Inside how fleece clothing brand Dudley Stephens has evolved its influencer gifting strategy

It started with gifts, as it so often does in influencer-land.

“My background was in celebrity PR,” Lauren Stephens, CEO and co-founder of Dudley Stephens, a clothing brand that specializes in upscale fleece turtlenecks, told Marketing Brew. At companies like Lancome and Gucci, it was her job to shower celebs with their products—think thousand-dollar bags for the Oscars.

And she didn’t see why Dudley Stephens couldn’t gift its signature turtlenecks in the same way. So, when the brand started in 2015, it started treating mommy bloggers and fashion influencers like the celebrities Stephens worked with in her past life.

Stephens co-founded the brand with her sister, COO Kaki McGrath, so it’s safe to say Dudley Stephens started small. But then again, so did some of the influencers the brand sent gifts to in its early days.

Some of the influencers the brand initially worked with in the early days have grown their followings a lot over the last seven years, causing their rates to increase. But Dudley Stephens has grown as well (last year it did eight figures in revenue for the first time, according to Stephens), so the brand’s larger influencer budget allows it to meet those demands. According to Stephens and McGrath, Dudley Stephens continues to work with roughly 50–60 influencers who’ve been posting about the brand since its start.

Below, Dudley Stephens’s founders walk us through how its influencer gifting program has evolved since day one.

From then…

Dudley Stephens was founded seven years ago, at a time when Stephens said “influencers were just not on the radar for large luxury fashion houses,” minus a few major names.

In hindsight, Stephens told us she targeted what we now call micro-influencers, but back then she called them mommy bloggers or fashion bloggers with “small followings,” between 5,000 and 6,000 followers.

Sometimes, in those early days, Stephens and McGrath did something they said they don’t do now: gift products to influencers in exchange for posts. “Now we would never gift product in return for posting. But back then, we were bootstrapped and stretching every dollar,” McGrath explained.

Even in year one, when the founders didn’t have the luxury of a solid influencer marketing budget, they still made sure they established the terms of every influencer deal clearly, using the creator’s input as well.

“Back then, we had very little budget to work with. So if we were gifting someone in exchange for a post, that was established. The terms of how much we were gifting [were] established. It was set up like we were paying them, because…every creator should be paid properly with what they think is fair,” Stephens said.

In some cases, Dudley Stephens sent gifts with no strings attached. It also did some sponsored posts with what little budget they had back then, too. Decisions were based on what each individual influencer wanted, Stephens said.

…to now

After its first year, as Dudley Stephens started to generate revenue, Stephens told us the brand stopped sending gifts to influencers in exchange for posts.

Between 2020 and 2021, the brand saw a 75% increase in revenue, according to the company. But gifting is still a huge part of Dudley Stephens’s influencer strategy—they just view it a little differently now.

“You never expect anything from a gift,” Stephens said. “You’re giving someone something, and the gift is to maintain that relationship, to stay in touch with them, to keep the brand top of mind.” Whether the influencer decides to post that gift is entirely up to them, she added—and sometimes, they do.

“It has to be mutually beneficial to both parties. If we gift someone and expect a post, it won’t feel organic. And I think followers can see through that,” McGrath added. “If the influencer receives a gift and says, ‘My follower base might enjoy this product,’ and posts about it, they’ll be more passionate about it,” she continued.

Now, the 50 or 60 influencers the brand has worked with consistently since its early years are always fiscally compensated. For folks the brand hasn’t worked with before, they might gift with no expectation of anything in return.

Stephens told us that while influencers are the core of Dudley Stephens’s larger marketing strategy, the brand has diversified its channels over the past three years. For instance, Dudley Stephens now has a paid social strategy, as well as a loyalty program. It even sent out in-home mailers to between 100,000 and 150,000 US homes last summer.

But the brand isn’t done innovating its influencer program yet. “We’re really trying to diversify our influencer database,” Stephens said. “That’s become a huge initiative for us as well in terms of body diversity and ethnicity,” she continued. Stephens and McGrath are still reaching out to new influencers as well, so surely, someone, somewhere, has a Dudley Stephens box tied with a ribbon headed to their mailbox soon.