Partipost, a Singapore-based marketing startup that lets everyone with a social media profile sign up for influencer campaigns, has raised $3.5 million in new funding. This was led by SPH Ventures, the investment arm of publisher Singapore Press Holdings, with contribution from Quest Ventures and other investors.
The funding will be used to raise Partipost’s current operations in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan, and expand into Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, other Southeast Asian markets with deep social media usage. Since the introduction of its mobile app in 2018, Partipost says it has added about 200,000 influencers to its stage, and that over the past one year, it has helped perform 2,500 social media marketing campaigns for more than 850 brands, including Adidas, Arnott’s, Red Bull, Chope and Gojek.
According to a benchmark report out in march by influncer marketing hub, the influencer marketing industry is probable to be worth about $9.7 billion in 2020, with companies spending increasing amounts on social media campaigns and working with added “micro-influencers.” To serve them, the report said that more than 380 innovative influencer marketing agencies and platforms were introduced last year, joining a list of companies that already include AspireIQ, Upfluence, BuzzSumo, SparkToro and Inzpsire.me.
While the majority of these companies spotlight on helping brands identify the influencers with the widest social media reach, Partipost lets anybody sign up to take part in a campaign.
“Partipost’s main difference is that we think that every person can be an influencer,” founder and chief executive officer Jonathan Eg told TechCrunch. “Even if you have two hundred followers, you can be one. We want to form a new market that we believe will be the future. Everyone can post on social media, write a review or give some feedback and be paid for it, We wish for everyone to empower and to monetize off their own data and influence and not just let the big tech companies to do so,”
Aspiring influencers browse brand campaigns on Partipost’s app and submit an application to take part by submitting a post draft. If the brand approves the content, the user can then go ahead and post it on their social media profiles.
The quantity of cash they receive is based on how much engagement each post receives. According to the company’s website, most campaigns require a minimum of 200 followers or more, and doing well users can make an average of $5 to $150 per campaign, depending on the brand’s payout composition.
One of Partipost’s promotion points for brands is that it enables them to sign up thousands of influencers for a campaign in a day and help them act in response quickly to online trends. Piece of the funding will also be used to construct data tools to help brands match campaigns with Partipost users more efficiently. The firm says it expects to increase its base of aspiring influencers to one million within the next one and half year.
