Christopher Henley is the UK & Europe Sales and Relationship Manager at Kitly & Kitly Business. Kitly is a product of the tech company Q83 Technology. Christopher helps drive awareness of Kitly and Kitly Business among creators, social publishers, talent management firms, agencies and brands. Before Kitly, he worked at multiple organizations including the Influencer Marketing Show and the Prysm Group. Christopher has a bachelor of arts degree in hospitality management from Cardiff University. He lives in Bristol, UK.

Christopher worked in events management before he joined Q83 Technologies mid-2020. Q83 is the developer of Kitly and Kitly Business.

What is Kitly and Kitly Business

“Kitly is an app and also a desktop URL for creators to professionalize their content and their work. And Kitly Business is for brands, agencies, talent management firms to run collaborations, to manage their talent, to save a lot of time and to run index reports as well.”

Q83 intentionally worked with creators in the design, setup, marketing and implementation of the Kitly mobile and desktop app to ensure the platform is based on what they want, like and need, Christopher says. 

“We’ve designed a tool where they can look at all their posts and story content, can do reports quickly, can do invoices and see how much money is coming in and when it’s due. That’s all live data in the app. Creators can see their best performing content and, if there’s a pattern, understand what they need to do in order to keep hitting those higher numbers. On the desktop version, we’ve done a range of webinars to help creators. Webinars by actual creators that have actually been there, done it and use our product. So it’s really authentic. They haven’t been paid. They love it. They use it. It’s helped them. The training, support and assistance. Also, we’re active on socials, get back to emails and are really engaged with creators. Creators come first. Not the brands nor the agencies.”

Kitly Business is designed to eliminate the traditional use of screenshots by brands and agencies in managing and tracking the creators they work with.

“Screenshots take time. Everything takes time in this. Capturing data. And the campaign management takes time. Whereas within the Kitly platform, you can set up a campaign, send deliverables and set up a report in under five minutes.”

Creators, agencies and brands who use Kitly and Kitly Business for a few reports or collaborations do not have to pay for it.

“With Kitly, if creating and sending out a lot of reports, then there are price tiers. But if somebody wants to come on the platform and just send out a few reports and do a few campaigns, there’s no payment. And that’s the same with Kitly Business. Anybody can sign up and run five reports on five talents and five collabs. So we’re not one of those platforms that says to access ‘no pricing’, you need to have a demo. Use it. Play around with it. See what it’s like.” 

Brands and agencies that try Kitly Business are often impressed with the results, he says.

“You’re like, ‘How did I survive without this? I’ve got data really quick, can send these reports really quickly and can manage campaigns. If a creator has forgotten to send me data which they’ve done in the past (which happens all the time if you’re not using this platform), I don’t need to worry. It’s all stored in the platform. I can look at stories from two years ago. I can view, play and download it’.”

Christopher believes Kitly stands out from competing platforms which simply scrape influencer information from social media platforms.

“Certain platforms boast about having a million or a billion creators. Big numbers which mean absolutely nothing. The problem is when you find a creator you like, how do you contact them? They’re not engaged. They’re not actually on the platform. They don’t know you. And that’s a big issue. With Kitly, people have to sign up. There’s no scraping. They’re engaged because the majority of creators using Kitly, use it because they like it and know it helps them. So to find and talk to a creator on the Kitly platform is a lot easier because these people are engaged.“

Collaborating with Travel Blogger Kelsey 

Q83 has collaborated with Kelsey, a UK-based travel blogger, in a campaign that looks to not only demonstrate the capabilities and successes of the Kitly platform but also identify opportunities for improvement.

“She used our service. So we reached out to her because we loved her content. She’s got a big Facebook group for creators that she trains and develops. It’s a win-win. We’ve got her on board to get insights into the product. What did she like? What did she dislike? What could be better? And obviously to share that with her Facebook group of thousands of followers to get feedback. Whether it’s security, privacy, signing up, their stats. It’s a long term campaign because she’s always talking about us.”

Q83 worked with Kelsey to understand what she and her audience of creators wanted out of Kitly. Nevertheless, she retains substantial creative freedom on the Kitly content she shares.

“We got her involved. We sort of said to her, ‘You use it. What are your thoughts? What do you like and would you like to improve? Do you have a lot of people in your group that are struggling with envelopes, data, stats, time management? Creators in your group that could be helped by this service, why haven’t they signed up? What are their worries and queries?’ She gave us this feedback. But from a content point of view, we left it completely up to her. Before it went live, she shared it with us. And I can’t remember the times we had to change anything. I think it was only once or twice out of a 12-month campaign.”

The main measure of the Kelsey collaboration’s success is Kitly signups.

“We can see the uplift in metrics such as saves, likes, engagement. We saw the uplift in followers on social media as well. But we are a business. So we want sign-ups. Kelsey’s on the Kitly platform so we were able to see the content going live, people using a referral link, swipe up. We’re able to see those link clicks, people join the platform and use Kelsey as the refer.” 

While Kitly has API access for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and soon Tik Tok, the collaboration with Kelsey was focused on Facebook and Instagram as those are the channels she has a large following on.

“Yes, she has a YouTube channel. Yes, she has Tik Tok. But for her, Facebook and Instagram are the channels she’s built up over the years and worked well.”

Industry Predictions

He has two predictions on trends he sees changing the world of influencer marketing in future. First, the rise of live shopping.

“Live shopping is going to be a really big thing for a number of reasons. It needs to be easy though. Nobody wants live shopping where you click on an item you love, go to the website, then you have to do X, Y, and Z. It should be I click on an item I like, choose a size and buy it. Make it as streamlined as feasibly possible. So live shopping and live shopping live streams is only going to grow further.” 

Second, greater process control by creators. 

“Creators will have more control. I don’t just mean from a point of view of ‘This is what I want to do’, ‘This is the content I think will work’, ‘This is how it should be’ and ‘I don’t want to do that’. I think they will be involved in the thought process. So they’ll be approached like ‘We’ve got this brand we want to market. Do you like the brand? Do you like the product? Can you try it? Can you give us feedback? So it’s the whole strategy. Long-term partnerships will develop into real brand ambassadors. Also, I think more and more creators are becoming more professional and are in groups discussing bad practices, good practices, bad agencies etc. And that’s like wildfire that will go around.”

Future Plans

Q83 has multiple plans for Kitly and Kitly Business, Christopher says.

“First, Kitly is implementing a report builder. So if people are using Snapchat, Pinterest, bloggers, various other platforms, they can add all that into the Kitly platform. That just makes that process a lot easier. 

Second, we could do a lot more educational things with partners to help creators. 

Third, with COVID-19 restrictions easing in the UK, we’re going to be doing a lot more face-to-face catch ups. And that’s what this business is all about: human interaction, human feeling. So meeting up with people is really very important. 

Fourth, continuously develop both Kitly and Kitly Business platforms. Literally every week, there’s little tweaks, little changes, new additions. 

Fifth, we’re going to have a competitive special pricing for startups which is USD 99 a month including tax. And we give them a lot of support there as well. There’s a lot of startups here in Europe and the UK that would love Kitly Business. It saves them time and money. The platform can help them make sales as well. But such platforms can be expensive for startups.”

Sixth, more Kelsey-like collaboration. The company is already working on a similar partnership.

“It hasn’t been signed off but she’s a really nice young lady called Melissa. She has a group of creators and she too is on the Kitly platform. She’s all about home improvement and interior design. So very different needs because Kelsey is very much into fashion, lifestyle and travel. Melissa is very much UK-specific. Even though Kelsey is UK-based, she has a more international audience. Melissa’s significantly smaller in follower size on her social accounts and the groups she manages. Overall though, it doesn’t matter what niche you’re in because it’s all about the app.”