Building scalable creator partnerships

Todd: [00:00:00]

Welcome back to the partnership economy podcast. I’m your host Todd Crawford, and we have a great episode for those interested in the creator economy today with Natasha Skolnick of Vistaprint. Natasha is the global director of partnership and influencer marketing at Vistaprint. Here she leads the global team across North America, Europe and Asia in transforming the performance partnerships channel.

 

Before she spearheaded the launch of their always on program. Natasha managed digital marketing strategies for major brands like Uber and Airbnb. Outside of work, she’s passionate about behavioral dog training and enjoys spending time with her family and their multi poo. If you’re interested in starting or running your own creator program, this episode is for you.

 

Natasha is excited to share her journey, and today we’ll dive into how to start a creator program from scratch, including how to approach your leadership team about it, compensation, and what to consider to take your program to the next level. I hope you [00:01:00] enjoy! Well, Natasha, welcome to our podcast. I’m really excited to have you on because you are, um, Have recently started some, uh, creator, uh, activity at Vistaprint.

 

I think it’s going to be really helpful, uh, to share kind of your experiences and learnings, both internally within the company and as well as the success of the channel, but before we get started, I always like to level set with kind of your current role and just help people, you know, Vistaprint and what you guys do.

 

Natasha: Thank you for having me on. I’m excited to be here to talk to you. Um, I oversee global affiliate partnerships and now influencers at Vistaprint. Um, so I sit on our global team, overseeing both North America, EMEA and APAC regions. In terms of Vistaprint, we support small businesses. Um, we’re really there to be kind of a full service and a design partner and be there to provide kind of anything [00:02:00] that.

 

Small businesses may need. Um, most people don’t realize. I think we’re known for business cards, but we actually offer anything from logo design services to marketing materials, signage, literally anything anybody would need for small businesses. We also do have a consumer products as well. Um, so especially coming off of.

 

Holiday season. We offer, you know, holiday cards, gifting, any of that all personalized as well as wedding, things like that. So sort of runs the gamut in terms of what we have to offer. 

 

Todd: Yeah, no, you guys definitely have a broad offering and obviously a very large footprint, especially in North America. Um, so how did you get into this career?

 

Natasha: You know, I started in just digital kind of traditional SEO paid search, um, was working at a couple of different agencies and actually was, um, contacted by, uh, CJ back in, I think it was maybe like 20. 10 or 2011 or [00:03:00] something like that. And, um, I had no idea what affiliate marketing was, but they had a kind of a, an opening to, to lead a team there in their New York office.

 

And I had at that point done display and I’ve done paid search and I’ve done SEO. And so I thought, you know, this sounds like it could be like a nice way to round out. Can my background in the digital marketing world and so I went in and took the role and that was really my 1st introduction to affiliate 

 

Todd: interesting.

 

Yeah, you hear a lot of people kind of say they fell into it. You know, it’s just an opportunity opened up and it’s definitely different. You know, levers and strategies and decisions than more of the traditional paid media. I think people really kind of fall into it and like it because it’s so much more interacting with real people.

 

And, um, it’s just a different, different approach. Right? So you oversee affiliate and influencer. How, how is it organized within Vistaprint today? So, you know, are they separate teams? Are they kind of co mingled? How is it today? [00:04:00] 

 

Natasha: Yeah, so we are obviously, like, many large global organizations, very complex and very matrix.

 

So it’s not a very black and white answer. I sit on a global team and so I support all of the different regions. So if you think about it from, like, Almost the way I look at it, almost like an agency versus and client. Um, you know, on the global team, we’re kind of like the agency and my job is to support.

 

There’s a North America marketing team. There’s an EMEA marketing team. There’s an APAC marketing team. My team is embedded into those teams. So while I sit in a global role and roll into global leadership, people that report into me are also kind of embedded into the specific markets. So that’s kind of like 1 setup.

 

So we have all of these programs. They’re the different markets have their own kind of objectives and goals and strategies and things they want to do. But then we also try to kind of layer in kind of our overall. Sort of center of excellence, if you will, for, um, kind of [00:05:00] the global channel, but then we do have brand marketing and obviously influencer.

 

Really, you know, there, there’s some overlap. So we do have a brand marketing team in North America. Um, well, in all the markets, but in this case, influencers only live in North America and they also do influencer and they do ambassador. And so there’s definitely kind of a lot of there’s collaboration and then there’s a lot of kind of figuring out, you know.

 

Who owns what and how do we differentiate between what they’re doing and the value that adds and what I’m doing and my team and the value that adds to the business and how it’s the same, how it’s different. 

 

Todd: Yeah, I love that center of excellence. Um, I’m hearing it more and more where and it’s really smart because you have this kind of, like you said, you’re you’re a support.

 

You’re supporting other teams, giving them best practices, learnings, strategies, measurement, all of that to make sure that everybody’s kind of staying on the same page and taking advantage of what works and what doesn’t. And I think that’s really a smart way to [00:06:00] organize a company because it, it really does help kind of level set everyone and give them that comfort that they supported and they have, uh, they’re executing.

 

That’s really, really. When did this, um, the kind of more of the creator motion under you kind of start? And, um, you know, what were some of the initial kind of thoughts around this? Because, you know, obviously you said you had more of the branding working with the macro and then you had the affiliate. So how did it kind of just come out of that?

To be 

 

Natasha: just being in the industry, obviously myself, understanding that this was kind of the direction a big part of sort of this partnerships world was heading right creator was really moving from not just being these big brand, you know, really expensive engagements. And there was a lot of smaller creators that were starting to work on more of these like affiliate or hybrid models.

 

So I knew. Just that that was happening, and that was kind of like a big move in the [00:07:00] industry. You know, our program at Vistaprint is very mature. It’s an extremely large program. It’s been around for 15 plus years, and we kind of have a lot of like the typical, you know, I guess challenges that most affiliate programs have.

 

You know, we’ve got all the major players were very much like over indexed on all of them and we’re very reliant. And so we started to really think about what, where do we want to be like, 3 to 5 years out? Like, because when 1 player swings, it affects the whole program. And like, how can we future proof this?

 

And what could we do to really diversify? Um, because there’s not going to be, you know, 10 other, like, really big fish in affiliate that are going to, like, fill that gap. And so we worked with, um, our agency to kind of develop this longer term plan where we were like, what are some of our, like, really big bets around where this is going over this kind of longer period of time and influencer was 1 of those.

 

And so when we created this kind of, like, longer term of, like, plan that was presented to leadership, [00:08:00] we. Layed out sort of some of the like, bigger options or like, key considerations of like, where we want to move the program. And that’s kind of how the conversation started, 

 

Todd: you know, what were some of the like, initial goals or expectations?

 

I mean, I 100 percent agree. The diversification is key. You know, you want to add as many partners to the mix and probably your, your, your brand team wasn’t really going to dip down beyond the macro and ambassadors anyway. So that was kind of open water for you guys to take. But were there any kind of like initial goals or expectations?

 

Like, I mean, obviously you got to get budget and maybe even resources. I mean, how did that initial kernel get to germinate? 

 

Natasha: So we first kind of presented the idea. And then we did kind of present the supporting needs of that. So obviously we would need resources, which really came from the agency side versus in house at that point.

 

Since this is a, you know, it was kind of we were looking at as a pilot. So there were expectations around that. I think there was a lot [00:09:00] of learnings to like, what the expectations we set versus. Reality of what happened and so in some of those initial meetings, we were looking at it as like, hey, this is going to be another kind of like, very clean revenue stream.

 

We’re going to have all these, like, kind of micro influencers and we’re going to set them up like affiliates and we’re going to, you know, over time, there’s going to be thousands of them because that’s how it works. You just do it on like a broader scale. So it’s lower touch. Higher volume, but that’s going to be all this, like, revenue we’re going to see coming in and that’s kind of like, what we thought was at 1st going to happen, which isn’t exactly how it works.

 

Like, we definitely ran into some, some challenges and have had to really pivot and learn and readjust. And I think we’re really starting to hit our stride now, but it was definitely not like. You know, we opened the program and suddenly we have thousands of creators in the program, um, driving a ton of revenue, but that was a big element of, I think, initially where we were looking to sort [00:10:00] of.

 

Incorporate and fold into the other piece from an expectation standpoint was, I think we thought it would be much more like, integrated with what we’re doing in affiliate. And it really kind of hasn’t been. And it’s become a much more, I think. A channel that touches a lot more and is involved with a lot of other channels.

 

So it’s not really. As much part of our affiliate channels become this more like strategic channel that sort of state is on its own. It has a lot of similar elements from like a performance marketing standpoint, but it’s not just like, oh, we suddenly added like. You know, another like vertical, like we have coupon loyalty, influencer content, like it’s, it’s really kind of its own and we’re evaluating it pretty separately.

 

Um, internally from affiliate, 

 

Todd: what a macro, a micro and an affiliate is doing for your business. Do you kind of see them as being leveraged differently for, you know, trying to find, I don’t know, different customers or products and things. I mean, or is [00:11:00] there some overlap? How do you, how do you leverage, I guess, these, these 3.

 

Um, Types of partners, even though you don’t manage the, the, the brand side ones. 

 

Natasha: Yeah, so for the macro influencers that our brand team works with, those are really like high touch. Like we did Tamara Mowry, um, over the holidays, that’s a very, like very integrated high touch type of relationship. So they, you know, it was all across our website.

 

There was. She had her own, like, line of like templates and, you know, so the entire engagement was massive with just this, like, 1 person who obviously had tremendous reach and like a really big impact. From that standpoint, so that’s kind of like 1 bucket from our standpoint. We were working with, you know, kind of more in that, like, micro, um, and and smaller and our ours are just lower touch.

 

So we had a lot of creators. We still have very tight brand guidelines. We, you know, they’re all getting briefs. They’re specific, you know, products and things we’re highlighting, [00:12:00] but they’re not integrated with our site. They’re not, you know, like the process is a lot more scale. So, you know, yes, we have to approve all the content.

 

Yes. Like there’s guardrails to make sure we’re protecting the brand, but we move at a much kind of quicker speed. And the relationships are a little bit, I would say. Faster and less involved, and so our goal, we do have brand saliency objectives as well, where we’re really, you know, the more conversation we have out there about this to print, whether it’s from a macro or micro influencer is is great.

 

The more people are there talking about it, the more awareness there is about. All the different products and things we have, but for us, it was really about trying to get as much content out there and get in front of us like broad audience as we could within these influencers who we felt had audiences that aligned with kind of who we see as our customer, who we think would be a high value customer for us.

 

Todd: So as you mentioned earlier, you started the program and you did, they didn’t beat a path to the door. Um, so you had to [00:13:00] assume, you know, identify and recruit. What was some of the things that really worked for trying to figure out who would be the best, um, creators to start recruiting and, and engaging with?

 

Natasha: Internally, just from our marketing and leadership objectives, there’s certain types of customers and. Audiences that we were going after, um, especially with, you know, the Supreme kind of being like a, such a brand that’s been around for a while. Um, we are trying to kind of tap into younger audiences, right?

 

Because a lot of like, the kind of more mature audiences are very familiar, more familiar with the brand. Um, and so we were really looking at creators who we felt kind of lean into the potential target customers that we wanted. Um, and then we also segmented by what we have is like our priority categories.

 

And like, again, like, we’re, you know, we’re known for for business cards. So that wasn’t necessarily going to be an area that we were going to like, really push after. But we also have a lot of stuff for again, like [00:14:00] weddings, for example. And so 1 way that we were selecting is looking at. Um, who’s in the very early stages of their kind of engagement journey, who we can kind of take through the entire process.

 

Because if, you know, if they’ve already done the invitations, and they’ve done all the stuff and they have it uploaded somewhere else, it’s kind of harder to, you know. They’re not as sticky or they’re sticky to wherever they started from. So, we’re, we were really trying to get in with influencers who are kind of in the beginning of that journey where, you know, they’re kind of going to start with us and then continue on with, you know, all the different products as things evolve from whether it’s invitations to place cards to thank you notes to gifts for their bridal party.

 

Like, they could do all of that through Vista print. So, we wanted to really kind of find creators who are early enough in that journey where we can hopefully build kind of that longer term. Partnership, but again, not in the same way as what our, uh, brand team is doing where, you know, we’re not developing like customized like templates and all this stuff [00:15:00] and, you know, putting it all across our site and really integrating 

 

Todd: how successful do you feel that was?

 

I mean, obviously, there’s so many out there now today that you could reach out to and identify like that. I mean, where the fairly receptive and how did it. How did it kind of how do you feel it went? 

 

Natasha: It wasn’t as smooth sailing at first as you would think. And so there was a lot, this is where I was saying kind of, you know, our expectation going in.

 

And when we pitched this, um, was very much like, you know, we’re going to have like this massive program and all these people. And then you realize that, you know, it takes a lot of work between, you know, pitching and educating on the brand and kind of onboarding and making sure that. You know, they’re getting the right, the products and you’re kind of working through the concepts with them.

 

Um, and then also incentivizing, because I think the other thing we learned is that this is not a last click type of channel for them to spend, for creators to spend so much time making this content and just getting like a commission. [00:16:00] They’re not, it’s not worth it for them because they’re like, they’re not getting the credit enough.

 

And so we had to really come up with different strategies. Strategies to like. Incentivize them to work with us and like, how, you know, give them different like goals and things they could meet for certain prizes, whether that’s product, whether that’s monetary, whatever it may be. But that went outside of just the commission piece, um, to, to get them more engaged and excited.

 

And then also to get them to continue to create content beyond just the 1st, 1, 

 

Todd: we’re seeing more and more kind of the affiliate teams start to do what you’re doing, kind of assume or take on or launch this, this macro or micro. Um, creator strategy. And I think the knee jerk reaction is we’ll get them on board and pay him a commission, maybe pay him even a higher commission.

 

Um, a lot of times to maybe to offset the fact that maybe they aren’t always last click, which is a traditional tracking method. And it depends on your budget and how the management, you know, sees all this, but we’re seeing what we call post [00:17:00] plus. So you pay a little bit for content and then, and then the commission rate.

 

But, but I think the commission only, it has some value there and like a self serve, right? Just come in, grab a product that you want to promote or service. There’s a commission associated with it. If you, you know, you can do that on your own. But you, you really weren’t necessarily running campaigns, right?

 

You were just trying to get these partners activated. And they were kind of mini campaigns like their journey of, you know, getting married or whatever. Whereas I think the brand team obviously is running more campaigns, which have the peak and then they settle down. So you’re kind of creating that undercurrent of revenue, which is similar to affiliate, but I’m, I’m wondering, you talked about some other incentive incentivization there around, you know, beyond just commission or maybe pay per post that you were looking to get them to do certain activities.

 

Can you unpack that just a little bit? 

 

Natasha: Yeah, and that’s a really good point. You made our objective is for this to be an always on type of channel. So it is [00:18:00] actually a key differentiator from the brand team where they really focus on these, you know, really strategic, very focused campaigns where we’re trying to.

 

You know, encourage our influencers to constantly be creating content, like all the time. So, and it doesn’t always have to be about the same thing. Um, so in order to do that, we do roll out incentives, which is around, you know, whether they hit certain goals in terms of like impression volume or engagement rates, or some combination or number of posts per month, or if they hit certain sales goals, then they get a bonus.

 

So we roll those out. Um, quarterly, and then, you know, they get bonuses for achieving various milestones within that. And we found that that’s really worked really well because we have some creators now and it’s nice because, you     know, some of them are have really started to become familiar with the brand and our products.

 

And they, you know, have tried different products and they’re seeing what works and they’ve created different content. Now they’re [00:19:00] understanding what their audience is resonating, what’s resonating with their audience and they’re able to really optimize their own content. Um, so it’s really kind of allowed us to incentivize them to continue posting and continue creating that kind of like, ongoing to your point, that sort of undercurrent.

 

Um, versus posting 1 or 2 times seeing like maybe the commission isn’t that high and determining that they’re going to move on 

 

Todd: engagement between you and your partners is really key. And I think those kind of incentive incentivization is really important to keeping them engaged and showing that you care and that, you know, you do for me.

 

I do for you kind of thing because. It is easy to kind of, they get distracted, they lose, you know, interest or they don’t see the results that they thought, or, you know, somebody else comes along and they’re off to something else. I mean, you know, creators are definitely busy and even the micro ones. Um, so it’s, it’s important to set yourself apart is I think really what you’re trying to do and show them that you’re leaning in as opposed to more of like a passive, [00:20:00] you know, once you’re in, figure it out, right?

 

Natasha: Yes, I think 1 of the other big learnings to, and then in kind of in developing these incentives and also going back to the expectations is, you know, realizing that there’s like, 1st of all, a lot of control. We did have to relinquish in terms of like. You know, we’re very, we’re like a traditional ecommerce brand in the sense that we have a promotional calendar.

 

We really wanted initially. It was like, you know, you post on. This period on this date, and like, it was very like rigid and we realized it’s just not how they work. It’s not the same as our affiliate partners where we book in placements and they run things for a certain date. And it’s all very structured and it’s clear and they promote what we want.

 

We realize there has to be like, a lot of fluidity and they’re kind of, you know, the more we’re able to give them flexibility, the more kind of we’re getting from them in return as well. And so that was like another, I would say. Okay. Learning, um, at least from from my end from kind of being so used to running these very structured engagements that we want it to be always on [00:21:00] content.

 

They’re kind of posting 1 when it’s convenient for them. And that actually affected how we work with them from like a promotional coupon code and things like that standpoint, because we’re not really aligning them to our promotional calendar. Like, they’re really, you know, we’re giving them their own codes.

 

And that way, they’re not tied to what’s happening on our site. And they can just kind of post when they, when they. Generally need want to post 

 

Todd: how does leadership see this nascent efforts so far and what do they value most? And is there anything they question? 

 

Natasha: Yeah, so I think we’re, we’re pretty new. So we just finished, you know, we just kind of wrapped up our 1st half of years or fiscal year for each 1 of our fiscal year, just wrapped up and we’ve seen really positive results.

 

So there’s a lot of kind of, I think. Yeah. Early excitement about it, um, you know, I think what’s really important and what I would advise anybody kind of going into this is like managing expectations as you go. So, again, like, we had a pitch the initial pitch. We were like, this is what it’s going to look like.

 

[00:22:00] And then, you know, a month or 2 in, it was like a check in. That was like, look, like, we’re readjusting like, this is not, you know, we have to rethink how we measure. We have to rethink these things. So we kept them in the loop, but also we’re showing all the content. So I think some of the. Okay. Things that have been really well received is just the quality of the content.

 

Despite the fact that we have really relinquished control. Like, the creators are really sticking to the brand guidelines. We’ve had really no content that we’ve had to go back and reject after they made it. And there’s very little handholding. You know, they, they get the briefs, they got the product. And they make this content and it’s high quality content.

 

So that’s been a lot of feedback that we’ve received. Um, there’s been, you know, excitement from creative where we even worked with our creative team to incorporate some of the content into our in house media mix during the holiday. So we were able to kind of. Pull this in until, like, you know, other channels and this was, you know, so we worked with creative and we worked with our paid media team to amplify some of the content.[00:23:00] 

 

Um, and then, of course, now we’re starting to really actually see what everybody ultimately cares about in the performance for, which is the revenue come in. Um, but again, we’ve, you know, it’s not as direct as last click. We’ve really kind of had to look at how does this revenue get redistributed? You know, people see these.

 

These, uh, videos, but then they go and they come in through other channels and we’ve had to stitch all of that together. But we’re seeing that when we, we stitch it together, this is actually driving, um, impact. And so there’s excitement around kind of just the momentum that’s picking up considering we are like, a very, very small team.

 

And this was meant to be a pilot and we’re really starting to kind of see the fruits of our labor after the 1st, 6 months. Finally. So. 

 

Todd: I’m fortunate enough to talk to, obviously, a lot of companies, um, and going through very similar things, and I think those expectation shifts are key to communicate because, uh, even the largest brands that we have, um, [00:24:00] uh, that are doing this, it’s not always goes as planned, and even if it’s doing really well, They through that data and learning they want to change it or it needs to shift a little so you know I think you know you kind of keyed in on this that keeping the loop open coming back Hey, here’s what we tried to do.

 

This is why we’re slow At doing that or this is why we’re not doing that or why we’re doing this instead, or we need money for this. It makes things go much more smoothly. So there’s no surprises. Everybody gets to ask their questions, get their answers and, and you get a chance to move forward. 

 

Natasha: I think it’s also like, uh, A bit of the education and a mind shift that, you know, leadership is used to seeing the performance teams come with very clear performance numbers.

 

And I think there was a lot of educating kind of, even in the weekly, you know, every time we have weekly. Our status meetings, or whether it’s quarterly reporting to continue to [00:25:00] remind and educate. You know, the way that the channel works and kind of the new expectations and, you know, why it’s important, why the importance of just having all the content out there and then the different ways that we’re looking to measure this.

 

That’s not traditionally what they’re used to from the affiliate team. And so I think kind of like that constant repetition and showcasing and highlighting the results in the right way. It’s helpful because it definitely in the beginning, there was a lot of questions like, you know, okay, you create it.

 

You know, you’ve had 100 pieces of content goes go live. Like, what does that mean? You know, how, how is this help the business? And so I do think that outside of managing the expectations is also like, a lot of like, educating and advocating for the channel that happens kind of on a weekly and monthly basis.

 

Todd: So for you personally, I mean, obviously spearheading this, you know, what’s been most rewarding about it for you. How do you see this as part of your career and, uh, accomplishments 

 

Natasha: in a lot of different ways? I think it’s been like phases. The 1st step to just get [00:26:00] such a significant budget approved for this little like pilot idea.

 

And I had no experience at all. An influencer. So, it was just exciting to kind of have, like, the confidence from our leadership team, where they were like, all right, fine, like, try this. Like, let’s see what you can do with it. So I thought so that was kind of like the 1st rewarding piece, because it was very motivating to be like, I got to make sure I figured this out and make it successful.

 

Um, and then when the content started to come out, and I, because, you know, I was a little nervous. Like, I knew we had to. Relinquish this control and we take our brand very seriously and everything we do is very brand controlled. And suddenly it was like, we’re just putting stuff out there and, you know, hopefully, and to see the content come in and see, like, how well it was turning out.

 

And I just people like talking about, and they get so creative with some of them just get really creative with the content they do put out. So that was like, the next kind of phase of just, Being so excited and sharing all the content with everybody and showing all the cool things. And then the last phase was doing, [00:27:00] um, kind of seeing the revenue come and finally figuring out how to measure it and being like, wait a minute.

 

We’re actually positive. Like, we’re row as positive. And this is actually a channel where. We’re not 6 months in, and we’re not even in the red, which wasn’t the expectation. We, we set, like, we, I didn’t expect to, you know, when I reset the expectations, I didn’t think we’d be all right. All right. Positive. So soon, 

 

Todd: what’s next for 2025?

How do you see this continuing evolving? 

 

Natasha: We’re still in such infancy stages, so there’s still a lot of testing and learning in terms of like. You know, initially we were probably started to rigid, then got very flexible. And now we’re trying to figure out like this sort of middle ground. Like, we’re still a business.

 

We have priorities and categories and things that are more important than others. So like, how do we leverage this channel to really support the broader business objectives? So if there’s like certain categories that are really important, even though influencers have sort of been able to pick and choose, you know, what they feel they need or what’s [00:28:00] best for the brand.

 

That’s great, but we also have a business and we need to, you know, really focus on certain priorities for the business. So, like, how do we align that? And I think that’s 1. and then also, like, how do we continue to work more cohesively and strategically with our brand team on their campaigns? Because again, they have the macro.

 

They have the ambassador. We have ours. Like, how does all of this play together? And how do we maximize each aspect of what we’re doing? So that’s kind of another piece that we’re looking in. And then the more of like, what I was mentioning earlier with wedding and things like that, kind of like the longer.

 

We’re trying to find a way to create long term relationships while it’s still being like an always on kind of channel where, you know, it’s not necessarily campaign driven in the traditional sense, but it’s not sort of like, you know, they’re kind of posting randomly and there’s no theme to it. So we’re really trying to evolve that.

 

And then from there, it’s really like, you know, continuing to scale, um, and, and figuring out how to make this. Be an even larger impact [00:29:00] from like a revenue standpoint for us, because at the end of the day, that’s really my job. Right. And my role is the revenue. I don’t get as much on the. Brand metrics, 

 

Todd: but I always look at both affiliate and and this creator strategy is more like farming in that there’s a lot of work up front that needs to be done before crops start growing and we harvest.

 

So there is that lag of. More investment up front, whereas with traditional paid media, you know, I can put 100, 000 into a machine and measure it tomorrow, right? So it’s it’s a little bit of patience game, but um, you know, you shared some great learnings and advice throughout this But I wondered if there’s anything else you’d want to share For someone maybe maybe even just thinking back if you had to do it all over again Like what would you advise someone?

 

You know, wanting to get started with something similar, right? Or trying to kind of stand up something new adjacent to the branding and the affiliate. 

 

Natasha: Well, I think being really clear on the [00:30:00] measurement, and I think that that’s what was a challenge in the beginning. Um, you know, we were obviously upfront between like our.

 

You know, tech and agency costs and influencer costs and all of this, there’s a lot of product cost. There’s a lot of cost. And then not really having clear definition around the non performance metrics made it difficult because the questions were coming up. Well, like, if the revenue is not coming through, how else are we measuring the success with all of this?

 

Money that we’re spending. And so I think, you know, we were really broad about it. And the pitch was sort of vague, like, you know, brand salience. Like, what does that mean? And how will we measure it? I think if I were to go back, I would have a much clearer because then when we’re reporting on it every week to the business, it would have been easier in those 1st couple of months to kind of show like, yeah, we haven’t started on driving the revenue yet.

 

But like, yeah. Here’s like these metrics and here’s what they mean. So it took us a little while to kind of get our bearings. Luckily, you know, the [00:31:00] leadership here had already committed the budget. And so they knew, like, you know, you have the budget for the year, like, figure it out. So they were giving me time.

 

And I think that that’s another probably really important piece where, you know, you’re going to run into a lot of hurdles. There’s going to be, you know, we, we had a lot of trouble kind of, uh, Between figuring out, especially this is probably specific to VistaPrint, but like, they have to order the product.

 

We have to give them a credit. They have to design the product. So it’s not even like, oh, I have a Stanley cup. I’m going to mail you the Stanley cup. And then you’re going to make a video about it. Like, they have to go on our site and like, figure out how to design it all and then get it. So there was just everything took way longer initially than we thought.

 

And so, you know, we have to just work through. Um, so again, I think clarity in terms of like, measurement would have been a big 1. Um, that’s probably the biggest 1, because everything else I would say, as long as you’re really communicating with leadership and managing expectations, um, and as long as the everyone understands that it’s a pilot and that [00:32:00] you’re it’s a test and learn.

 

And we’re very much of like a test and learn kind of environment. You know, we, we’ve done a lot of testing. We’ve done paid amplification testing. We’ve done all kinds of stuff that, um, you know, they were, there was freedom to use the budget, how I want to use it to figure out the best way to make this channel work.

 

And I think that’s like a kind of big takeaway in terms of if you want to be successful, like, the more you can kind of work with leadership to get some of that flexibility to figure it out, the likely more successful you will be because now I think we’re set up much. To have a really strong second half of our fiscal because we were doing all this testing and they weren’t, I wasn’t afraid that the budget was going to be taken away when things weren’t working.

 

Todd: Measurement is always hard because in the beginning, you have nothing to measure. So, you know, you can kind of design measurement, but a lot of the learnings and evolution of measurement is getting the data coming through. And then you say, oh, we’re, we’re not measuring this or we’re, we’re missing something.

 

So we have to, you [00:33:00] know, kind of sort it out. 

 

Natasha: But also for performance marketers, like, we’re not used to measuring things that aren’t like direct KPIs. And so, in this case. It is that, like, you have to understand what these, and we’re still trying to, right? Like, it’s like, what, how else can we evaluate? You know, we have to really lean into looking at, you know, other kinds of metrics that and understand, like, well, what do these mean?

 

And like, why are these valuable? And why does this matter for the business when it’s not when it’s not just like a dollar amount that we’re seeing come in the big pieces, like, having clarity around, like, what the measurement is and. Yeah. Defining it and that’s where it was sort of a struggle in the first couple of months because I was so used to and you know, anybody kind of overseeing performance is used to just expecting to see your normal like clicks and revenue and all of those metrics.

 

And those weren’t really coming in at 1st. 

 

Todd: Yeah, I think that’s probably the biggest risk of the when the affiliate team kind of adjacent stands [00:34:00] up. This, um, you know, micro, uh, creator strategy is that they kind of get pigeonholed into the same measurements of affiliate and that can actually work against the, the success of the, of the creator program because they, they want to see last click conversion, revenue, payout, everything neat and tidy.

 

And it is, it’s a little bit more of a hybrid, right? There’s still those social signals, like you said, the engagement, the content that’s being created and a lot more value that, um. Typically affiliate doesn’t get measured by. So yeah, that’s smart. 

 

Natasha: Well, and even like how we measure revenue, like it’s, you know, it’s still not last click.

 

Like, even though now we have so many influencers in the program and we’ve got so much content that’s constantly coming out. Um, we’ve had to get creative with, it’s just a much more like sophisticated way, I guess, in terms of measuring, um, a lot more similar to what our media team does. So we’ve actually done.

 

Like, conversion lift tests looking at, [00:35:00] you know, holdout groups versus exposed groups. And, you know, understanding. Is there incremental lift from the people that are seeing the content versus not? And we were looking at, as I mentioned earlier, like, where is this coming in from other channels? Like, somebody sees.

 

The influencer content, but then they convert on paid search and stitching that together. Because if you just look at the line item influencer in our report, the revenue with it is very little, big cost, small revenue, because it’s still last click. But so, you know, from a, how you represent it and present it to leadership.

 

You have, you know, you, you have to show kind of that. It’s not this very direct line. It’s, it’s actually a lot more in line with how display media probably works than or content versus how paid search and affiliate work, 

 

Todd: right? So much more upper funnel and mid funnel, but, um, yeah, this has been amazing.

 

Natasha. I really appreciate you sharing your learnings and all the, all the [00:36:00] things that you’ve done. It’s amazing. And I’m excited for you guys and, uh, greatly appreciate you sharing. 

 

Natasha: Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I really appreciate chatting and, um, happy to, uh, share our learnings as we go as well. 

 

Todd: Yeah, that’d be great.

 

Creators are a great way to diversify your partnership mix. They allow brands to reach niche audiences they wouldn’t have been able to get to otherwise. Starting your own creator program involves flexibility, managing expectations with senior leaders, and the challenges, but also reward of letting go of control.

 

Vistaprint’s shift from costly, high touch, influencer campaigns to scalable hybrid models shows how being nimble and strategic can pave the way for sustainable growth. Natasha’s emphasis on testing, learning, and refining along the way reminds us that success often comes from iteration, not perfection.

 

Finally, it’s important to remember to relinquish control when working with creators. By empowering creators to work with more autonomy, You [00:37:00] can tap into authentic high quality content that resonates deeply with audiences. Thanks for listening and I look forward to next time.