Building a Sustainable Influencer Marketing Program

This case study explores the successful evolution of Postman’s influencer marketing program, highlighting its journey from a small pilot to a core component of the company’s marketing strategy. The insights are based on 10 months of collaboration between Freeman & Forrest and members of the Postman marketing team.

“Freeman and Forrest transformed our ad-hoc influencer efforts into a scalable program that delivers real results. They’ve helped us turn influencer marketing into a proven channel for signups, MQLs, and pipeline, while making the entire process easy and effective. I’d highly recommend them to any company looking to elevate their influencer strategy.”

-Justine Davis, Head of Marketing at Postman

About Postman

Postman is the world’s leading platform for building and using APIs, trusted by over 40 million users and 500,000 companies including 98% of the Fortune 500. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster.

About Freeman & Forrest

Freeman & Forrest is the first influencer marketing service built exclusively for enterprise tech. Founded by industry veterans with decades of experience at AWS, Google, Microsoft, and high-growth startups, we understand exactly what it takes to reach developers. Across our influencer campaigns, our clients have seen a 115x boost in awareness, a 10x improvement in lead generation, and a 6x gain in event sign-ups.

The Evolution of Postman's Influencer Program

Starting State: Influencer Marketing as a Siloed Motion (Fall 2024)

Before working with Freeman & Forrest, Postman had experimented with various ad-hoc influencer partnerships on their own. While these individual placements sometimes produced intriguing results, they were not fully tied into the marketing team’s strategic objectives. Suspecting there was more value to unlock, they decided to bring in a partner with experience in delivering predictable, high-performance influencer marketing campaigns.

“Influencer marketing was originally treated as an afterthought here,” explains Postman senior integrated marketing manager Olivia Watson. “[When we did use influencers], we were too reactive, throwing everything and the kitchen sink at them. Freeman & Forrest showed us that when you select campaigns where the goals are aligned with what you can expect from influencers, the results will be better across the board.”

Scaling the Program (Spring 2025)

Freeman & Forrest’s pilot influencer campaign in fall 2024 exceeded numeric goals for impressions and clicks, providing Postman with the business case to invest in developing influencer marketing as a first-class paid media channel.

To get the most out of the partnership with F&F, Postman made several key decisions early in 2025:

• Establishing clear program ownership. Postman chose to home the influencer marketing initiative within their social media team, giving other stakeholders a straightforward path to request campaign support.
• Hiring an influencer marketing manager. Postman invested in hiring a dedicated team member to coordinate with stakeholders throughout the marketing team as well as with F&F, ensuring that influencer initiatives aligned with broader team goals.
• Doing more of what works. Postman and F&F established a short feedback loop to gather data on influencer posts and allocate budget to higher-performing influencers and CTAs.

“Freeman & Forrest maintains the relationships with the influencers on our behalf, and also seeks out subject matter experts who align with our campaign goals,” says Olivia Watson. “It’s a whole job in and of itself. Having to manage all of that internally is very taxing. Being able to rely on a partner to maintain the relationships has been crucial. [F&F] also benefits a lot from insights from other campaigns—we’re able to slot in influencers who have done well for other clients.”

Driving Demand (Spring and Summer 2025)

Postman’s renewed focus on influencer marketing paid off dramatically when they launched their AI Agent Builder in March 2025. A carefully-chosen influencer slate, combined with a great product, drove what Olivia Watson calls “chart-breaking amounts of traffic.”

But, she adds, the effects didn’t stop there: “We also measured a spike of sustained activity that lasted weeks after the launch. Influencers had gained trust with their audience and were effective at driving not just traffic but actual adoption.”

And that traffic is increasingly converting to product signups, MQLs, and pipeline. As an example, influencer marketing channels were the #1 driver of downloads for Postman’s 90-day AI Readiness playbook – and those downloads translated into strong down-funnel conversion from leads to MQLs to pipeline. Kimberly Truong, social media lead at Postman, also notes that influencer marketing is “consistently outperforming our traditional paid media channels,” with certain posts driving a significant number of MQLs on their own — clear evidence that well-crafted influencer content can deliver direct business impact.

At a macro level, Freeman & Forrest data shows that influencer activations for Postman in the first half of 2025 delivered more than 107,000 engagements on nearly 10 million impressions, resulting in an average engagement rate of 1.08% — in line with industry influencer benchmarks and significantly outperforming traditional paid media averages.

On the click-through front, influencer posts achieved an average CTR of 0.54%, nearly 2x higher than traditional paid digital benchmarks of ~0.2–0.3%, reinforcing the value of influencer-driven traffic. While this steady average demonstrates program reliability, certain activations significantly outperformed — reaching CTRs as high as 4.49% and 6.97%, underscoring the power of authentic, technical storytelling.

Influencers By Default (Fall 2025 and Beyond)

The primary benefit of the influencer program is its proven effectiveness as a high-performing marketing channel. The dedicated staffing, with Kimberly Truong leading the effort, ensures the channel can thrive and be properly reported on.

The program also provides valuable insights for Postman’s internal operations. The learnings from activating influencers have been instrumental in launching an internal employee advocacy program, which has already activated nine internal influencers. This internal program has confirmed the significant reach that internal advocates can achieve, mirroring the success seen with external influencers.

Kimberly says that when planning campaigns, influencer marketing is now “one of the first things that comes to mind for the marketing leadership team. It’s a key piece of every launch.”

Freeman & Forrest’s Maria C. Noble (center) with influencers at POST/CON 2025

The Value of an Agency Partnership with F&F

Working with Freeman & Forrest provides significant benefits for the Postman team:

• Time, Effort, and Expertise: The partnership not only saves time and effort on creating copy and creative content but also brings deep expertise to the table. Freeman & Forrest knows the landscape, understands developer audiences, and can identify the right influencers who speak authentically to the right people. By leveraging these trusted voices, says Olivia Watson, the Postman team gains a reliable, high-quality channel without being “in the weeds,” freeing them up to focus on more strategic initiatives while ensuring their message lands with maximum impact.
• Relationship Management: Freeman & Forrest handles the taxing, full-time job of maintaining relationships with influencers. This allows Postman to rely on a partner to manage these connections, which is crucial for scalability.
• Insights and Vetting: Postman benefits from F&F’s insights gained through partnerships with other leading tech companies. This experience enables Freeman & Forrest to strategically identify and vet influencers with a proven track record of driving meaningful impact. By leveraging F&F’s perspective across the ecosystem, Postman gains access to influencers who not only align with brand goals but also resonate authentically with the right technical audiences.

What Works Best: A Collaborative and Trust-Based Model

The handoff between Postman and Freeman & Forrest is built on a foundation of trust and willingness to learn, says Kimberly Truong. Postman “provides key marquee messages, then trusts F&F to select the right influencers and run with the execution.” This collaborative approach allows Postman to get the most out of the partnership while ensuring the influencers also have the creative freedom they need to connect with their audience.

The influencer program has seen the most success with technical, product-focused content. Posts that provide insights into how the product works consistently outperform promotional or community-style content, resonating more strongly with Postman’s highly engaged developer audience.

During the February 2025 campaign, technical posts delivered 130% more clicks than promotional/community-style content, underscoring the value of deep expertise in reaching Postman’s audience.

This mirrors what F&F has seen across campaigns: hands-on technical content consistently performs 2–3x stronger than promotional/community-style posts when targeting technical audiences.

Measuring ROI

Postman measures the ROI of its influencer program through website traffic, while also recognizing the importance of “zero-click” influence . Their goal is to get messaging in front of as large and relevant an audience as possible, whether or not every impression leads to an immediate click. They can track what users do once they land on the site, though they acknowledge that UTM stripping can make it difficult to follow the entire customer journey.

Key indicators of success beyond raw clicks and impressions include:

• Sustained Traffic Spikes: Postman has identified that key traffic peaks often coincide with influencer posts, and this momentum can be sustained for weeks.
• Engagement & Resonance: The team looks closely at engagement rate and how well the content is resonating with the audience, recognizing that value isn’t solely tied to large click numbers.
• Increased Share of Voice: They have seen big surges in their share of voice on platforms like LinkedIn and X.
• Correlation to Conversions: While not always directly trackable, the team has observed a clear correlation between influencer activity and increases in demos and sign-ups.

Lessons for Other Marketers

Postman’s team shared several lessons for other marketers building or scaling an influencer program:

• Be Strategic, Not Reactive: Avoid treating influencer marketing as an afterthought. Campaigns should be intentionally chosen and aligned with what influencers can realistically deliver.
• Deliver On-Platform Value: Strong content should create demand and shift perceptions right where the audience is, even without a click. Getting a user to leave a social media platform is a "miracle," so the content needs to be compelling and the user journey to the website has to be truly worth it.
• Keep the Big Picture in Mind: Tracking is important, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture—ultimately, influencer content should build demand and long-term brand lift.

The Future of Influencer Marketing at Postman

Influencer marketing is no longer a pilot program for Postman—it's the new standard. It now sits alongside other core paid media channels with a dedicated team, proving its permanence as a vital part of the marketing mix. Beyond serving as a powerful vehicle for brand messaging, the program has become a critical source of market insights, helping Postman understand how users and potential users perceive them. This reinforces the company’s position as more than just an API tool — it’s an AI-ready solution built for the future of software development.

The credibility generated by influencers is something that cannot be duplicated internally, making the channel more important than traditional press or advertising.

From the Freeman & Forrest perspective, Postman’s journey also highlights how strategic influencer partnerships can scale into an enduring advantage. By pairing Postman’s vision with F&F’s network, expertise, and execution, the program consistently outperforms paid media benchmarks and delivers a playbook for companies seeking to build authentic relationships with technical audiences, from executives to hands-on practitioners.