Most DTC brands start managing their influencer marketing manually. But, as your brand grows and the number of creator partnerships increases, these manual systems break down. You lose track of what’s performing, payout errors increase, and managing each influencer relationship becomes impossible. 

Leading ecommerce brands use automation to manage their influencer partnerships at scale, requiring less time and manual effort. 

In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how to automate each part of your influencer partnerships and the tools that can help you do it right.

Why should you automate influencer partnerships?

Managing influencer relationships manually is time-consuming and error-prone. Automation streamlines the entire process, from onboarding to payout.

With automation, you can discover influencers quickly, auto-enroll influencers into your program, generate unique tracking links and discount codes, set up tiered commission structures, send timely updates, and send rewards through 700+ payout methods like PayPal, gift cards, or store credit with just one click.

As your program grows, automation ensures you stay efficient, compliant, and ROI-focused.

How to automate different workflows within your influencer partnerships

To automate influencer partnerships for online sales, use influencer marketing platforms that centralize influencer discovery, outreach, and management, simplify onboarding, engagement, and payouts, and allow you to track performance with a powerful analytics dashboard.

Here’s a breakdown of how to automate each part of the process and why it matters:

Influencer discovery

Instead of manually searching social platforms, use creator marketplaces like TikTok Creator Marketplace, Collabstr, and Aspire, which let you filter through thousands of profiles based on your brand’s needs and preferences.

These platforms help you filter by category, audience size, location, and past performance, giving you a vetted shortlist without hours of research.

Outreach

You can’t fully automate outreach, but you can streamline outreach with templates that you can personalize. 

How to automate outreach smartly:

• Use AI tools to draft personalized messages that you can edit.
• Set up automated follow-ups for non-responders after 2-3 days.
• Track replies and trigger different workflows based on creator responses.

This helps you stay consistent with follow-ups and reduce drop-offs, without compromising on personalization.

Onboarding

Once a creator agrees to the partnership, you need to onboard them to your systems. If you’re doing this manually—creating links, sharing briefs, or adding people to a spreadsheet—it’s not scalable.

You can automate the entire onboarding process:

• Set up a branded signup form that automatically collects required details.
• Trigger the generation of a unique tracking link.
• Assign the creator to a pre-set commission tier based on criteria (e.g., channel, audience size).
• Send a welcome email with campaign goals, brand assets, and FAQs.

Platforms like Social Snowball handle this entire flow without manual approvals or follow-ups.

Auto-generate unique tracking links

Every affiliate or influencer needs a unique link or code so their performance can be tracked accurately. Manually creating codes can cause delays, duplication, errors, and opportunities for coupon code misuse. 

An automated single-use unique code created with tools like Safelinks can reduce fraud and attribute sales to the right influencer instantly.

Timely communication

Communication gaps can make it hard to maintain influencer relationships. Automating emails and SMS updates keeps your creators informed without requiring constant manual effort.

Automate messages to your influencer partnerships with tools like Klaviyo or Postscript to send messages based on updates, milestones, and behaviour. 

You can send sign-up confirmation, welcome message with instructions, first sale update, payout confirmation, campaign launch announcement, new tier achievement, product launch alerts, and inactivity reminders.

Content management

Without a system to track and store content, it becomes impossible to know what’s performing and what’s being posted, as well as repurposing them. 

Automate content management by collecting every TikTok and Instagram asset automatically, tagging and organizing content by creator, performance, or campaign. 

Social Snowball’s social listening feature saves all your affiliate content from TikTok Shop and Instagram into a media library, so you can easily review, repurpose, or feature the best content across your brand channels.

You can also track views, engagement, and sales driven from each content asset.

Payouts

Manually processing payouts is time-consuming and risky. It’s easy to miss one of the many payouts or make errors in the amount you send, damaging trust among your influencers.

Automate payouts to eliminate manual calculations and spreadsheets. With payout tools like Trolley or Tremendous integrated into your influencer management platform, you can pay all your creators in just a few clicks, with all commissions calculated automatically. 

These tools let you set payment thresholds (e.g., pay only after $50 earned) and run scheduled payouts weekly or monthly.

Real-time campaign tracking

Without live visibility into how your affiliates are performing, you can’t scale what’s working and fix what isn’t. You get delayed access to insights and miss out on opportunities to drive more sales to your ecommerce store through your influencer partnerships.

With a centralized dashboard for campaign tracking like Social Snowball, you can monitor sales and conversions by each influencer, channel performance (e.g., TikTok vs. Instagram), content engagement metrics, commission earned per campaign, and top-converting creators and offers.

This dashboard also lets you set up filters to segment data by campaign, tier, or creator, flag underperforming creators or content early for follow-up, and reallocate budgets or incentives based on live data. You can also set up weekly performance reports to be sent to your inbox automatically.

Tasks you should not automate when running influencer campaigns

While it can help scale repetitive tasks, not everything can be automated. Some parts of influencer marketing need human judgment, personalization, or legal clarity, and can’t be automated.

Tasks within your influencer partnerships, like outreach, contract creation, social media engagement, and strategy, should be manually handled.

Outreach 

Automated messages are generic, impersonal, and easy to ignore. Influencers can immediately tell when they’ve received a mass message. This reduced trust and your chances of getting a response.

Instead of automating outreach, start with a reusable template to save time, but personalize every message based on the creator’s content, tone, audience, or past brand collaborations. Be clear about why you’re reaching out and what value the partnership offers. Send targeted messages that will increase both your reply rate and your credibility.

Contracts

Influencer agreements are rarely one-size-fits-all. Some creators charge a flat fee, while others work on performance-based models. Some may want exclusivity clauses or specific usage rights. Automating this with static templates increases the risk of miscommunication, incorrect payment terms, and legal disputes.

Here’s what to do instead:

• Use a contract template as a starting point, but customize it every time.
• Clearly outline the deliverables, platform(s), usage rights, deadlines, and payment terms.
• If you're offering commission, specify the rate, payout schedule, and tracking mechanism.

Engaging on social media

Using bots to engage (liking, commenting, or replying) can damage your brand. It signals to creators and their followers that you're not genuinely invested. Besides hampering creator trust, fake engagement tactics can cause your account to be penalized. 

Here’s how to approach social media engagement:

• Engage intentionally and in real time. Like relevant posts, comment with meaningful feedback, and respond to DMs or tags directly.
• If a creator posts about your brand, reshare it with thoughtful context.
• Build real relationships using authentic engagement, which leads to better content and longer-lasting partnerships.

Strategy

Your influencer strategy determines your success. It includes who you partner with, how you structure rewards, which platforms you prioritize, and how you scale what works. Tools can make these decisions for you. While automation can surface data, it can’t interpret context or nuance.

While you can leverage automation to track performance and uncover patterns, rely on your team to analyze the “why” behind the numbers. Review what content is converting, which creators are a brand fit, and where your customer acquisition is strongest.

Best tools for influencer automation

If you're serious about scaling your influencer marketing program, you can’t rely on manual workflows. Tools like Social Snowball, ReferralCandy, Grin, and Traackr enable influencer marketing automation, with each suited for different business needs and preferences. Let’s dive into each in detail.

Social Snowball

Best for: Large to enterprise-sized Shopify brands looking to automate influencer, customer referral, and affiliate programs in one place.

Social Snowball is a word-of-mouth marketing platform that automates every part of your affiliate, referral, and influencer programs, from onboarding to payouts. It’s built specifically for ecommerce brands that use Shopify and is ideal for teams that want to streamline both customer-led referrals and influencer-driven campaigns in one place.

For influencer marketing, Social Snowball provides fully branded sign-up forms, tiered commission programs, automated product gifting, UGC tracking, and real-time attribution reporting. 

Leading brands like Tabs Chocolate switched from manual workflows to Social Snowball and saw a 17% increase in GMV with a 9.8x ROI, plus 10+ hours saved per week.

Pricing starts at $199/month + 3% commission.

Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars on Shopify App Store

Grin

Best for: Mid to large-sized teams managing long-term creator relationships across multiple campaigns.

Grin is a creator management platform designed for brands running end-to-end influencer campaigns. It includes discovery tools, email sequences, product seeding, contract management, and performance tracking. Ideal for brands working with a large roster of influencers.

Pricing is custom. Users need to reach out to get a quote.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars on Shopify App Store

ReferralCandy

Best for: Small or new brands looking for simple, scalable referral automation without needing full influencer campaign features.

ReferralCandy is a referral and affiliate marketing platform focused on driving sales through customer and creator referrals. It’s easy to set up, integrates directly with Shopify, and supports tiered commissions, coupon rewards, and performance tracking.

Pricing starts at $59/month + 3.5% of referral sales.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars on G2

Traackr

Ideal for: Brands who want to run influencer product gifting or seeding at scale.

Traackr is a product seeding automation tool that simplifies how creators receive sample products. You select the items available to each creator, they choose what they want, and Traackr handles fulfillment. 

Pricing is annual, costing $32,500/year.

Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars on G2

Ready to automate your influencer partnerships?

Automating your influencer partnerships means you can scale faster, track performance accurately, and manage everything from onboarding to payouts without drowning in admin work. You eliminate manual errors, reduce time spent on coordination, and gain real visibility into what’s actually driving sales.

Social Snowball gives you a single platform to manage it all. From turning customers into affiliates to gifting influencers, tracking revenue, saving UGC, and sending bulk payouts, you can finally run a performance-based program at scale, without the spreadsheet chaos.

Frequently asked questions

How can I automate my influencer partnerships for online sales?

To automate your influencer partnerships for online sales, start by identifying what parts of the workflow you want to automate. The ideal tool should help you automate these key areas:

• Discovery: Find different types of influencers that fit your needs and preferences.
• Onboarding: Bring influencers onto your program with a few clicks.
• Tracking links: Generate unique tracking links automatically.
• Gifting: Send gifts at scale without any logistical hurdles.
• Performance tracking: Track how each influencer and their content perform across platforms.
• Payouts: Automate payouts and customize them based on reward logic.
• Engagement: Set up triggered emails and SMS to be sent to influencers with updates on sales, payouts, tier upgrades, and milestones.

Once you know what to automate, pick a tool that does it all in one place. Social Snowball is ideal for DTC brands on Shopify. It automates gifting, unique tracking link generation, communication, and payouts. 

Which is the best tool to automate influencer partnerships for online sales?

The best tool to automate influencer partnerships for online sales, especially if you're a DTC brand on Shopify, is Social Snowball. Made for large to enterprise ecommerce brands, the tool lets you onboard affiliates automatically after checkout or through a custom invite. 

Each affiliate gets a unique link, making it easy to track referrals without worrying about code leaks.

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