Creator Storefront and/or affiliate code.

LoudCrowd’s integrations with social platforms and payment providers enables seamless delivery of rewards and commissions.

Exceptional creators have the opportunity to graduate into more exclusive program tiers. These programs have upgraded incentives like a better affiliate code and higher commission percentages.

In its first year, the program excelled at driving both revenue and content, as well as fostering a passionate community of brand ambassadors.

Revenue

All ambassadors were given Creator Storefronts to drive traffic to the site and affiliate codes to further incentivize customer conversations. In its first year, the program generated over $1.5M in direct, measurable sales through 1700+ creators.

Traffic from creator social audiences is significant: conversion rates on Storefronts are 345% higher than the rest of the eCommerce site, and AOV is 29.8% higher than the rest of the site.

In other words, creators are converting more sales by giving their followers a seamless, personalized shopping experience on melindamaria.com. Plus, the first-party shopping experience, with creator-curated collections, looks, edits, and bundles results in consumers spending more with Melinda Maria.

Content

While the program developed an extremely strong conversion funnel for creator-driven traffic, creator engagement also increased significantly. In 1 year, total UGC from Instagram and TikTok grew 3X – an extra 1.4K posts and 13M impressions per month – with impressions now at an average CPM of $5.29, a massive improvement from the $40-$50 average in the industry.

Specifically, 86% of this additional content per month comes from the programs’ brand ambassadors, who have increased their production by 16X since joining the formal program with gifting and Storefronts. The value of such content hit over $4.8M, resulting in dramatic gains in Melinda Maria’s brand awareness.