The Influencer Who Grew Her Database from 233 People to 4,000+ in 9 Months and Now Drives 767 Clicks per Campaign

Pete Davis

CEO, Ampjar

18 Sep, 2018

Share article:

A simple Email Marketing plan is the perfect way to monetise an Instagram following. The following (true) story shows Influencers and bloggers everywhere how they can go from almost no database and no email activity to sending campaigns to thousands of people that sell products.

EmmyLou MacCarthy is a Melbourne, Australia-based influencer.

Her 28,000 followers on the Instagram account @EmmyLou_Loves are devoted. She doubled her following over the past four months, and maintained healthy engagement. While she often sits on panels with people with 10 times her following, her audience loves EmmyLou.

She uses Instagram stories, live video, and news feed content to engage her followers.

Similar to many bloggers and influencers, EmmyLou is the definition of time-poor.

She has a narrow, focused digital ecosystem:

1. Instagram for engagement
2. Email campaigns for guaranteed cut-through and driving traffic to convert
3. Website for conversion

It’s a simple model that becomes even more simple with Ampjar. Ampjar is an email marketing tool, built perfectly for bloggers and influencers.

Making money

As with many influencers, EmmyLou turns her influence into a paying job in a number of ways.

She has used social outreach and email campaigns to drive sales in the following areas:

• Educational event ticket sales
• Party ticket sales
• Product sales through collaborations
• Her own direct-to-consumer products

Database Growth

When EmmyLou first started using Ampjar she had 233 people on an email list. Growing this has been a priority which EmmyLou has focused on by using the following:

• a website pop-up;
• opting-in website purchasers; and
• by driving traffic to her database sign up page which is pre-built for any Ampjar user.

EmmyLou does a really great job of driving traffic to her sign up page using stories and the swipe up function. She also changes the link in her bio to her Ampjar sign up link for short periods of time and drives traffic there.

She has grown her email list to over 4,000 subscribers in 9 months.

Email Content

EmmyLou’s emails are an extension of her social experience. The emails are written in a way that knows the user can click to buy, but that keeps the same tone and style as her Instagram stories and news feed posts.

The following are some of EmmyLou’s emails.
26th August
22nd August
22nd July
24th June
14th May

Email Stats

EmmyLou has maintained impressive open rates and click through rates as her audience has grown.

An average of 59.6% of her followers open her emails which is huge for any industry.
Her most clicked Ampjar emails got over 1,750 clicks, and her average is 767 clicks per campaign. Again, very impressive numbers.

Ampjar shows users where they received their clicks, and also create unique links that are trackable through their own tools. So EmmyLou knows exactly what drove the traffic and does more of that next time.

With these numbers, email has become a whole new channel of influence for EmmyLou and is critical anytime EmmyLou has something meaningful to talk about.

Email Solution

The EmmyLou_loves approach should be a roadmap for influencers and bloggers of how to leverage the strength of their social followings to build their databases.

In the age of falling organic reach on social channels, owning your own database who you can reach whenever you want is crucial.

Databases can be used to drive traffic, whether you’re selling your own products, tickets or driving traffic for affiliate relationships.

EmmyLou’s open rates and click-through rates are reflective of the value that exists in her database. For influencers and bloggers, a small nurtured database can be an asset that becomes a leverage point for deals with brands.