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 &…
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Olapic
Score 6.0 out of 10
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Olapic is a content marketing tool specifically focused on visual marketing content. It allows a brand to locate, curate and publish user or fan photos into its own marketing material and website, sourcing many sites (e.g. Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc.), and sending select material omni-channel, using it in emails, print, in-store, or elsewhere. Olapic also provides measures for judging how effective your curation and user-generated content were in boosting conversions. Olapic was…
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.
If your brand has a good amount of steady social content, and you like to show it on your site along with shoppable links at the catalog and also at the product level, Olapic is an easy to use utiilty and also allows you to render your Instagram feed shoppable. In our case, we had a very active social presence but did not leverage it directly for the customers to shop from it, so Olapic filled that need.
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
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.
It's a niche solution. If you're looking for niche, it's great. But if you're looking for an enterprise tool connected to many different systems and data solutions, it might not be for you.
The revenue analytics are not very reliable.
Price. This seems like it would be a great solution for medium size businesses, but the price is not feasible for the product.
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
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.
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
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.
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."
We have not used many competitors, but we stick with Olapic because of the capabilities that it offers. We don't use much of the reporting functionality, but it is a great tool to allow for collaboration between team members. It also allows us options when it comes to sharing content on the website, as it has gallary-style plug ins to display UGC.
In general, we are seeing customers react to the content and use the links for shopping on our site. Their analytics is perhaps more optimistic than I believe, but content is king, and customers like to see more images of the product in more sizes and situations
We are starting to make custom brand pages and landing pages for advertising campaigns, and it's always great to add believable UGC to those pages to showcase a brand's style and general feel.
Tracking our social content is a good way to get a more generalized feel of how the brand is tracking, and who is creating content regarding our brand, so that is a beneficial side effect of constantly monitoring our tags.
