Hosted by:

Katya Allison

Director of Marketing
Content at GRIN

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About GRIN Gets Real

Welcome to the GRIN gets real podcast, the show for people who want to maximize their marketing potential. From influencer marketing to eCommerce strategy and everything in between, each episode will feature industry experts that share their insights and provide actionable tips to help you achieve your marketing goals. Subscribe and stay tuned!

How to activate influencers as content creators for your brand

[audio src="https://grin.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Vera-Bradley-Sabrina-Medert-102921.mp3" /]

In this episode:

Sabrina Medert

Senior Social Media Specialist salary

Sabrina Medert is the social media specialist for Vera Bradley. She joined a recent Brands Talking Influeners webinar and episode of the GRIN Gets Real Podcast to discuss how she successfully manages 300+ influencers that have helped the company quadruple its returns and provide ROI across the brand’s entire marketing strategy.

Watch the full webinar

Full episode details

“We just want people that are genuinely interested in Vera Bradley. We’re not everybody’s cup of tea, but we’re happy and we’re fun. And we want to find people that are happy and fun, and actually would wear a Vera Bradley bag.”

Vera Bradley knows exactly how to get the right content for the right price. By establishing its own fun and colorful identity, they can pursue creators with the same profile, then turn their brand love into authentic, engaging content that drives sales. Sabrina Medert is the social media specialist for Vera Bradley. She joined a recent Brands Talking Influencers webinar and episode of the GRIN Gets Real Podcast to discuss how she successfully manages 300+ influencers that have helped the company quadruple its returns and provide ROI across the brand’s entire marketing strategy.

Build the trust and authenticity needed to nurture high-performing partnerships

Breakdown of the BTI+GGR with Vera Bradley

Like any relationship, brand-influencer partnerships thrive on mutual respect and open dialogue. But it doesn’t happen overnight. Brands have to dedicate time to build trust and genuine connections with their influencers before they can collaborate on branded content that resonates with consumers.

“I do think that the influencers become our friends, they become people that we can rely on. And then at the same time, they can rely on us, too, because that’s what you do with your friends. That’s what you do with your relationships.”

Sabrina spends about 90% of her time communicating with influencer partners. Her approach to relationship management helped her build a powerhouse influencer marketing program for Vera Bradley, and her experience makes her an invaluable resource for anyone looking to take their program to the next level. In this podcast you will learn:

How to prove the ROI of creator content
The keys to running a high-performing influencer program
How to communicate with creators to get the exact content you’re looking for
How to leverage templates and sequences to automate communication while still keeping it personal
Why relationships with your creators are vital for success

Quotes from This Episode

“An influencer is marketing to their followers, but they’re real. There’s a relationship between them and their followers, so I believe that there needs to be a relationship between the brand and the influencer, too.” “The more you get to know someone, the easier it is to give them honest feedback and get a higher level of content. There’s trust there. It’s not just a brand cutting at them, it’s more working through it together.” “We are personable, we are kind, we’re caring, we’re thoughtful. So that’s who we go after, and those seem to be the best when you find somebody that’s honestly kind, honestly happy, and that’s just who they are. They seem to be the best performers and the best content creators, for us at least.” “We really tried to hone in on how the influencer is performing on their site. And that’s something that we really didn’t have prior to GRIN – it was all done by hand. If you wanted to calculate out how well an influencer was doing, that just took way too much time. Now with GRIN, you can really look at that.”