Founded in 2021, Superfiliate offers software designed to streamline and consolidate influencer and ambassador marketing efforts for ecommerce brands.

Co-founder Andy Cloyd started the company in the wake of iOS14 and challenging increases in CAC in traditional paid acquisition channels. . Their core product enables influencer marketing managers to create conversion-optimized, co-branded landing pages for all of their influencer partners along with more traditional features such as gifting and seeding, communication, and payments.

When Andy Cloyd moved to Venice, California to be the “random fourth roommate” in a house with three entrepreneurial friends two and a half years ago, he and his co-founder, Anders Bill,  became inspired to start Superfiliate after seeing many brands in their network struggle to activate more sustainable “word of mouth” channels beyond traditional paid channels like Meta and Google. 

They defined “word of mouth marketing,” as channels such as “refer a friend, friends telling friends about brands, ambassadors — people who are really engaged with a brand and want to tell their brand story, and traditional influencers and affiliates” The vision was to create software to help brands transform these channels into ROI positive alternatives to paid acquisition and to streamline management of these influencer relationships, providing features like “CRM and management to product seeding to social listening.”

However, the key differentiation they saw was creating “co-branded landing pages that were optimized to drive whatever outcome a brand wanted as a result of that partnership.” Instead of just sending influencers generic tracking links, Cloyd saw brands like Athletic Greens creating customized landing pages for partners like podcaster Andrew Huberman. “We started talking to marketers asking, have you ever done this? Had we thought about doing that? Why haven’t you done this?”

The answer was that most marketers knew custom landing pages converted better but lacked the engineering bandwidth to build them at scale.. As Cloyd explains, “at an e-commerce company, there’s maybe one developer serving an entire organization — and keeping their main site up and optimized is always going to take precedence over custom landing pages..  .” 

In this reality, Superfiliate’s founders saw an opportunity. In Cloyd’s words, “what if we could build a system that could scalably do that, and then of course, package in, all the necessary features and functionality that a marketer would expect out of their influencer or community or ambassador management software.”

An Evolving Platform

Originally Superfiliate focused on commission-based payouts for influencers. But they have expanded the options for structuring partnerships, including flat fees for content usage rights and rewards programs that “gamify” the experience. As Cloyd says, “engagement sky rockets when you dangle carrots along the partnership journey and offer bonus rewards like additional product or swag or like AirPods or a MacBook when goals are met.”

At its core, Superfiliate aims to enable brands to “invest in these creator relationships at a deeper level. It’s not just like, here’s the product that shows up, here’s your link, go post it to your friends, and hope something happens.” Instead, the landing pages and personalization make creators feel special and show “that the brand actually cares about the relationship and are willing to invest in it.”

The core way Superfiliate aims to differentiate itself is by unifying various influencer-related initiatives onto one streamlined platform. As Cloyd outlines, “we allow brands to integrate all of these channels into one platform and make it super easy to enable all of these different communities you’re working with.” This ranges from existing loyal customers to larger creators and even potentially new distribution channels like healthcare providers or other industry experts.

He describes Superfiliate’s software as “very program based,” enabling brands to readily “activate across all of these different programs and then have a single source of truth, a single pane of glass to understand performance, payouts, and personnel across all of your programs.” The concept is to consolidate influencer marketing management, which often spans multiple teams and tools to ultimately improve results and save brands money.

Flexible Monetization for Win-Win Partnerships

Superfiliate also focuses on providing flexible monetization models to align incentives. As Cloyd says, “our platform natively enables brands to give creators options” on how they get paid, whether PayPal, gift cards, or product rewards. The goal is facilitating “transactions that accurately pay for the things that creators and brands agree to drive value for each party.”

Cloyd shares an example of how rewards can incentivize performance: “We have brands that are offering a two-year supply of the product when the creator hits 50 conversions of net new customers.” 

Viva Raw Case Study Shows Platform’s Impact

Cloyd spotlights pet food brand Viva Raw as a standout Superfiliate success story. Knowing influencer marketing was crucial for their growth, Viva Raw needed a platform that could manage multiple communities while also enabling custom experiences like landing pages.

Superfiliate was able to unify their strategy across various programs, including “veterinarians, customers, pet creators, dog creators, general pet influencers.” Within the first year, Cloyd shares that Superfiliate has “generate[d] over half of their net new subscribers” and “over 20% of revenue.”

Specifically, by replacing basic affiliate links with tailored landing pages, Viva Raw has seen a “conversion rate lift of 30 to 40%.” And by consolidating previously disparate tools, the centralized platform has simplified their workflow. Demonstrating Superfiliate’s ability to drive results for brands willing to invest in thoughtful influencer and ambassador programs.

Creator Economy at Inflection Point

When it comes to the broader creator economy, Cloyd observes an intriguing trend – while creator economy funding has “fallen off a cliff” in 2022, creator impact keeps expanding. He believes this reveals a “fundamental misunderstanding” in oversimplifying creators as conventional business customers. In his view, “Creators are fickle, they are people.”

Meanwhile, social platforms are allocating more and more resources to creators since that’s where audience attention lives. As Cloyd notes, “the currency is eyeballs and attention and the demand is all coming to the social platforms.” He expects their influence in the space to keep growing.

For brands, a key need lies in managing creator relationships holistically across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and more. Cloyd suggests “opportunities still lie in [answering] how do you help brands manage that entire picture.”

What’s Next for Superfiliate

In terms of Superfiliate’s future, Cloyd summarizes their vision as building “the best tool for brands and creators to work together.” On the brand side, they want to deliver attributable ROI while streamlining workflows.

Upcoming platform enhancements include “direct product seeding and gifting” plus messaging to ease influencer campaign management. And expanding integrations with social platforms to efficiently pull creator content into tailored landing pages.

Longer term, Cloyd hints at plans to move beyond ecommerce into other verticals like mobile apps. Their conversion optimization approach could benefit any digital business collaborating with creators. He concludes “it’s going to be an exciting 2024 for Superfiliate as we make some big moves to bring our technology to a much broader market.”