Digital marketing agency Tech Bay Leaf‘s influencer marketing division, Connext, has emerged to address an important gap in the digital marketing field. Founded by Shilpa Sirdesai and scaled beginning in February this year, Connext serves e-commerce brands struggling with the logistical complexities of influencer partnerships.

Shilpa, who built Tech Bay Leaf along with Allwyn from Mumbai into a global agency with more than 60 team members globally, recognized that solving influencer marketing challenges requires more than technology alone. “You have to identify, reach out, go through the legal process, script it, approve the scripts, and then share it with the client. Several pieces put together a strong influencer marketing program,” she says.

Connext bridges the gap between brands and creators by making influencer marketing strategies “very strategic, measurable, and authentic,” turning influence into a “real business impact for brands across various verticals such as fashion, lifestyle, skincare, medtech, and fintech,” says Shilpa.

The Partnership Advantage

Instead of becoming a self-serve platform focused solely on creator discovery, Connext employs a different approach. “Our understanding of paid media and the role Influencers and affiliates play in building a robust top of the funnel, gives us an edge in driving awareness and conversions,” Shilpa says. “We go into that understanding paid media, attribution, and where Connext will fit.”

Connext manages the entire process, functioning as an extension of a brand’s marketing team rather than just providing access to a database of creators. 

Grace Valerie, who leads Connext’s operations from Los Angeles and brings her own experience as an influencer, articulates their approach: “We are the agency, we will hold your hands, and we will bring the right creators to you. You don’t need to do any work on that side. You don’t need to stress about making the wrong choice or stress about contracts or how to reach an influencer, how to even knock on that door. It’s all our job.” 

This partnership model extends from initial strategy development through creator identification, contract negotiation, content development, and performance measurement. “We help brands completely offload all their influencer marketing to us so they can use their internal resources much better,” Shilpa shares.

The Creator Community Connection

Beyond serving brands, Connext is building a curated community of creators with whom they develop ongoing relationships. “We are building a community. We have our own database of creators that we worked with, know, and have personal connections with,” Grace explains. “It’s not just clicking on the platform and choosing the right fit for the brand. We actually have knowledge about these creators and influencers.”

According to Grace, this community-based approach benefits both sides of the marketplace. Creators gain access to vetted brand opportunities, while brands connect with creators who have been personally evaluated by the Connext team. “The vision is also to have Connext as a community for both creators and the brands to feel safe and know that this is a stamp of success, this is a stamp of approval, this is legit. Connext will take you further,” she says.

For each client campaign, Connext develops a customized creator strategy based on the campaign’s objectives. “We think ahead, we plan ahead, we strategize,” says Grace. This includes determining the ideal mix of nano, micro, and macro influencers, as well as identifying which creators are better suited for affiliate partnerships versus UGC content creation.

The Multiplier Effect

Connext enables users to leverage influencer-generated content within broader paid media campaigns, building on Tech Bay Leaf’s existing management of performance marketing for many of its clients.

“When we roll out campaigns, the results are something that we get to see firsthand, because we are running those campaigns and digital performance marketing,” Shilpa explains. “It’s perfectly blended. We can tweak and optimize to ensure that campaigns perform better and better.”

This integration creates a feedback loop that many brands miss when their influencer marketing exists separately from their paid media strategy. 

“We do a lot of testing. We do testing of UGC and influencers to see who’s getting better metrics,” Shilpa notes. “If one influencer is giving better metrics than the other, then we get that person to do more content. If we feel he or she is good, but their ads are not performing, we tend to iterate.”

Solving Market Challenges

Connext’s versatility is demonstrated in its work with clients outside the typical fashion and lifestyle sectors. A particular example is a campaign for a medtech company targeting people aged 65 and older, a demographic not traditionally associated with influencer marketing.

The client needed genuine testimonial content from actual users, but faced a considerable challenge: their target audience wasn’t comfortable creating content independently. “People of a certain age are not very tech-savvy. Although they have very great ideas and great personas, they cannot build the content they were wanting to,” Shilpa says.

Rather than abandoning this audience, Connext developed a hands-on solution. “Our teams go help, handhold, shoot to make it easier and to get content from a generation that is not successful [with] self-serving,” Shilpa explains. This extra level of support enables the brand to access real content from its exact target market.

As Shilpa shares, the campaign delivered a 4.5x return on ad spend. The client asked Connext to expand its efforts and take “full charge of the community to get more content.”

Connecting Influence to Impact

Connext moves beyond surface-level engagement metrics to connect influencer activity directly to business outcomes that matter to their clients.

“Beyond the vanity metrics, such as likes and comments, we also focus on CTR for influencer posts or brand assets, which becomes one of the main metrics in digital,” Shilpa explains. “Secondly, it’s the cost per engaged user or cost per qualified lead or sale that we look at, then this UTM tracking (Urchin Tracking Module) and discount code redemptions.”

The company’s analytics approach includes click-through rates, conversion metrics, discount code usage, sentiment analysis, and impact on organic brand search following campaigns. They benchmark ROI per creator, content tier, and format, enabling brands to understand exactly which elements of their influencer program are driving results.

Importantly, Connext shares these insights not only with brands, but also with the creators themselves. Shilpa says, “We share all insights with the creators so they too get an idea of how their content has performed.”

Cross-Border Expansion and Growth

Having established their model with U.S.-based brands, Connext is now helping international companies enter the American market through strategic influencer partnerships. “We also help well-established companies and brands overseas to launch in the U.S.,” says Grace. “That’s something we’ve been working on lately a lot, and we’re really excited to see those campaigns launch and see the content and see the results.”

This cross-border service has attracted clients from Asia, Europe, and, most recently, an Australian athleisure brand. “Cross-border collaborations are becoming very pivotal right now,” Shilpa says when discussing the future direction of Connext.

As the creator economy continues to expand, Shilpa emphasizes the importance of what she calls “deep layer strategy” – aligning campaigns with full-funnel marketing KPIs to ensure influencer initiatives contribute meaningfully to business growth. 

As Shilpa concludes, “If your brand wishes to work with somebody who’s strategic and result-oriented and follows all the objectives you set, let’s Connext.”