Blogger Outreach & Influencer Marketing Case Studies [Updated]

It’s no secret that we love influencer marketing and outreach.

These strategies helped propel our blog from zero to DA 55 in record time at almost no marketing cost, after all. But can other companies say the same of their own experiences with these tactics?

How powerful is influencer marketing, really?

How does blogger outreach factor in, and what do people in the community have to say about the dos and don’ts?

To answer these questions, we turned to yet another of our favorite go-to resources: case studies.

We’re no stranger to creating massive case study compilations.

For a good example, check out our EPIC list of Marketing Case Studies.

This time, we want to create an updated short list to show examples of how influencer marketing and blogger outreach campaigns have impacted other companies, as well as the influencers themselves.

So, we powered up our handy NinjaOutreach tool, hit Content Prospecting, and clicked search.

We then cleaned up this data, choosing the most relevant choices for our topic.

We made new additions to our list, eliminated older studies, and kept some that we think still holds water.

To start our lineup, here are our latest top 5 favorites!

Our Top 5 Favorite Blogger Outreach Case Studies:

How influencers grew website traffic 204% in four months for a convenience food company – We love this case study because it shows how, without paying for any marketing program, Klean Plate used blogger outreach to connect with influencers in their niche. The result? They grew website traffic 204% and increased online sales 14x in just four months.

The Value of Mega and Micro Influencers: A Case Study – Ever wondered how to target the right influencer for blogger outreach? Which influencers  are worth the time and budget? This case study compares the quantifiable impact of micro influencers and mega influencers in the organic beauty niche and sheds some light.

Sales Effect Study: Influencer Marketing by Nielsen Catalina Solutions – This is one of the biggest and most thorough case studies ever done to measure the direct effect of influencer marketing on sales. The results in a nutshell: Influencer marketing can drive up to an 11x increase in annual sales vs traditional digital advertising. The low-cost, high-return influencer marketing model, to use a quote from the study, “Blows traditional digital advertising results out of the water.”

The Importance of Influencer Marketing in the 2016 American Election – While this is not a case study in the strictest sense of the word, this made it into our top 5 because of its interesting talking points about influencer marketing and the latter’s power to influence a country’s election results.

Other Awesome Influencer Marketing Case Studies:

Case Study: Tilting Point’s soft launch influencer marketing campaign – Does influencer marketing work for mobile games? Game publisher Tilting Point proves it does with their influencer marketing success story. Their blogger outreach campaign gave the game a 245% organic uplift and boosted App Store rankings from #1224 to #192. Believe.

Case Study: How Anki Earned 19M+ Impressions, Capitalizing On The 2016 Election – For robotics and AI toy company Anki, influencer marketing has helped them knock their KPIs out of the park. Initially expecting only 8 million views, their multi-influencer campaign ended up giving them close to 20 million views.

Blogger Outreach – Mustela Case Study – Premium baby skin care brand Mustela benefited from the power of “mummy bloggers”, gaining over 1k followers in a month. One post got 15k views in Instagram stories and over 800 likes in less than 24 hours, with many clamoring to know more about Mustela’s products. Mommy bloggers FTW!

How influencer marketing attracted 100,000 website clicks to luxury mattress site – Leesa, a direct-to-consumer luxury mattress manufacturer sponsored Youtube influencers and reached out to customers and social media influencers for reviews. This resulted in more than 100k visitors and 400 sales since they launched their influencer marketing campaign.

How Chobani’s Influencer Program Elevated Their #BreakYouMake Campaign – In a saturated market, consumer product Chobani is always pushing to stand out. In this campaign, they ramped up their blogger outreach, targeting top influencers to help promote their Greek yogurt brand. With social media personalities and curated hashtag in place, Chobani launched their campaign and immediately reaped the benefits of this strategy, with 90% of engagement largely driven by their strong roster of influencers.

Case Study: Influencer Marketing Campaign for NYC Restaurant Group – Pepe’s Restaurant Group wanted to raise awareness and sales for its five Manhattan-based restaurants. Their weapons of choice: social media, influencer marketing, and a blog ambassador program. After six months of launching their campaign, the end results were: 45 influencer visits, 4.5 million impressions, 66,500+ social interactions, and average engagement of 2,000+ per post. Sweet!

Cleaning The Slate: A Swiffer & Mr. Clean Case Study – Swiffer and Mr. Clean enlisted the help of an agency to put together an influencer marketing campaign. But they did not want just any influencer, they wanted influencers who had just recently moved homes. Why? The goal was to tell personal stories that show how the company’s products took part in the homemaking experience. The result? In only three weeks, the campaign sparked great conversations on homemaking, drove more than 4.5k social shares, reached 3 million individuals, and got more than 50 million impressions. Sneaky but effective!

Case study: How influencers can cut through social noise –  In the case of Calvin Klein, influencers such as Kendall Jenner, Miranda Kerr, and Iggy Azalea, among others, posted selfies featuring the brand’s products and the hashtag #mycalvins. These posts followed a crucial format: the selfies must feel organic and not overly promotional. Not surprisingly, the campaign immediately went viral. Over 6k fans submitted their own #mycalvins selfies and the hashtag reached a combined global following of over 90 million fans. In two weeks, Calvin Klein gained almost 13k Instagram followers and over 38k Facebook fans. Global sales also saw an upturn. Talk about star power!

Measuring The Impact of One Perfect Tweet: Arby’s Case Study – Sometimes, a simple social media post can generate disproportionately large returns, especially if posted with the right content, the right audience, and the right time. One such phenomenon happened during the Grammy’s. Amused by the likeness of celebrity Pharell’s hat to their company logo, fast food chain Arby’s sent a tongue-in-cheek tweet with the message: “Hey Pharrell, can we have our hat back?”. The post went viral, getting engagement with over 118K people, over 180K retweets, favorites and related organic mentions, and nearly 170 million potential impressions. All this within a span of 2 days.

Social Media Marketing: GNCs strategy for courting online influencers and adding 383,000 Facebook fans – Changing brand perception can be difficult. In this case study, health and nutrition products retailer GNC took a grassroots approach and surveyed influencers and customers to help them refine their product and their marketing. What did they get out of their influencer marketing tactic? Almost 400K new Facebook fans, 60K more Twitter followers, and increased sales.

ANA Social Media Influencer Outreach Brand Ambassador Case Study – All Nippon Airways (ANA) utilized Brand Ambassadors to create social media buzz for the launch of their new “Inspiration of Japan” service in Los Angeles. Within 24 hours after gathering 30 Brand Ambassadors for a promotional party, over 300 tweets featuring pictures of the event resulted in almost 5.5 million impressions.

How a celebrity influencer gave #CadburyCraveyard a new lease of life – For Halloween 2015, Cadbury’s brought back one of its old chocolate bars back from the dead with a social media vote. The campaign started well enough, but when a former X-factor contestant and Big Brother presenter joined in on the hashtag party, things escalated to a whole new level. The influencer’s post got over 1 million impressions and, by the end of the day, #CadburyCraveyard got over 11k tweets compared to a little over a hundred the day before. Now that’s what a little star power can do!

Marriott Case Study Reveals Story Topics & Tips for Pitching the Web’s Top Influencers – Bloggers are proven to drive millions of consumers (and consumer spending) to the products, services, and destinations they write about. In the case of Marriott, eight influential travel bloggers and vloggers produced a total of 39 blog posts promoting Florida Marriott’s collection of hotels and resorts. In one month, this campaign resulted in a combined reach of more than five million.

Sleep Naked Social Media Campaign: A Case Study Exploring the Role of Online Influencers – How do you get people talking about an unknown brand in a category of undifferentiated products? That’s the challenge U.S. Cotton’s communications team took on in 2012. Five influential beauty bloggers posted their makeup-free selfies in a bid to win votes for their chosen charities. This opened a conversation with the audience who gamely responded with their own selfies and skin care stories. After three weeks of the campaign, Swisspers jumped from 250 to over 20k Facebook likes, 40k votes, and 60k visits to its Facebook campaign tab.

Shutterstock Gets Social – Digital PR Case Study – These days, Shutterstock is known as the de facto paid, high quality image library for bloggers. But there was once a time when they did blogger outreach too. This was when Shutterstock received a great suggestion from one of the bloggers they reached out to—Adam Singer of The Future Buzz blog. Instead of agreeing to their pitch, which was to write a blog post interviewing Shutterstock’s CEO, Adam requested free access to test drive Shutterstock’s image library in exchange for a review blog post. Adam then went on to suggest that Shutterstock open this opportunity to the other bloggers they reach out to. Shutterstock agreed and followed his suggestion—resulting in great success for the company.

Anatomy of a bad pitch: 5 things marketers and agencies should AVOID when pitching bloggers (case study) Brand Meets Blog – Pitching matters. How you pitch a blogger could be considered the most crucial part of running a successful blogger outreach offering as a brand or agency. In this blogger outreach case study, a micro influencer dishes out all the good and the bad from every pitch she’s ever received.

Ongoing Influencer Marketing Case Study Series – mediakix – Four airline companies wanted to market their brand to new audiences. Their game plan was to partner with top social media influencers who created aspirational lifestyle content highlighting the airline brand. The result: 5 million pageviews, 1 million monthly uniques, and a combined social reach of over 8.2 million.

Friends with Benefits – In a social media marketing space ridden with bots, one influencer eschewed the practice of automation. This influencer, Marketing Chap, generated genuine conversations and engagement with his followers, eventually catching the attention of one-time SilverDoor marketer Marta Cowburn Cuesta. Cuesta lost no time to build a relationship—again, an authentic one where they exchange articles and commentary. Despite the Marketing Chap’s smaller reach compared to bigger influencers, his deeper relationships with his audience resulted in higher conversions. Another case in favor of micro influencers.

Blogger Outreach for Oxfam America’s International Women’s Day 2012 Campaign -This case study details how a blogger outreach campaign far exceeded its initial goals. Despite a steep timeline of only one month, the campaign was able to secure 42 blog posts from top online sources, which was a roughly 600% increase in media coverage compared to previous campaigns.

Effective And Easy To Use Influencer Outreach Tool  :  Create Custom Templates with custom fields to send personalized influencer outreach messages to your contacts either via email or contact form.  Comes with tracking and easy email integration

Backyard Takeover: Influencer Marketing “Grows” Brand Awareness – Gardening app startup Sprout.it  wanted to spread some hype about their new iPad app. At the same time, they wanted the influencers to nurture a community of followers. So, they partnered with six influential home, garden and DIY bloggers. With limited budget and only seven blog posts later, the brand’s promotional hashtag, #GrowInspired, reached 60k people. Campaign-related Facebook posts reached 300k people. Sprout.it’s Facebook fan base also tripled throughout the campaign. They were able to collect 130 participants’ email addresses and, in just a week, the campaign drove more than 5k visits to Sprout.it’s website. Lastly, the campaign has generated ongoing media coverage from leading online news outlets such as The Next Web, Social Media Today, and PR Daily.

Pirelli Case Study – Facebook and Blogger Outreach – For tire manufacturer Pirelli, a social media marketing campaign and targeted blogger outreach delivered great results: Over 12k pageviews and 1.5k new fans in less than three weeks.

Blogger outreach that works – Although it certainly is possible for digital influencers to play an effective role in media strategies, getting it right is tricky and carries a lot of risk. This interview highlights a case study of how travel brand G Adventures did it right through their brand ambassador program.

Need Blogger Outreach? A Case Study in How NOT to Do It | PRBreakfastClub – Blogger outreach is an important part of marketing and PR strategies. But there’s a right way (and many wrong ways) to conduct effective outreach. This case study showcases one cold outreach example and points out how they got it all wrong.

Restaurant Marketing Case Study: Engaging Influencers, Gatekeepers, Bloggers And Media –  This case study shows how a beleaguered steakhouse executed another side of blogger outreach where they didn’t go direct to the top-tier influencers. Instead, they went through “gatekeepers” (agents, assistants, etc). These micro influencers then started a ripple effect, reaching top social influencers who, in turn, passed along their high-value recommendations. This multi-pronged marketing strategy worked, making a big impact to the restaurant’s successful launch.

How To Use Social Influence To Build A Personal Brand – How an aspiring science writer did influencer outreach right—and landed an interview feature on the holy grail for science writers, Scientific American.

How Buzzsmith Elevated Bugaboo’s Brand Recognition Offline and Brought Engagement Levels to Measurable Results Online – Digital marketing firm Buzzsmith used blogger outreach and an influencer ambassador program to boost awareness for the global fashion stroller brand, Bugaboo. Thirty bloggers participated in this campaign and in 3 months, they were able to gain 17.9 million impressions, 33% more referring traffic, ranked top ten in some of their targeted keywords, and ranked first in audience engagement for the US region.