Peach & Lily's Director of Influencer Marketing, Alyssa Zickenberg shares tips to collaborate with the K-beauty skincare brand.
Alyssa Zickenberg is the Director of Influencer marketing at Peach & Lily. She and her team are dedicated to building a community of passionate creators. Prior to Peach & Lily, Alyssa worked at powerhouse brands like Benefit Cosmetics and Bulletproof, as well as helping brands understand how to measure and grow influencer communities as a Client Partner at Tribe Dynamics.
In a rush? Here's a digest of Alyssa's juicy tips 🍑
Working with Peach & Lily
- Peach & Lily looks at who tagged them and how many times.
- The best way to do outreach with Peach & Lily is through Instagram DM. Then when the deal is on, move to email.
It’s a two-way street
- Brands also want to feel valued and respected. Cold outreach with no previous signs of affection is not the best way to start a healthy relationship.
- Show love to brands in-between campaigns.
- Be willing to lay the groundwork first, before you even get into a conversation about paid opportunities.
- Brands are learning to value the worth of creators as an integral part of the brand's success. And creators need to value the brand and show genuine passion and interest in developing long-term relationships.
- The next evolution deeply relies on the creators being hand-in-hand sellers and educators with the brand.
Best practices
- Brands look at the quality of your comment section, so interact, reply, and answer questions. That gets noticed.
- The people that reach out to us with a simple DM to say congrats on launching a product are the people that we keep in the back of our minds.
- You're gonna feel uncomfortable and you're gonna be nervous, but you have to advocate for yourself because no one else is going do it for you.
- Creators who are able to inject their personality and their humor into their content, or who are known for something specific (e.g. the mascara pro) are going to be the most successful in the industry.
Read on to learn all about collaborating with Peach & Lily, what metrics they look at, the value of UGC, what kind of content sticks out, and much more.
Brit (Createur): Speaking about Peach & Lilly specifically, what are your criteria when looking for a creator to collaborate with?
Alyssa (Peach & Lily): It will depend on what the campaign is. A campaign is used for either brand awareness or to drive sales on a new product or an existing product that needs reinvigorating.
If we’re focused on awareness, we’re looking for people who have a large reach. We’re aiming for people that have high followings because with that one person we’re able to get in front of more people in their audience. On the flip side, when you're further down your influencer journey, you really see the value in micro-influencers, mid-tier, and nano because of their engaged audiences.
And that’s when we want to educate people's audiences about what the product does or how to use it. Influencers on the micro side are able to have those one-on-one conversations, whether it's through their Instagram stories or in their DMS, or even in their comments section.
The everlasting data that we’re always looking at is engagement rate. No matter your follower size, your engagement rate is really important.
Another thing I look at is the quantity and quality of your comment section. So maybe you have 40 comments on average in your photos, and maybe somebody has 200 average comments. But maybe those 200 comments are emojis and nobody's asking questions, or nobody's talking about the product or wanting to get more information. Then the person with 40 comments is actually engaging, providing information, and asking questions back and forth. That's much more valuable to me as a brand marketer. I want people to not only see the product, and I want them to be interested and want to learn more. Your comment section quality is important for every campaign that we're running.
Do you work towards long-term partnerships with your community?
We want long-term relationships. We don't necessarily contract long-term partnerships right away. At Peach & Lily, we don't have anything like six-month or 12-month-long partnerships yet. For instance, we're launching a new serum. We want you to do a post for the launch day, and trickle that throughout your content over the next months.
Continue to show brands love in-between campaigns. Every campaign is not always going to be a fit for you, no matter how close you are to the brand or how amazing your content is. Make sure you stay on top of their mind when the right one comes along.
How can creators stay top of mind for brands in between campaigns?
There are little things that you can do that go a long way for brands. If people are asking questions, reply. The more that we see you’re active in your comments section, the better. Most people just put up the post and then forget about the comment section. If somebody comments “I saw you liked this Peach & Lily serum. What about their oil cleanser?” and you're answering “I liked it because of these reasons” or “it didn't work for me because of these reasons”, that shows that you're going that extra step. People who do that, and especially people who tag us in those replies get our attention.
Keep showing those brands you want to continue working with them. Continue to show them love in-between campaigns. Every campaign is not always going to be a fit for you, no matter how close you are to the brand or how amazing your content is. Make sure you stay on top of their mind when the right one comes around.
Don't feel like if you're not chosen for the next campaign down the road, it's something against you. Maybe in a couple of months, there's going to be a perfect campaign. In between that continue to tag them, etc. At Peach & Lily, we're a really small team, we see every single DM that comes in, every photo we’re tagged in.
We've talked about comment section quality and engagement rates. What other metrics are you looking for?
One of the data points that we use a lot is looking at our historical legacy with a creator. We use softwares that tracks how many times you mention our brand. When the time comes for a paid opportunity or even a gifting opportunity, it makes it very clear to us who we want to reach out to.
I'm going to value working with that person who showed genuine interest in the brand over time, over somebody who reaches out to me with an amazing sales pitch but has never once tagged us. Posting cadence and posting history are crucial data points.
Provide your Instagram story statistics. It's really helpful when somebody reaches out and says, “I get 2000 clicks when I promote a product in my Instagram stories.” That gives me immediate insight into the creator’s engagement. I know that if I give them a link to our website or an affiliate code, people are actually going to click on it and hopefully convert and purchase.
How do you prefer influencers to reach out to the brand?
For us personally, we do everything in the DM section and that's simply for an organizational preference because our whole team is in the DMS every day. That way we can all see that three years ago we sent you this PR box, etc. You can see the history flourish right there.
Once we get to know people on a more personal basis or when we're starting to talk about a contracting opportunity, then we move to email.
This whole industry is relationship-based and it goes both ways. We want to feel respected and valued and not pitched at out of the blue.
How far in advance are you planning your campaigns? When's the right time for creators to get in front of you for inclusion and upcoming campaigns?
I would say the right time is always. At Peach & Lily, we don't plan our campaigns too far out. We're very small and nimble. There’s never a wrong time to try and get on our radar. But there’s a way to get on our radar.
If you reach out and say “I'm loving this product, I'm posting about it every day. Here are some metrics,” that's a great way to get on the brand's radar instead of just reaching out with a cold pitch. This whole industry is relationship-based and it goes both ways. We want to feel respected and valued and not pitched at out of the blue.
We get hundreds of DMS every day and emails from people with simply their name and their content focus, asking for a paid campaign. Nine times out of 10, those get ignored. The people that reach out to us with a simple DM to say congrats on launching a product are the people that we keep in the back of our minds.
Talk to me a little bit about UGC.
UGC is such a help to the brand. We’re able to sprinkle that into our social content so that it’s not just stylized studio imagery.
We hear so much in the industry about knowing your worth and charging for everything. I definitely think everyone should be compensated for their work. But I think that brands with a lot of creators and managers these days are stuck and won't do anything. We won't even receive your PR package unless there's payment attached to it. I think that that ends up hurting the creator in the long run. You're essentially shutting down the conversation from the beginning.
So I would say, pick those brands that you're really passionate about and that you want to develop a relationship with. Be willing to lay the groundwork first, before you even get into a conversation about paid opportunities. Brands are learning to value the worth of creators as an integral part of the brand's success. And creators need to value the brand and show genuine passion and interest in developing long-term relationships.
Do you use key opinion leaders like dermatologists? Are they a part of your community for peach and Lily?
Yes, dermatologists and estheticians played a really important role in our influencer strategy. We have various segments that we make sure are included in every campaign.
We make sure we have a mix of people who can speak from the dermatologist's perspective, people with more mature skin who understand the concerns, taste-makers, micro-influencers, mid-tier, top-tier, etc.
To me, the next evolution deeply relies on the creators being hand-in-hand sellers and educators with the brand.
Coming up in the next several years, what do you think the next trends are in influencer and PR?
While we know creators and influencer programs are creating brand awareness, which down the line is helpful to the brand, a lot of companies are now focused on direct conversion. It's no longer enough to say we did this campaign and it got this many impressions or views. The leadership of these companies want to know how that translates to sales.
Now a lot of companies are moving towards trackable links, swipe-up links, etc. Concrete pieces of data that we can bring back to leadership. So we’re able to “we worked with this person and they had a 10% off promo code and they ended up selling $4,000 worth of product.” To me, the next evolution deeply relies on the creators being hand-in-hand sellers and educators with the brand.
We’re building an affiliate program for Peach & Lily and would love all of you to be part of it. You can reach out to either Peach & Lily or Peach Slices through Instagram DM.
Do brands have a way to see if creators get affiliate sales from LTK or other aggregator sites?
We do. There are a number of different platforms out there that we can use. On the backend, we see how many clicks your links are getting and how many sales are being driven.
We also track lifetime ROI. For instance, if we've sent this person X number of dollars worth of products, but they've never made one sale for us, that's a relationship we would want to reevaluate. If there's somebody who is selling like crazy, that signals to us this is a person that we should build a long-term partnership with. Their audience obviously is interested in our brand, they align with us.
Does Peach & Lily send PR and gifting to international influencers?
Very rarely. We unfortunately don't have the most robust international footprint. So we do sell to international countries from our website. However, it's not every country. For that reason, we limit sending international PR packages because it doesn't quite make sense for their audience. But if somebody’s London-based, but a large part of their audience is US-based, we'd make the exception of spending the shipping fees to get them product overseas. We want to make sure that the audience can get access to those products once they see them.
What kind of content are you loving from influencers today?
I spend so much of my time on TikTok, and I find myself going back and to the pages of people that are able to inject their personality and their humor into their content. So one of my favorite creators right now is Rudy Berry.
And it's because she gives great product recommendations, but it's also because she's so funny and quirky. She’s not afraid to let that personal side come through. I find that I keep coming back to that. You kind of fall in love with them as a person. Those are the people I see as being the most successful in the industry. You can do all the unboxings and reviews, but the more that you’re known for something, the more you stand out.
What are some reasons you love working at Peach & Lily? What makes the brand special?
I knew I really wanted to work for a cruelty-free brand. That's really important to me that they were a completely vegan, completely cruelty-free brand. I also wanted to work for a brand that was doing something about sustainability and our impact on the earth. When we're farming our ingredients, are we doing it in the most environment-friendly way possible? Are we working with farmers who are taking care of the earth and not just ravaging it?
I had come from Benefit, which was an amazing experience, but it's a massively global brand. After that, I really wanted to work for a small brand. I am the Director of Influencer Marketing, but I also lead our Social Media team. I also advise our PR team. So we all have an overarching view on communications and branding which I find really fun every day.
What would you tell your younger self coming into the next five years?
I would say, advocate for yourself. I always give that advice. You're gonna feel uncomfortable and you're gonna be nervous, but you have to advocate for yourself because no one else is going do it for you.
If you want that promotion, go to your boss and ask what criteria you need to meet to get to that point, and work to get there.
That can easily be relayed back to you guys, to creators. As we said, reach out to the brands, show them your worth, show them what your audience is all about, and show them those DMs talking about our products. Know what you're capable of and show it to the brands. It might not bring you a deal right away, but I can guarantee that when there's a campaign that you're the right fit for, you're going to come to mind.
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