How impact.com Uses Trusted Research to Drive Growth and Demand

Hitting Growth Goals With Smarter, Faster Insights

impact.com is the world’s leading commerce partnership management platform, helping brands, publishers, agencies, and creators optimize their influencer, affiliate, and referral marketing programs. With ambitious growth goals and new product launches underway, Cristy Garcia, CMO, needed to stay ahead of shifting consumer expectations and clearly communicate what those changes meant for the business. “Whether we’re making a case for new investments or refining our GTM plans, we need credible data to ground our strategy.” That’s where trusted research becomes essential.

“When we started using EMARKETER, we were looking for a way to get smarter, faster,” Cristy explains. “I hoped it would give me solid data and trends to help guide decisions and spark new ideas.” What began as a research subscription quickly evolved into a company-wide partnership. “Once other teams saw the value, it spread across the business. As we realized how trusted and credible EMARKETER is, we wanted to align our brand with theirs—through webinars, events, and analyst collaborations.”

Driving Alignment and Action Across the Business

Sales uses it to build client presentations and ensure that reps are informed on calls. They also leverage EMARKETER content, adding their own perspective to boost visibility and engagement with prospects. “Just being able to cite some of the charts and data, alongside our own thought leadership—it’s done great things for sales opportunities for our company,” Cristy notes.

Research teams rely on the platform to validate hypotheses and identify strategic opportunities. “It helps us spot trends, benchmark against the broader market, and make sure we’re not missing anything.” EMARKETER’s AI Search has made that process even more efficient: “AI Search has completely streamlined how we find insights—it’s saved us hours, if not days, of research time.”

Marketing taps into EMARKETER daily, using it to support campaign and budget planning, channel strategy, and content creation. “We use PRO+ as an internal intelligence hub. The KPIs help us see how we stack up against competitors, and the data visualizations make it easy to share insights across the company.”

One example is their State of Influencer Marketing report. While impact.com led the research, Cristy emphasizes that EMARKETER added credibility and scale:
“We were able to incorporate EMARKETER’s charts into our report to show that we’re not the only ones saying this—there’s a credible, third-party source validating our message. That added a layer of authority we wouldn’t have had on our own.”

With sales, research, and marketing working from the same data and insights, teams are aligned, collaborating more effectively and driving unified growth.

From Insight to Impact: Generating Credible Content and Qualified Leads

For Cristy’s team, a single chart or trend can set a full campaign in motion. “It often starts with reading a report or spotting a relevant trend in EMARKETER,” she says. “From there, we think about how we can add our perspective—what’s our point of view, what data or experience can we layer in to build a stronger story?”

That story then takes shape across multiple formats. A custom piece of research becomes a multi-channel asset, repurposed into blog posts, email content, social campaigns, or custom decks. “With 10 to 15 pages of insights, there’s so much to work with. We turn it into smart, snackable content across our marketing,” Cristy explains.

The results speak for themselves: one co-branded report and webinar, The Modern Customer Journey, has generated over 1,000 unique leads so far. “Each touchpoint with EMARKETER serves a distinct purpose, but together they create a powerful, integrated strategy,” Cristy says. “Custom research anchors our thought leadership, webinars bring it to life, and the insights help us see where the market is going and refine our plans. The advertising solutions from EMARKETER help us execute—creating a seamless ecosystem that drives stronger results.”

Confident Decisions in Uncertain Times

Looking ahead at the market, Cristy anticipates growing complexity, from fragmented consumer behavior to emerging tech and stricter privacy regulations. She sees EMARKETER as more than an insights partner; it’s a critical lever for lead generation, revenue growth, and staying competitive. “As the marketing landscape evolves, EMARKETER’s timely insights and forecasts will continue to be essential. We want to stay ahead of the curve, make smart decisions, and deliver what our customers expect—and EMARKETER enables us to do that.”