Influencer marketing for Shopify stores

The parts of a creator deal that touch your shop can all run through Shopify's own tools. The wider workflow, from seeding to paid posts, is on our page for ecommerce brands.

Shopify describes Collabs as a "marketplace-style app" that connects businesses and creators. You can invite creators directly, publish an open access programme that eligible creators join at the commission you set, or take applications through a page on your online store. From the same app you send gifts or codes, track affiliate sales and pay commission. Collabs also keeps its own database of creators, which you can filter by social account and location and sort by audience size (recruiting creators on Collabs).

Collabs suits a standing commission programme with many creators. For a handful of paid or gifted posts, a code and a link per creator do the same measuring job with nothing for the creator to sign up to.

1. 01

   Create one code per creator

   Name it so you'll recognise it in a report, such as the creator's handle plus the discount. Set an end date and a limit on uses, such as one per customer: a code read out in a video travels beyond the creator's audience.

2. 02

   Turn the code into a shareable link

   Open the discount, choose Promote, then the option to get a shareable discount code. Pick where it lands: your home page, a collection or a single product. Shopify says the discount then applies automatically to the customer's cart.

3. 03

   Tag the link for your reports

   Add UTM parameters, and always include utm_campaign: Shopify counts traffic as marketing when the address carries one (how Shopify attributes marketing). Use one pattern for every creator, with the creator in utm_content. See UTM parameters.

4. 04

   Hand over both before the post goes live

   Ask for the link where viewers can tap it, and the code where they can see or hear it, for anyone who finds your shop later without the link.

Collabs gifts

A gift can be a free product, or a percentage or fixed-amount discount code. Free shipping always applies, and once the creator claims the gift, an order appears in your admin for you to fulfil. Gifts can only go to your connections on Collabs.

Draft orders

For anyone not on Collabs, create a draft order to the creator's address and take the price off with a custom discount, as an amount or a percentage of the listed price.

Ask before you send, make clear there's no obligation to post, and put a disclosure request in writing: a gifted post still needs labelling. See disclosing paid posts on Instagram and TikTok.

• Sales by discount codes groups sales by the name of the discount, so each creator's code shows its own orders.
• Sales attributed to marketing counts only sales from traffic attributable to your marketing, including campaigns outside Shopify tagged with UTM parameters.
• The attribution model. Shopify's channel performance reports default to last non-direct click, and also offer first click, last click, any click and linear. Use the same one for every creator.

An order that used a creator's code and arrived through their link appears in both reports, so count it once. Say a creator cost a fee of 400 plus 60 in product and postage. Their code is on 23 orders, their link brought 9, and 4 did both: 28 orders, or about 16.40 each. Set that against what an order is worth to you.

Nakodo finds the creators, on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. It reads your shop's homepage and up to 5 key pages, then writes a brief you can edit: what you sell, your markets, the kind of creator and a follower range, and 3 to 6 groups of search keywords. Each creator gets a score from 0 to 100 with written reasons. The method is on how it works.

By default it emails the best-scored fits that publish an email, strongest first, with your shop's name as the sender. You approve each first email, unless you let them go out after a 60-minute window in which you can still edit or stop them. It follows up, and when a creator says yes, introduces you in the same thread with you in Cc. That's when you create their code and link.

• Nakodo has no Shopify integration. It doesn't read your orders or reports, and doesn't create codes, links, gifts or commissions.
• It never shows, sells or exports creators' email addresses. You get a creator's address through the introduction.
• The Free plan searches Instagram and TikTok; YouTube is on the paid plans. See pricing.