Creating your first campaign involves a handful of key decisions: your goal, your compensation model, your brief, and your tracking setup.
If you’re not sure where to start, Jaice, Upfluence’s AI assistant, can handle most of these steps for you. Answer a few questions about your brand and goals, and Jaice will structure your campaign: compensation, creator targeting, brief and all. It’s the fastest way to get to launch.
👉 Not sure what you want yet?
🎯 Define Your Goal, It Shapes Everything
Get clear on what success looks like for this campaign. Your goal determines your ideal creators profile and your campaign structure.
Share your goal with Jaice and it will guide you through your campaign settings, from creator targeting to compensation, based on what you are actually trying to achieve.
Goal | What to look for in creators | What to set up in the campaign | KPIs to track |
Brand awareness |
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Drive sales |
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Collect UGC |
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💰 Set Up Your Compensation and Customise It
Decide what you are actually offering and why. The structure you choose should reflect what you are asking creators to do and what success looks like for you.
Not sure what to offer? Jaice will recommend a compensation structure based on your goals
Base compensation type
Gifting: physical product, gift card, experience
Flat fee: a one-time payment for a defined deliverable
Gifting + Flat fee
⚠️ Your compensation type cannot be changed after the campaign is created. Make this decision before you launch.
Optional add-on
Commission: Based on sales generated. Available on top of either type above.
⚠️ If you want to offer commission, you need a tracking plan set up in your campaign
Match your structure to your goal
The structure you choose sends a signal to creators about what you value most.
Goal | Recommended structure | Why |
Brand awareness | Flat fee, gifting* or both
| You are paying for content and reach, not measurable sales. Commission alone does not make sense if you cannot track direct attribution. *A gifting-only campaign tends to work best when your product has a high perceived value. Think technology, travel experiences, or premium goods. |
Drive sales | Flat fee + commission (+Gifting) | Flat fee covers the creator's effort and reduces their risk. Commission keeps them actively promoting after they post, because every sale benefits them too. |
Collect UGC | Flat fee (+Gifting) | You are buying a deliverable (the content and its usage rights) not performance. Keep it simple. |
Long-term partnerships | Flat fee + commission (+Gifting) | Flat fee gives creators stability month to month. Commission keeps them engaged over time without you having to renegotiate every few weeks. |
Testing a new niche, limited budget | Gifting + commission | Lower upfront cost, but only works if your product has genuine appeal. Creators have less financial incentive to post, so expect a lower conversion rate from outreach. |
Flat fee: the setting most people miss
When configuring compensation, you have three options for flat fee
Set a default flat fee that applies to all creators: consistent and efficient when you have a fixed budget per creator.
Set a default flat fee, then adjust for specific creators if needed: use the default as a baseline and tweak the amount individually before sending each invitation. Creators see the rate in their invitation, so make sure it reflects what you actually intend to offer before you reach out. Useful when you want flexibility for standout profiles.
Leave the flat fee blank and enable counter-offers: creators propose their own rate when they apply. This removes any anchor you set and lets the market tell you what creators in your niche actually expect. A good approach for a first campaign if you are unsure what to offer.
💡 Importance of negotiations
Negotiation is a normal and expected part of the process. Most successful partnerships involve some back and forth, on rate or deliverables, before both sides align. Engaging in that conversation often leads to stronger long-term collaborators.
Commission rate
Commission rates typically fall between 10% and 30% for e-commerce brands.
If you are launching your first campaign and are not sure where to land, 20% is a strong starting point. It is competitive enough to attract creators without overcommitting on margin.
A few factors to keep in mind
You can set a default commission rate and adjust it per creator before sending invitations. Creators see the rate in their invitation, so finalise it before you reach out.
Counter-offers are not available for commission. If you want to negotiate a commission rate with a specific creator, do it by exchanging directly via email. Once you reach an agreement, update that creator's profile in the campaign to reflect the agreed rate before processing any payment.
Bonus payments
Upfluence also lets you add a bonus payment on top of a creator’s base compensation. This is separate from their flat fee, gifting, or commission. It is a one-time extra amount you can award at any point during or after the campaign.
You can approach bonus payments in two ways.
👉 Tiered milestones
Define bonus amounts in advance tied to performance thresholds. For example:
20 confirmed sales → $50 bonus
50 confirmed sales → $75 bonus
100 confirmed sales → $150 bonus
This gives creators a clear incentive structure from the start and removes any ambiguity about what strong performance is worth. You set the tiers upfront in the campaign brief or creator agreement, and award the corresponding bonus once the threshold is reached.
👉 Discretionary bonuses
You can also decide to award a bonus after the campaign is live, based on results or circumstances as they unfold. A few situations where this makes sense:
A creator delivers additional content beyond what was agreed and you want to compensate them fairly
You want to retain a top performer at the end of a campaign before moving into a longer-term arrangement
💡 Even a small bonus goes a long way. Creators talk to each other. A reputation for rewarding strong performance makes future outreach easier.
📄 Write a Brief That Actually Gets a Yes
Jaice generates a brief for you based on your campaign settings: it covers all the essentials so you are not starting from a blank page.
From there, it is worth taking a few minutes to make it your own: add your brand’s tone, a detail about what makes your product different, or anything that reflects who you are. The brief is often a creator’s first impression of your brand. Make it feel like you!
👉 Learn more here How to make a brief A-Z
📧 Build Your Email Flow Before You Launch
Jaice creates email templates for your entire flow based on your campaign settings, the foundations are solid and cover everything you need.
But your email flow is not just a logistical tool. It is the voice of your brand throughout the entire creator relationship. Every email a creator receives from you, from the first invitation to the shipment notification, shapes how they feel about working with you.
1️⃣ Your invitation email, your first and most important impression
Creators receive dozens of collaboration requests. Your invitation email has roughly four seconds to earn a read.
Your subject line determines whether the email gets opened at all. Avoid anything that reads like a mass send: “Free product,” “Paid partnership opportunity,” “Collab request.” These get filtered out before the email is even opened.
A subject line that works 👉 [Your Brand] x {{influencer_name}}: [specific hook]
💡 Keep this exact subject line across every email in the thread: invitation, follow-up, approval, and beyond. Changing it mid-conversation creates separate threads and makes your communication feel scattered.
Personalize the first line: Use merge fields to make every email feel written for that specific creator. 👉 How to personalize your emails with merge fields
The first sentence should reference their content style, or why they are a natural fit for your brand. The template should not read like a template.
Make the offer easy to scan: You have four to ten seconds before someone decides whether to keep reading. Structure the offer in bullet points:
What you are offering (product, flat fee, commission, or a mix)
What you are asking for (one reel, a story, an unboxing)
Why them specifically, in one line
One clear CTA: Beyond personalisation, your invitation email needs to include the {{application_link}}. This is the single most important merge field in your outreach, without it, a creator who wants to say yes has nowhere to go. Double-check it is in the email before you launch.
2️⃣ Shipment email
Match the content of this email to exactly what you are sending:
Physical product: include tracking information
Gift card: share the code directly in the email
No physical product: share the discount code, affiliate link, and any hashtags or keywords to use
This is also the right moment to remind creators to add their affiliate or tracked link to their Instagram Story link sticker if Stories are part of their deliverables. Story traffic disappears fast. If they do not add the link, that performance data is lost entirely.
3️⃣ Draft request email, even if you are not reviewing drafts
If your campaign does not require content approval, do not skip this email, repurpose it. Instead of a formal review request, use it as a pre-publication check-in that reinforces the relationship.
A warm, encouraging message at that exact touchpoint makes a real difference in how they feel about the collaboration and how much effort they put in.
🔗 Set Up Tracking Before Anyone Goes Live
Click here to learn more.
Without tracking from day one, you cannot prove ROI, attribute sales to the right creator, or improve future campaigns. With Upfluence, you are able to track:
Discount code usage
Affiliate link clicks (available natively on Shopify and AST integrations)
Affiliate link conversions, to calculate sales and commissions
Clicks to your website
⚠️ Important
If you are on Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, or BigCommerce, use the native integration to track your sales and clicks. It is the most accurate and least manual option available.
If you selected commission as part of your compensation structure, a Tracking Plan is required, not optional. Commission is calculated based on attributed sales, and without a tracking plan in place, there is no way to measure what each creator generated or pay them accurately.
If you set up a Tracking Plan, you do not need to also add standalone click tracking. Click tracking can be added directly inside your Tracking Plan alongside sales and conversions, no need to set it up separately. Adding it on top as a standalone feature is redundant and can create messy, duplicated data.