Case Study · Emma Sleep
Influence only counts where the mattress is on the shelf.
Emma Sleep, the Frankfurt sleep brand with 135,000+ five-star reviews worldwide, was already crushing it in Mexico. For Black Friday it wanted influencers across the US, Canada, and Mexico, but the mattress sold through specific retailers in specific markets. So we built a pool of 50 to 100 influencers whose audiences lived where the shelves were, negotiated usage rights on the majority of them, and ran the operation end to end. The client’s own verdict: a ROAS above 3.0 across all influencer campaigns, and a 5.0 review in every category.
3.0x+
ROAS, all influencer campaigns
5.0 / 5.0
Client review, every category
50–100
Influencers sourced & managed
CLIENT
Emma Sleep (Emma US)
Industry
Sleep · DTC + Retail E-Commerce
Engagement
Influencer Marketing · Instagram · Oct–Dec 2024
Offering this proves
Influencer Marketing
01
BEYOND MEXICO
Crushing it in Mexico. Fighting for the aisle everywhere else.
Emma Sleep came to us as a mattress company that had already won one market. Mexico was working. The next move was the rest of North America, the most contested space in DTC, with Casper, Purple, Nectar and Saatva all spending against the same eight hours of the same night. Emma’s counters were real, a 365-night trial and 135,000+ five-star reviews, but counters only matter to shoppers who ever encounter the brand.
Here was the constraint that shaped everything: Emma’s North American play ran through retail partners, and the mattress sat on shelves in specific retailers, in specific markets across the US, Canada, and Mexico. A standard national influencer campaign sprays reach across a continent, most of it landing in cities where a shopper who wanted the mattress could not walk in and find it. And the window was Black Friday through Cyber Monday, the loudest, most expensive quarter of the year.
The diagnosis: the problem was never awareness. Reach only becomes revenue where somebody can actually buy the mattress, and Emma’s shelves weren’t everywhere yet.
365-night trial
135,000+ five-star reviews worldwide
Contested aisle
Casper, Purple, Nectar, Saatva, same night
Retail-gated
Sold through specific retailers, specific markets
02
MAP BEFORE VIBE
Match the map before the vibe.
Most influencer sourcing starts with the feed: does this creator look right, sound right, fit the brand? We started with geography. Every influencer in the pool had to pass two filters, in order, first an audience concentrated in the markets where Emma’s retail partners actually stocked the mattress, then the category fit. A creator with twice the following and the wrong zip codes didn’t make the list.
The second bet was quieter and paid longer. We negotiated usage rights up front for the majority of the influencers we signed, so every review, unboxing, and lifestyle post could run twice: once as the creator’s post, again as Emma’s ad. One fee, two lives.
Not reach.
Placement.
Geography filter, first
Audience concentrated in markets where the mattress was actually on the shelf, California and Texas among them.
Category fit, second
Sleep, home, and lifestyle relevance, checked only after the geography passed, never before.
Usage rights, up front
Negotiated on the majority of signed influencers before content shot, not after it performed.
One fee, two lives
Most posts could run as the creator’s own and again as Emma’s paid ad, the scarcest BFCM resource, hedged.
03
END TO END
One pool, run end to end.
Emma facilitated the product logistics. Everything else in the influencer operation, from the first search query to the last payment, ran through us. On a Q4 schedule, the operation is the product.
The Search
Identify and analyze
Creators scored on two axes: sleep, home, and lifestyle category fit, and audience geography matched to Emma’s retail markets across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Output: a vetted pool of 50 to 100 influencers.
The filter
We wrote the creative brief
We negotiated on Emma’s behalf
Contracts, payments, compliance
Performance tracking and reporting
“
Their flexibility, commitment, and resilience were truly remarkable throughout the project.
Verified client review · Clutch · December 2024
04
POSTS INTO ADS
Most posts could run again as Emma’s ads.
Somewhere in November the campaign changed shape. The posts had gone live, reels pulling five-figure play counts from single creators, stories walking viewers from a bedroom to a retailer link. Because usage rights were already signed, each post was also becoming something else the moment it published: a paid-ready creative asset Emma could put budget behind.
It did not run frictionless, and we’d rather tell you that than polish it. A transatlantic brand, a compressed holiday schedule, and communication that had to be fixed mid-flight. It was. Targets hit anyway.
3.0x+
ROAS, all influencer
campaigns
5.0 / 5.0
Client review score, every
category
05
GRADED 5.0
The client graded it. Every category, 5.0.
The headline numbers below come from Emma’s own verified review of the engagement, published on Clutch in December 2024. The content sample beneath them comes from post-level analytics collected per creator.
The Verdict, Client-Reported, Clutch Review · Dec 2024
Metric
Result
Details
R
Metric
ROAS
3.0X+
Result
Across all influencer campaigns, hit during BFCM
Details
S
Metric
Review score
5.0 / 5.0
Result
Quality, Schedule, Cost, Willing to Refer
Details
I
Metric
Influencer pool
50-100
Result
Identified and vetted; signed influencers paid and compliant
Details
The Content Engine, Partial Sample, 18 of the Pool
Metric
Result
Details
V
Metric
Views & plays
52,454
Result
Across 32 measured posts from 18 creators
Details
R
Metric
Accounts reached
37,971
Result
Concentrated by design in retail-matched markets
Details
R
Metric
Interactions
1,960
Result
Best single reel: 22,177 plays, 988 interactions
Details
Methodology: ROAS and pool size are client-reported figures from Emma’s verified Clutch review (published December 27, 2024). Content metrics are a partial sample read from per-creator analytics of 32 posts by 18 influencers; roughly seventeen additional creators delivered content whose analytics weren’t captured, so sample totals understate the campaign’s full organic footprint. Views/plays mixes Story views and Reel plays; accounts reached is the most comparable cross-format metric.
06
DISTRIBUTION
Influencer marketing is a distribution business.
The industry buys influencers like media: cost per thousand, audience size, category adjacency. Emma’s campaign worked because we bought them like distribution. Every creator was a storefront placed in a market that had actual shelves, most posts were pieces of inventory that could sell twice, and the whole pool was run with the contracts, payments, and compliance discipline that lets a brand trust dozens of strangers with its name during the biggest sales weekend of the year.
The client scored the operation 5.0 in every category and reported a return above 3.0 across all influencer campaigns. The reach numbers are the footnote. The map was the strategy.
Emma’s verified review: a ROAS above 3.0 across all influencer campaigns.
3.0x+
ROAS, all influencer campaigns
5.0/5.0
Client review, every category
50-100
Influencers sourced & managed
52,454
Views & plays, partial sample
37,971
Accounts reached, partial sample
1,960
Interactions, measured posts
Selling through shelves
your ads can’t see?
We source influencers by where their audiences live, not just what their feeds look like. Search, brief, negotiation, contracts, payments, compliance, reporting, one pool, run end to end, matched to your distribution.
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