David Abbey on Scaling Influencer Marketing with AI

1. How is your marketing team managing manual processes in terms of influencer relationships, and how are you addressing scalability challenges?

A lot of brands still rely on spreadsheets, manual outreach, and disconnected tools to manage influencer programs which makes it nearly impossible to scale efficiently. Once a brand grows from 10 to 50+ influencer partnerships, the wheels start to fall off. Teams get bogged down in manual follow-ups, managing approvals, handling gifting logistics, and compiling performance reports. It ends up consuming their entire bandwidth. That’s where automation changes everything. Influencer marketing platforms, like Endlss, that combine outreach, gifting, commission tracking, and communication in one place have become essential to keeping programs scalable. With the right tools, marketing teams can manage 3x the creator volume without needing to grow their headcount, freeing up time for the work that actually drives results.

2. How is your organization evolving its influencer marketing strategy to shift from brand awareness to measurable revenue generation?

Influencer marketing used to be all about reach and impressions, but the most forward-thinking brands today are treating it like a true performance channel. Instead of chasing vanity metrics, they’re focused on driving measurable, attributable growth. To meet that demand, more teams are adopting attribution tools that link creator content to conversions—whether through custom landing pages, affiliate links, or dynamic tracking infrastructure. On our end, we’ve built SmartLinks into the core workflow, so each creator’s impact is measured in real-time, and with partners of ours like Creator Commerce, together we provide co-branded shopping sites to elevate the consumer experience with a trusted shopping experience that increases conversions. Weekly performance reports make it easy to see which partnerships are generating returns and which need to be re-evaluated. That kind of visibility helps transform influencer marketing from a brand play into a predictable revenue stream.

3. How are you approaching influencer selection and outreach to ensure alignment with your brand values and audience segments at scale?

Alignment is everything in influencer marketing and not just in terms of values. The right creator should reflect the brand’s tone, speak to the right audience segment, and have a track record of driving action. Brands are getting more precise with how they vet creators, looking at engagement quality, audience breakdowns, content style, and past performance before making a move. With AI-powered messaging, every brand can personalize outreach in their own tone of voice—tailored to each creator’s audience, style, and past content.

But finding the right fit at scale is a different challenge. That’s where AI and smart filters are transforming outreach. With AI-powered messaging, every brand can personalize outreach in their own tone of voice—tailored to each creator’s audience, style, and past content. Combined with branded application forms and full creator analytics, brands are scaling high-quality outreach without losing that human touch. Inviting existing customers to apply is low hanging fruit when you want to scale effectively, and authentically—people who already know and love the brand often make the best partners.

4. What limitations have you encountered with traditional tracking methods (e.g., promo codes, UTM links), and how are you planning to evolve your attribution strategy?

Traditional tracking methods come with real friction. Promo codes can get leaked or shared in unintended ways, making attribution muddy. UTM links often break in-app or get stripped entirely, especially on mobile. This creates a gap between creator activity and the sales data that marketers rely on to optimize spend. To move past these limitations, we’re focusing on more robust attribution tools that work reliably across platforms and devices. SmartLinks, for example, generates unique tracking for each creator and integrates directly into conversion and payout workflows. Clean attribution is foundational to scaling today’s influencer programs responsibly. Whether it's to manage budgets or reward high performers, teams need to trust the data.

5. How are you evaluating new MarTech platforms to determine their potential impact on operational agility and cross-functional collaboration?

When evaluating MarTech tools today, agility is at the top of the list. Marketing teams need tools that are fast to implement, intuitive to use, and flexible enough to support cross-functional workflows. If a platform takes weeks to implement or requires engineering support to operate, it’s already a blocker. The best tools today integrate seamlessly with existing systems, whether that’s ecommerce platforms like Shopify, payment processors like Stripe, or internal communication tools. Endlss replaces four different tools in one, so brand, finance, and CX teams can all work from a single system. At the end of the day, the best platforms don’t just do more; they reduce friction across every team.

6. What competitive advantages do you see in adopting lean, AI-powered influencer marketing platforms compared to legacy tools with heavier infrastructure and higher costs?

Legacy influencer marketing platforms were often built with large enterprises in mind. They’re powerful, but also complex, expensive, and heavy to manage. For fast-moving teams, that’s become a real disadvantage—especially when speed and efficiency are critical. Lean, AI-powered platforms are flipping the script. By automating outreach, tracking, and gifting workflows, brands can move from idea to execution in 20 minutes, not weeks. And because these tools are often modular and self-serve, they’re far more cost-effective. What we’ve seen is most brands using Endlss are cutting their software spend by 50% or more while getting campaigns live that day, not weeks. That kind of agility has become a major competitive edge, especially for brands trying to maximize output with lean teams.

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