Influencer gifting seems simple. Reach out, send a product, get content. Right?

If you've been running these programs for even a day, you know that, in reality, there are lots of moving parts and problems to solve.

• How do you stand out when gifting has become so commonplace?
• Should you do barter deals or take a no-strings-attached approach?
• How do you maximize the impact of your influencer content generated via gifting campaigns?

If you're working on a gifting program for a brand, I'll do my best to help you drive even better results with these seven non-obvious tips.

1. Go beyond handwritten notes

When influencer gifting was new, you could stand out by writing a personalized note. Today, it's no longer enough because every other brand is doing the same thing. You don’t stand out, and in turn, their audience isn’t impressed with you either.

Influencer marketing expert Dmitri Cherner says personalizing starts with influencer selection itself — and should be present at every stage of the gifting campaign:

Dmitri Cherner

Influencer Marketing Expert

The biggest way to stand out with gifting is to personalize your actual correspondence with the creator. It's less about the product/notes/custom boxes/etc., and far more important that you can convey that the creator is not just a number.

How do you express that a creator isn’t just another cog in the machine for you? Dmitri elaborates:

Dmitri Cherner

Influencer Marketing Expert

Move away from automated messaging, lower the quantity and focus on the quality of relationships. This will yield a better return overall — more responses, more likelihood of posting, and better, more sincere content.

A great example is St.Ives gifting to influencer Ankita Chawla, who often skates and shares how much the hobby means to her. They sent a personalized picture of her skating — which 100% wins over sending a generic product. It shows the brand cares and has been paying attention — much more thoughtful than a PR package shipped to every other influencer.

Something like this would definitely make the audience pause & take notice and make the creator feel valued. Win-win.

Another brand that does personalized gifting well is Inde Wild. They gifted their product to creator Anushka Hazara. Since it was the Holi festival, they customized their packaging and products for the occasion.

One last example: influencer marketing specialist, Lauren Roth, also shared how she worked with a brand to gift candles to influencers. Lauren let influencers choose their preferred scent, but then added extra similar scents she thought they might like as a surprise. A fun and thoughtful element like this adds that extra oomph to your gifting campaigns.

2. Use a balance of no-strings-attached and barter deals

A no-strings-attached approach to gifting is when you send your products to influencers with zero expectations. They can post about you or receive your product and still not post about you. There’s no obligation. In barter deals, on the other hand, an influencer is requested to post an honest review and/or share their code/link.

Ieva Rees, Gifting Team Lead at BURGA, suggests combining both approaches in your gifting strategy for the best results.

Ieva Rees

Influencer Gifting Team Lead, BURGA

We try to arrange a specific number of content units with our gifting partners, especially with nano creators. This gives us more concrete projections on how much content to expect in the coming months. It sets a more professional tone for the collaboration, and guarantees a steady flow of influencer content that our social media team can repurpose.

She continues:

Ieva Rees

Influencer Gifting Team Lead, BURGA

That said, we also have campaigns where we send products with no strings attached. The aim is still to seed the products, let them try them out. If they love it and want to share it with their followers, they also have a discount code. This helps us retain initial contacts, receive nice features, and reach out to creators with more followers.

Neither approach guarantees a better ROI. If you aim to get some influencer content live within a tight timeline, go with more barter deals. But if you have the budget and timeline for experimenting and finding people who truly love your products, shoot for more no-strings-attached deals and nurture the relationships.

3. Maximize posting rates by offering product choices

In all the types of influencer collaborations, getting a response for gifting might be the hardest. Since influencers aren’t receiving any direct cash payment, piquing their interest is harder.

One lever you could pull to increase how many influencers accept your products (and post) is to give them a wider choice of products from your catalog. You could take one of three approaches here:

A) Offer the entire product catalog, let influencers choose what they want.

• Pro: you'll maximize the chances they'll post something.
• Con: they might choose something that isn't popular and doesn't sell.

B) Offer a specific product that you want to promote.

• Pro: since you're in control, you can optimize all your efforts and budget towards your priority product.
• Con: you might get a lower acceptance rate and posting rate, as there's no choice.

C) Something in-between. Offer choice, but not the entire catalog. Provide as much choice as possible to maximize post rates, but remove the least popular sellers.

Which approach is best depends on your goals.

• For driving immediate sales, the last approach (C) is your best bet.
• For achieving maximum brand awareness or obtaining the most possible units of influencer content, go with the first approach (A).
• For creating buzz around a specific, the second approach (B) is a good choice.

If you decide to take approach C (a curated selection), here's a pro-tip from Mark Dandy, an influencer marketing consultant, to nudge influencers toward your bestsellers:

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Consultant

Create a closed category with collections you want to offer to influencers. Put your top choices first on page one. That way, you still provide choice, but increase the chance your preferred products will be picked.

Another benefit of offering product choices to creators is it minimizes wastefulness. Influencer gifting has often come under attack for being harmful for the environment. Consumers and creators echo the sentiment that sending so many products comes across as tone-deaf and puts the planet at risk.

By giving creators the control over what they truly want, you ensure your product doesn’t just sit in a pretty package and collect dust.

4. Improve outreach response rates with better influencer selection

The easiest way to increase your influencer outreach response rates for gifting campaigns is to pick the right creators — ones who actually need your product.

Andreea Moise, founder at HypeMaven, suggests matching your ideal customer profile’s demographics & needs to your potential creator partners (or even recruiting your customers as influencers if they have a good following):

Andreea Moise

Influencer Marketing Consultant, HypeMaven

In gifting campaigns, some of the creators on your shortlist will be your ICP. That’s where you should start.

If you're just getting started on a shoestring budget, you can do this manually by searching hashtags, asking for recommendations, and scrolling through Reels and other suggested content.

If you're looking for a faster solution, you can use an influencer search tool like Modash.

In Modash, you can find any creator with over 1k+ followers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. In the screenshot example, we're searching for influencers who are:

• In a specific country (UK)
• Within a specific performance range (1-10k average Reels plays)
• In a specific age rang
• In our niche (see "beauty" in bio)

And for an extra bonus, we have a hashtag filter in the “influencer filters” category. If we search for influencers who have used #gifted in their content, we'll find influencers who have done gifted collaborations in the past.

(You can try Modash for free, no credit card needed.)

Beyond this test, you also need to ensure the influencer’s audience will actually benefit from your product and highlight those advantages in your outreach message. Do the research to answer the influencer’s “what’s in it for me?” question.

Since gifting is an ask where an influencer is expected to create content without cash payment, you need to emphasize the benefits they get from this partnership more than you would for any other type of collaboration.

And don’t forget to follow-up with creators. Andreea Moise suggests following up every week up to five to six times (after the initial outreach message). She recommends using the below follow-up sequence:

• Ask about their problem and if it has improved
• Send some testimonials or experiences of other people with your product and ask about their problem again
• Offer to send some product to their family or friends for special occasions
• Ask them for honest feedback to improve the product

She adds:

Andreea Moise

Influencer Marketing Consultant, HypeMaven

You might notice I'm not asking for content anywhere in this sequence, but rather inquiring about their problems, life, expectations, etc. This is what it actually means to build trust and a relationship with an influencer — caring about them outside the context of your product and brand.

5. Maximize the impact of influencer content by asking for usage rights

Your influencer gifting campaigns can have great results alone, but if you can work cross-functionally and contribute to other teams, the value is even higher.

The most obvious way to help adjacent teams is to offer influencer content for repurposing — as ads, on landing pages, for social creatives, etc.

To do this, you need to first obtain usage rights from the creator.

How? You can simply thank the influencer for posting and ask whether you can repost their content.

Some influencers might ask extra $$$ for this, but it’s worth it if it provides ROI to your marketing arm. Dmitri Cherner recommends having a plan to use gifting content before you begin shipping out products to get the most bang for your buck:

Dmitri Cherner

Influencers Marketing Expert

Develop a partnership roadmap where value could be driven in multiple ways (content generation, sales, Ambassador program growth, awareness, etc). That way, ROI could be driven in multiple capacities, giving the larger program an opportunity to provide benefits to the marketing organization as a whole.

6. Use gifting as a stepping stone for long-term creator partnerships (if it fits your goals)

Should you use gifting campaigns to assess which influencers can become long-term partners for your brand? It depends. If your goal is to:

a) generate tons of influencer content in a short time

b) spread buzz about a new product launch

c) test various potential creator partners

d) run a seasonal campaign

e) gather creative insights

…then short-term partnerships via gifting campaigns are excellent.

But you can also use gifting campaigns as a litmus test. Those who perform well and create excellent content get promoted to long-term partners.

Piper Philips, former Director of Marketing at Tru, always sends a free product to a potential creator — even if it ultimately has to lead to a paid partnership:

Piper Phillips

Former Director of Marketing, Tru

My first step in outreach is always offering a free product. To even consider a paid collab, we need the creator to actually enjoy our product. My go-to line is: ‘If you're interested, I would love to personally send you some Tru! (No strings attached of course)'.

Dmitri Cherner also agrees:

Dmitri Cherner

Influencers Marketing Expert

Take a conscious approach to gifting, and use it as a first step in the (ideally) long-term relationship development of the creators you care more about and see the most potential in.

Starting with sending a free product is also great way to vet for authenticity. Find people who truly love the product, and nurture the relationships into A+ long-term influencer partnerships.

7. Don’t devalue your product by saturating the market

Being all over someone’s For You page sounds good in theory. Gift to as many influencers as you can all at once, right?

But in reality, consumers can get annoyed and start questioning your authenticity if you repeatedly send your products to every creator on their feed. Case in point: Rachel Karten says she got inundated with so much influencer content of Roadway Moving that she started wondering if regular people even use their service.

You also run the risk of devaluing the product, especially if you're positioned as a premium brand. It's not premium, or exclusive, if everyone seems to have it.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t pursue a higher volume strategy. But you have to find a balance and lead with intention.

Take skincare brand Function of Beauty. They could go the route of shipping their product to every popular beauty creator. But they didn’t. They only send gifts to handpicked niche creators — nano and micro influencers who post about curly hair care.

💡 Here’s a more detailed guide on how you can identify and test new niches for your influencer program.

Think from the point of view of a potential customer: if they’re interested in a topic, they're likely see/follow a lot of creators in that space. You don’t want to be in the position Roadway Moving ended up, with people seeing so much sponsored content that they question the authenticity.

For one final tip: Ieva Rees of BURGA recommends this spacing out your activations with repeat influencers. This can help to ease the issue as you build a bigger roster of partners:

Ieva Rees

Influencer Gifting Team Lead, BURGA

Don't overwhelm the creator and their audience  — take breaks in how often you partner with them. This will make your partnerships last longer, allow more products to be introduced and sent in the future, and help the same audience get to know your brand over a longer period of time!

Influencer gifting is the best start to creator relationships

Influencer gifting is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to start your influencer relationships on the right foot.

a) You begin by “giving” something and not asking

b) You can scale a gifting strategy at minimal cost, if you have a low COGS

c) Both parties can evaluate whether or not the partnership is a right fit without a contractual commitment

After reading this article, you might find yourself looking for either real-life examples to learn from, or more actionable tips to implement. We got you covered either way:

• Read up on how to nail influencer outreach
• Or, check out this list of 10 examples of brands who are winning with product seeding.