Squarespace 5-C Influencer Campaign Analysis

How we pick the creators

Cast is where most of the money is won or lost.

We start from creators who have performed before, plus names from partner agencies. Then every candidate runs against our sponsorship database, nearly 285,000 sponsored videos across 31,000+ channels and 44,000 brands, going back years. The next slides are the signals we score.

Our database. Every channel, the brands that sponsored it, the dates, the views, and the offer.

Signal 1: they keep getting re-booked

The single best sign that an audience buys is a brand booking the same creator again and again.

Nobody keeps re-booking a creator who does not bring in signups. Take Evan and Katelyn (1.63M subs). Squarespace booked this maker duo 41 times. They are a good example, because other brands in completely different lanes keep paying them too, so the audiences do not compete:

• TotalBoat (epoxy and marine supplies), 17 sponsored videos
• Raycon (earbuds), 12

When repeat buyers in different categories all keep coming back to the same maker channel, the audience is acting on what they say, not just watching.

One caution: make sure your creator is not also reading your direct competitor. It reads as fake, fast, especially when the audience sees how many sponsors they run.

A real Squarespace read. Evan and Katelyn, a recurring Squarespace creator, with squarespace.com/evanandkatelyn in the description.

Why the long partnerships convert

Cruise With Ben and David have read Squarespace 85 times, more than any other channel. They sit at 331K subscribers but average about 253K views a video. That is roughly 76 percent of the subscriber base watching, which is very high.

Here is the part most people miss. On any single video, only about 5 to 10 percent of an audience shows up.

Different topics, missed uploads, life. But because they keep hearing the same offer over months, you convert a big share of them over time.

A one-off read might move 0.3 percent of viewers. A long partnership with a trusted creator can get you to 5 percent.

That is the whole case for going long on a subscription product.

Signal 2: the four creator types

Subscriber counts are easy to buy and easy to forget, so we ignore them as the headline. We score average views on recent videos, the view-to-sub ratio, engagement, recency, and loyalty into one fit score, zero to a hundred, with weights we state. It sorts the roster into four buckets, and a good program buys from all four.

Each creator scored and sorted in our system. High subscribers with a low view-to-sub ratio (Jared Polin, Rachel Aust) score low on purpose.

Signal 3: read the views, not the subscribers

A million subscribers is easy to buy and easy to forget. What you actually pay for is who shows up. Jared Polin has 1.52M subscribers, but his recent sponsored videos average around 75K views, only about 5 percent of the base showing up. That usually means the channel caught a wave and slowed down, or just naturally settled as it got bigger, the way it does for the largest channels.

The real problem there is cost. A channel like that is usually more expensive, because the creator values themselves on the subscriber count.

That matters for whitelisting, when you run ads from their handle and the ad shows the number. But for a plain sponsored read, the subscribers who left years ago do nothing for you.

Compare that to Cruise With Ben and David at 331K subscribers, averaging about 253K views, near 76 percent of the audience watching.

A quarter of Jared Polin's subscriber count, far more real reach, and usually a fraction of the price. You pay for the attention you actually receive, not for a number that left.

Signal 4: read the comments

Comments are the closest read on what is really going on with an audience. We check whether comments are mostly questions or mostly statements. A lot of real questions means the audience treats the host as a trusted source, not background noise.

We measure that question-to-statement ratio across ten videos and compare it to the rest of the shortlist. We also score each channel for bots, based on how old and how active the commenting accounts are.

Accounts under a year old with no activity are the tell. A finalist only passes if its commenters are not much younger than channels we know are clean.

Examples of fake comments. These are pulled from one channel we vetted out. We are confident the comments were bought.

The thread itself is the first tell: near-identical hype, duplicated lines, and a coin being pushed in every comment.

Joined Nov 2025, no content.

Joined Nov 2025, no content.

Joined Feb 2026, no content.

Click into the accounts behind those comments and they are brand new, with no videos and no history. That is what a bought audience looks like up close.

What good comments look like

Good comments are thoughtful, specific, and show the viewer actually acting on what the host said.

Long, specific, and personal. A comment like this is a real human acting on what the host said, not background noise.

The audience teaches the host back. That two-way exchange is the signal an audience is engaged and trusts the channel.

Cover the funnel: top, middle and bottom

We pick creators across all three levels of the market. The percentages are the view-to-sub ratio, average views divided by subscribers, what share of the audience actually watches a video.

Top: awareness. Get Squarespace in front of new people through big channels.

• Odd Animal Specimens, 4.98M subs
• Matt D'Avella, 4.02M subs
• Evan and Katelyn, 1.63M subs
• Jared Polin, 1.52M subs (but only ~5% view-to-sub, so smaller real reach than it looks)

Middle: consideration. Trusted hosts who have read Squarespace many times, vouching for it.

• Anne of All Trades, 669K subs, 74 reads, ~66% view-to-sub
• Jason Vong, 636K subs, 78 reads, ~43% view-to-sub
• How To Renovate A Chateau, 563K subs, 52 reads, ~38% view-to-sub

Bottom: conversion. High-loyalty workhorses saying it for the twentieth time, where the signups happen.

• Cruise With Ben and David, 331K subs, 85 reads, ~76% view-to-sub
• Katelynn Nolan, 81K subs, 71 reads
• Brae Hunziker, 73K subs, 68 reads
• cherrien, 65.8K subs, 38 reads, ~27% view-to-sub

Make them a partner, not an ad slot

For software there is nothing to ship, so the gift is access plus a real reason to care. Done right, the creator builds their own real site on camera, which is the most convincing read you can get.

• A free long-term or lifetime account, fully set up
• A personal onboarding call so they actually build a site on camera
• A handwritten note from the team, and some branded swag
• The creative brief, clear and simple, sent up front

3. Comply

Keep it honest

Squarespace does not carry health-style fines, but it carries a claims risk, and the Federal Trade Commission enforces honest endorsements.

You do not want a creator inventing a claim you cannot back up, then you wearing the FTC letter for it.

• Claims have to be provable. No made-up ranked #1, no fake uptime or speed numbers, no cheaper than everyone without the data.
• It has to be true to them. The creator should actually use Squarespace. The best reads show their own real site.
• Disclose every time. A clear spoken disclosure, in the description, and a pinned comment. A promo code is not a disclosure.
• No false comparisons. Do not let a creator claim you beat a named rival on a number without handing over the proof.
• Send them to the site. Every read points to squarespace.com slash the creator, where the real pricing and features live.

The same line shown two ways. These reads are illustrative, to show where the line sits:

The FTC endorsement guides. An endorsement must reflect the honest opinion of the endorser.

The creative brief

The brief is the cheapest thing you can do to stay out of trouble. A Squarespace-style sample (note: we don't share our real one, that stays internal with clients):

1. Ban made-up superlatives (best, #1, fastest) and any invented metric.
2. No cheaper than a named competitor or more secure than a rival without the data that day.
3. Require a plain spoken disclosure. A promo code is not a disclosure.
4. Show your own real Squarespace site. Do not claim features you have not used.
5. Keep it to real benefits: easy to build, looks professional, all in one, free trial.
6. Every read points to squarespace.com slash the creator. Never improvise the pricing.

We catch these at review and ask for a re-record before it goes live. Far cheaper than pulling a video months later.

4. Convert

How we track every signup

Multitouch attribution.

• We counted around 1,000 distinct personal links for Squarespace, one per creator, all the same shape, squarespace.com slash the creator's name. 5,803 of the 6,322 reads, about 92 percent, send viewers to one. A dedicated page is low effort and reliably lifts the signup rate.
• Every trial and paid account is tagged to the exact channel it came from, with the free trial as the hook.
• When a viewer clicks, a pixel fires, so they become the warm audience you retarget later.

Where squarespace.com/evanandkatelyn lands. A co-branded page that names the creator and carries the offer, with the channel tagged right in the URL.

The full loop. A creator read sends a viewer to the site, the visit fires Meta and YouTube pixels, repeat touches mark the visitor as hot, and prior visitors get retargeted until they convert.

Lifetime value

A customer who comes from a creator is worth more than one from a cold ad.

• They signed up on borrowed trust, so they stick and churn less.
• They keep seeing the product as new creators read it.
• On a yearly subscription, that loyalty turns into renewal after renewal.

Same price on day one. By month six the two are not close, and that gap decides how much you can pay for the next creator.

The payout side is solved. Off-the-shelf affiliate software tracks each creator's link and pays them on its own.

UpPromote on Shopify. Referrals and commission tracked to the order.

The same job in Impact. We can plug into PartnerStack, Rewardful, Impact, or custom software.

Can you predict the results?

No, you can never guarantee results. But you can do a pretty good job estimating them.

If the roster has no fake followers, the audience is the right one, and the offer is low friction like a free trial, the numbers land in a tight range. Expect bigger swings around launches and seasonal peaks.

• Launches and seasonal peaks: apply a 2 to 3x multiplier, because the offer just converts better.
• New region or new segment: apply about a 2x lower multiplier, because it takes time to warm up.

The next slides use Squarespace's real Q1 2025 views and Squarespace's own published revenue per customer. The funnel rates in between are our estimate, labelled as such.

What we measured, January to March 2025

• Squarespace paid for 427 sponsored reads from 171 creators.
• Those reads pulled in roughly 19.4 million views, about 141,704 each.
• Viewers left around 827,000 likes and 50,000 comments, about 4.5% engaged.

Priced at a $20 CPM, the same rate you would pay Facebook for the same views, that is near $388,270 in media value, and at about 4 percent reaching the site, on the order of 776,000 visits to the personal landing pages. Squarespace runs a 14-day free trial with no card, so the next step is a trial, not a sale.

Q1 2025 in numbers

Reads, creators and views are real, measured from our database. About a quarter of stored reads carry view counts, so the view total is over the reads that have them. The CPM and the rates are our model.

The funnel, modelled

ROAS is how many dollars come back for each dollar in. We price the media at a $20 CPM, then model the funnel: 4 percent of viewers reach the site, 8 percent of those start the free trial, 20 percent of trials go paid, at Squarespace's real $19 a month (their published $228 a year per customer).

First-month revenue near $236,075 on $388,270 of media is a 0.61x return. Under water on month one, and for a subscription that is normal and fine. The renewals are where the money is.

A Facebook ad at the same CPM usually converts worse, because a creator read lands like a friend's tip, not an ad cutting them off. Think referral versus cold traffic.

What a customer costs vs what they are worth

CAC lands near $31, the media cost divided by customers. Squarespace's own filings put revenue per customer at $228 a year.

Keep that customer two years, which is conservative for them, and they are worth about $456. You paid $31 to win them.

A healthy SaaS wants 3 to 1. This is near 15 to 1, because a creator's trust pulls in people who sign up and then stay. Even on year one alone, $228 against a $31 cost is past 7 to 1.

Run the quarter out a year

Now run the same quarter out a year, once the renewals are counted.

Under water in month one, about 7x by month twelve, and still climbing into year two. That is why the program scales the more creator spend you add.

5. Compound

The flywheel

Once you have winners, you double down on them, then add new creators to keep the pipeline full. Squarespace's 553 creators with 3-plus reads is that flywheel running.

A growing channel rarely runs out of audience, because only a slice watch any one video and new viewers show up every month. That is why we like up-and-coming creators, the audience is fresh and still growing.

• The 85/15 rule. Keep the top 85 percent, swap the bottom 15 for fresh creators every month.
• Do more of what works. Run a winner's best read as a paid ad through their own handle.
• Go deeper with the best. Move top creators to an always-on ambassador deal, the way Squarespace does with its most-booked channels, some past 80 reads.
• Build ambassadors. Bring top creators into your launches, betas and events so the content stays fresh.

The takeaway

Squarespace did not win website builders on YouTube by overpaying one big name. It won by booking the right creators again and again until the roster itself became the moat.

The 553 creators it has read three or more times is the whole strategy in one number.

For software brands, this same approach is our day job. See how we frame a B2B program on our SaaS influencer marketing page, read the parallel Rocket Money influencer campaign analysis, and browse the AI and developer creator roster we would book from.

Produced from Influencer Advisory's sponsorship database, June 2017 to June 2026. Revenue per customer is Squarespace's own published figure ($228 a year, 2023 filing). The funnel rates are our model, not Squarespace's books.