By
Lumanu
Aug 5, 2024
How ColourPop scaled their creator marketing program
Michelle Song, Director of Social at ColourPop, and Tony Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumanu, share their experiences and perspectives on creator marketing. Moderated by Nick Sharma, the discussion focuses on how ColourPop scaled their creator marketing program. Michelle discusses how her approach and tech stack streamline workflows, enhance relationships, and helped ColourPop scale. This transcript offers insights for brands looking to scale their creator programs and optimize their marketing strategies.
Nick Sharma: How about you guys start us off with quick intros, introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do? And what brought you to grow?
Michelle Song: I'm Michelle. I am the director of social color pop. What brought me to grow is I'm a client of Lumanu and we got talking about, how.
I use different products in my tech stack to be really efficient and to solve problems in not just the marketing funnel, but productivity and working collaboratively with different departments. And Lumanu has been a really great partner and really receptive to my feedback and product updates that just helped me to be really efficient, not just with my own workflow, but also for my creators who are really important partners to my day to day.
Tony Tran: I'm Tony, co founder and CEO of Lumanu. We launched our payments product in 2020, which then we started learning about net payment terms and all these other things that jeopardize relationships that marketers spend a long time building, sometimes finance isn't always the fastest to turn around payments. And then that's where we are.
One thing Michelle and I see eye to eye on is the importance of relationships especially in today's world, right? Where people like working with who they like, and if you want to see better results, it pays to, to treat creators, right.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Michelle, you have experienced both on the agency and the brand side. I'm curious how that has led to the way that you treat creator marketing being at ColourPop.
Michelle Song: I myself was a creator. I was shooting content doing art direction and photography. And so all of that kind of combined with social marketing, I realized, social media really needs workflows, and also creators really need an easy way to work with the brand. It can't be one way.
Because when you work with creators, it's actually a collaboration. Tony said creators want to work with people that they like, who they respect, and they'll do more. They'll give you extended usage rights, they'll give you discounted rates. So you are not only representing a brand, you have your brand. Your own brand, your personal brand.
They know that, hey, if I moved to a different brand, I know Michelle always pays me on time. I know that she's really easy with her briefs or she will give me detailed instructions. She's super easy to work with and they'll be more amenable to working with me on like a three day turnaround, which is really hard to do.
Nick Sharma: And I'm curious, you've got a lean team, right? On the social side. So what's your tech stack to help you automate and make sure that you get everything done?
Michelle Song: Yeah. I love notion and it's funny cause people call me like you're a tech bro, Michelle.
But it's really the best tool I've used. I've used Trello, I've used Jira. And when you're working with creators, you need a tool that's really easy, user friendly without adding costs to seats. So I use notion for not only project management, but as a collaborative tool for creators to upload their content.
With each database that I work with it's like a Kanban board. I know, they know exactly what stage their brief is. We work on 120 pieces of content a month and it's always rotating. We have many product launches. And It has to always be a moving, living cycle.
So they know when their product has been sent for shipment, they know when something needs to be delivered, they get an automatic due date, and it's an app. So they can, they're creating content on their phone. Cause it's UGC and it's really easy for them to just literally embed a video or even on their desktop, drag and drop because other platforms like, you have to deal with Dropbox and then on the brand side, you have to then download the asset, make sure, you label it for sharing purposes.
And it's really easy for us to just create tags to share with other departments.
Nick Sharma: Totally. And Lumanu also, in your tech stack. Why did you choose Lumanu for creator management and payouts?
Michelle Song: Yeah I was grandfathered in, and I didn't really understand the platform until three months in my role.
It's really easy because AP, finance always takes forever. And in a way I can premeditate exactly how much budget I'm going to be spending monthly. And Lumanu recently onboarded us onto a new function of having projects. So I can start segregating. I have a budget for this campaign, and then I can actually bring in invoices into these specific projects.
Lumanu makes my tech stack very easy. I can do all my budgeting there.
Nick Sharma: Got it. Tony, can you walk us through the evolution of Lumanu since 2017 and where it is now?
Tony Tran: Yeah, for sure. We noticed the creative ways that they were charging, it wasn't always just paid up front, sometimes it's a percentage of ad spend, it's a la carte usage rights, and then you had Spark ads, TikTok ads, and we just learned that the traditional way that finance did it, which is every payment had to have an invoice, and bigger companies and EPOs just didn't really work, and PayPal and Venmo weren't great because it was terrible for accounting.
So there's just all these drawbacks. So we develop payments, and then when we launch a creator app, to Michelle's point, one thing I tell my team is, the creator space is very much a multiplayer space. And we felt like a lot of the existing solutions, whether it's BILL or PayPal, are single player solutions.
You really have to think about the other side of the game. And if you're a lean team, treating creators as an extension of your team, by thinking of them as product users, and not just as an afterthought, it saves everyone a lot of time. So that's when we built out payments. And one of the big things we did was actually this feature called Instant Pay.
So to Michelle's point, I remember talking to her like, asking a creator to turn around and edit in 24 hours, yet you're telling them, I want to pay you in 60 days, breaks some fundamental human psyche. And we actually saw that, when you tell creators, hey, Lumanu will pay you as soon as you finish your work.
Finance will pay them later. It allows you to get those really quick edit turnarounds, or last minute changes, or can I fly you out to a photo shoot? And that's when we started really seeing payments is not just a thing you do at the end, but it's actually something you can rope in at the very beginning to make the relationship and collaboration go better.
Nick Sharma: I'm curious, Michelle, as you work with creators, where does Lumanu fit into that relationship or that journey of working with a creator?
Michelle Song: It starts from when we sign a creator on. We say, hey, go sign up at Lumanu, here's your link.
If we have a video that we're like, hey, we're restocking this product, we lost usage rights. We want to extend it, and it's immediately done. And for all other creatives, we're net 30, which I think creators really enjoy. For us, net 30 isn't end of the month. It's as soon as we receive your deliverable, you will get paid in 30 days.
So a lot of creators just really enjoy knowing that they have financial stability, they know they will get paid. They know that we are very reliable. There are very few instances where we're late with payments, which makes our relationship with them so strong.
Nick Sharma: And how has that also impacted the relationships with the creators?
Cause I know as you were saying earlier working with YouTubers or content creators, the more you can make it easier for them, the more they want to continue working together.
Michelle Song: So we've actually started to onboard creators as retainers, you'll get X amount for X amount of deliverables each month.
And we have perpetuity in usage and in content, which is always a struggle in content marketing because you want to be able to use the asset anywhere without having to question what the usage is.
So they get signed on as a retainer and they're like, okay, great, I know I'm going to have money coming in. And they're also very open to having lowered rates because they already know they can depend on the retainer. So if I add on a separate asset, they're like, okay, great. It'll be like, 10 percent off or whatnot.
Nick Sharma: Yeah. I feel the guarantee is a mental thing for creators. They don't have a stable income. So knowing it's coming is huge. I'm curious, like from A creator working with creators has has using Lumanu enabled you to add a ton more creators to your roster that you work with on a monthly basis.
Michelle Song: Yeah, because I don't have, we don't have to do the back and forth with the, Hey, submit your invoice. We need to get your, your W 9 form yeah, we don't have to get all of that filled out, pass it off to finance. It's all in Lumanu, which is super easy. It's, we literally just have an email blurb that we're like, this is a submit it and, It's very easy for them.
They're great, we don't need to worry about following up.
Nick Sharma: Tony, on average, when you start working with somebody for let's say six months in, do you see a big increase in brands being able to bring on more creators?
Tony Tran: We do, and what's really interesting a lot of times is, it's a very collaborative effort with the brands we work with.
So it starts off at ColourPop, the social team, the creator team. We were just talking backstage about affiliates. One of the things we noticed, especially in the beauty space, or any brand that has an affiliate program I think someone earlier talked about how it's not, a lot of creators are driving better ROAS, lower CPAs, but it's hard to attribute with last click attribution.
So we actually work with our partners to come up with creative incentive programs. Maybe you have a pool of money that you can divvy out to creators based on some top of funnel metrics that correlate with downstream better ROAS. We were also talking like landing pages, one of the undervalued things in today's landscape is.
After people click on an ad, where do they go? A lot of times, if you click on a creator ad or creator post, you want to take them to a landing page that is creator heavy or creator front and centered. You can actually pay creators on an affiliate based on the views that page gets, even if that page gets views from other traffic sources as well.
So we notice that when you introduce those additional compensation models, the number of creators you work with increases because now you're not paying 2k, 3k per pop. Some creators you can pay, a hundred plus residuals, right? And those creative compensation models allow you to work with way more creators.
Someone once told me it's like picking stock. You don't always know ahead of time who's going to really perform, but the more bets you make, the better the chance that you're going to get a winner.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Speaking of metrics, Michelle, I'm curious what kind of metrics you look for with creator posts.
If they're not assuming these are not paid media running or white listed posts, how do you judge if a. Collaborative campaign was successful and what do you look for?
Michelle Song: Yeah, so it's a little bit different because for us at ColourPop we're very built out everything on social is for organic and it trickles down to paid ads it goes into emails, PDPs and our influencer team who also uses Lumanu they definitely like track EMV And, I see exactly like what they're tracking and how they're tracking it and they're very good about projecting okay, this group of influencers are going to drive this much for the brand that they have that goal.
For social, it's a mix because we have to support all these different legs of the business. Sometimes I am trying to get content that is specifically meant to convert. Sometimes I'm trying to get content that just is what the brand needs because no matter what like when you're part of when you're in house, you can't just always think What the customer wants.
Sometimes you have these brand ideals and aesthetics that you have to hit. But majority of the time it's what our consumers want, like what our community wants. I think someone said it earlier content, you have to create your content for your community. Or else, it's just going to fall flat on your face.
Unless you're like a very legacy, very, Like you have such strong branding that people come to you for your branding. You actually have to create for your community. And it's always changing. Like sometimes they're going to want tutorials. Sometimes they just don't want to be sold.
There's no real formula. You just have to guess what they want.
Nick Sharma: Do you find that certain creators are best for educational type content? Certain are best for promoting sales or promotions, things like that.
Michelle Song: Whenever we have a campaign, we look at, okay, we want to get content that has some speaking heads.
We know we need tutorials. We know we need macros. And I've created an internal CRM where I can actually filter. For those specific niches. So then when I create my briefs and where I'm, when I'm choosing who I want to pay, I can be like, okay, I want to do 10 creators that are macros or I need to do 20 that are talking head tutorials.
And so we break, that's how we project and do our budgeting.
Nick Sharma: Tony, with the, I mean I feel like creators are just getting more and more, I mean I think 50 percent of Gen Z identifies as a creator now or identifies as something, but I thought you were Gen Z, wouldn't you know? Yeah, technically I am, I don't identify as Gen Z.
Where else do you think Lumanu fits into that creator org or that creator journey as you guys continue to grow?
Tony Tran: So one thing that I noticed was really interesting we've noticed this term partnerships being tossed around quite a bit, but as the teams that originally worked with influencers and creators grow, we've noticed that Many different people can be considered creators, even if you don't think about it at first glance.
We have a lot of fitness brands, for instance, that partner with local gyms food and beverage brands that partner with local businesses like bars and clubs and a lot of the techniques, even whitelisting, even, these type of affiliate models or pay for performance that you traditionally would think for a tick tocker.
Or an Instagram, or a YouTube, or actually also work with in real life partnerships. I think one of our other clients, Farmers Dog, does a lot of partnerships with local dog walkers. So I think that is, and I know it's a little bit, a mentor told me a long time ago, relationships are the only thing that's recession proof.
And now I tell my nieces and nephews, relationships are also the only thing that's AI proof. Because I don't think machines will ever, Take over that part, but the more relationships that you can build with not just your traditional influencers and creators, but in real life creators your community, if you will I think that's where the [00:13:00] money was going and we've noticed, there's just so many, we have dermatologists and vets, getting paid through the Lumanu which is really exciting to see photographers who are not only freelancers, but also promoting cameras and, doing tutorials and things like that.
Nick Sharma: And with ColourPop, I feel like you guys are one of the biggest beauty brands on social. You have almost 10 million followers on Instagram, which is insane. Where do you see the future of working with creators, or collaborating with creators, or putting out content in a way that's creator friendly, or driven by creators?
Michelle Song: I think Tony said something that's really spot on. Anyone can literally be a creator. A video can go viral and it's just someone who's just a customer and they just really love the product. I can literally go out, reach out to them, be like, Hey, I want to whitelist your video so I would sign them on Lumanu, pay them out.
Or I'd be like, Hey, I actually think it's because your social audience, which you don't have one, but people have just seen your viral video. If I have you create another video and pay you to do this people know it's actually real. It's not some fake or white listed person who you have no idea who they are.
Like they know they're genuine fans. And then they become a creator and people know them for loving your brand.
Nick Sharma: Tony, do you feel the same way?
Tony Tran: I do. Yeah, I do. And then I think it's one of the cool things that sometimes when I look at our data, I see the Instagram accounts, YouTube accounts, and tick tock accounts, and it amazes me the diversity.
Of the types of creators and everything that you're seeing now. And I think, like Michelle said, it's probably because a lot of brands are treating their customers and their users as creators. You just never know where they come from, so it pays to keep an open mind and to have that data.
And then to have the resources to reach out and manage those relationships.
Nick Sharma: Yeah, I also feel like the best content is created by just genuine customers or genuine reactions. Okay, if you were if you're a brand that is scaling from 10 to 50 million And you were to give them some advice on how to either get started on crater marketing or to continue expand their crater program What would you say?
Michelle Song: That's a good question. I would think someone else said it to figure out what your objective is. Are you trying to create content to sell? Are you trying to create content that's going to resonate with your community? Or are you trying to create content that is about brand building?
Once you figure out your objectives, what you're trying to do with your content, then you can lean into, okay, I know that I have a really strong brand ethos that I need to support. And so you need an in-house person, or if you know that you need educators, you're going to go find a dermatologist to speak to all the technical stuff that, Customers don't know.
So figure out first, what your goal is and then you can start like budgeting out, like to support those goals.
Nick Sharma: And Tony, from your standpoint, how would you offer advice to brands that are looking to grow their creator programs?
Tony Tran: I think one thing is really treating them like an extension of your team, make life easier on yourself.
If you give them the tools so that they manage themselves so that they can turn around things quickly so that they're not bothering you about payment issues and things like that. Don't waste time on all the operational like back paperwork stuff and just focus on the creatives.
That's how you get those really good relationships. And again, no one has a crystal ball. We've seen folks and Nick you and I have seen like the creative that ends up doing the best, you don't always know that ahead of time. It doesn't look like it should but it just kills it. So you just need to have more shots on goal and the easier each shot is in terms of time, energy, money, the more chances you have of something really blowing up.
So yeah. Give yourself more shots.
Michelle Song, Director of Social at ColourPop, and Tony Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumanu, share their experiences and perspectives on creator marketing. Moderated by Nick Sharma, the discussion focuses on how ColourPop scaled their creator marketing program. Michelle discusses how her approach and tech stack streamline workflows, enhance relationships, and helped ColourPop scale. This transcript offers insights for brands looking to scale their creator programs and optimize their marketing strategies.
Nick Sharma: How about you guys start us off with quick intros, introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do? And what brought you to grow?
Michelle Song: I'm Michelle. I am the director of social color pop. What brought me to grow is I'm a client of Lumanu and we got talking about, how.
I use different products in my tech stack to be really efficient and to solve problems in not just the marketing funnel, but productivity and working collaboratively with different departments. And Lumanu has been a really great partner and really receptive to my feedback and product updates that just helped me to be really efficient, not just with my own workflow, but also for my creators who are really important partners to my day to day.
Tony Tran: I'm Tony, co founder and CEO of Lumanu. We launched our payments product in 2020, which then we started learning about net payment terms and all these other things that jeopardize relationships that marketers spend a long time building, sometimes finance isn't always the fastest to turn around payments. And then that's where we are.
One thing Michelle and I see eye to eye on is the importance of relationships especially in today's world, right? Where people like working with who they like, and if you want to see better results, it pays to, to treat creators, right.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Michelle, you have experienced both on the agency and the brand side. I'm curious how that has led to the way that you treat creator marketing being at ColourPop.
Michelle Song: I myself was a creator. I was shooting content doing art direction and photography. And so all of that kind of combined with social marketing, I realized, social media really needs workflows, and also creators really need an easy way to work with the brand. It can't be one way.
Because when you work with creators, it's actually a collaboration. Tony said creators want to work with people that they like, who they respect, and they'll do more. They'll give you extended usage rights, they'll give you discounted rates. So you are not only representing a brand, you have your brand. Your own brand, your personal brand.
They know that, hey, if I moved to a different brand, I know Michelle always pays me on time. I know that she's really easy with her briefs or she will give me detailed instructions. She's super easy to work with and they'll be more amenable to working with me on like a three day turnaround, which is really hard to do.
Nick Sharma: And I'm curious, you've got a lean team, right? On the social side. So what's your tech stack to help you automate and make sure that you get everything done?
Michelle Song: Yeah. I love notion and it's funny cause people call me like you're a tech bro, Michelle.
But it's really the best tool I've used. I've used Trello, I've used Jira. And when you're working with creators, you need a tool that's really easy, user friendly without adding costs to seats. So I use notion for not only project management, but as a collaborative tool for creators to upload their content.
With each database that I work with it's like a Kanban board. I know, they know exactly what stage their brief is. We work on 120 pieces of content a month and it's always rotating. We have many product launches. And It has to always be a moving, living cycle.
So they know when their product has been sent for shipment, they know when something needs to be delivered, they get an automatic due date, and it's an app. So they can, they're creating content on their phone. Cause it's UGC and it's really easy for them to just literally embed a video or even on their desktop, drag and drop because other platforms like, you have to deal with Dropbox and then on the brand side, you have to then download the asset, make sure, you label it for sharing purposes.
And it's really easy for us to just create tags to share with other departments.
Nick Sharma: Totally. And Lumanu also, in your tech stack. Why did you choose Lumanu for creator management and payouts?
Michelle Song: Yeah I was grandfathered in, and I didn't really understand the platform until three months in my role.
It's really easy because AP, finance always takes forever. And in a way I can premeditate exactly how much budget I'm going to be spending monthly. And Lumanu recently onboarded us onto a new function of having projects. So I can start segregating. I have a budget for this campaign, and then I can actually bring in invoices into these specific projects.
Lumanu makes my tech stack very easy. I can do all my budgeting there.
Nick Sharma: Got it. Tony, can you walk us through the evolution of Lumanu since 2017 and where it is now?
Tony Tran: Yeah, for sure. We noticed the creative ways that they were charging, it wasn't always just paid up front, sometimes it's a percentage of ad spend, it's a la carte usage rights, and then you had Spark ads, TikTok ads, and we just learned that the traditional way that finance did it, which is every payment had to have an invoice, and bigger companies and EPOs just didn't really work, and PayPal and Venmo weren't great because it was terrible for accounting.
So there's just all these drawbacks. So we develop payments, and then when we launch a creator app, to Michelle's point, one thing I tell my team is, the creator space is very much a multiplayer space. And we felt like a lot of the existing solutions, whether it's BILL or PayPal, are single player solutions.
You really have to think about the other side of the game. And if you're a lean team, treating creators as an extension of your team, by thinking of them as product users, and not just as an afterthought, it saves everyone a lot of time. So that's when we built out payments. And one of the big things we did was actually this feature called Instant Pay.
So to Michelle's point, I remember talking to her like, asking a creator to turn around and edit in 24 hours, yet you're telling them, I want to pay you in 60 days, breaks some fundamental human psyche. And we actually saw that, when you tell creators, hey, Lumanu will pay you as soon as you finish your work.
Finance will pay them later. It allows you to get those really quick edit turnarounds, or last minute changes, or can I fly you out to a photo shoot? And that's when we started really seeing payments is not just a thing you do at the end, but it's actually something you can rope in at the very beginning to make the relationship and collaboration go better.
Nick Sharma: I'm curious, Michelle, as you work with creators, where does Lumanu fit into that relationship or that journey of working with a creator?
Michelle Song: It starts from when we sign a creator on. We say, hey, go sign up at Lumanu, here's your link.
If we have a video that we're like, hey, we're restocking this product, we lost usage rights. We want to extend it, and it's immediately done. And for all other creatives, we're net 30, which I think creators really enjoy. For us, net 30 isn't end of the month. It's as soon as we receive your deliverable, you will get paid in 30 days.
So a lot of creators just really enjoy knowing that they have financial stability, they know they will get paid. They know that we are very reliable. There are very few instances where we're late with payments, which makes our relationship with them so strong.
Nick Sharma: And how has that also impacted the relationships with the creators?
Cause I know as you were saying earlier working with YouTubers or content creators, the more you can make it easier for them, the more they want to continue working together.
Michelle Song: So we've actually started to onboard creators as retainers, you'll get X amount for X amount of deliverables each month.
And we have perpetuity in usage and in content, which is always a struggle in content marketing because you want to be able to use the asset anywhere without having to question what the usage is.
So they get signed on as a retainer and they're like, okay, great, I know I'm going to have money coming in. And they're also very open to having lowered rates because they already know they can depend on the retainer. So if I add on a separate asset, they're like, okay, great. It'll be like, 10 percent off or whatnot.
Nick Sharma: Yeah. I feel the guarantee is a mental thing for creators. They don't have a stable income. So knowing it's coming is huge. I'm curious, like from A creator working with creators has has using Lumanu enabled you to add a ton more creators to your roster that you work with on a monthly basis.
Michelle Song: Yeah, because I don't have, we don't have to do the back and forth with the, Hey, submit your invoice. We need to get your, your W 9 form yeah, we don't have to get all of that filled out, pass it off to finance. It's all in Lumanu, which is super easy. It's, we literally just have an email blurb that we're like, this is a submit it and, It's very easy for them.
They're great, we don't need to worry about following up.
Nick Sharma: Tony, on average, when you start working with somebody for let's say six months in, do you see a big increase in brands being able to bring on more creators?
Tony Tran: We do, and what's really interesting a lot of times is, it's a very collaborative effort with the brands we work with.
So it starts off at ColourPop, the social team, the creator team. We were just talking backstage about affiliates. One of the things we noticed, especially in the beauty space, or any brand that has an affiliate program I think someone earlier talked about how it's not, a lot of creators are driving better ROAS, lower CPAs, but it's hard to attribute with last click attribution.
So we actually work with our partners to come up with creative incentive programs. Maybe you have a pool of money that you can divvy out to creators based on some top of funnel metrics that correlate with downstream better ROAS. We were also talking like landing pages, one of the undervalued things in today's landscape is.
After people click on an ad, where do they go? A lot of times, if you click on a creator ad or creator post, you want to take them to a landing page that is creator heavy or creator front and centered. You can actually pay creators on an affiliate based on the views that page gets, even if that page gets views from other traffic sources as well.
So we notice that when you introduce those additional compensation models, the number of creators you work with increases because now you're not paying 2k, 3k per pop. Some creators you can pay, a hundred plus residuals, right? And those creative compensation models allow you to work with way more creators.
Someone once told me it's like picking stock. You don't always know ahead of time who's going to really perform, but the more bets you make, the better the chance that you're going to get a winner.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Speaking of metrics, Michelle, I'm curious what kind of metrics you look for with creator posts.
If they're not assuming these are not paid media running or white listed posts, how do you judge if a. Collaborative campaign was successful and what do you look for?
Michelle Song: Yeah, so it's a little bit different because for us at ColourPop we're very built out everything on social is for organic and it trickles down to paid ads it goes into emails, PDPs and our influencer team who also uses Lumanu they definitely like track EMV And, I see exactly like what they're tracking and how they're tracking it and they're very good about projecting okay, this group of influencers are going to drive this much for the brand that they have that goal.
For social, it's a mix because we have to support all these different legs of the business. Sometimes I am trying to get content that is specifically meant to convert. Sometimes I'm trying to get content that just is what the brand needs because no matter what like when you're part of when you're in house, you can't just always think What the customer wants.
Sometimes you have these brand ideals and aesthetics that you have to hit. But majority of the time it's what our consumers want, like what our community wants. I think someone said it earlier content, you have to create your content for your community. Or else, it's just going to fall flat on your face.
Unless you're like a very legacy, very, Like you have such strong branding that people come to you for your branding. You actually have to create for your community. And it's always changing. Like sometimes they're going to want tutorials. Sometimes they just don't want to be sold.
There's no real formula. You just have to guess what they want.
Nick Sharma: Do you find that certain creators are best for educational type content? Certain are best for promoting sales or promotions, things like that.
Michelle Song: Whenever we have a campaign, we look at, okay, we want to get content that has some speaking heads.
We know we need tutorials. We know we need macros. And I've created an internal CRM where I can actually filter. For those specific niches. So then when I create my briefs and where I'm, when I'm choosing who I want to pay, I can be like, okay, I want to do 10 creators that are macros or I need to do 20 that are talking head tutorials.
And so we break, that's how we project and do our budgeting.
Nick Sharma: Tony, with the, I mean I feel like creators are just getting more and more, I mean I think 50 percent of Gen Z identifies as a creator now or identifies as something, but I thought you were Gen Z, wouldn't you know? Yeah, technically I am, I don't identify as Gen Z.
Where else do you think Lumanu fits into that creator org or that creator journey as you guys continue to grow?
Tony Tran: So one thing that I noticed was really interesting we've noticed this term partnerships being tossed around quite a bit, but as the teams that originally worked with influencers and creators grow, we've noticed that Many different people can be considered creators, even if you don't think about it at first glance.
We have a lot of fitness brands, for instance, that partner with local gyms food and beverage brands that partner with local businesses like bars and clubs and a lot of the techniques, even whitelisting, even, these type of affiliate models or pay for performance that you traditionally would think for a tick tocker.
Or an Instagram, or a YouTube, or actually also work with in real life partnerships. I think one of our other clients, Farmers Dog, does a lot of partnerships with local dog walkers. So I think that is, and I know it's a little bit, a mentor told me a long time ago, relationships are the only thing that's recession proof.
And now I tell my nieces and nephews, relationships are also the only thing that's AI proof. Because I don't think machines will ever, Take over that part, but the more relationships that you can build with not just your traditional influencers and creators, but in real life creators your community, if you will I think that's where the [00:13:00] money was going and we've noticed, there's just so many, we have dermatologists and vets, getting paid through the Lumanu which is really exciting to see photographers who are not only freelancers, but also promoting cameras and, doing tutorials and things like that.
Nick Sharma: And with ColourPop, I feel like you guys are one of the biggest beauty brands on social. You have almost 10 million followers on Instagram, which is insane. Where do you see the future of working with creators, or collaborating with creators, or putting out content in a way that's creator friendly, or driven by creators?
Michelle Song: I think Tony said something that's really spot on. Anyone can literally be a creator. A video can go viral and it's just someone who's just a customer and they just really love the product. I can literally go out, reach out to them, be like, Hey, I want to whitelist your video so I would sign them on Lumanu, pay them out.
Or I'd be like, Hey, I actually think it's because your social audience, which you don't have one, but people have just seen your viral video. If I have you create another video and pay you to do this people know it's actually real. It's not some fake or white listed person who you have no idea who they are.
Like they know they're genuine fans. And then they become a creator and people know them for loving your brand.
Nick Sharma: Tony, do you feel the same way?
Tony Tran: I do. Yeah, I do. And then I think it's one of the cool things that sometimes when I look at our data, I see the Instagram accounts, YouTube accounts, and tick tock accounts, and it amazes me the diversity.
Of the types of creators and everything that you're seeing now. And I think, like Michelle said, it's probably because a lot of brands are treating their customers and their users as creators. You just never know where they come from, so it pays to keep an open mind and to have that data.
And then to have the resources to reach out and manage those relationships.
Nick Sharma: Yeah, I also feel like the best content is created by just genuine customers or genuine reactions. Okay, if you were if you're a brand that is scaling from 10 to 50 million And you were to give them some advice on how to either get started on crater marketing or to continue expand their crater program What would you say?
Michelle Song: That's a good question. I would think someone else said it to figure out what your objective is. Are you trying to create content to sell? Are you trying to create content that's going to resonate with your community? Or are you trying to create content that is about brand building?
Once you figure out your objectives, what you're trying to do with your content, then you can lean into, okay, I know that I have a really strong brand ethos that I need to support. And so you need an in-house person, or if you know that you need educators, you're going to go find a dermatologist to speak to all the technical stuff that, Customers don't know.
So figure out first, what your goal is and then you can start like budgeting out, like to support those goals.
Nick Sharma: And Tony, from your standpoint, how would you offer advice to brands that are looking to grow their creator programs?
Tony Tran: I think one thing is really treating them like an extension of your team, make life easier on yourself.
If you give them the tools so that they manage themselves so that they can turn around things quickly so that they're not bothering you about payment issues and things like that. Don't waste time on all the operational like back paperwork stuff and just focus on the creatives.
That's how you get those really good relationships. And again, no one has a crystal ball. We've seen folks and Nick you and I have seen like the creative that ends up doing the best, you don't always know that ahead of time. It doesn't look like it should but it just kills it. So you just need to have more shots on goal and the easier each shot is in terms of time, energy, money, the more chances you have of something really blowing up.
So yeah. Give yourself more shots.
Michelle Song, Director of Social at ColourPop, and Tony Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumanu, share their experiences and perspectives on creator marketing. Moderated by Nick Sharma, the discussion focuses on how ColourPop scaled their creator marketing program. Michelle discusses how her approach and tech stack streamline workflows, enhance relationships, and helped ColourPop scale. This transcript offers insights for brands looking to scale their creator programs and optimize their marketing strategies.
Nick Sharma: How about you guys start us off with quick intros, introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do? And what brought you to grow?
Michelle Song: I'm Michelle. I am the director of social color pop. What brought me to grow is I'm a client of Lumanu and we got talking about, how.
I use different products in my tech stack to be really efficient and to solve problems in not just the marketing funnel, but productivity and working collaboratively with different departments. And Lumanu has been a really great partner and really receptive to my feedback and product updates that just helped me to be really efficient, not just with my own workflow, but also for my creators who are really important partners to my day to day.
Tony Tran: I'm Tony, co founder and CEO of Lumanu. We launched our payments product in 2020, which then we started learning about net payment terms and all these other things that jeopardize relationships that marketers spend a long time building, sometimes finance isn't always the fastest to turn around payments. And then that's where we are.
One thing Michelle and I see eye to eye on is the importance of relationships especially in today's world, right? Where people like working with who they like, and if you want to see better results, it pays to, to treat creators, right.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Michelle, you have experienced both on the agency and the brand side. I'm curious how that has led to the way that you treat creator marketing being at ColourPop.
Michelle Song: I myself was a creator. I was shooting content doing art direction and photography. And so all of that kind of combined with social marketing, I realized, social media really needs workflows, and also creators really need an easy way to work with the brand. It can't be one way.
Because when you work with creators, it's actually a collaboration. Tony said creators want to work with people that they like, who they respect, and they'll do more. They'll give you extended usage rights, they'll give you discounted rates. So you are not only representing a brand, you have your brand. Your own brand, your personal brand.
They know that, hey, if I moved to a different brand, I know Michelle always pays me on time. I know that she's really easy with her briefs or she will give me detailed instructions. She's super easy to work with and they'll be more amenable to working with me on like a three day turnaround, which is really hard to do.
Nick Sharma: And I'm curious, you've got a lean team, right? On the social side. So what's your tech stack to help you automate and make sure that you get everything done?
Michelle Song: Yeah. I love notion and it's funny cause people call me like you're a tech bro, Michelle.
But it's really the best tool I've used. I've used Trello, I've used Jira. And when you're working with creators, you need a tool that's really easy, user friendly without adding costs to seats. So I use notion for not only project management, but as a collaborative tool for creators to upload their content.
With each database that I work with it's like a Kanban board. I know, they know exactly what stage their brief is. We work on 120 pieces of content a month and it's always rotating. We have many product launches. And It has to always be a moving, living cycle.
So they know when their product has been sent for shipment, they know when something needs to be delivered, they get an automatic due date, and it's an app. So they can, they're creating content on their phone. Cause it's UGC and it's really easy for them to just literally embed a video or even on their desktop, drag and drop because other platforms like, you have to deal with Dropbox and then on the brand side, you have to then download the asset, make sure, you label it for sharing purposes.
And it's really easy for us to just create tags to share with other departments.
Nick Sharma: Totally. And Lumanu also, in your tech stack. Why did you choose Lumanu for creator management and payouts?
Michelle Song: Yeah I was grandfathered in, and I didn't really understand the platform until three months in my role.
It's really easy because AP, finance always takes forever. And in a way I can premeditate exactly how much budget I'm going to be spending monthly. And Lumanu recently onboarded us onto a new function of having projects. So I can start segregating. I have a budget for this campaign, and then I can actually bring in invoices into these specific projects.
Lumanu makes my tech stack very easy. I can do all my budgeting there.
Nick Sharma: Got it. Tony, can you walk us through the evolution of Lumanu since 2017 and where it is now?
Tony Tran: Yeah, for sure. We noticed the creative ways that they were charging, it wasn't always just paid up front, sometimes it's a percentage of ad spend, it's a la carte usage rights, and then you had Spark ads, TikTok ads, and we just learned that the traditional way that finance did it, which is every payment had to have an invoice, and bigger companies and EPOs just didn't really work, and PayPal and Venmo weren't great because it was terrible for accounting.
So there's just all these drawbacks. So we develop payments, and then when we launch a creator app, to Michelle's point, one thing I tell my team is, the creator space is very much a multiplayer space. And we felt like a lot of the existing solutions, whether it's BILL or PayPal, are single player solutions.
You really have to think about the other side of the game. And if you're a lean team, treating creators as an extension of your team, by thinking of them as product users, and not just as an afterthought, it saves everyone a lot of time. So that's when we built out payments. And one of the big things we did was actually this feature called Instant Pay.
So to Michelle's point, I remember talking to her like, asking a creator to turn around and edit in 24 hours, yet you're telling them, I want to pay you in 60 days, breaks some fundamental human psyche. And we actually saw that, when you tell creators, hey, Lumanu will pay you as soon as you finish your work.
Finance will pay them later. It allows you to get those really quick edit turnarounds, or last minute changes, or can I fly you out to a photo shoot? And that's when we started really seeing payments is not just a thing you do at the end, but it's actually something you can rope in at the very beginning to make the relationship and collaboration go better.
Nick Sharma: I'm curious, Michelle, as you work with creators, where does Lumanu fit into that relationship or that journey of working with a creator?
Michelle Song: It starts from when we sign a creator on. We say, hey, go sign up at Lumanu, here's your link.
If we have a video that we're like, hey, we're restocking this product, we lost usage rights. We want to extend it, and it's immediately done. And for all other creatives, we're net 30, which I think creators really enjoy. For us, net 30 isn't end of the month. It's as soon as we receive your deliverable, you will get paid in 30 days.
So a lot of creators just really enjoy knowing that they have financial stability, they know they will get paid. They know that we are very reliable. There are very few instances where we're late with payments, which makes our relationship with them so strong.
Nick Sharma: And how has that also impacted the relationships with the creators?
Cause I know as you were saying earlier working with YouTubers or content creators, the more you can make it easier for them, the more they want to continue working together.
Michelle Song: So we've actually started to onboard creators as retainers, you'll get X amount for X amount of deliverables each month.
And we have perpetuity in usage and in content, which is always a struggle in content marketing because you want to be able to use the asset anywhere without having to question what the usage is.
So they get signed on as a retainer and they're like, okay, great, I know I'm going to have money coming in. And they're also very open to having lowered rates because they already know they can depend on the retainer. So if I add on a separate asset, they're like, okay, great. It'll be like, 10 percent off or whatnot.
Nick Sharma: Yeah. I feel the guarantee is a mental thing for creators. They don't have a stable income. So knowing it's coming is huge. I'm curious, like from A creator working with creators has has using Lumanu enabled you to add a ton more creators to your roster that you work with on a monthly basis.
Michelle Song: Yeah, because I don't have, we don't have to do the back and forth with the, Hey, submit your invoice. We need to get your, your W 9 form yeah, we don't have to get all of that filled out, pass it off to finance. It's all in Lumanu, which is super easy. It's, we literally just have an email blurb that we're like, this is a submit it and, It's very easy for them.
They're great, we don't need to worry about following up.
Nick Sharma: Tony, on average, when you start working with somebody for let's say six months in, do you see a big increase in brands being able to bring on more creators?
Tony Tran: We do, and what's really interesting a lot of times is, it's a very collaborative effort with the brands we work with.
So it starts off at ColourPop, the social team, the creator team. We were just talking backstage about affiliates. One of the things we noticed, especially in the beauty space, or any brand that has an affiliate program I think someone earlier talked about how it's not, a lot of creators are driving better ROAS, lower CPAs, but it's hard to attribute with last click attribution.
So we actually work with our partners to come up with creative incentive programs. Maybe you have a pool of money that you can divvy out to creators based on some top of funnel metrics that correlate with downstream better ROAS. We were also talking like landing pages, one of the undervalued things in today's landscape is.
After people click on an ad, where do they go? A lot of times, if you click on a creator ad or creator post, you want to take them to a landing page that is creator heavy or creator front and centered. You can actually pay creators on an affiliate based on the views that page gets, even if that page gets views from other traffic sources as well.
So we notice that when you introduce those additional compensation models, the number of creators you work with increases because now you're not paying 2k, 3k per pop. Some creators you can pay, a hundred plus residuals, right? And those creative compensation models allow you to work with way more creators.
Someone once told me it's like picking stock. You don't always know ahead of time who's going to really perform, but the more bets you make, the better the chance that you're going to get a winner.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Speaking of metrics, Michelle, I'm curious what kind of metrics you look for with creator posts.
If they're not assuming these are not paid media running or white listed posts, how do you judge if a. Collaborative campaign was successful and what do you look for?
Michelle Song: Yeah, so it's a little bit different because for us at ColourPop we're very built out everything on social is for organic and it trickles down to paid ads it goes into emails, PDPs and our influencer team who also uses Lumanu they definitely like track EMV And, I see exactly like what they're tracking and how they're tracking it and they're very good about projecting okay, this group of influencers are going to drive this much for the brand that they have that goal.
For social, it's a mix because we have to support all these different legs of the business. Sometimes I am trying to get content that is specifically meant to convert. Sometimes I'm trying to get content that just is what the brand needs because no matter what like when you're part of when you're in house, you can't just always think What the customer wants.
Sometimes you have these brand ideals and aesthetics that you have to hit. But majority of the time it's what our consumers want, like what our community wants. I think someone said it earlier content, you have to create your content for your community. Or else, it's just going to fall flat on your face.
Unless you're like a very legacy, very, Like you have such strong branding that people come to you for your branding. You actually have to create for your community. And it's always changing. Like sometimes they're going to want tutorials. Sometimes they just don't want to be sold.
There's no real formula. You just have to guess what they want.
Nick Sharma: Do you find that certain creators are best for educational type content? Certain are best for promoting sales or promotions, things like that.
Michelle Song: Whenever we have a campaign, we look at, okay, we want to get content that has some speaking heads.
We know we need tutorials. We know we need macros. And I've created an internal CRM where I can actually filter. For those specific niches. So then when I create my briefs and where I'm, when I'm choosing who I want to pay, I can be like, okay, I want to do 10 creators that are macros or I need to do 20 that are talking head tutorials.
And so we break, that's how we project and do our budgeting.
Nick Sharma: Tony, with the, I mean I feel like creators are just getting more and more, I mean I think 50 percent of Gen Z identifies as a creator now or identifies as something, but I thought you were Gen Z, wouldn't you know? Yeah, technically I am, I don't identify as Gen Z.
Where else do you think Lumanu fits into that creator org or that creator journey as you guys continue to grow?
Tony Tran: So one thing that I noticed was really interesting we've noticed this term partnerships being tossed around quite a bit, but as the teams that originally worked with influencers and creators grow, we've noticed that Many different people can be considered creators, even if you don't think about it at first glance.
We have a lot of fitness brands, for instance, that partner with local gyms food and beverage brands that partner with local businesses like bars and clubs and a lot of the techniques, even whitelisting, even, these type of affiliate models or pay for performance that you traditionally would think for a tick tocker.
Or an Instagram, or a YouTube, or actually also work with in real life partnerships. I think one of our other clients, Farmers Dog, does a lot of partnerships with local dog walkers. So I think that is, and I know it's a little bit, a mentor told me a long time ago, relationships are the only thing that's recession proof.
And now I tell my nieces and nephews, relationships are also the only thing that's AI proof. Because I don't think machines will ever, Take over that part, but the more relationships that you can build with not just your traditional influencers and creators, but in real life creators your community, if you will I think that's where the [00:13:00] money was going and we've noticed, there's just so many, we have dermatologists and vets, getting paid through the Lumanu which is really exciting to see photographers who are not only freelancers, but also promoting cameras and, doing tutorials and things like that.
Nick Sharma: And with ColourPop, I feel like you guys are one of the biggest beauty brands on social. You have almost 10 million followers on Instagram, which is insane. Where do you see the future of working with creators, or collaborating with creators, or putting out content in a way that's creator friendly, or driven by creators?
Michelle Song: I think Tony said something that's really spot on. Anyone can literally be a creator. A video can go viral and it's just someone who's just a customer and they just really love the product. I can literally go out, reach out to them, be like, Hey, I want to whitelist your video so I would sign them on Lumanu, pay them out.
Or I'd be like, Hey, I actually think it's because your social audience, which you don't have one, but people have just seen your viral video. If I have you create another video and pay you to do this people know it's actually real. It's not some fake or white listed person who you have no idea who they are.
Like they know they're genuine fans. And then they become a creator and people know them for loving your brand.
Nick Sharma: Tony, do you feel the same way?
Tony Tran: I do. Yeah, I do. And then I think it's one of the cool things that sometimes when I look at our data, I see the Instagram accounts, YouTube accounts, and tick tock accounts, and it amazes me the diversity.
Of the types of creators and everything that you're seeing now. And I think, like Michelle said, it's probably because a lot of brands are treating their customers and their users as creators. You just never know where they come from, so it pays to keep an open mind and to have that data.
And then to have the resources to reach out and manage those relationships.
Nick Sharma: Yeah, I also feel like the best content is created by just genuine customers or genuine reactions. Okay, if you were if you're a brand that is scaling from 10 to 50 million And you were to give them some advice on how to either get started on crater marketing or to continue expand their crater program What would you say?
Michelle Song: That's a good question. I would think someone else said it to figure out what your objective is. Are you trying to create content to sell? Are you trying to create content that's going to resonate with your community? Or are you trying to create content that is about brand building?
Once you figure out your objectives, what you're trying to do with your content, then you can lean into, okay, I know that I have a really strong brand ethos that I need to support. And so you need an in-house person, or if you know that you need educators, you're going to go find a dermatologist to speak to all the technical stuff that, Customers don't know.
So figure out first, what your goal is and then you can start like budgeting out, like to support those goals.
Nick Sharma: And Tony, from your standpoint, how would you offer advice to brands that are looking to grow their creator programs?
Tony Tran: I think one thing is really treating them like an extension of your team, make life easier on yourself.
If you give them the tools so that they manage themselves so that they can turn around things quickly so that they're not bothering you about payment issues and things like that. Don't waste time on all the operational like back paperwork stuff and just focus on the creatives.
That's how you get those really good relationships. And again, no one has a crystal ball. We've seen folks and Nick you and I have seen like the creative that ends up doing the best, you don't always know that ahead of time. It doesn't look like it should but it just kills it. So you just need to have more shots on goal and the easier each shot is in terms of time, energy, money, the more chances you have of something really blowing up.
So yeah. Give yourself more shots.
Michelle Song, Director of Social at ColourPop, and Tony Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumanu, share their experiences and perspectives on creator marketing. Moderated by Nick Sharma, the discussion focuses on how ColourPop scaled their creator marketing program. Michelle discusses how her approach and tech stack streamline workflows, enhance relationships, and helped ColourPop scale. This transcript offers insights for brands looking to scale their creator programs and optimize their marketing strategies.
Nick Sharma: How about you guys start us off with quick intros, introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do? And what brought you to grow?
Michelle Song: I'm Michelle. I am the director of social color pop. What brought me to grow is I'm a client of Lumanu and we got talking about, how.
I use different products in my tech stack to be really efficient and to solve problems in not just the marketing funnel, but productivity and working collaboratively with different departments. And Lumanu has been a really great partner and really receptive to my feedback and product updates that just helped me to be really efficient, not just with my own workflow, but also for my creators who are really important partners to my day to day.
Tony Tran: I'm Tony, co founder and CEO of Lumanu. We launched our payments product in 2020, which then we started learning about net payment terms and all these other things that jeopardize relationships that marketers spend a long time building, sometimes finance isn't always the fastest to turn around payments. And then that's where we are.
One thing Michelle and I see eye to eye on is the importance of relationships especially in today's world, right? Where people like working with who they like, and if you want to see better results, it pays to, to treat creators, right.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Michelle, you have experienced both on the agency and the brand side. I'm curious how that has led to the way that you treat creator marketing being at ColourPop.
Michelle Song: I myself was a creator. I was shooting content doing art direction and photography. And so all of that kind of combined with social marketing, I realized, social media really needs workflows, and also creators really need an easy way to work with the brand. It can't be one way.
Because when you work with creators, it's actually a collaboration. Tony said creators want to work with people that they like, who they respect, and they'll do more. They'll give you extended usage rights, they'll give you discounted rates. So you are not only representing a brand, you have your brand. Your own brand, your personal brand.
They know that, hey, if I moved to a different brand, I know Michelle always pays me on time. I know that she's really easy with her briefs or she will give me detailed instructions. She's super easy to work with and they'll be more amenable to working with me on like a three day turnaround, which is really hard to do.
Nick Sharma: And I'm curious, you've got a lean team, right? On the social side. So what's your tech stack to help you automate and make sure that you get everything done?
Michelle Song: Yeah. I love notion and it's funny cause people call me like you're a tech bro, Michelle.
But it's really the best tool I've used. I've used Trello, I've used Jira. And when you're working with creators, you need a tool that's really easy, user friendly without adding costs to seats. So I use notion for not only project management, but as a collaborative tool for creators to upload their content.
With each database that I work with it's like a Kanban board. I know, they know exactly what stage their brief is. We work on 120 pieces of content a month and it's always rotating. We have many product launches. And It has to always be a moving, living cycle.
So they know when their product has been sent for shipment, they know when something needs to be delivered, they get an automatic due date, and it's an app. So they can, they're creating content on their phone. Cause it's UGC and it's really easy for them to just literally embed a video or even on their desktop, drag and drop because other platforms like, you have to deal with Dropbox and then on the brand side, you have to then download the asset, make sure, you label it for sharing purposes.
And it's really easy for us to just create tags to share with other departments.
Nick Sharma: Totally. And Lumanu also, in your tech stack. Why did you choose Lumanu for creator management and payouts?
Michelle Song: Yeah I was grandfathered in, and I didn't really understand the platform until three months in my role.
It's really easy because AP, finance always takes forever. And in a way I can premeditate exactly how much budget I'm going to be spending monthly. And Lumanu recently onboarded us onto a new function of having projects. So I can start segregating. I have a budget for this campaign, and then I can actually bring in invoices into these specific projects.
Lumanu makes my tech stack very easy. I can do all my budgeting there.
Nick Sharma: Got it. Tony, can you walk us through the evolution of Lumanu since 2017 and where it is now?
Tony Tran: Yeah, for sure. We noticed the creative ways that they were charging, it wasn't always just paid up front, sometimes it's a percentage of ad spend, it's a la carte usage rights, and then you had Spark ads, TikTok ads, and we just learned that the traditional way that finance did it, which is every payment had to have an invoice, and bigger companies and EPOs just didn't really work, and PayPal and Venmo weren't great because it was terrible for accounting.
So there's just all these drawbacks. So we develop payments, and then when we launch a creator app, to Michelle's point, one thing I tell my team is, the creator space is very much a multiplayer space. And we felt like a lot of the existing solutions, whether it's BILL or PayPal, are single player solutions.
You really have to think about the other side of the game. And if you're a lean team, treating creators as an extension of your team, by thinking of them as product users, and not just as an afterthought, it saves everyone a lot of time. So that's when we built out payments. And one of the big things we did was actually this feature called Instant Pay.
So to Michelle's point, I remember talking to her like, asking a creator to turn around and edit in 24 hours, yet you're telling them, I want to pay you in 60 days, breaks some fundamental human psyche. And we actually saw that, when you tell creators, hey, Lumanu will pay you as soon as you finish your work.
Finance will pay them later. It allows you to get those really quick edit turnarounds, or last minute changes, or can I fly you out to a photo shoot? And that's when we started really seeing payments is not just a thing you do at the end, but it's actually something you can rope in at the very beginning to make the relationship and collaboration go better.
Nick Sharma: I'm curious, Michelle, as you work with creators, where does Lumanu fit into that relationship or that journey of working with a creator?
Michelle Song: It starts from when we sign a creator on. We say, hey, go sign up at Lumanu, here's your link.
If we have a video that we're like, hey, we're restocking this product, we lost usage rights. We want to extend it, and it's immediately done. And for all other creatives, we're net 30, which I think creators really enjoy. For us, net 30 isn't end of the month. It's as soon as we receive your deliverable, you will get paid in 30 days.
So a lot of creators just really enjoy knowing that they have financial stability, they know they will get paid. They know that we are very reliable. There are very few instances where we're late with payments, which makes our relationship with them so strong.
Nick Sharma: And how has that also impacted the relationships with the creators?
Cause I know as you were saying earlier working with YouTubers or content creators, the more you can make it easier for them, the more they want to continue working together.
Michelle Song: So we've actually started to onboard creators as retainers, you'll get X amount for X amount of deliverables each month.
And we have perpetuity in usage and in content, which is always a struggle in content marketing because you want to be able to use the asset anywhere without having to question what the usage is.
So they get signed on as a retainer and they're like, okay, great, I know I'm going to have money coming in. And they're also very open to having lowered rates because they already know they can depend on the retainer. So if I add on a separate asset, they're like, okay, great. It'll be like, 10 percent off or whatnot.
Nick Sharma: Yeah. I feel the guarantee is a mental thing for creators. They don't have a stable income. So knowing it's coming is huge. I'm curious, like from A creator working with creators has has using Lumanu enabled you to add a ton more creators to your roster that you work with on a monthly basis.
Michelle Song: Yeah, because I don't have, we don't have to do the back and forth with the, Hey, submit your invoice. We need to get your, your W 9 form yeah, we don't have to get all of that filled out, pass it off to finance. It's all in Lumanu, which is super easy. It's, we literally just have an email blurb that we're like, this is a submit it and, It's very easy for them.
They're great, we don't need to worry about following up.
Nick Sharma: Tony, on average, when you start working with somebody for let's say six months in, do you see a big increase in brands being able to bring on more creators?
Tony Tran: We do, and what's really interesting a lot of times is, it's a very collaborative effort with the brands we work with.
So it starts off at ColourPop, the social team, the creator team. We were just talking backstage about affiliates. One of the things we noticed, especially in the beauty space, or any brand that has an affiliate program I think someone earlier talked about how it's not, a lot of creators are driving better ROAS, lower CPAs, but it's hard to attribute with last click attribution.
So we actually work with our partners to come up with creative incentive programs. Maybe you have a pool of money that you can divvy out to creators based on some top of funnel metrics that correlate with downstream better ROAS. We were also talking like landing pages, one of the undervalued things in today's landscape is.
After people click on an ad, where do they go? A lot of times, if you click on a creator ad or creator post, you want to take them to a landing page that is creator heavy or creator front and centered. You can actually pay creators on an affiliate based on the views that page gets, even if that page gets views from other traffic sources as well.
So we notice that when you introduce those additional compensation models, the number of creators you work with increases because now you're not paying 2k, 3k per pop. Some creators you can pay, a hundred plus residuals, right? And those creative compensation models allow you to work with way more creators.
Someone once told me it's like picking stock. You don't always know ahead of time who's going to really perform, but the more bets you make, the better the chance that you're going to get a winner.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Speaking of metrics, Michelle, I'm curious what kind of metrics you look for with creator posts.
If they're not assuming these are not paid media running or white listed posts, how do you judge if a. Collaborative campaign was successful and what do you look for?
Michelle Song: Yeah, so it's a little bit different because for us at ColourPop we're very built out everything on social is for organic and it trickles down to paid ads it goes into emails, PDPs and our influencer team who also uses Lumanu they definitely like track EMV And, I see exactly like what they're tracking and how they're tracking it and they're very good about projecting okay, this group of influencers are going to drive this much for the brand that they have that goal.
For social, it's a mix because we have to support all these different legs of the business. Sometimes I am trying to get content that is specifically meant to convert. Sometimes I'm trying to get content that just is what the brand needs because no matter what like when you're part of when you're in house, you can't just always think What the customer wants.
Sometimes you have these brand ideals and aesthetics that you have to hit. But majority of the time it's what our consumers want, like what our community wants. I think someone said it earlier content, you have to create your content for your community. Or else, it's just going to fall flat on your face.
Unless you're like a very legacy, very, Like you have such strong branding that people come to you for your branding. You actually have to create for your community. And it's always changing. Like sometimes they're going to want tutorials. Sometimes they just don't want to be sold.
There's no real formula. You just have to guess what they want.
Nick Sharma: Do you find that certain creators are best for educational type content? Certain are best for promoting sales or promotions, things like that.
Michelle Song: Whenever we have a campaign, we look at, okay, we want to get content that has some speaking heads.
We know we need tutorials. We know we need macros. And I've created an internal CRM where I can actually filter. For those specific niches. So then when I create my briefs and where I'm, when I'm choosing who I want to pay, I can be like, okay, I want to do 10 creators that are macros or I need to do 20 that are talking head tutorials.
And so we break, that's how we project and do our budgeting.
Nick Sharma: Tony, with the, I mean I feel like creators are just getting more and more, I mean I think 50 percent of Gen Z identifies as a creator now or identifies as something, but I thought you were Gen Z, wouldn't you know? Yeah, technically I am, I don't identify as Gen Z.
Where else do you think Lumanu fits into that creator org or that creator journey as you guys continue to grow?
Tony Tran: So one thing that I noticed was really interesting we've noticed this term partnerships being tossed around quite a bit, but as the teams that originally worked with influencers and creators grow, we've noticed that Many different people can be considered creators, even if you don't think about it at first glance.
We have a lot of fitness brands, for instance, that partner with local gyms food and beverage brands that partner with local businesses like bars and clubs and a lot of the techniques, even whitelisting, even, these type of affiliate models or pay for performance that you traditionally would think for a tick tocker.
Or an Instagram, or a YouTube, or actually also work with in real life partnerships. I think one of our other clients, Farmers Dog, does a lot of partnerships with local dog walkers. So I think that is, and I know it's a little bit, a mentor told me a long time ago, relationships are the only thing that's recession proof.
And now I tell my nieces and nephews, relationships are also the only thing that's AI proof. Because I don't think machines will ever, Take over that part, but the more relationships that you can build with not just your traditional influencers and creators, but in real life creators your community, if you will I think that's where the [00:13:00] money was going and we've noticed, there's just so many, we have dermatologists and vets, getting paid through the Lumanu which is really exciting to see photographers who are not only freelancers, but also promoting cameras and, doing tutorials and things like that.
Nick Sharma: And with ColourPop, I feel like you guys are one of the biggest beauty brands on social. You have almost 10 million followers on Instagram, which is insane. Where do you see the future of working with creators, or collaborating with creators, or putting out content in a way that's creator friendly, or driven by creators?
Michelle Song: I think Tony said something that's really spot on. Anyone can literally be a creator. A video can go viral and it's just someone who's just a customer and they just really love the product. I can literally go out, reach out to them, be like, Hey, I want to whitelist your video so I would sign them on Lumanu, pay them out.
Or I'd be like, Hey, I actually think it's because your social audience, which you don't have one, but people have just seen your viral video. If I have you create another video and pay you to do this people know it's actually real. It's not some fake or white listed person who you have no idea who they are.
Like they know they're genuine fans. And then they become a creator and people know them for loving your brand.
Nick Sharma: Tony, do you feel the same way?
Tony Tran: I do. Yeah, I do. And then I think it's one of the cool things that sometimes when I look at our data, I see the Instagram accounts, YouTube accounts, and tick tock accounts, and it amazes me the diversity.
Of the types of creators and everything that you're seeing now. And I think, like Michelle said, it's probably because a lot of brands are treating their customers and their users as creators. You just never know where they come from, so it pays to keep an open mind and to have that data.
And then to have the resources to reach out and manage those relationships.
Nick Sharma: Yeah, I also feel like the best content is created by just genuine customers or genuine reactions. Okay, if you were if you're a brand that is scaling from 10 to 50 million And you were to give them some advice on how to either get started on crater marketing or to continue expand their crater program What would you say?
Michelle Song: That's a good question. I would think someone else said it to figure out what your objective is. Are you trying to create content to sell? Are you trying to create content that's going to resonate with your community? Or are you trying to create content that is about brand building?
Once you figure out your objectives, what you're trying to do with your content, then you can lean into, okay, I know that I have a really strong brand ethos that I need to support. And so you need an in-house person, or if you know that you need educators, you're going to go find a dermatologist to speak to all the technical stuff that, Customers don't know.
So figure out first, what your goal is and then you can start like budgeting out, like to support those goals.
Nick Sharma: And Tony, from your standpoint, how would you offer advice to brands that are looking to grow their creator programs?
Tony Tran: I think one thing is really treating them like an extension of your team, make life easier on yourself.
If you give them the tools so that they manage themselves so that they can turn around things quickly so that they're not bothering you about payment issues and things like that. Don't waste time on all the operational like back paperwork stuff and just focus on the creatives.
That's how you get those really good relationships. And again, no one has a crystal ball. We've seen folks and Nick you and I have seen like the creative that ends up doing the best, you don't always know that ahead of time. It doesn't look like it should but it just kills it. So you just need to have more shots on goal and the easier each shot is in terms of time, energy, money, the more chances you have of something really blowing up.
So yeah. Give yourself more shots.
Michelle Song, Director of Social at ColourPop, and Tony Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumanu, share their experiences and perspectives on creator marketing. Moderated by Nick Sharma, the discussion focuses on how ColourPop scaled their creator marketing program. Michelle discusses how her approach and tech stack streamline workflows, enhance relationships, and helped ColourPop scale. This transcript offers insights for brands looking to scale their creator programs and optimize their marketing strategies.
Nick Sharma: How about you guys start us off with quick intros, introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do? And what brought you to grow?
Michelle Song: I'm Michelle. I am the director of social color pop. What brought me to grow is I'm a client of Lumanu and we got talking about, how.
I use different products in my tech stack to be really efficient and to solve problems in not just the marketing funnel, but productivity and working collaboratively with different departments. And Lumanu has been a really great partner and really receptive to my feedback and product updates that just helped me to be really efficient, not just with my own workflow, but also for my creators who are really important partners to my day to day.
Tony Tran: I'm Tony, co founder and CEO of Lumanu. We launched our payments product in 2020, which then we started learning about net payment terms and all these other things that jeopardize relationships that marketers spend a long time building, sometimes finance isn't always the fastest to turn around payments. And then that's where we are.
One thing Michelle and I see eye to eye on is the importance of relationships especially in today's world, right? Where people like working with who they like, and if you want to see better results, it pays to, to treat creators, right.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Michelle, you have experienced both on the agency and the brand side. I'm curious how that has led to the way that you treat creator marketing being at ColourPop.
Michelle Song: I myself was a creator. I was shooting content doing art direction and photography. And so all of that kind of combined with social marketing, I realized, social media really needs workflows, and also creators really need an easy way to work with the brand. It can't be one way.
Because when you work with creators, it's actually a collaboration. Tony said creators want to work with people that they like, who they respect, and they'll do more. They'll give you extended usage rights, they'll give you discounted rates. So you are not only representing a brand, you have your brand. Your own brand, your personal brand.
They know that, hey, if I moved to a different brand, I know Michelle always pays me on time. I know that she's really easy with her briefs or she will give me detailed instructions. She's super easy to work with and they'll be more amenable to working with me on like a three day turnaround, which is really hard to do.
Nick Sharma: And I'm curious, you've got a lean team, right? On the social side. So what's your tech stack to help you automate and make sure that you get everything done?
Michelle Song: Yeah. I love notion and it's funny cause people call me like you're a tech bro, Michelle.
But it's really the best tool I've used. I've used Trello, I've used Jira. And when you're working with creators, you need a tool that's really easy, user friendly without adding costs to seats. So I use notion for not only project management, but as a collaborative tool for creators to upload their content.
With each database that I work with it's like a Kanban board. I know, they know exactly what stage their brief is. We work on 120 pieces of content a month and it's always rotating. We have many product launches. And It has to always be a moving, living cycle.
So they know when their product has been sent for shipment, they know when something needs to be delivered, they get an automatic due date, and it's an app. So they can, they're creating content on their phone. Cause it's UGC and it's really easy for them to just literally embed a video or even on their desktop, drag and drop because other platforms like, you have to deal with Dropbox and then on the brand side, you have to then download the asset, make sure, you label it for sharing purposes.
And it's really easy for us to just create tags to share with other departments.
Nick Sharma: Totally. And Lumanu also, in your tech stack. Why did you choose Lumanu for creator management and payouts?
Michelle Song: Yeah I was grandfathered in, and I didn't really understand the platform until three months in my role.
It's really easy because AP, finance always takes forever. And in a way I can premeditate exactly how much budget I'm going to be spending monthly. And Lumanu recently onboarded us onto a new function of having projects. So I can start segregating. I have a budget for this campaign, and then I can actually bring in invoices into these specific projects.
Lumanu makes my tech stack very easy. I can do all my budgeting there.
Nick Sharma: Got it. Tony, can you walk us through the evolution of Lumanu since 2017 and where it is now?
Tony Tran: Yeah, for sure. We noticed the creative ways that they were charging, it wasn't always just paid up front, sometimes it's a percentage of ad spend, it's a la carte usage rights, and then you had Spark ads, TikTok ads, and we just learned that the traditional way that finance did it, which is every payment had to have an invoice, and bigger companies and EPOs just didn't really work, and PayPal and Venmo weren't great because it was terrible for accounting.
So there's just all these drawbacks. So we develop payments, and then when we launch a creator app, to Michelle's point, one thing I tell my team is, the creator space is very much a multiplayer space. And we felt like a lot of the existing solutions, whether it's BILL or PayPal, are single player solutions.
You really have to think about the other side of the game. And if you're a lean team, treating creators as an extension of your team, by thinking of them as product users, and not just as an afterthought, it saves everyone a lot of time. So that's when we built out payments. And one of the big things we did was actually this feature called Instant Pay.
So to Michelle's point, I remember talking to her like, asking a creator to turn around and edit in 24 hours, yet you're telling them, I want to pay you in 60 days, breaks some fundamental human psyche. And we actually saw that, when you tell creators, hey, Lumanu will pay you as soon as you finish your work.
Finance will pay them later. It allows you to get those really quick edit turnarounds, or last minute changes, or can I fly you out to a photo shoot? And that's when we started really seeing payments is not just a thing you do at the end, but it's actually something you can rope in at the very beginning to make the relationship and collaboration go better.
Nick Sharma: I'm curious, Michelle, as you work with creators, where does Lumanu fit into that relationship or that journey of working with a creator?
Michelle Song: It starts from when we sign a creator on. We say, hey, go sign up at Lumanu, here's your link.
If we have a video that we're like, hey, we're restocking this product, we lost usage rights. We want to extend it, and it's immediately done. And for all other creatives, we're net 30, which I think creators really enjoy. For us, net 30 isn't end of the month. It's as soon as we receive your deliverable, you will get paid in 30 days.
So a lot of creators just really enjoy knowing that they have financial stability, they know they will get paid. They know that we are very reliable. There are very few instances where we're late with payments, which makes our relationship with them so strong.
Nick Sharma: And how has that also impacted the relationships with the creators?
Cause I know as you were saying earlier working with YouTubers or content creators, the more you can make it easier for them, the more they want to continue working together.
Michelle Song: So we've actually started to onboard creators as retainers, you'll get X amount for X amount of deliverables each month.
And we have perpetuity in usage and in content, which is always a struggle in content marketing because you want to be able to use the asset anywhere without having to question what the usage is.
So they get signed on as a retainer and they're like, okay, great, I know I'm going to have money coming in. And they're also very open to having lowered rates because they already know they can depend on the retainer. So if I add on a separate asset, they're like, okay, great. It'll be like, 10 percent off or whatnot.
Nick Sharma: Yeah. I feel the guarantee is a mental thing for creators. They don't have a stable income. So knowing it's coming is huge. I'm curious, like from A creator working with creators has has using Lumanu enabled you to add a ton more creators to your roster that you work with on a monthly basis.
Michelle Song: Yeah, because I don't have, we don't have to do the back and forth with the, Hey, submit your invoice. We need to get your, your W 9 form yeah, we don't have to get all of that filled out, pass it off to finance. It's all in Lumanu, which is super easy. It's, we literally just have an email blurb that we're like, this is a submit it and, It's very easy for them.
They're great, we don't need to worry about following up.
Nick Sharma: Tony, on average, when you start working with somebody for let's say six months in, do you see a big increase in brands being able to bring on more creators?
Tony Tran: We do, and what's really interesting a lot of times is, it's a very collaborative effort with the brands we work with.
So it starts off at ColourPop, the social team, the creator team. We were just talking backstage about affiliates. One of the things we noticed, especially in the beauty space, or any brand that has an affiliate program I think someone earlier talked about how it's not, a lot of creators are driving better ROAS, lower CPAs, but it's hard to attribute with last click attribution.
So we actually work with our partners to come up with creative incentive programs. Maybe you have a pool of money that you can divvy out to creators based on some top of funnel metrics that correlate with downstream better ROAS. We were also talking like landing pages, one of the undervalued things in today's landscape is.
After people click on an ad, where do they go? A lot of times, if you click on a creator ad or creator post, you want to take them to a landing page that is creator heavy or creator front and centered. You can actually pay creators on an affiliate based on the views that page gets, even if that page gets views from other traffic sources as well.
So we notice that when you introduce those additional compensation models, the number of creators you work with increases because now you're not paying 2k, 3k per pop. Some creators you can pay, a hundred plus residuals, right? And those creative compensation models allow you to work with way more creators.
Someone once told me it's like picking stock. You don't always know ahead of time who's going to really perform, but the more bets you make, the better the chance that you're going to get a winner.
Nick Sharma: Totally. Speaking of metrics, Michelle, I'm curious what kind of metrics you look for with creator posts.
If they're not assuming these are not paid media running or white listed posts, how do you judge if a. Collaborative campaign was successful and what do you look for?
Michelle Song: Yeah, so it's a little bit different because for us at ColourPop we're very built out everything on social is for organic and it trickles down to paid ads it goes into emails, PDPs and our influencer team who also uses Lumanu they definitely like track EMV And, I see exactly like what they're tracking and how they're tracking it and they're very good about projecting okay, this group of influencers are going to drive this much for the brand that they have that goal.
For social, it's a mix because we have to support all these different legs of the business. Sometimes I am trying to get content that is specifically meant to convert. Sometimes I'm trying to get content that just is what the brand needs because no matter what like when you're part of when you're in house, you can't just always think What the customer wants.
Sometimes you have these brand ideals and aesthetics that you have to hit. But majority of the time it's what our consumers want, like what our community wants. I think someone said it earlier content, you have to create your content for your community. Or else, it's just going to fall flat on your face.
Unless you're like a very legacy, very, Like you have such strong branding that people come to you for your branding. You actually have to create for your community. And it's always changing. Like sometimes they're going to want tutorials. Sometimes they just don't want to be sold.
There's no real formula. You just have to guess what they want.
Nick Sharma: Do you find that certain creators are best for educational type content? Certain are best for promoting sales or promotions, things like that.
Michelle Song: Whenever we have a campaign, we look at, okay, we want to get content that has some speaking heads.
We know we need tutorials. We know we need macros. And I've created an internal CRM where I can actually filter. For those specific niches. So then when I create my briefs and where I'm, when I'm choosing who I want to pay, I can be like, okay, I want to do 10 creators that are macros or I need to do 20 that are talking head tutorials.
And so we break, that's how we project and do our budgeting.
Nick Sharma: Tony, with the, I mean I feel like creators are just getting more and more, I mean I think 50 percent of Gen Z identifies as a creator now or identifies as something, but I thought you were Gen Z, wouldn't you know? Yeah, technically I am, I don't identify as Gen Z.
Where else do you think Lumanu fits into that creator org or that creator journey as you guys continue to grow?
Tony Tran: So one thing that I noticed was really interesting we've noticed this term partnerships being tossed around quite a bit, but as the teams that originally worked with influencers and creators grow, we've noticed that Many different people can be considered creators, even if you don't think about it at first glance.
We have a lot of fitness brands, for instance, that partner with local gyms food and beverage brands that partner with local businesses like bars and clubs and a lot of the techniques, even whitelisting, even, these type of affiliate models or pay for performance that you traditionally would think for a tick tocker.
Or an Instagram, or a YouTube, or actually also work with in real life partnerships. I think one of our other clients, Farmers Dog, does a lot of partnerships with local dog walkers. So I think that is, and I know it's a little bit, a mentor told me a long time ago, relationships are the only thing that's recession proof.
And now I tell my nieces and nephews, relationships are also the only thing that's AI proof. Because I don't think machines will ever, Take over that part, but the more relationships that you can build with not just your traditional influencers and creators, but in real life creators your community, if you will I think that's where the [00:13:00] money was going and we've noticed, there's just so many, we have dermatologists and vets, getting paid through the Lumanu which is really exciting to see photographers who are not only freelancers, but also promoting cameras and, doing tutorials and things like that.
Nick Sharma: And with ColourPop, I feel like you guys are one of the biggest beauty brands on social. You have almost 10 million followers on Instagram, which is insane. Where do you see the future of working with creators, or collaborating with creators, or putting out content in a way that's creator friendly, or driven by creators?
Michelle Song: I think Tony said something that's really spot on. Anyone can literally be a creator. A video can go viral and it's just someone who's just a customer and they just really love the product. I can literally go out, reach out to them, be like, Hey, I want to whitelist your video so I would sign them on Lumanu, pay them out.
Or I'd be like, Hey, I actually think it's because your social audience, which you don't have one, but people have just seen your viral video. If I have you create another video and pay you to do this people know it's actually real. It's not some fake or white listed person who you have no idea who they are.
Like they know they're genuine fans. And then they become a creator and people know them for loving your brand.
Nick Sharma: Tony, do you feel the same way?
Tony Tran: I do. Yeah, I do. And then I think it's one of the cool things that sometimes when I look at our data, I see the Instagram accounts, YouTube accounts, and tick tock accounts, and it amazes me the diversity.
Of the types of creators and everything that you're seeing now. And I think, like Michelle said, it's probably because a lot of brands are treating their customers and their users as creators. You just never know where they come from, so it pays to keep an open mind and to have that data.
And then to have the resources to reach out and manage those relationships.
Nick Sharma: Yeah, I also feel like the best content is created by just genuine customers or genuine reactions. Okay, if you were if you're a brand that is scaling from 10 to 50 million And you were to give them some advice on how to either get started on crater marketing or to continue expand their crater program What would you say?
Michelle Song: That's a good question. I would think someone else said it to figure out what your objective is. Are you trying to create content to sell? Are you trying to create content that's going to resonate with your community? Or are you trying to create content that is about brand building?
Once you figure out your objectives, what you're trying to do with your content, then you can lean into, okay, I know that I have a really strong brand ethos that I need to support. And so you need an in-house person, or if you know that you need educators, you're going to go find a dermatologist to speak to all the technical stuff that, Customers don't know.
So figure out first, what your goal is and then you can start like budgeting out, like to support those goals.
Nick Sharma: And Tony, from your standpoint, how would you offer advice to brands that are looking to grow their creator programs?
Tony Tran: I think one thing is really treating them like an extension of your team, make life easier on yourself.
If you give them the tools so that they manage themselves so that they can turn around things quickly so that they're not bothering you about payment issues and things like that. Don't waste time on all the operational like back paperwork stuff and just focus on the creatives.
That's how you get those really good relationships. And again, no one has a crystal ball. We've seen folks and Nick you and I have seen like the creative that ends up doing the best, you don't always know that ahead of time. It doesn't look like it should but it just kills it. So you just need to have more shots on goal and the easier each shot is in terms of time, energy, money, the more chances you have of something really blowing up.
So yeah. Give yourself more shots.
By
Lumanu
Aug 5, 2024
© 2024 Lumanu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lumanu, Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank. Lumanu accounts are provided by i3 Bank, Member FDIC.
© 2024 Lumanu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lumanu, Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank. Lumanu accounts are provided by i3 Bank, Member FDIC.
© 2024 Lumanu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lumanu, Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank. Lumanu accounts are provided by i3 Bank, Member FDIC.
© 2024 Lumanu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lumanu, Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank. Lumanu accounts are provided by i3 Bank, Member FDIC.
© 2024 Lumanu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lumanu, Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank. Lumanu accounts are provided by i3 Bank, Member FDIC.