They could have chosen influencers. They chose neighbors.

How a collaboration becomes an ongoing referral channel

A creator applies to a Pure Barre campaign, books a class at one of the operator’s studios, takes it, and publishes a post. That is the campaign, and the post is the start of it. The post keeps working on its own long after it goes up, circulating on her feed and reaching people months after the initial collaboration.

Another thing that outlasts the campaign is the Local Edit, the creator’s own recommendation page, listing the places she endorses and carrying a tracked link to Pure Barre. The Local Edit lives on her profile alongside her posts, so anyone who visits her page for any reason can find it, whether or not a campaign is running.

Six months produced 34 collaborations from 29 creators across five studios and at least 50,829 post views. The campaigns attracted 162 applications for 34 available spots.

A lead is what Roeme calls it when someone drops their information on a creator’s link to claim a Pure Barre offer. That means a full name, an email address and a phone number, handed over to claim a specific deal. It is a far stronger signal than a click, and Pure Barre has recorded 26 of them since tracking opened in May.

The recommendations keep working after the class ended

Since May, creators’ tracked links have drawn 702 taps from 265 different people in front of Pure Barre Atlanta, an average of more than 20 taps for every collaboration the operator ran. The class is a one-time cost to the studio, but the recommendation keeps working afterward: 87% of unique clicks arrived after the collaboration had already closed — and the busiest month for a creator’s link is the month after her campaign ends.

One creator’s link shows the pattern up close

She took one class on May 7. Through July 26, her link reached 129 different people: 47 in May, 41 in June and 41 in July.

The creators behind the results

Using their current follower counts, 22 of the 29 creators have fewer than 10,000 Instagram followers. The traffic results show why the operator benefits from measuring each creator’s link rather than assuming the largest audience will produce the strongest result.

“My jaw was on the floor picking this round. The variety of local creators we get to choose from is insane.”

Naomi Hopkins, Pure Barre Atlanta GM

In this sample, follower count alone did not identify the strongest traffic drivers.

Takeaway: Pure Barre could never have picked these creators by follower count.

Real campaign data from Pure Barre in Roeme.

What this means for a multi-studio operator

Pure Barre’s operator rewards creators with classes. What it gets back is a post that keeps circulating, a link that keeps sending people, and a name attached to every one of them.

The collaboration that closed in May is still reaching new people in July. The one closing this month will still be working in the fall. Nothing was re-bought, re-negotiated or re-launched to make that happen. The recommendations simply stayed where the creators put them.

The studios ran classes. Roeme did the rest: matched the creators, built every Local Edit, tracked every link and captured every claim, 34 times over, without the operator managing any of it by hand.