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GRIN

GRIN

Overview

What is GRIN?

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,…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

GRIN has revolutionized the way users manage their influencer programs, offering a comprehensive solution for tracking and optimizing …
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GRIN deceived us

1 out of 10
August 25, 2023
In my experience, GRIN used to be a great platform, with good customer service. Now they have no first-party data, no ability to deliver …
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Grin product review.

8 out of 10
December 18, 2022
Incentivized
We use Grin to manage our influencer relationships. We also use it as a vetting tool for influencers who reach out to us. It is very …
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GRIN for the win!

10 out of 10
September 13, 2022
Incentivized
We use GRIN to meet creators in our industry and manage our partnerships. We have found many new partners through Grin's thorough search …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is GRIN?

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…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

What is GRIN?

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 & affiliate links a breeze. GRIN provides a comprehensive reporting dashboard, a custom report builder and gives detailed analytics on the user's creator programs from the campaign level down to the individual creator level. DTC brands can use GRIN as a creator management platform to support rapid growth & scale.

GRIN Features

  • Supported: Discovery & Recruitment
  • Supported: Relationship Management
  • Supported: Communication
  • Supported: Activations
  • Supported: Product Seeding
  • Supported: Content Tracking
  • Supported: Payments
  • Supported: Analytics
  • Supported: Ecommerce Integrations

GRIN Screenshots

Screenshot of Search 36M+ CreatorsScreenshot of Identify Influential CustomersScreenshot of Activate Unlimited CampaignsScreenshot of Track Creator ContentScreenshot of Send Email Templates + SequencesScreenshot of Report on PerformanceScreenshot of Track Order Fulfillment

GRIN Videos

Influencer Marketing Software Comparison (GRIN, Meltwater, Dovetale)
How the GRIN platform works.
How ABLE uses GRIN to manage product seeding (gifting) campaigns.

GRIN Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

Upfluence, Aspire.io, and Impact are common alternatives for GRIN.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.4.

The most common users of GRIN are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(95)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

GRIN has revolutionized the way users manage their influencer programs, offering a comprehensive solution for tracking and optimizing influencer partnerships. Users have successfully utilized GRIN to streamline all aspects of their influencer marketing efforts, from tracking product stipends and revenue to analyzing key performance indicators related to influencer campaigns. With GRIN, users have been able to establish partnerships with a large number of influencers and track the return on investment of these collaborations individually and as a whole. This has proven especially beneficial during major events like Black Friday sales, where GRIN enables users to organize campaigns and leverage partnerships effectively, resulting in maximum ROI. Additionally, GRIN simplifies the process of reaching out to both new and existing influencers, eliminating the need for influencers to create an account or sign in. Users have also appreciated the prompt and supportive customer support provided by their dedicated support representative. By replacing multiple tools and manual processes like spreadsheets, Shopify, Gmail, and PayPal with a single software platform, GRIN saves users valuable time. It facilitates easy organization of creator lists based on performance across different social media platforms, simplifying the management of influencer campaigns. Furthermore, GRIN supports influencer marketing at scale by providing features such as creator categorization, influencer gifting, campaign organization, content collection, budget management, payment tracking, and reporting. Although users have found the search feature in GRIN less accurate for finding new creators, they consider it a valuable platform for managing influencer programs and achieving growth for their businesses.

Users commonly recommend the following improvements and strategies for using GRIN for influencer marketing:

  • Upgrade and modernize the interface to enhance user experience.
  • Allocate dedicated resources by dedicating a good percentage of work hours to using GRIN and having a dedicated person on the team to monitor and work with the platform.
  • Seek support and training by arranging training sessions and follow-up calls with the GRIN agent for assistance. Users also find value in the support provided by GRIN's team, recommending users to ask lots of questions and take advantage of their expertise.

These recommendations highlight the importance of upgrading the interface, allocating resources, and seeking support and training for successful influencer marketing management with GRIN.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use GRIN to manage all aspects of our influencer program; this includes tracking product stipends, revenue, and other KPI's related to influencer marketing. Additionally, the program captures UGC from our creators, which we can repurpose for marketing efforts.
  • Identifying and onboarding new influencers
  • CRM - managing influencer relationships
  • Reporting performance of creator programs
  • Seamless integration with Shopify
  • Additional performance metrics (deeper click data, new customer data, etc)
  • Address potential attribution loss through common post-purchase upsell programs
  • Enhanced reporting available without additional cost
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.
  • Time saved with templated communication options.
  • Revenue growth/new customer acquisition.
  • Ease of understanding total costs associated with a campaign.
We have used both Everflow and ShareASale to manage influencer partnerships.

ShareASale:
  • Has a clunky interface/isn't user friendly.
  • Communicating with partners is more challenging.
  • ShareASale takes a % commission off of every attributed order.
  • Does not offer any content tracking/UGC capture.
Everflow:
  • Is not a user-friendly platform/requires much more technical know-how.
  • Offers robust reporting and ability to customize payouts.
  • We have experienced some attribution loss issues with the platform.
  • Does not offer UGC/content capture.
1
Partnerships:
  1. Influencer marketing
  2. Affiliate marketing
  3. Key partnerships
1
Partnerships manager- I handle everything.
  • Influencer marketing management
  • UGC content capture
  • Partnerships reporting metrics
  • Track all types of affiliate performance
  • Create custom landing pages for influencer applications
  • Deeply research potential influencers
  • Incorporate more harvested UGC into our marketing strategy
  • Platform dedicated campaigns
  • Ambassador (gifting) campaigns
The GRIN platform has been easy to use (both for brands and creators) and their customer service is excellent.
Yes
ShareASale and Everflow. GRIN is much more user-friendly and offers substantially more features than both of these platforms.
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
Usability was our most important factor, considering how our previous affiliate management platforms were not user-friendly.
There aren't any changes that immediately come to mind.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
  • Some tools were not available initially in relation to the creator search tools.
It was quite easy to get set up and integrated with Shopify, Gmail, etc.
Every time I've reached out to support, I've received a response the same day. The team has also been willing to hop on calls to cover everything from technical details to influencer marketing strategy.
Nope - the level of support provided with our contract did not warrant the need to pay for premium support.
Yes
Yep!
We dealt with a challenge related to attribution loss; the IT Team discovered the root cause and offered solutions to eliminate the issue. Their support team was very communicative (and friendly) and worked hard to reach a resolution.
The platform is substantially easier to use than any of the previous influencer/affiliate marketing platforms than we previously used.
  • Setup/integration
  • Influencer management (revenue, product stipends, payouts)
  • Communication (and email sequences)
  • Creator research
  • Robust click data (affiliate links)
November 29, 2022

GRINNING IS WINNING

Olivia Schappert | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use GRIN to host and support our influencer marketing program as well as our ambassador program. It is used to manage recruitment, applications, payments, emails/contact, content management, order generation, discount codes, etc! GRIN takes a process that use to involve Shopify, a scary spreadsheet, Gmail, PayPal, and a lot of man-hours, and puts it into one beautiful software that takes us a fraction of the time to use!
  • Influencer Recruitment.
  • Content management.
  • Influencer payments.
  • Influencer outreach/communication.
  • Adding more integrations (I know this is in process though).
We had a mess of a program prior to onboarding GRIN! Since bringing it into our company we have seen a huge increase in brand ambassadors, a huge increase in ROI, as well as a HUGE increase in the work that is able to be done in the same 9-5 workweek. GRIN manages everything from start to finish with a campaign it truly is the Ferrari of influencer software and has taken our program to new heights. If you have an ambassador/affiliate program that you are having trouble managing, are at a plateau with, or are looking to revolutionize your processes and results GRIN is for you. If you are looking to start an ambassador/affiliate/influencer program, let GRIN take you there. This is the only software you will ever need, and it truly takes care of business!
  • Increased ROI.
  • Increased productivity.
  • Increased content value.
  • Increased relationship with creators.
  • Major program growth.
We looked at:
FOHR as well as many other small and new platforms and GRIN by far was more advanced, user friendly, and easier to implement. GRIN was not just good for the short term, but I know will continue to support me and my team for the duration of our program.
2
Influencer/ambassador marketing strategy, execution, and literally every single piece of our influencer/ambassador marketing discipline.
2
Organizational skills, people skills (talking to influencers etc), and drive (the user has to be motivated to find influencers, etc).
  • Influencer Recruitment
  • Influencer Management (emails etc)
  • Tracking revenue, conversions, etc.
  • To support specific product launches with ambassadors (changing link destinations etc)
  • Increased tracking with GA
  • Truly building and maintaining detailed relationships with ambassadors via custom fields.
  • To continue to support product launches
  • To find contact information for larger influencers
  • To support all of our sales/promos.
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.
Yes
We previously had an inexpensive app that integrated with Shopify. Overall it was very basic and didn't fit our needs, the only thing it took care of was tracking conversions and creating discount codes. We needed to replace the app because it was leaving a lot of meat on the bone so to speak, we could never scale (or manage it if we did) without more features.
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
Product features was the most important factor in our decision to move to GRIN. We needed the ability to manage every aspect of both our ambassador program and our influencer campaigns in one place. GRIN is also the leader in the industry so I felt confident that as our needs grew so would GRIN's technologies and that has proven to be true time and time again.
If I had to do it again, I wouldn't change a single thing. Frequently competitors of GRIN reach out to me and my team to attempt to poach us from GRIN to their product. I feel so confident in my decision to use GRIN that I refuse to entertain any other software.
Rachel Eddington | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used GRIN to start and scale our Influencer marketing program. It is mainly used in the marketing team but occasionally has been used in our wholesale department. GRIN has been instrumental in helping set up partnerships with a large number of influencers and track the ROI of those partnerships, individually and as a whole. While we mostly use it for affiliate partnerships it has also been key in allowing us to assess the value of working in paid partnerships with large influencers. Having campaigns to support big events such as our Black Friday Sale and half-yearly sale is an absolute game-changer. The ability to easily sort influencers into campaigns, has allowed us to leverage partnerships to get the highest ROI possible. Reach out to new and existing influencers is seamless and easy for us and them. I love that influencers don't have to create an account and sign in as that can be a stumbling block to activating influencers. Our individual support rep is AMAZING! If any questions ever come up she is quick to get them answered and supportive of our program in total. Any questions or issues that come up are taken care of quickly and usually a user error by myself.
  • Scale our influencer program to increase revenue for our company.
  • Track the progress and ROI of our influencer program.
  • Set up big campaigns for large events.
  • Send out product to influencers.
  • Asses value of each influencer.
  • Track payments
  • We've seen the TikTok creator improve since using it, but would like to see more through the search.
GRIN has been amazing in starting our Influencer program. I've worked in influencer marketing for 8 years, and it would also be amazing for people who have established programs but want an easier way to run them (reach out, tracking, payment). It makes everything easier and more streamlined. I forgot about payments in my previous section, but it makes being able to pay a large number of influencers so much easier and collects all the right documentation. Doing large campaigns with BIG revenue goals was awesome! We've worked with people all year, and we're able to reach out to them and get them signed up to promote again for Black Friday. GRIN has also been great for one-off marketing needs. For example, we need 10 videos for ads. We can reach out to a bunch of people and set up the partnership really easily.
  • In our first month using GRIN, we were able to bring in 10K in revenue and have been able to almost 10x that number in monthly revenue after 7 months of using GRIN.
  • We use creators to generate almost all our advertising content, video, and photography, this has saved us a ton of time and money on shoots and given us a huge range of content.
  • The reporting is so easy to use, and track the direction and value of the program for our company.
GRIN was the best fit for our company. We felt like the ability to identify influencers that were best fit for our company was best through GRIN, so we felt like we could best scale with GRIN. Campaign set up and tracking was most easily done. And as far as price goes is very competitive.
1
I'm the main Grin user, and act as the influencer and affiliate marketing manager.
1
Grin takes some getting used to, but outside of communication skills and organization skills anyone can use it.
  • Scaling influencer program
  • Demonstrating ROI
  • Content organization
  • Syncing with Lumanu to boost sponsored ads
  • We may eventually move to a multi user system to continue to grow our program
We have actually just re-upped our agreement this year, and added another 100 influencer spaces to the program as we grow.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
The two go together, but we needed to be able to find the right influencers for our brand to work with, and organize them in to campaigns that were easily trackable, since we are a small company, we also needed to be able to do it for a reasonable price
We are extremely happy with how everything went!
  • Implemented in-house
  • I wasn't there for this part of the set up
Although I wasn't there for the initial set up, it worked GREAT!
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.
No, I wasn't involved in that decision making process, and I don't even know what it is, but the support we get is great!
No
I recently noticed an influencer hadn't been paid, and couldn't figure out why. I emailed my support person (Claire is the BEST!) and she was able to show me that I hadn't actually added the influencer into a campaign, then got them added so we could get them paid out.
Once you have used Grin for a while it is super fast and super easy. The initial set up was a little clunky for me, but after I was familiar it was super easy to use, especially after I was more familiar with all the features.
  • Finding influencers, influencer search, social listening, audience look alikes so much
  • campaign creation and execution
  • sending out orders
  • making payments
  • finding tik tok influencers
  • reporting across multiple campaigns
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use GRIN to source, contact, negotiate, and execute our influencer marketing efforts. GRIN makes these processes infinitely easier by providing a clear path for campaign completion. The best part of GRIN, though, is their support team. They're super quick at responding and really try to answer every question you may have, even if it's stupid... which I have asked plenty, haha.
  • Customer Support Services/Helpdesk
  • Sourcing Influencers
  • Data Organization
  • Email functionality - no terrible, but not great
  • Connecting my business/personal socials to the platform to directly contact influencers without an email associated with their account. (Enable Direct Messaging within Grin)
GRIN provides a platform that's helpful to learn on and easily teachable to new employees. It's comparable to other influencer marketing platforms or CRM systems I've used in the past, but their support services are top-notch and are very familiar with the product.
  • Increased visibility from influencers tagging our socials and/or talking about our products
  • Month over month increases in revenue demonstrates a growing program
  • Time saved sourcing influencers
I've used custom platforms and demoed Strawberry Socials. The custom platforms aren't relevant to compare because they were only partially made for influencer marketing, but I found Strawberry Socials to be fairly comparable, but the sales and integration team sold me on Grin.
1
I use Grin for influencer marketing. This includes sourcing, contacting, negotiating, and executing campaigns with influencers.
1
Grin requires a base level of technical abilities. If you can w rite an email, you can use Grin. That's why the program is so great.
  • Influencer Sourcing
  • Influencer Contact/Negotation
  • Campaign Execution
  • Content Capture
  • Agreement/Contract Distribution
  • Discovery of micro-influencers/people with ancillary automotive interests to advertise to
  • Mass data collection of non-influencers
Everything about Grin has been easy. I've been satisfied with every aspect of Grin, including the product integration, influencer campaign creation, and helpdesk support.
Yes
The technical answer to this is, yes and no. I've demoed Strawberry Socials in the past, but it has been years, so I don't know how that product would stack up against the current Grin, however, I'm loving my decision to go with Grin and can't imagine enough of a benefit to switch.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
The price seemed inline with other products, so that was good to see. The product features had everything I would need plus, when speaking with the integration team, spoke with several upcoming features that would continue to improve the product. The usability seemed great during the demo, so I had to go with Grin!
I wouldn't. The sales team did a fantastic job and the integration team really helped make this super simple to get started.
March 18, 2022

Go with GRIN

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a very lean team, so operational efficiencies are very important to us. We use GRIN to streamline the communication and workflow for our influencer program. We previously utilized spreadsheets, manual code creation, and Gmail for our influencer reach out and tracking. By adopting GRIN as our provider, it has allowed us to dramatically scale the program in a sustainable way.
  • Influencer Discovery / Audience Validation
  • Code Creation Process / Product Selection
  • Reporting
  • Gated Reporting is frustrating
  • Additional users
  • Additional influencer slots
If you are using less than 50 influencers per month or have multiple team members on the influencer team, I believe a spreadsheet could be sufficient. Anything above that, or if you have aggressive influencer goals, I recommend using Grin. It will both save you time and increase your revenue output.
  • GRIN allowed us to go from $20k/mo to over $125k/mo with the same internal personnel
  • GRIN has reduced the time spent per influencer by 1 hour
  • GRIN has allowed us to do channel expansion into Tik Tok and Youtube
We chose GRIN because it is the most encompassing tool that we explored. We used other tools that each provided individual value, but having it all under one roof has been extremely helpful. We don't have to do multiple searches, multiple report exports, multiple spreadsheets, and more. It has provided us with a comprehensive view of our efforts.
3
The Director of Ecommerce goes into Grin to review the dashboard and also export campaign reports into a spreadsheet. The Influencer Marketing Manager is the main user and is in the platform constantly for discover, reach out, payments, reporting, etc. We then also have a marketing intern that assists with discovery and audience analysis.
3
The Director of Ecommerce goes into Grin to review the dashboard and also export campaign reports into a spreadsheet. The Influencer Marketing Manager is the main user and is in the platform constantly for discover, reach out, payments, reporting, etc. We then also have a marketing intern that assists with discovery and audience analysis.

Grin is very straightforward, so the skills required would be project management, organization, and data analysis.
  • Generating Conversions
  • Brand Awareness
  • UGC
  • We use Grin in partnership with Lumanu to generate UGC and gain whitelisting access
  • We have utilized partnerships through Grin to produce content articles for SEO purposes
  • We have used Grin for specific Youtube burst campaigns
  • We are looking forward to doing more Tik Tok campaigns
  • We are considering investing into more reporting abilities
We are very happy with the results Grin has been able to get us and the amount of time that has been saved. I removed 3 points because I feel frustrated when there are many basic features that are gated by additional fees. For example, reporting, multiple users, number of influencer slots, etc.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
The most important factor was whether Grin could be a viable option in place of hiring 1-2 more people to help scale the influencer program. It allowed us to keep a lean team while significantly growing the number of people we are partnering with as well as the volume of attributed sales.
I don't appreciate the "nickel and dime" pricing from Grin. Grin has aggregated the key features we were looking for, but I would consider using 2-3 other platforms together if they were more robust and the combined cost was comparable to what we are currently paying. Accessible reporting is what is missing.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
I'm not sure I understand this question, but there was little to no friction in the adoption of Grin into our organization. The transition was from solely using spreadsheets, so it was an immediate upgrade. We had our spreadsheet database of people we were working with but it was easy to add them into the Grin environment.
  • Product setup
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.
We have been happy with the support that has been provided from Grin. They have allocated to us a dedicated customer success manager and we communicate with them consistently about different features and strategies we should be monitoring and testing. We also did a webinar in partnership with them as a visual testimonial they could use to show to prospective customers.
I am unfamiliar with premium support, so I don't believe we purchased that option. That being said, I do feel like we get "premium support" as we always get our questions answered in a timely manner. We have overall been happy with the communication with Grin and the service they have provided.
No
There was a time we asked our customer support representative what some strategies that other brands were utilizing to produce results. She could have easily dismissed our question but she took the time to review other accounts and come back to us with actionable insights that we then considered to apply into our own strategy.
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.
  • Influencer Discovery
  • Audience Analysis
  • Campaign Segmentation
  • Reporting
  • Adding new products into Grin
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