Elemis exploring how micro-influencers can drive new customers to digital flagship – social media head

The UK-based beauty company has worked in partnership with brand advocacy platform Duel to launch its Skinsiders community – a programme for content creators and community engagers who produce high-quality skincare content and also happen to love Elemis products.

To join the Skinsiders community as a creator, applicants must be over 18 with a passion for skincare, a talent for content creation, over 1k followers on Instagram or TikTok, and be based in the UK.

As part of the onboarding contract to join the community, the company includes a list of ASA Guidelines that must be adhered to.

Posts win prizes

Once they are accepted into the programme, the content creators receive a welcome bundle featuring a trio of hero products, a personal discount code, as well as the chance to earn commission and free product vouchers. They’re then encouraged to produce social media content via gamified tasks that allow them to build points, which can be redeemed for free products.

“Content creators can progress through the programme and be rewarded as they complete tasks from sharing the love on social, joining campaigns through content creation and building their community through gifted giveaways​,” explains Elemis’ Head of Social Content Hannah Sheahan.

She says the tasks can be as general as ‘create a TikTok video featuring your favourite Elemis skincare’, or as specific as ‘create an Instagram Reel showing the transformative texture of ProCollagen Cleansing Balm as part of #texturetuesday’. Each task has reward points attached to it, which are awarded on completion.

Higher engagement rates

The trend for collaborating with influencers that have small yet ‘quality’ followings has been gaining traction in recent years, as more beauty brands realise that hiring the biggest-name influencers doesn’t always offer a strong return on investment. The popularity of TikTok, which celebrates micro-influencers, has further exacerbated this.  

“We’re looking for creators of quality content rather than focusing on following or audience size​,” says Sheahan. “The members of Elemis’ Skinsiders community tend to be nano- or micro-influencers (having either 1k+ or 10k+ followers) and generally we see they have a strong engagement rate, ranging between 3 and 10​%.”

Sheahan believes that the content produced by these creators is more effective because they’re content creators first and foremost, “We also see some of the content go viral,” ​she says. “One recent piece by an Elemis Skinsider had an engagement rate of 122%!”​

Directing new customers to D2C digital flagship

According to Sheahan, Elemis already had a passionate community of brand advocates, which is why it decided to leverage this in the social space and foster a community for content creators that it can engage with at scale, and reward for producing strong content.

Going forward, she says the brand plans to engage with more socially active brand fans through the Skinsiders community. “We’re aiming to scale the production of quality UGC and increase overall brand awareness​,” she shares. “We’re focused on growing the Skinsiders community and encouraging our most socially active brand fans to join us. We’re also interested in exploring how this community can assist us with recruiting new customers to our digital flagship, elemis.com, through these highly engaged nano- and micro-influencers referring their audience.”​