Last month, Sprout Social rebranded its influencer marketing platform, formerly known as Tagger Media, to Sprout Social Influencer Marketing. 

This name change represents the culmination of a strategic vision that began with Sprout’s acquisition of Tagger in 2023—a move that established the company as a major player in social media management and influencer marketing technology.

“No one wants to see another influencer sell a tea that claims it will make you skinny. They want to get real product advice and feedback,” says Layla Revis, Vice President of Brand and Social at Sprout Social. 

Her statement cuts to the heart of the authenticity crisis facing the creator economy—and hints at how Sprout Social’s recent strategic moves aim to solve it.

From Acquisition to Unified Platform

For Sprout Social, a platform serving over 30,000 brands worldwide, the Tagger Media acquisition in 2023 was “a big deal for our company and the industry,” according to Layla. 

The integration has strengthened Sprout’s competitive position by expanding its capabilities into the fast-growing influencer marketing space.

“By integrating influencer insights into our existing social intelligence tools, we help brands stay on top of trends, understand audience behavior and measure campaign impact more effectively,” Layla explains. 

She elaborates that this unified approach earned Sprout the #1 spot in G2’s Best Software Awards last year, validating their strategic direction.

The rebranding comes at a key moment in social media marketing development. As Layla notes, with 59% of marketers planning to expand influencer collaborations, the need for sophisticated tools to identify, manage, and measure creator partnerships has never been greater. 

By transitioning from Tagger Media to Sprout Social Influencer Marketing, the company aligns this capability more closely with its core brand identity and creates a more seamless customer experience.

The Technology Behind Partnerships

The acquisition and subsequent rebranding tackle an overarching challenge in the creator economy: how to build genuine, effective partnerships in an environment where consumers are increasingly skeptical of inauthentic promotional content.

Through the integration of Tagger’s capabilities, brands using Sprout can now access AI-driven insights and advanced analytics specifically designed to match them with appropriate creators. Rather than focusing solely on follower counts, the platform evaluates more meaningful indicators of potential partnership success.

“When we look at authenticity, we take that into account with our product roadmap and make sure the recommendations we provide in Sprout Influencer Marketing are curated to deliver the right person with the right audience, as opposed to only the creator with a million followers,” Layla emphasizes.

She backs this approach with Sprout Social’s data on consumer behavior: 87% of Gen Z consumers are more likely to buy from brands that build long-term influencer partnerships—the kind of sustained, authentic relationships Sprout’s platform is specifically designed to facilitate. 

With nearly half of all consumers (49%) making monthly purchases because of influencer posts, the stakes for getting these partnerships right are high.

Creator Relationship Management

What distinguishes Sprout Social’s newly rebranded influencer marketing platform is its connection to the broader social media management ecosystem, opening new avenues for brands managing both owned social channels and creator partnerships.

The platform enables marketers to assess potential creators through a sophisticated yet intuitive evaluation process. “It can make it a lot easier when you can assess an influencer’s followers, their other brand partnerships, and, based on the parameters you’ve set forth, get a score that helps you determine if they’re the right match,” Layla explains.

This data-informed approach to creator selection aims to make finding partners who genuinely align with a brand’s values and audience effortless by removing guesswork from the process.

After the discovery phase, the platform provides tools for managing relationships, executing campaigns, and measuring results—all within the same environment where brands manage their broader social media presence. 

This creates what Layla describes as a “comprehensive platform to execute holistic social strategies,” breaking down silos between different aspects of social media marketing.

Product Development Through Creator Collaboration

A key factor in Sprout Social’s approach to the creator economy is its commitment to collaborative product development. Unlike platforms developed solely from the brand perspective, Sprout actively engages with creators to understand their needs and challenges.

“We view product development as a collaborative process. We actively engage with the creator community to understand their needs and challenges—their feedback is foundational to our process and driving innovation,” Layla explains.

One concrete example of this engagement is “The Arboretum,” a dedicated space where both micro and mega creators can share experiences, discuss challenges, and provide direct feedback to Sprout. This ongoing dialogue ensures the platform meets the actual needs of both creators and brands.

Sprout also practices what it advocates to clients firsthand. “Last year, we partnered with dozens of unique creators who drove more than 4 million impressions, 100K+ engagements, and a large volume of leads,” Layla shares, adding that this direct experience with creator partnerships provides the company with practical insights that inform product development.

New Metrics for Influence

The rebranding of Sprout Social Influencer Marketing coincides with a shift in how brands measure the success of creator partnerships. The platform enables refined campaign performance evaluation.

“We help brands measure ROI by providing key insights into reach, engagement, cost, and conversions,” Layla explains. “We look at CPL (cost per lead) and CPA (cost per acquisition) and benchmark against the cost of our other paid social and digital activities.”

What’s particularly notable is Sprout’s focus on sentiment and trust metrics. According to Layla, these factors are “increasingly important as consumer confidence in influencers plays a major role in purchasing decisions.” By tracking these less tangible but crucial indicators, Sprout helps brands understand the true impact of their creator partnerships.

Looking forward, Layla identifies emerging metrics that will become important in the creator economy: “Share of Search and AI Search are increasingly becoming an area that marketers are looking to influence as typical SEO and website visits show signs of a shifting landscape. Earned and Owned Media Value, from a more organic standpoint, are also becoming another go-to for measuring campaign success.”

These new measurement approaches help brands “put a dollar amount on organic content, things like shares, comments and mentions, painting a clearer picture of the true impact of an influencer campaign,” Layla notes.

The AI-Powered Future of Creator Partnerships

As Sprout Social continues to develop its platform following the rebranding, artificial intelligence will assume an increasingly central role. “Looking ahead, we’ll continue to roll out new AI-powered features making it even easier for brands to discover, vet, and partner with the right influencers,” Layla reveals.

Sprout has already integrated AI throughout its platform, automating tasks like workflow management, prioritizing customer inquiries, crafting engaging content, and analyzing data. “All of this helps marketers move faster so they can focus on higher impact strategic and creative work,” Layla explains.

Explaining the importance of AI integration, Layle highlights its ability to analyze massive amounts of data in real time, which she predicts will “help marketers surface insights, create tailored content, and personalize audience engagement more effectively.”

Broader Industry Impact

Sprout Social’s moves reflect broader industry trends: the shift toward long-term creator partnerships, the growing emphasis on authentic content appeal, and the importance of data-driven decision making. 

Bringing advanced influencer marketing capabilities into its social media management platform, Sprout is helping to normalize creator partnerships as a core component of digital strategy rather than a separate, experimental channel.

“Influencer marketing is outperforming organic brand content in reach, engagement, and conversions,” Layla observes. This performance advantage, combined with consumers’ growing trust in creator recommendations, suggests that integrating influencer marketing into broader social strategy represents the future of digital marketing.

For Layla, the most exciting aspect of this development is “how influencer marketing is evolving beyond social media to create deeper, data-driven connections between brands and consumers.”