Shopify Influencer Marketing: Run Your First Campaign
Shopify influencer marketing means paying creators to show your products to their audience, and tracking the sales each one brings with a personal discount code and link. You can run a first campaign with tools already in your admin: a discount code per creator, a tagged link, and the Sales by discount report. Shopify’s own app for this, Shopify Collabs, adds recruiting, gifting and commission payouts, but in October 2026 it is not accepting new creator signups.
Shopify facts below come from the Shopify Help Center pages on Collabs, discount codes and marketing reports, read on October 23, 2026.
Pick the deal before you pick the creator
Every campaign is one of three deals, and each needs something different in Shopify:
| Deal | What the creator gets | What you set up in Shopify | Your risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gifting (seeding) | Free product, no promise to post | A gift order or a one-use 100% discount code | Product and shipping cost, even if nobody posts |
| Affiliate | Commission on each sale they bring | A personal discount code and a tracked link; commission paid by an app or by hand | Low: you pay only on sales |
| Paid post | A flat fee for agreed content | A code and link for tracking; the fee is paid outside Shopify | The fee, whatever the result |
For a first campaign, gifting plus an affiliate code is the cheapest test. You send product to creators whose audience matches your customers, and each one gets a code that pays them a commission if their followers buy. Paid posts make sense once you know which creators sell, because then you are paying for a result you have already seen.
Find creators who already fit
Start with people who already buy from you. Sort your customers by number of orders, look up the ones who post about your product category, and contact them first, since they already know the product.
After that, search the platform where your customers spend time for posts about your product type, and look at the comments rather than the follower count. A creator with 8,000 followers and real questions under every post is a better test than one with 200,000 and emoji replies. How to choose and approach small creators is covered in our guide to product seeding.
Shopify Collabs has a Recruiting section where you search creators by keyword, location, social account and audience size. Two limits apply in October 2026:
- The Help Center says Collabs isn’t accepting new creator signups at this time. Merchants can still send direct invites to creators and accept applications from creators.
- Collabs works on all Shopify plans except Starter and Retail, and it needs Shopify Network Intelligence turned on in your privacy settings.
You can invite up to 100 creators in any 7-day period, and invites expire after 30 days. The setup itself is in our Shopify Collabs guide.
Set up the campaign in Shopify
Each creator needs a discount code, a tracked link and the product itself.
1. A personal discount code. In Discounts, create a discount code named after the creator, for example MAYA15. Set a value you can afford on every order, and use the code’s options to limit it: an end date for the campaign, a usage limit if you want to cap the cost, a minimum order amount, or specific products. The code doubles as your tracking tool, because every order that uses it is counted in the Sales by discount report. Avoid special characters in the code name; Shopify warns they can break the code in checkout links.
2. A tracked link. Give the creator a link to the product with UTM parameters, for example:
https://yourstore.com/products/rose-serum?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=2026-11-maya
Shopify attributes traffic that arrives with a utm_campaign parameter to marketing, and you see it in the Growth section and in the marketing reports. The link catches visitors who buy without typing the code; the code catches people who buy later, on another device, or after hearing about you in a video they could not click.
3. The product. In Collabs, a gift is a free product or a discount code that you send to creators you are already connected with. Free shipping always applies, and once the creator claims the gift, an order appears in your admin for you to fulfill. Without Collabs, the simplest route is a one-use discount code for 100% off the product you are sending, plus a free-shipping discount set to combine with it, so the creator orders their size or shade and you see the cost as a discounted order.
Paying commission. With Collabs, affiliate commissions are tracked and paid through your Shopify bill; the Collabs listing said on October 23, 2026, that a 2.9% commission processing fee on automatic payments may apply. Without an app, export the Sales by discount report at the end of each month and pay creators from it. That works for five creators and becomes a chore at twenty, which is the point to look at an affiliate app.
Measure sales per creator
At the end of the campaign, compare each creator on the same three numbers: orders with their code, sales from their link (in the marketing reports, by utm_campaign), and what they cost you in product, shipping, commission and fees. A creator who brings few orders but many first-time customers may still be worth a second round; the campaign reports show new and returning customers for each campaign.
When manual tracking gets too slow, compare Collabs with affiliate apps in our guide to influencer tracking and platforms. More campaign guides are in the marketing and SEO hub.
Ask for a clear disclosure
In the United States, the FTC’s guide Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers says creators must disclose any financial, employment, personal or family relationship with a brand, and that free products count. The disclosure must sit with the post itself, not only in a bio, and not be buried in a cluster of hashtags. Words like “ad”, “sponsored” and “advertisement” are clear; “sp”, “spon” and “collab” are not, and “ambassador” alone is unclear, although the FTC accepts a brand-specific label such as “Acme Ambassador” where space is short. Put the disclosure in your written brief to every creator, so it is part of the deal from the start. Other countries have their own rules, so check the ones where your creators and customers are.
Frequently asked questions
Does Shopify have a free influencer marketing tool? Shopify Collabs is free to install and is made by Shopify, but it is not accepting new creator signups in October 2026, and a processing fee may apply to automatic commission payments. Discount codes, UTM links and Shopify’s reports cost nothing extra.
How do I track sales from an influencer on Shopify? Give each creator a personal discount code and a link with UTM parameters. Orders with the code appear in the Sales by discount report, and visits and sales from the link appear in the marketing reports under the campaign name.
How much should I pay an influencer? Start with product plus commission on sales, which costs you money only when the creator sells. Pay a flat fee once a creator has shown, through their code and link, that their audience buys from you.
Do influencers have to say a post is sponsored? In the US, yes: the FTC says creators must disclose a relationship with a brand, including free products, in the post itself. Write the requirement into your agreement with each creator.