Aspire.io (formerly AspireIQ) is an influencer marketing platform empowering ecommerce brands to build and cultivate influential communities of influencers, ambassadors, affiliates, and customers. Brands using Aspire can discover authentic partners, streamline relationships, scale their programs, and measure business impact.
N/A
Mention
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
Mention is a social media monitoring tool. Users can create alerts for their company name, product or competitors. The vendor aims to help companies get updated in real-time by tracking the most relevant mentions over the web and social web. The vendor’s value proposition is that Mention enables companies to react, get statistics, and collaborate with their team, all on the go! According to the vendor, over 650,000 companies use Mention.
I used Aspire to find influencers for my fashion business and most of the influencers who signed up for my project were unreliable and did not fulfill their contract terms. For example, of 5 influencers I sent products to, only one completed the work that was agreed upon under the Terms. The others received a $195 product and disappeared, even though we signed a contract called Terms that is monitored by Aspire. The main downfall with Aspire is that it doesn't have a system in place to control this. For instance, they don't have a way for brands to leave a review for influencers and they don't block bad influencers (many just want free product) from applying for future projects. Aspire doesn't take responsibility for anything. What is the point of paying money to Aspire if they don't vet their influencers and control the quality of influencers who use their platform?
I would ask if they have ever used a software like Mention before, if not, I would totally suggest they start with it. It's easy to use, easy to set up and while it may be confusing at first, it's probably the cheapest and most effective. My suggestion to a new marketer or first-time user of this kind of software would be Mention.
Yes, I just said it is clean and easy to use, but there is always room for improvement in even the most perfect software. I would personally love to see the ability to custom message options a bit more or just customize the look and feel of your dashboard.
Bugs. Mention works great 95% of the time. The other 5%, you may run into major crashes or see mentions that you cleared coming back, etc., but nothing that is a deal breaker or unexpected with a tool like this. Worth noting nonetheless!
Better plans. This is a small issue, but I wish the lower plans has some basic reporting.
Mention works quickly and its user interface is easy to use. Alerts update regularly and I've never noticed any lag. It integrates with our CRM via Zapier, but this is not something which we use yet. The only thing I would say is that it takes time for Mention to reach its full potential. It only starts to rank influences from when you set up the alert, so it can take a few weeks to build a map of your influencers.
Mention always responded promptly and gave excellent support. Any problem we had with the software, from login trouble to broken features were addressed quickly. There was once a problem with our quota, where we were unable to see results we should have been able to see. We sent an email, and within an hour, the situation was resolved!
Currently, there are no other tools available with the features that Mention has possible according to our knowledge and experience. We firmly believe that Mention has placed themselves in a category all of their own. In the ten years, our company has been around. We have yet to come across any other companies like Mention. Pretty sure there may be another company or competition. None like Mention in our opinion are available, however.
While our account is "small" we believe investing in influencers has broadened our brand and gotten in front of people we didn't have the capability of
Mention has had a positive impact on my business because it gives people the impression that I was following them, even if I might not have been. It makes me appear active on all social media platforms, even if I ONLY look at my mentions each day!
Because I have only used the free plan but have benefitted greatly, I would say that my ROI is fantastic!
The only negative impact that Mention has is that I do get a daily email in my inbox, and it is one more thing to check. However, it is worth the time.
