Freja New York can trace the success of its Linnea Tote in the brown shade “Pecan” to a single bag.
The brand had sent a free tote to the influencer Rachel Shea in July 2023. Shea in turn used it for a “what’s in my bag” video on TikTok, sharing the items — hand sanitiser, a pill case, a book, her laptop and more — she keeps in the bag’s divided pockets. Sales of the bag in that colour, which hadn’t previously been one of the brand’s best sellers, spiked.
For founder Jenny Lei, the whole sequence of events was a revelation. Freja had built its marketing around buying ads on social media. But today, more sales come from influencers posting about their gifted bags – the brand sends out about 20 a month – than from the ones it spotlights in its paid marketing. She’s planning to bring on a full-time influencer specialist and raise the monthly freebie mailings to 100.
“I always looked at gifting influencers as a bonus,” she said. “But gifting definitely works really, really well.”
Freja is one of many brands where gifting has become a central part of their marketing strategy. Sending free stuff to influencers is often cheaper than paying for posts, and the content that comes out of it doesn’t need to include the dreaded #ad in the caption.
Influencers like it too. A decade ago, creators pushed back against brands that offered a sweater or shoes instead of cash. But today, creators are more open to gifts as a way to start a relationship with a brand; they can make up the income from affiliate revenue. There are also more tools available for brands to measure the impact of their gifting efforts.
“Creators don’t only want to work with Walmart and Amazon,” said Tiffany Lopinsky, the co-founder and chief operating officer of influencer monetisation platform ShopMy, which offers brands tracking tools for gifting. “They want to be able to work with the small brands, and this is a way for them to do it without the brand taking on a huge risk.”
But gifting brings its own challenges. Tracking the effectiveness of a campaign isn’t easy. And influencers are inundated with packages, making it no guarantee a mailing will result in a post. Even if they do post, because it’s not subject to the terms of a traditional sponsored deal, influencers can say whatever they want about the product in question.
That said, gifting has always been, to some degree, a volume play.
“A gift is a gift, and it’s a bit hit or miss,” said Lei. Still, the more you gift, the greater the potential. “If you get a hit per 100 videos, if people are making 100 videos for you a day, you’re gonna get a hit every day.”
Bringing Gifting Back
Brands have sent free stuff to influencers since the earliest days of social media (and to actors and pop stars for decades before that). Until the mid-2010s, a free bag or shoes – rather than cash – was often the go-to form of compensation for all but the biggest creators. As influencing became a full-time career for more and more people, many began pushing back, making the case that a sweater or skincare couldn’t pay the mortgage. Brands pivoted to paying for posts; gifting didn’t go away, but it became something of an afterthought.
Today, the situation is reversed. Consumers are increasingly skeptical of sponsored content, and influencers chafe against brands’ instructions governing everything from what words appear in a post to how an item is positioned on their bodies.
Gifting offers more control to creators; the item is theirs to post about how they like – or to not post about at all.
“Influencers do not want to cloud their stories with all this gifting, but you’re seeing them post it more in their content,” said Kristy McInnis, an influencer and the founder of marketing agency KCMConnect, which hosts gifting suites throughout the year. “You’ll see it in ‘get ready with me’ or packing videos.”
And though that requires brands to let go to a certain degree, it typically makes for better content, because followers see items used in the creator’s everyday life — not show up in a sponsored post never to be seen again.
Well-Received Gifts
Even without a guarantee, there are steps brands can take to set themselves up for success.
The first is understanding that while numbers matter in gifting, there still needs to be some level of intentionality in who you’re connecting with. The “spray and pray” approach — in which a brand sends out a deluge of mailers to anyone with a follower count above a certain number — is no longer effective.
Curation is key. The goal with gifting is that the product ends up organically in someone’s feed. To best optimise for that outcome, brands must create a recipient list of people who match your brand’s ethos or vibe, and make sure that they actually want to receive the gift rather than send out product blindly. It’s also best to ask influencers what they actually want, rather than send a standard package to all.
“I want to be able to pick out exactly what I want in my size,” said influencer Grace Atwood, adding that she’s also seen influencers become more resistant to waste in gifting whether it’s through unasked for gifts or too-elaborate packaging. Participating in an affiliate program, so the influencer can earn money for purchases driven, also provides a greater incentive to post.
Brands can also think beyond the classic mailer. Sleepwear brand Petite Plume, for instance, worked with Yse Beauty, the label founded by the actress-slash-podcast-host Molly Sims, outfitting all the attendees at its holiday party in Beverly Hills earlier this month, including actress Hilary Duff and “The Talk” host Amanda Kloots, resulting in a slew of glossy posts.
Gifting suites like Air Milkshake, which invite guests into a space (think a hotel room) to receive gifts from number of participating brands, are also growing in popularity, because they give brands a way to gift without doing legwork of creating the list of recipients, and have their products presented in a more thoughtful environment. Air Milkshake, for example, is conducted via one-on-one appointments, so they can talk to the recipient about what sort of products they’re looking for, increasing the chances they’ll take home something they’ll actually want to use.
“You would just go and it would be a free for all where you’re taking stuff off a wall, it was sloppy and felt a little icky and transactional,” Marta Freedman, the founder of Air Milkshake, said of her own previous experiences with gifting suites. “We really try to have it be about connecting brands to cool people, and making them want to go home and incorporate it into their lives.”
Measuring Effectiveness
While five years ago, brands were often unwilling to gift without a guaranteed post, it is easier for them to stomach today because there are more tools available to track the effectiveness of these efforts.
ShopMy has made gifting a central part of its offering, allowing brands to offer gifts from a pre-selected assortment through its “Lookbooks” feature, and then measure who is driving sales for them after the fact. LTK also rolled out a new feature called “Power Gifting” this fall, which similarly lets brands gift influencers through its backend and track their performance through its affiliate links.
Still, “managing [brand] expectations is a huge part of it,” said Molly Van Etten Hall, the founder and director of the agency Van Etten PR. “Not every post shows up [to measure]. And sometimes someone is really supportive, and then the next time they’re not. You just have to keep trying.”
With that, brands should consider gifting a testing ground. Lei said that at first, she gifted vegan-focused influencers, because its bags are made with vegan leather. They didn’t perform as well as she thought, so then she tried creators focussed on workwear. She finally found the right mix in targeting “fashion girlies,” she said.
That period requires patience. “Over time, you get really good about figuring out who your best partners are, the most on brand,” said Fanny Quehe, CMO of Petite Plume. Once you do, you can incentivise further posting by offering a creator a higher commission on affiliate links or a promo code to give their followers.
Even as its popularity grows, gifting remains just one lever. The desire for high-paid sponsored deals hasn’t evaporated on the influencers’ part — Stephanie Sandbo, the vice president and head of brand partnerships at LTK, said it remains the number one sort of partnership their influencers are seeking. But it can open the door: Atwood said that after activewear brand Addison Bay gifted her product, it started a relationship between the two that eventually led to a product collaboration.
“Brands are looking for their customers who are showing up in a bigger, broader, more viral way,” said Sandbo. “Take that gift, start talking about the brand, show up on that leaderboard so they can see this is paying off. Ultimately, you can get that flat fee in the long run.”
