Track influencer campaign results

The most reliable way to track influencer results is to give each creator something that only their audience can use. Kite sets up two of these for every creator in the campaign: a discount code and a tracked link.

If your store runs on Shopify, Kite creates a unique code for each creator under a discount you've already set up there, such as 15% off a first order. It can add up to 100 codes at a time, so a campaign with twenty creators takes one step. Kite names the codes so they're easy to read later, like MAYA15 or SAMRUNS15, and shows you the list before it adds them to your store.

Kite also writes a tracked link for each creator. The link points to your site with tags on the end, called UTM tags, that tell Google Analytics the visit came from this creator and this campaign. Visits and purchases from that link then show up under the creator's name in your reports.

If Kite hosts your website, it can go one step further and build a separate landing page for each creator. Say a running creator is promoting your electrolyte mix. Their page can open with "Recommended by Sam" and show the flavors Sam talks about in their videos. Kite's built-in analytics then count the visits and signups on each creator's page.

A good influencer tracker has one row per creator and keeps the cost and the results side by side. Kite builds that record when the campaign starts and keeps it up to date as the campaign runs. A useful setup has these columns:

• Creator and platform. The creator's name, their handle, and where they post, such as TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube.
• What they agreed to deliver. The number of posts, the format, and the dates they're due.
• Total cost. The fee, the product you sent, shipping, and anything you paid for the right to reuse their content.
• Their code and link. The discount code and tracked link Kite set up for them.
• What the posts did. Views, likes, and comments on each post.
• What they brought in. The orders, signups, or installs tied to their code or link, and the revenue from those orders.
• Cost per result and return. What each order or signup cost you, and what you got back for every dollar you spent.
• Notes. The hook or angle they used, and whether you'd work with them again.

Kite can keep this record as a Google Sheet your team already uses, as a page in your team's knowledge base, or as a small dashboard it builds and publishes for your team. You give Kite the fees and the deals you agreed to, either by pasting them into the conversation or by sharing the contracts, and it fills in the rest as results come in.

Kite records how each creator's posts performed so you can see whether a weak result came from a post nobody saw or from a post that got attention and didn't convert. For public YouTube videos, Kite reads the views, likes, and comments directly. For TikTok, it reads the engagement on public videos in its built-in TikTok research library.

Some numbers only the creator can see, such as how many people tapped the link in an Instagram Story or where their viewers live. Ask creators to send a screenshot of their post insights when the campaign ends. Share the screenshots with Kite in the conversation, and it reads them and adds the numbers to the creator's row.

The influencers driving sales are the ones whose codes and links turn into orders at a cost you'd happily pay again, and Kite counts those orders for you. With Shopify connected, Kite reads your orders and counts how many used each creator's code and how much those orders were worth. With Google Analytics connected, it reads the visits, conversions, and revenue that came through each creator's tracked link. On a site Kite hosts, it reads the same results from its built-in analytics.

Kite then puts cost and results together for every creator. Say you paid five creators for a two-week push. One cost $3,000 and drove 400,000 views but only 30 orders. Another cost $400, got 25,000 views, and drove 40 orders. Measured by views, the first creator won. Measured by what each order cost, the second creator brought in customers for $10 each while the first cost $100 each. Kite makes that comparison for every creator and shows you which ones paid for themselves.

Codes and links never catch every sale. Followers forget the code, share it with friends, or buy days later from a different device. So Kite also compares your total orders and site visits during each creator's posting window with the weeks before. When a creator's code shows 20 orders but your overall orders jumped by 60 the day after their video went live, that creator probably did more than the code alone shows, and Kite says so in the report.

Kite turns the record into a report that tells you what to do next, not just what happened. The report ranks creators by what each result cost, notes which ones returned more than they cost, and recommends who to book again, who to try with a different angle, and who to drop.

You can ask for the report any time, or put it on a schedule, such as every Monday while the campaign runs. If your team uses Slack, the scheduled report arrives in the channel you choose. Otherwise, Kite emails it to you, or you can keep the reports in the Kite web app, where each one appears as its own conversation.

Kite also records what it learned in your team's knowledge base. If the creators who showed the product in a morning routine sold twice as well as the ones who did unboxings, the next set of influencer briefs leads with that angle. If small creators in one niche kept outperforming large general ones, the next creator search looks for more like them.