Back when Instagram’s logo was still brown, influencer marketing mostly consisted of one-off deals or big pushes around events like BFCM. But Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in 2015 anymore…

Today, over 82% of influencer marketers in our survey say they run always-on campaigns, partnering with creators year-round instead of only during seasonal spikes.

Always-on influencer campaigns deliver excellent ROI – if you run them the right way. In this article, I show how marketers are making evergreen programs work and how you can do the same.

The case for always-on influencer programs

The majority of marketers in our survey agree that an always-on program is crucial to achieving their goals throughout the year. Here’s why:

1. They build authenticity and credibility.

Long-term influencer partnerships come across as more authentic because audiences regularly see the creator using your product, and in various ways. Instead of feeling like a one-off ad, your product appears more integrated into the influencer’s life.

2. They can be used to test new creative angles.

You can use always-on influencer collabs to experiment with new messaging, communication guidelines, workflows, etc. Use evergreen campaigns as the testing ground to make a solid foundation for seasonal campaigns.

3. They give you a prepped and seasoned roster whenever you need it.

You can tap always-on influencer partners during busy seasons or in case of last-minute dropouts. Since you work with them regularly, they’ll be prepared and ready to tackle tasks without requiring too much direction.

4. They help you save time and money.

When you offer an influencer a long-term collaboration, they’ll likely negotiate on their flat fee in exchange for the predictable income. Plus, once you’ve worked with a creator a few times, they’ll get the hang of your brand voice, expectations, and feedback – reducing your workload over time.

A well-rounded influencer marketing strategy uses evergreen campaigns as a great addition to your one-off campaigns as well as to support your seasonal campaigns throughout the year. Athira Aravind elaborates:

I use always-on programs to warm up the audience. Then, I retarget them during seasonal campaigns with a discount or a sale so that the product/brand-informed audience is incentivized to make a purchase.

Athira Aravind Brand Partnerships and Influencer Manager

What should be your goals for always-on campaigns? Almost 60% of marketers in our survey say their goals with evergreen campaigns are to build brand awareness and foster a sense of community.

And it makes sense: evergreen programs are best for building long-term brand trust, not for making immediate sales – think of always-on campaigns as planting seeds for your audience to get to know your brand and products. Lucy Sergeeva agrees:

People rely on influencers’ stories, reviews, and recommendations when making purchases. When they see your brand repeatedly in authentic influencer content, they’re more likely to remember you, trust you, and choose you over countless other options on the market.

Lucy Sergeeva Head of Influencer Marketing

Since brand awareness is a primary goal with always-on campaigns, use metrics like organic traffic surge, earned media value (EMV), positive brand sentiment, and cost-per-view (CPV) to measure the ROI of such collaborations.

But this doesn’t mean your always-on campaigns can’t generate revenue. If you want to aim for conversions via evergreen programs, you can build an affiliate program – more on that in the next section.

3 Ways to structure always-on influencer collaborations

Based on our survey, there are three directions you can take with your always-on influencer program:

Affiliate programs

You already know what a high-performing affiliate program can do, including generate sales throughout the year and even boost your seasonal campaigns. For affiliates, you might have fewer guardrails on who gets to join the program, so this structure allows you to cast a wider net.

Additionally, compensating affiliates based on performance is low risk, high reward for you, but with variable consistency throughout the year. 

Brand ambassador programs

Like an affiliate program on steroids. But unlike affiliates, ambassadors are known advocates of your brand and have become synonymous with your brand and products. As such, you’re going to need a much tighter brand fit when recruiting ambassadors, as they’re going to be explicitly representing your company. 

Your brand ambassador program will also likely provide additional benefits such as flat fees, invitations to company events, and insider access to new product launches.

Always-on influencer partners

The middle ground: choose a handful of creators to partner with every month, or a few times each year. For example, you can partner with a creator to review your product today and then showcase the benefits of long-term usage three and six months later. 

Instead of having a full-fledged program, you can customize this option to your needs. Every influencer can have unique terms in their contract, including frequency of collaborations, performance guidelines, etc.

You can even implement it before you develop a brand ambassador program as a way to test the waters with a few trusted partners. 

If your only goal is revenue, and you’re working with a smaller budget, affiliates are an easy place to start (though evergreen influencer programs can drive much more than just conversions!). 

Even if you choose to build an affiliate program, supplement it with the third option: always have a handful of creators talking about your brand and building trust among their audience.

Choosing the right influencers for always-on campaigns

Depending on which of the above structures you choose, your vetting criteria and creative guidelines will differ.

Affiliates

Most affiliate programs offer a lot of creative freedom – they allow creators from multiple niches to join, thereby providing room for experimentation and innovation.

When evaluating affiliates, many marketers value engagement and reach more than the number of followers or the perfect brand fit. Why? With affiliates, the goal is to bring in clicks and sales, so creators with a wide reach and healthy engagement are better positioned to elicit those actions as quickly as possible.

Brand ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are often synonymous with your brand image. Therefore, you want to hire creators with excellent engagement and storytelling skills so they can talk about your product in fresh, new ways. Fiorella Picado explains:

Using always-on influencers doesn't mean pushing the same messaging. Quite the opposite: it means jumping on new messaging and keeping your brand story alive. In terms of performance, partners must show consistency and ideally an improvement over time.

Fiorella Picado Influencer Marketing Expert

Other always-on partners

As I mentioned above, you can customize the criteria here to fit your needs. Since you’re entering into a long-term contract, I suggest evaluating for solid reach and sharp storytelling skills. 

Even better: look for influencers who are growing quickly and developing an engaged audience. This combo will ensure you continue reaching new potential customers without “burning through” the audience a creator already has.

5 Pro tips to ace your always-on campaigns

Now that you’re confident about running always-on campaigns in your influencer marketing strategy, here are five pro tips to take your evergreen program from good to great!

1: Treat evergreen campaigns as your testing lab

Always-on campaigns are an excellent opportunity to experiment with:

• New messaging
• Creative angles
• Storyfit influencers
• Communication workflows
  

There’s a lower risk with evergreen programs because you aren’t running these campaigns with a very specific revenue goal in mind, so you can afford to play it bold. Kat La Fata adds that the insights you gain will help you improve the performance of your seasonal campaigns:

I use always-on campaigns to test marketing copy. I integrate the talking points that perform best into higher-paying campaigns. I also hone our communication templates and processes with always-on partners so that seasonal campaigns with deadlines run like well-oiled machines!

Kat LaFata Founder

For example, let’s say you learn that working with always-on creators in a specific niche gives you the best ROI. You can use this insight to make your seasonal campaigns more impactful by doubling down on influencers in the same industry.

2: Understand the strengths of each influencer partner

When you work with a creator for the long haul, focus on identifying their strengths. For example, some influencers might excel at creating educational content that you can repurpose while others excel at capturing customer emails.

Monitor how your creators perform, and don’t be afraid to experiment with content formats, messaging, and social media channels with each partner – you never know where they might shine. As always, use these insights to strengthen your seasonal campaigns.

For instance, if a creator is excellent at converting customers, you can partner with them during peak seasons like BFCM. Mark Dandy explains how he collects deep data on influencer performance and leverages it during Black Friday:

We measure influencer performance in June and July. Based on that, we decide which influencers are performing the best in which category, and what budgets we should align to those influencers within those categories [for Black Friday].

Mark Dandy Influencer Marketing Specialist

3: Use always-on campaigns to build rapport with audiences

When a creator partners with your brand repeatedly, it makes for an excellent community-building opportunity. You can nurture that relationship, build brand trust, get some potential buyers in your orbit, and then, when they’re warmed up, finally make the sales pitch.

This process may be long, but you aren’t just getting one buyer one time; you’re building a relationship strong enough to turn one-time customers into repeat customers.

Plus, when a creator has been raving about your brand on their profile for a long time, many people are already familiar with you and will be ready to buy when your seasonal campaigns kick in. Alice Arruda agrees:

Each [always-on] creator’s audience is already familiar with the brand. Some even own the products already – they know their quality and are just waiting for a promotion to make another purchase.

Alice Arruda Senior Social Media Analyst

4: Run internal campaigns to motivate always-on creators

Creative fatigue is a byproduct of always-on campaigns. With repetitive collabs and similar products, a creator’s content can lose its spark. To keep influencers motivated, run internal campaigns and incentives that’ll keep them on their toes.

For example, you can offer performance-based rewards so the creator has more earning potential beyond the flat fees. Incentives can also take the form of free merchandise (especially if your product is expensive), invitations to exclusive brand events, early access to new products, and more.

5: Create always-on campaigns with unique creative angles

Audience fatigue doesn’t just happen because a creator’s followers have seen your products multiple times – it might also happen because they’ve seen the same product with the same messaging. To keep things fresh and interesting, experiment with new creative angles. Dmitri Cherner adds:

You’ll want long-term partners to start mentioning the other value props and even come up with some more nuanced ones that aren't typically shared in the brief.

Dmitri Cherner Influencer Marketing Expert

For example, let’s say you sell a hair serum. After the first detailed review post, you can follow it up with:

• What happens when you use the product consistently for three months
• What happens when you use it while traveling in a different climate
• How to use it in conjunction with other products in the creator’s routine
  

Think of fresh talking points for each post so the audience isn’t always hearing the same thing. Read on for more about how to combat audience fatigue…

Top challenges of always-on campaigns (and how to solve them)

Evergreen influencer programs offer numerous benefits, but they’re not without drawbacks. Here are some challenges you can expect to encounter, along with strategies for overcoming them.

1: Audience fatigue

Audience fatigue occurs when you’ve exhausted a creator’s audience: those who wanted to buy from you already have, and the ones who haven’t bought are not interested. Here’s how to steer clear of audience fatigue:

Work with creators who are growing fast. The faster a creator grows, the more people you can reach as their following count climbs. Find fast-growing influencers using a filter designed specifically for this purpose in Modash. For example, you can choose to only see creators who have grown at least 50% over the past six months.

Bake in breaks in your evergreen campaign contract. Always-on campaigns don’t have to be executed every month – you can collaborate once every other month or once a quarter, for instance. 

2: Long-term contracts can be risky

You signed a year-long contract with a creator, and three months in, their performance is dropping like a stone. What do you do? The risk with always-on campaigns is you can’t turn them off at will – you’re stuck with the creator for the duration of their contract. Here’s how to minimize the risk of long-term contracts:

‍Run a trial period to test the waters. Run a short trial period that helps you assess a creator’s content quality and performance. A trial period gives both you and the creator an “out” if it’s not the right fit.

Have a cancellation clause in your contract. Put a clause about premature cancellation (for both sides!) in your influencer contract. For instance, you can specify a fee in exchange for ending a contract earlier than expected.

3: Always-on campaigns require considerable resources

Evergreen campaigns are a lot of work (although this typically doesn’t apply to affiliate programs that are “set it and forget it”). The more long-term influencers you continue to add to your roster, the more your workload increases. 

You need more resources to manage relationships, track performance, and so on – which can be extremely challenging for a small team. Here’s how to work more efficiently to manage always-on campaigns:

‍Onboard only a few creators at a time. The majority of the work in always-on campaigns is done in the beginning when onboarding. To avoid putting too much on your plate, don’t onboard too many creators at any one time. 

‍Use software to automate manual tasks. Some influencer marketing tasks – like collecting influencer content, tracking affiliate performance, and sending payments – can easily be automated via an influencer marketing tool like Modash. 

The more you outsource administrative tasks, the more room you have to focus on important things like giving personalized feedback, nurturing influencer relationships, and finding more creators for your always-on campaigns.

Play the long game

Always-on campaigns are a heavy lift up front, but they lay the foundation of consistent influencer relationships, brand recognition, and even sales. You also gain a solid network of creator partners, loyal audiences, and a steady stream of insights to make every seasonal campaign stronger.

If it feels too overwhelming, start small and scale slowly. Reach out to your best-performing influencer and sign a long-term contract with them. When you see positive results in a few months, add another creator to your always-on program. Then another. 

Building an evergreen program is about progress, not speed. Go at your own pace, and before you know it, you’ll have a program that makes every campaign easier, stronger, and more impactful.

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