By running multiple influencer campaigns a year, Walgreens shares how they were able to drive app downloads and more with influencers.

Influencer marketing – it may well be the most talked about marketing strategy of the decade. So many brands are dipping their toes in the influencer space – with mixed results. One brand having repeated success with this marketing tactic, however, is Walgreens. Working closely with Carusele, Walgreens runs more than 25 influencer campaigns a year in support of vendor and retail initiatives.

Let’s take a look at how one of these campaigns worked to drive awareness and downloads of Walgreens own consumer app. The campaign was so successful that Digital Shopper Marketing Magazine highlighted it in their February issue.

Ambassador Influencers

Because of the number of influencer programs they run each year, Walgreens has developed mutually-beneficial relationships with specific influencers who now act as brand ambassadors. These “VIP influencers” developed messaging that worked with their own personal content strategies to get the word out about the convenience and money-saving capabilities of #MyWalgreensApp.

Original influencer images from the #MyWalgreensApp campaign

This is one of the keys to successful influencer marketing – the messaging must fit naturally with the influencers’ own brands. This ensures that the content produced is authentic, believable and resonates with the influencers’ audiences.

https://youtu.be/FfneRGGvcq0

Results

During the campaign period, the Walgreens App saw a 28 percent lift in new app downloads and influencer content generated more than 222 million impressions. “To buy premium digital display ads delivering equivalent impressions, it would have cost more than $2.3 million,” said Calvin Peters, PR and digital communications manager of Walgreens Boots Alliance.

The target audience spent more than 100,000 hours engaging with 3,600 pieces of content – that’s more than 11 years of cumulative attention! One of the really cool parts about this campaign was the addition of user-generated editorial content that appeared in more than 1,000 hyper-local digital and print news outlets.

Read more about how Carusele created consumer relevancy for #MyWalgreensApp here and see how Digital Shopper Marketing Magazine covered the campaign here.