Silicon Slopes-Based Company Raises $6 Million Seed Round to Modernize Traditional Influencer Marketing

Wooly announced that the company has rebranded as Roster, introduced an enhanced creator engagement platform, and raised a $6 million seed round to modernize traditional influencer marketing for e-commerce companies.

Roster has created an innovative creator engagement platform that enables online retailers to leverage their customer community and turn them into brand ambassadors – and do it at scale.

“The most powerful form of influence a brand can tap into comes from their customers – the people who use their products,” said Kyle Fraughton, CEO, Roster. “Roster helps retailers leverage their customer community to drive influence and ultimately spread word-of-mouth in an automated and measurable way. With Roster, brands can engage with customers at scale to spread influence, drive awareness, and increase sales.”

“The most powerful form of influence a brand can tap into comes from their customers – the people who use their products”

Marketing Technology News: DataLoop Increases Offerings for Data Annotation for Clients’ Benefit

A brand’s customers are unquestionably the most authentic source to promote products and services to others. For this reason, customers are the ideal brand ambassadors. They share first-hand experience from a position of credibility and trust. Studies have found that two-thirds of Americans trust word-of-mouth referrals from family and friends because they believe the recommendation is genuine and trustworthy.

Given the rising cost of social ads and traditional pay per click marketing, ambassador programs are the next wave of effective and cost-efficient marketing. Using Roster removes many complications inherent in scaling a brand on social media and enables e-commerce businesses to build brand communities.

“Ambassador marketing has changed, and we’ve changed with it. The Wooly team is proud to announce our new brand, Roster,” said Danny Webb, CRO, Roster. “Our energetic new look expresses our passion for helping today’s best brands Recruit, Engage, Reward, and Measure a thriving ambassador community.”

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Alex Dean, Co-founder and CEO at Snowplow

With customers that include On Running, Cotopaxi, Salomon, Blendtec, 1 800 contacts, and Specialized, Roster’s on-demand brand engagement platform helps e-commerce businesses adopt traditional influencer, ambassador, and affiliate marketing strategies to drive better impact. Roster’s SaaS model enables simple budgeting and provides a more economical solution to harness the new creator economy.

Additionally, Roster accelerates word-of-mouth marketing to capitalize on this source’s $6 trillion spent annually. CMO analysis shows that word-of-mouth generates 13 percent of all U.S. sales. According to the same research, word-of-mouth marketing generates five times more sales than paid advertisements.

As part of the company rebrand, Roster is announcing it has raised a $6 million seed round to help the company scale business operations and enhance the customer experience. The financing round was led by Grix VC, with participation from Peterson Ventures and Album VC.