Table of contents
As a Shopify merchant, finding cost effective ways to stand out and attract new buyers can be challenging. Working with creators and influencers in an affiliate capacity can help you save on ad costs while reaching new audiences and driving more sales. That’s why we created Shopify Collabs, a free-to-install app built to help merchants collaborate and manage creator partners.
Whether you’re a business owner or a marketing professional, Shopify Collabs gives you the tools you need to successfully work with creators, from creating connections to automating creator commission payments through your Shopify bill.
What is Shopify Collabs?
Shopify Collabs is Shopify's own affiliate marketing tool, built to help Shopify merchants to promote products through influencers and creators to increase brand awareness and drive sales.
If you’re looking to get started working with creators on Shopify Collabs, or just want to learn more about some of the best ways to take advantage of the app, you’re in the right place. Keep reading to learn more about the features and strategies that can set you up for success when using Shopify Collabs.
Installing and getting set up
The Collabs app can be installed in the Shopify App store for free. Once installed, the app will be available inside your Shopify admin, where you can access it any time to begin onboarding. Once you’ve completed your setup of the Collabs app, you’ll be able to enter the Collabs dashboard, which is built to help you keep a pulse on your work within the app and give you some “Things to do next” to get you started.
Setting up programs
Before you start recruiting creators to join your program on Collabs, you should think about what you want to offer them. Most merchants using Collabs offer a commission on sales and discounts to the creator’s audience using affiliate links and codes. These can easily be configured in Collabs. Merchants also use Collabs as an easy and efficient way to send gifts or product samples to creators so they can make authentic content using the products.
To set up your affiliate commission and discounts for creators in Collabs, you can go to Programs in the left menu, and then Programs at the top of the page. Here you can create multiple programs for different levels of creators, each offering a different level of commission and/or discount. You may want to think about building out programs that allow creators to graduate from one program to another with higher buyer discounts or commissions if they pass a certain number of sales.
Under the Programs tab, click on Create Invite Program. The amount you set for commissions and discounts is up to you and depends on the margins you can afford on your products, but commissions and discounts on Collabs usually are set at around 10% on average.
Within the Programs setup process, you can also configure options that make your affiliate tracking and commission settings more powerful. For example, you can increase discounts and affiliate commission on sales that come from new customers. If you sell subscriptions, you can configure a tier that gives commissions and discounts on just the first order, or on multiple orders to give extra incentives to creators who sell your subscriptions. Program setup in Collabs gives you the flexibility to incentivize creators in the way that works best for your business.
Create and send gifts to creators
Have you ever sent gifts to creators using spreadsheets? Or spent hours requesting shipping details from creators and sending out gifts manually? Collabs leaves all that manual work in the past and makes it simple to create and send gifts that creators can claim from your store without the hassle of requesting shipping addresses, shipping methods, product requests, and more.
Gifting is one of the most important parts of your affiliate and influencer marketing strategy. It helps influencers discover and test new products so they can create authentic endorsements. Companies like Ceremonia, which sells clean hair care products rooted in Latinx heritage, incorporate welcome gifts as a key part of its onboarding to its creator community. Giving creators who are accepted to the community a welcome gift helps the brand build a stronger bond with its creators.
“Sending a welcome gift to creators we invite into our community is one of the most important steps we take as a part of our creator onboarding. We not only want to welcome our creators to our community, but it’s also important that the creators we work with are fans and users of our products. To do this, we give our creators a chance to select two hair care products from a selection of 14 of our bestsellers. This is not only imperative to building a strong relationship with our new creator relationships, but also sets us up successfully for future work that we do with our community.” —Andy Scully, VP of Growth @ Ceremonia
While you should never expect a creator to post content about your brand just because you’ve sent them a gift, gifts can inspire creators to test and post about your products. If you are looking for guaranteed content, make sure to create an agreement outlining expectations with the creator before sending them a gift.
Here are just a few reasons why gifting is a crucial part of working with creators:
-
Builds stronger relationships with creators: Gifting is an effective way to initiate and foster relationships with influencers. Sending them gifts shows your appreciation for their work and can open up opportunities for future collaborations.
-
Increases brand awareness: When a creator receives a gift from a brand, they may share or unbox it in front of their audience. This exposure can significantly increase brand awareness through the user-generated content the creator makes on their favorite social platform(s).
-
Product testing and authentic reviews: Gifting allows influencers to test the product firsthand. This paves the way for authentic and genuine reviews being shared with their followers. Product reviews by influencers tend to feel more personal and relatable to the audience compared to traditional ads.
-
Cost-effective marketing strategy: Gifting doesn’t always require a significant budget. Often, the costs are the product itself and shipping fees. Given that the potential return on investment (ROI) can be high (if the creator creates content about it), it can be a highly cost-effective marketing strategy.
To set up a welcome gift for creators, head over to the Gifts tab under Programs in the Collabs navigation menu. Here, you will be able to create a product gift or offer your new creators a discount on a purchase they make from your store.
Get started setting up your welcome gift to creators
Recruiting creators to join your program
Now that you have gift and affiliate programs set up, you can start recruiting creators to join your Shopify Collabs program.
There are a few ways to recruit creators on Collabs.
Set up a creator application page
One of the best ways to recruit creators is through an application page on your store. These applications are a customizable landing page with a quick form that creators can fill out if they are interested in partnering with you. This will help you gather information and details about the creator such as name, contact information, social media handles, and why they would be a good fit to collaborate with your brand. Collabs includes an application page template to help you get started. When creators fill it out, their information is automatically saved in your Collabs account for review.
To help creators find your application page, copy and paste a link to this page in the places that will attract creators, such as your brand’s Instagram bio. We also recommend that you add your application page to your store’s header or footer so creator customers who already love your brand can easily find it.
immi, a healthy ramen brand, has recruited hundreds of creators to their affiliate program through their application page. In their application, they not only include a thorough description of their brand, their brand values, and what they offer their creators, but as creators go to apply, they prompt them to answer questions about themselves and their relationship to the immi brand. This helps them better understand which applicants will be a fit for their program.
“We want our affiliates to feel special when they join our community and to make sure the time and effort that’s put into the community will be mutual. The application page we create on Shopify Collabs helps us get that message across to our creators. It helps creators learn more about our brand values and clearly explains the opportunities and gifts we offer when applying to join our program, while also making sure that each creator is interested in a true partnership-like relationship with us,” –Simal Adenwala, Sr. Partnerships Manager @ immi.
Want to further promote your application page so creators can join your creator program? Think about marketing activities such as including it in a monthly newsletter to your customers and sharing in posts on your social media channels. Remember, people who want to promote your products could be anywhere, and some of the best creators you build relationships with may already be your customers.
Share a link to your application page
Invite creators
If you already have creators in mind that you would like to work with or if you are migrating current creator partners to Collabs, you can invite them to the platform directly. As long as you have their email address you can send them direct invites through Collabs and include an affiliate offer and gift for them to redeem. This is the fastest way to get them into your program, as they won’t need to fill out your entire application. If you have a list of creators you want to invite, you can upload a CSV of their emails. Don’t have an email address to contact the creator you’re interested in working with? Sometimes sending a DM from your brand’s social media account can be your best method of contacting creators.
Let creators discover you
To get started quickly, you can create an open access offer, which allows Collabs creators to start promoting your products for a commission, without additional approval. To activate an open access offer, you set a commission rate on either all products or at the collection level. The products that you’ve indicated creators can earn a commission on are shown in their discovery experience. Creators can generate commission links to these products and share with their followers.
An open access program is not only an easy way to let creators find you and start driving sales, it’s also a great way to find new creators that you may want to develop a deeper partnership with. As creators drive sales via your open access offers, they will show up in your connections table. If you see a creator is consistently driving sales for you, you can choose to promote them to an invite-only program by assigning them a higher commission and a discount for their followers to further incentivize them to promote your brand.
Managing your creators
Once you’ve started to accept creators into your program, you can manage those relationships in Shopify Collabs. By clicking on Contacts in the navigation menu you will see all the creators who you’ve accepted or who have driven a sale for you through your open access program.
For tips on keeping your connections engaged, check out Keeping Creators Engaged with Shopify Collabs.
Paying creators for commissions
Once the affiliate sales roll in, Collabs can also help you streamline the process of paying creators with automatic payments. Collabs keeps track of any sales driven by creators using your affiliate links or codes, and calculates the commission owed to creators based on the rates you set in your programs. After a holding period has passed, Collabs automatically pays creators who have met a $25 minimum threshold via your Shopify bill. As soon as a sale is made, Collabs automatically starts a holding period that you can adjust between seven and 90 days in your Collabs settings. If an order is returned within this holding period, the commission payment is automatically removed.
On the creator side of Collabs, creators are transparently shown the sales they are helping you make and the commissions that they are earning from those sales. Creators are guided through setting up their payment account by logging into their Collabs Creator account and clicking on the Payouts tab. Here, the creator will be able to activate auto-payouts by inputting their personal and billing information. This will be used to create a PayPal Hyperwallet account, which is how creators get paid. Automatic payments makes sure this money gets into the Creator’s Collabs account and is ready to cash out to their preferred payment method.
Whether it’s protecting your store from paying commissions on orders that are returned, or if it’s to save you time paying creators out one-by-one, automatic commission payments on Shopify Collabs is crucial as you start to scale your creator and affiliate program.
What’s next?
You’ve built out your program, now it’s time to keep creators engaged and driving sales.
Communicate with creators early and often
Communicating with your creators early and often is important. As soon as a new creator joins your program, a warm welcome email with their affiliate link and code and any other instructions or asks you have for them will help them get started right away. Think about the things that are most important for a creator who is joining your program to know, such as key info about your brand and products, incentives, or hashtags to use if they post about your brand.
Then, once creators join your program, engaging with them regularly keeps the momentum going. Be sure to frequently remind your creators of the program they belong to, and share the new things you’re doing as a brand, such as new product launches. Reaching out to creators can be done via onboarding emails, email newsletters, or DMs on social platforms.
For tips on keeping your connections engaged, check out Keeping Creators Engaged with Shopify Collabs.
You’re ready to get started with Shopify Collabs
So you’ve done the legwork—you’re up to speed with Shopify Collabs and ready to start building relationships with creators who can help you to drive more sales. Remember, Shopify Collabs is flexible and adaptable to your brand, so now it’s up to you to tailor it to your needs.
