Crayon headquartered in Boston offers the Crayon Intel Pro marketing intelligence suite, including competitive intel and analysis, market and product trends, and search tools (e.g. filters and views) for making data intelligible.
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GRIN
Score6.3 out of 10
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GRIN is a creator management software platform that offers a creator search of over 38 million influencers that is not an opt-in influencer network. GRIN states they believe that the connection between brand and creator should not have a middle-man, and therefore we take no commission. GRIN creator management platform helps brands to connect directly with creator prospects and manage creator relationships to scale. The eCommerce integration aims to make product seeding, discount codes &…
Elsewhere in my review, I've talked about Crayon's incredible capabilities to track competitors, make ingesting intelligence about those competitors automatic, and how easily it incorporates that intelligence into dynamically and automatically-updated battlecards. I've also talked about their expanding use of AI to improve user experience and to improve the final work of CI professionals. All of which is to say that Crayon is the best tool I've ever used for intelligence analysis- it's incredible. Another area of consideration is analytics, particularly around win/loss data - Crayon's integration with Salesforce creates insightful analytics for understanding which competitors you're winning against, which you're losing against, which sellers are having a hard time, which are succeeding, and which sellers are utilizing the battlecards during the sales cycle. Proving ROI is simple with Crayon's analytics, as well, with a tool to show how much revenue you (as an individual) or your team have influenced with your battlecards.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
GRIN is well suited for companies that are seeking an all-in-one solution for influencer program management and place a high value in repurposing UGC for marketing purposes. I would also say that GRIN makes sense for those who are aggressively scaling their influencer program and are planning on having at least 100-150 creators in the program. GRIN would be less appropriate for companies who may not have a large influencer program and are merely seeking to track affiliate link/coupon code performance.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
streamlines resources (creator search, emails, Shopify orders, payments, etc) all on one platform
The amount of customization and overall tools - sometimes this feels overwhelming but I'm grateful they are there to build on as I grow my experience with the platform
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Crayon has been innovative in incorporating AI into the tool, both to enhance productivity and to enhance the outcomes of analysis. The fantastic thing is these features started rudimentary, have gotten better, and are set to get better still - I could recommend this to Crayon as an area for improvement (I suppose), but they're already working to take advantage of the latest AI features to make the user experience and our outputs even better.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Creator search tool - doesn't bring up viable creator options, which means we do primarily off-platform seeding.
The landing page is clunky and not functional for reviewing creators - it adds a lot of time to my team's day looking through the creators with the way it's set up.
Email templates have funny formatting, and the typeface always seems to get messed up.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I wouldn't be able to run as high of a profitable or functioning influencer program without it. GRIN seriously is the organizational tool that propels us towards success, it is not in any way going to do the work for you, but it does make the work more efficient, easier, and WAY more organized
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Crayon is super easy to use - regardless of level in the organization. As a power user, it's easy to curate the most important information about competitors and then distribute it out to leadership and other teams so that they can stay informed on the most important competitor trends. It allows me to share out information via email or through Slack and our competitive intel channel
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The user interface of the platform is very well designed and extremely intuitive. You almost don't need an onboarding process because the workflow is so straightforward. The only item I would mention as a downside is the reporting. In order to get comprehensive reports, you need to go into each individual campaign. There is no aggregated report with all conversions.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We have our own support rep who helped get us set up, and as odd one off questions have come up has continued to support us. The rep is super knowledgeably and has also helped with some creative ways to get what we need. They are also always super fast to help when anything comes up
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I don't have any key insights here. If you have someone organized and aware of how the influencer workflow operates then it will be a very easy implementation process for you. I would just ensure you have all of your products setup in Shopify before starting the implementation with Grin.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The core features of all of these are essentially the same. Crayon Impact (the win/loss side) is what won us over compared to the other tools that we demoed.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I was looking around at Dovetale, which connected with Shopify, and although it may be an easy connection because it's within the Shopify website, it isn't as user-friendly. It also doesn't offer the same hands-on experience from the GRIN team, 24/7 customer support, or bi-weekly calls with your direct contact. It just doesn't feel like it's worth it to me for the "convenience."
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Crayon has centralized what was previously a dispersed collection of competitive intelligence analysis, streamlined sharing of competitive insights, and allowed the CI Team unprecedented visibility into our impact on the business. This helps our business by: making sharing of analysis more efficient and creating a self-serve mechanism among our stakeholders, reducing the number of bespoke requests we receive; fostering competitive discussions among the wider workforce, which pulls in multiple perspective to ultimately shape and improve the quality of finished analysis; clarifying the impact of the CI Team's role on the business, which makes discussions around ROI with leadership much easier now that they're backed by hard numbers rather than a reliance on anecdotal evidence.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
