REAL INFLUENCE:

DOMINATING
INFLUENCER
MARKETING
WITH GRETTA
ROSE VAN
RIEL
Success Story

Van Riel has used
influencer marketing to
catapult her businesses
to millions in revenue.
Now she’s using her
expertise to build a
platform that can help
others do the same.
W
hen Gretta Rose van Riel launched her family didn’t go so well.
first business, she was just 22 years old
with less than $25 in her bank account. “Everybody said, ‘Do not quit your
In search of the perfect detox tea for
herself, van Riel had started creating
Success Story
blends at home and soon found a job, her biggest worry was that she
loyal customer base among her office wouldn’t have enough to keep her
coworkers. Inspired, she put up a busy. Would she just be on constant
simple Shopify site and started selling holiday?
her teas.
“[That] was the biggest misconception
It did better than expected. Way better. I’ve ever had!” van Riel says. “The
She started making her day job’s daily more work you do, the more you
wage in just one hour with her teas, realize that you have to do.”
and then her weekly wage in an hour,
and then eventually, her monthly wage In its first six months, SkinnyMe Tea
in an hour. That’s when she knew she was making more than $600,000 in
was onto something. revenue a month. Since then, it has
garnered 300,000 customers around
“I was like, ‘Okay, this is really the world and multiple millions in
something that I need to focus on,’” revenue.
van Riel says. The young marketing
professional was still working her full- But if you think she’d be satisfied with
time job while she ran the ecommerce one multimillion-dollar company
site for the first two to three months. and a burgeoning “teatox” market
under her belt, you don’t know van
But asking for advice from friends and Riel. Even since we last spoke with
the social media marketing titan
back in early 2016, van Riel’s suite of
businesses has only grown stronger. In
job!’” van Riel says. “So I just didn’t tell her latest project, she’s looking to help
anybody and quit anyway.” other entrepreneurs follow suit, by
harnessing one of van Riel’s own secret
When she finally left her full-time weapons—influencer marketing.
 Founding
A
After the success of SkinnyMe,
van Riel embarked on her
second venture, demonstrating
her marketing chops by creating
a watch company with a unique
twist. The 5TH sells high-end
timepieces on the fifth of each
month, for only five days.
The time-limited aspect of
this sales process is part of its
genius—it sparks increased
demand with its restricted
supply, and has allowed van Riel
to build a loyal following willing
to stay up late or get up early
just to be the first to snag a 5TH
watch.
How did she come up with such
a unique launch process?
“Well, it was kind of a bit of an
accident to begin with,” van Riel
says.
Thanks to her influencer
marketing prowess, she had
grown a list of about 8,000
leads before launch. But the
problem was, she had only 1,200
timepieces to sell. So when The
5TH launched, it sold out of
most of the styles within the first
day.
Being sold out can be good for
the seller, but it’s a huge pain
point for buyers.
“We decided that we’d harness
this as a way to use that to our
advantage,” van Riel says. So
Success Story instead of having to send an
“out of stock” apology message
to prospective buyers, van Riel
and co-founder Alex McBride
chose to be transparent about
the process and let customers
know that stock is limited, so
they have to get in fast.
“And that worked really, really
well,” she says, “because for the
first, like, six months of sales,
we were selling out really, really
quickly—sometimes within
a few hours—which meant
that also we’re building this
incredibly loyal customer base,
because those people that were
buying literally stayed up until
midnight Australian time or got
up at, like, 5 to 7 a.m. around
the world to shop our store.”
But van Riel admits it wasn’t
always this easy. The 5TH has
been in business for more than
two years now, but the first five
to 10 launches were tough.
“We didn’t really have our
processes locked down very
well,” she says. “It would just be
a lot of moving parts at the same
time and just having to act very,
very quickly to keep up with
orders.”
Despite the rocky start, van
Riel and McBride hit their
stride with this unique business
model one year after launch.
In December 2015, The 5TH
brought in a whopping $1
million in sales in just one day.
 Success Story
Weaving
Social
Good Into
a Business
For most children, Christmas might
be a time to ask for new toys. But
5-year-old Gretta van Riel had
something very different at the top
of her Christmas list: She wanted a
certain politician to “become a good
person.”
Van Riel, whose parents are both
social workers, says she was raised
in a very socially minded family, and
that upbringing inspired the way she
runs her businesses today.
“I have always been interested
in developing socially conscious
brands,” van Riel says. “Usually it’s
just behind the scenes, and it’s just
things like going with the more
ethical supplier or sustainable
product parts, and you don’t often
get to celebrate that as much.”
When she started her third business,
Drop Bottle, she decided to make
a good cause central to the identity
of that business by donating a
percentage of its sales to clean water
initiatives around the world.
“I think having that social-conscious
image at the forefront of your brand
develops a different relationship
with your customer,” van Riel says.
“And it helps the discourse of your
brand in general. You can talk about
completely different issues-based
topics rather than just the general
functionality of the product.”
With SkinnyMe Tea, she’s been able
to give back through public-facing
events, such as a charity gala where
they raised $25,000 for The Kids’
Cancer Project. But for van Riel,
some of the most rewarding things
are when she hears from customers
who have found her products
helpful.
“The products are often rewarding
in themselves,” she says. “But then
it’s also nice to give back where
possible as well.”
Drop Bottle was launched in a sort
of reverse method, something van
Riel likes to think of as “market
product fit,” rather than the
traditional “product market fit.”
“We launched Drop Bottle off
the back of an audience,” she
says, “rather than developing that
audience for the product.”
Van Riel had grown an Instagram
community interested in detox
waters, with about 900,000 followers
and lots of engagement in the form
of comments and likes. So she
started brainstorming ideas for a
product she could offer this engaged
audience. She decided to create a
detox water bottle that customers
could use to infuse fruits into their
drinking water, and thus, Drop
Bottle was born.
“I prefer to think of it as ‘market
product fit,’ because if you launch
a product to no audience, it’s not
really going to develop into a
brand or anything sustainable,”
van Riel says. “You’re not going
to get the sales that you thought
you were. You’re going to be quite
disappointed. So the idea that you
develop the market before, or at the
exact same time as your product,
right along the way as you’re
building it is just a much better
concept in my eyes.”
 The Secret to Van Riel’s
Success? Influencer Marketing
A
fter scaling a few
multimillion-
Success Story
dollar
companies,
van Riel
has perfected a repeatable
formula for success. A key
component of that formula
has been influencer marketing,
which relies on personal
endorsements from people
with devoted social media
followings, and has been
running circles around old
school marketing methods. Van Riel has been a master
of this approach since early
“It’s the most effective digital days, and a big part of her
marketing technique that there branding success has to do
is right now, in terms of ROI,” with the personal connections
van Riel says. she’s cultivated with fans
over time. She’s also got the
Why? Consumers are growing logistics down cold, with a
more distrustful of brands, unique understanding of how
and influencer marketing is this form of marketing works,
a way for people to feel an including some key best
authentic connection to a practices.
business via influencers who
love a particular product.

Is offering free product enough,
or should you pay an influencer?
“That’s kind of the bind right now,”
van Riel says.
There are pros and cons to both
the product-for-post campaigns
and the paid ones.
If an influencer is willing to
post about your brand simply
in exchange for free product,
the good news is that influencer
is genuinely interested in your
product. But the bad news is that
influencer may not always follow
through and post about your
product.
And then you’re in a tight spot.
Because there was no monetary
compensation involved, it’s
difficult to follow up in a
meaningful way.
Free vs.
Paid
Campaigns
O
n the other hand,
when you pay
an influencer, it
completely changes
the dynamic, because now it’s a
business relationship.
“Often, paying them is going to be
less work in the long run,” van Riel
says. Product-for-post campaigns
involve a lot of relationship
management, requiring you
to make sure they received the
product, that they’re happy with it,
and that they know how to use it.
And these days it’s common for
most professional influencers to
expect payment, a fair expectation,
says van Riel, considering all
the work that goes on behind
the scenes. “A lot of them are
incredible content creators that
have to take that photo on their
camera and then spend an hour
editing it as well, and so it must be
hugely disappointing if that post
was not paid for, because you’ve
spent hours of your life generating
that content.”
But how much should you pay an
influencer?
As with any industry, there are
many different ways to put a price
tag on content. What’s important
is that you decide from the start
what you will be measuring. While
you could choose to pay based
on conversions, van Riel says
payment-for-post is the norm.
Once you start working with
influencers in your niche, you’ll get
a better idea of the going rates. But
van Riel offers some benchmarks
to give us a general idea:

Influencers with
Success Story

• under 20K followers = $50 to $100 a post

• 50K followers = $100 to $200 a post
• 100K+ followers = $200 to $500 a post
• 500K+ followers = more than $1000 a post

Success Story
While many eager brands
might aim for the big leagues
first, hoping to hit a homerun
with a celebrity like Kylie
Jenner, van Riel says that
sometimes the “micro”
influencers can have a larger
impact.
“I haven’t heard one brand
actually regenerate all of the
sales they spent on that one
post with a macro influencer
like a Kylie Jenner,” van Riel
says.
For best results, van Riel
recommends working with
those micro influencers who
are growing quickly, but have
hardly posted any branded
content yet.
“The reason that micro-
influencers are so much
more effective than a macro-
influencer, in terms of ROI
as well,” she says, “is because
often those micro-influencers,
their feeds are so much more
fresh. ... They’re like gems.”
Where macro-influencers
really shine is in influencing
Micro- vs.
Macro-
Influencers
your micro influencers, who
will, in turn, influence your
potential customers.
So before blowing your budget
on multiple influencers, you
could start out by paying one
macro-influencer to post about
your product first. “If you do
engage a macro-influencer,”
van Riel says, “you can use
that as leverage to engage
your micro-influencers. Plus,
your micro-influencers will
have had exposure to your
brand through seeing it on
[the macro-influencer’s] feed.
So you’re much more likely to
then be able to pursue them
for just a product-for-post or a
cheaper post than usual.”
That’s when the micro-
influencers can come in and
create branded content that
will inspire user-generated
content from your customers.
This technique builds an entire
ecosystem that, when managed
properly, can thrive and spark
a whole lot of growth and sales
for your brand.
Real-Life Influencer Case
Studies From Van Riel’s
Getting
Brands SaaS-y
SkinnyMe Tea: How 1 Instagram Post Led to
$1,000 in Sales in 1 Day

The timing was perfect. the multimillion-dollar For her next endeavor, Van Riel is
When SkinnyMe Tea company it is today. venturing into new territory with a
launched in 2012, software as a service (SaaS) company,

The 5TH: How

“influencer marketing” albeit one in a very familiar setting.
wasn’t a well-known term While running influencer marketing

30 Influencers
or strategy yet, and there campaigns for her other businesses,
weren’t many brands van Riel has run into several pain
trying to collaborate with points. So she decided to build her
influencers on Instagram.
Generated $100K in ideal, end-to-end collaboration
platform—it’s called “Hey.”

Sales on Launch Day

One day, van Riel noticed
someone from Tasmania Hey guides you through the process of
had purchased from creating and managing your influencer
SkinnyMe Tea and posted marketing campaigns.
Before launching The 5TH,
about it on Instagram. That
van Riel sent 30 sample
same day, the tea company The first step is to create a campaign.
watches to Instagram
had its best day ever at Hey offers templated campaigns based
influencers. This campaign
$1,000 in sales. on goals, such as generating sales or
was unpaid, but it’s
important to note she had content.
Van Riel saw a huge
already developed good
opportunity here. She Next, it helps you find influencers.
relationships with these
went through and took They’ll appear based on the
influencers.
screenshots of Instagram demographics you chose. If you
accounts that fit well within have pre-existing relationships, you
She sent watches to 10
her target demographic and can invite those influencers to the
influencers with more than
then commented on these campaign by uploading a CSV or
100,000 followers and 20
accounts, offering to send adding their email addresses and
influencers with under
them free tea. names.
50,000. The call to action
in all the posts focused on
The results were Finally, Hey makes it easy to manage
getting the audience to sign
overwhelming. Van Riel relationships. You can set the terms
up for the waitlist. As a
was seeing response rates and communicate via a chat feature
result, van Riel was able to
of 90 to 95 percent from so that you can find all the essential
add 8,000 highly qualified
Instagram influencers information in one spot.
leads to her email list prior
(which, back then, meant
to launch.
each had only about 1,000 Once your campaign is up and
followers). running, you can pre-approve a
Sending out those 30
watches and sending emails post and give the green light when
The low competition and it’s ready to go live. The brand gets
to the waitlist were the
the novelty of influencer notified when the post is published,
only marketing tactics The
marketing meant van and the payment gets released to the
5TH did before launch. On
Riel was able to use this influencer.
launch day, the company
one technique to help
generated $100,000 in sales.
grow SkinnyMe Tea to
 Think Outside the Box:
Three Types of Influencer
Marketing Collaboration
The biggest misconception surrounding influencer
marketing, van Riel says, is that most brands don’t
understand it’s multidirectional. Instead of thinking of
influencer marketing as strictly a place where brands send
a brief to influencers and tell them what to do, van Riel
recommends thinking in terms of creative freedom and
collaboration from all directions.

Success Story

Van Riel says you can think of them as

She cites three types of a “content crew,” where each influencer
influencer marketing has a role, such as hair stylist, makeup
artist, photographer, and model. This
collaborations: crew can then pitch its creative concept
to a brand.
1. One brand collaborates with
multiple influencers. This is your 3. Multiple brands collaborate on a
traditional influencer marketing single campaign. Many brands share
campaign and the one with which most similarities with other brands within
brands are familiar. You send a product,their niche. Rather than viewing them
and sometimes payment, to influencers as competition, consider teaming up
and have them post about your brand. with them on an influencer marketing
campaign. One huge benefit to this is
When you do this, give your influencers that you can split the campaign costs.
creative freedom to do what they do
best: influence. A brand should not “It’s that kind of collaborative aspect
be dictating the wording and creative that a Frank Body, [or] like my sister’s
direction of the posts. company, could team up with a
Amy Rigby is a writer
SkinnyMe Tea,” says van Riel, “because
who helps startups “It’s really unfair on the influencer, we have really similar audiences, but
woo their customers and it’s not going to have good results it wouldn’t be detracting from either
with words. An avid company’s sales. … If you’re doing a body
traveler, she has visited
for your brand,” van Riel says. “An
Machu Picchu twice, influencer knows their audience.” scrub, that’s quite detoxifying for your
run across the world’s skin, and if you’re drinking a detox tea
widest avenue in Buenos at the same time, that wouldn’t be an
2. Multiple influencers collaborate
Aires, and eaten her
fill of gourmet cheeses on a single campaign. On the unusual thing to happen. People often
in Paris. Amy founded influencer side, popular YouTubers and use our products side by side. So why not
WhereverWriter. Instagrammers, for example, can team team up to create that content at scale at
com to help fellow half the price?”
entrepreneurs work
up on a collaboration for a brand and
remotely and travel expand each other’s reach.
freely.