What Merchants Can Expect from Shopify Collabs

Shopify Collabs isn’t just for creators; it also benefits ecommerce business owners. Finding brand-fit creators has always been challenging for marketers and solo store owners; there are the struggles of browsing, vetting, and shortlisting the right creators. It’s an added challenge to give them the right exposure for your brand and build a healthy relationship.

With Shopify Collabs, brands can find promising creators, manage their marketing campaigns effortlessly, and stay on top of expenses. The app streamlines working with creators.

Let’s look at the three key benefits merchants can expect from Shopify Collabs:

1. Discover niche creators from a large marketplace

One of the biggest highlights of Shopify Collabs is its Creator Marketplace, a massive database of creators from different niches and channels handpicked by Shopify’s team. This marketplace is the jackpot for store owners that can change how they run influencer marketing campaigns.

Brands don’t have to invest time and effort into finding brand-fit creators. They can set up their account, make their store discoverable, and roll out an application form for interested creators. Taylor Jo Dodson, Creative Director at Snarky Tea, highlights this benefit of Collabs.

“It’s nice that people can find and apply to be an ambassador without us having to do all the heavy lifting. I will say that the Dovetale interface was easier to use before it became SC, and the swap was confusing for some of our ambassadors. Overall, I’d give it four stars.”

Alternatively, they can search this database to find creators that check all the boxes for them. This searchable platform enables merchants to filter according to the target audience, follower size, channel, and other filters. So, you only need to browse through these creators’ profiles, shortlist the most promising ones, and start a conversation to get cracking.

2. Easily hire and manage creator relationships

With Collabs, it’s easy to find the right creators for your brand from thousands of candidates. But that’s not all. Store owners can easily hire and partner with their selected creators on the platform.

Collabs generate customized insights to help brands optimize their campaigns for maximum impact. You can use these insights to create guidelines for creators and set the metrics for a new campaign. It also gives you unique links and discount codes to work with multiple creators and track their outputs.

Since Collabs is directly integrated within Shopify admin, you can easily visualize your entire sales funnel across channels—from customer database to orders and inventory.

3. Win more affiliate sales and track payments

Shopify Collabs simplifies your relationship with affiliates. You can have a complete overview of your affiliates’ sales, and the app will automatically calculate the commissions for every affiliate.

What’s more, you can directly pay affiliates from the platform. It’ll also generate analytics for every affiliate’s progress so that you can reward the high-performers. This also allows you to extend your collaboration with the ones who perform well.

In essence, instead of hiring a big team dedicated to affiliate marketing, Collabs can take care of these responsibilities and make your affiliate campaigns successful. Monica Grohne, the founder of Marea says:

“The platform is easy to use and allows us to review conversions from affiliates easily and make paying them seamless. They’ve continued to make improvements, like having a saved welcome message. I hope they continue by adding integration with Klaviyo so we can add our affiliates to a specific list, send notifications when they make sales, etc.”

Despite all these merchant-centric benefits, Shopify Collabs doesn’t quite match up with other influencer management tools because:

• Payments are limited to PayPal
• No multi-language translation feature
• Less scope for customization

So, we decided to see how Collabs stands against Afluencer to benefit merchants and creators.

Shopify Collabs vs Afluencer: Which Option is Better for You?

Shopify Collabs made all the headlines since its rebranding and launch. The platform was introduced as a new and easy way for creators to monetize their content and for brands to collaborate with creators.

But while the app offers this functionality, it doesn’t bring the added convenience and perks you get from similar tools, like Afluencer. If you’re weighing your decision to sign up on Collabs, read this comparison review of Shopify Collabs vs Afluencer to make an informed choice.

Ease of setup

The ease of setting up and learning the functionality of a tool determines how quickly you can get the best value out of it. A shorter learning curve means you can hit the ground running faster and implement your strategy. Here’s how Shopify Collabs fares against Afluencer in terms of setup.

Shopify Collabs

Signing up for a Collabs account seems slightly complicated, even for existing users. When you land on the Collabs site, you’ll find the option to install the app as a merchant or sign up as a creator. But things get tricky after this.

If you’re a merchant, you have to install the app first and then tweak some settings from your Shopify account to complete the setup. If you’re a creator, you have to sign up to take any action—which is one of the biggest concerns visible in the early reviews. Signing up on a new platform can be inconvenient, especially with Collabs’ lengthy sign-up process. You first need to create a Shopify account and sign up as a Creator separately.

Afluencer

Afluencer has a hassle-free setup. You can visit the website and find the options to sign up or sign in. If you’re a new user, sign up on the app, answer the given prompts, and you’re all set to use the platform. Creators can explore the app and find potential partnerships without signing up on the platform and don’t have to go through the hassle of signing up without knowing the full benefits of the platform.

Interface

A tool’s interface impacts the overall user experience and creates customer stickiness. The more appealing the interface, the more users will return to the tool. Let’s see which interface is better among Shopify Collabs and Afluencer.

Shopify Collabs

Collabs have a top-notch interface with an intuitive, data-packed dashboard for merchants and creators. The platform has a navigation panel on the left of the screen and multiple settings to keep users informed about their accounts.

Merchants can discover new creators from the marketplace, find affiliates, shortlist their ideal candidates, and track payments. They can also check applicants interested in working with them. On the other hand, creators track their applications, manage their ongoing partnerships, and monitor their earnings.

Afluencer

Afluencer has a seamless and neat interface with minimal design elements. The welcome dashboard covers all essential details about your campaigns, like applications, influencers you may like, all your brands, and saved searches from the past. You can also jump to the influencer directory to find more influencers.

Once integrated with your Shopify account, you can track sales and inventory on the dashboard.

For creators, the app gives you constant updates about new programs and brands looking for collaborations. So, you can set up your profile and click on these programs to get started. Kendall, a content creator, shares her take on the app’s user-friendly interface.

“I love that Afluencer is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. I never miss out on messages because it’s always clear when I have one. Love how easy it is to find new brands to work with.”

Functionality

A platform is only as good as how well it can meet users’ needs, solve their pain points, and help them achieve their goals. Let’s compare Collabs against Afluencer to see who comes out stronger in terms of functionality.

Shopify Collabs

Shopify Collabs promises several exciting features for merchants and creators. While we’ve discussed most of these features, it’s worth spotlighting these:

• Merchants can access a vast database of creators to reach out to brand-fit creators directly.
• Creators can apply to collaborate with millions of brands available on Shopify.
• All users can effectively track their performance and payments using a data-driven dashboard.

The platform still has many shortcomings, like no email customization option, multi-language feature, a complicated sign-up process, and unnecessary glitches.

Afluencer

Afluencer is a feature-rich tool packed with every essential feature brands, and creators need to collaborate. The Afluencer dashboard keeps you updated with your past and ongoing campaigns. You can also track your sales and creator performance in separate sections.

The app’s huge Influencer Directory of more than 16,000 creators has powerful search filters to help you effortlessly find the most relevant niche creators.

Creators can also check collaboration programs by scrolling the homepage without signing up. Once registered on the platform, they’ll get regular updates about new programs to participate in.

Chelsea, a content creator, highlights the best parts about Afluencer from a creator’s perspective.

“There are campaigns for every niche and interest, and new collaborations are added frequently. I love how easy it is to use and that I’m always sent updates on new collaborations, so I do not have to guess when to sign in and what is available to me as a creator.”

Another great feature is chatting with any creator and maintaining prompt communication on the same platform. You don’t have to jump to another tool to talk with your creators or brand PoCs.

There’s a Better Alternative to Shopify Collabs

Let’s face it: Shopify may have relaunched Collabs as an exciting new way for brands to work with creators. But in reality, it still lacks a great deal to compete against tools like Afluencer.

Afluencer is a power-packed alternative to Shopify Collabs with must-have features, lucrative opportunities, and convenience for creators and brands to maximize their progress. The platform gives you deeper visibility into your performance with meaningful insights to hit the next level and improve your ROI.

Try Afluencer today and see the impact yourself.

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