Collabstr's Kyle Dulay: Why brands rehire creators even when their posts underperform
Collabstr co-founder Kyle Dulay explains why only 10.35% rehire a creator within 60 days and why reliability can outweigh engagement.
A consumer-technology company hired an Instagram creator with 26,000 followers. The post drew an average engagement rate of 2.8%, hardly the kind of result that dominates an influencer campaign report. Yet the brand booked the same creator four more times within 60 days.
The creator had delivered high-quality content in five business days. For the buyer, knowing that the next brief would arrive on time was valuable enough to justify another booking.
That example comes from Collabstr, an influencer marketplace where brands find, hire and manage creators. Its transaction research found that just 10.35% of brands rehired the same creator within 60 days. ContentGrip spoke with Kyle Dulay, Collabstr's co-founder, about why so many relationships end after one collaboration and what a second booking reveals that views alone cannot.
Kyle is Collabstr's co-founder, and his account draws on the platform's marketplace data. His interview raises a practical question for brands beyond how their first influencer post performed: would they hire this creator again?
Table of contents
- Why so few brands return to the same creator
- Why one creator got four more bookings
- Why reliability outweighs a single engagement score
- The first booking tells you very little
- Who keeps the creator relationship after the first deal
- Why the 60-day window can hide a working relationship
Why so few brands return to the same creator
Collabstr's 10.35% figure describes the share of brands in its analysis that booked the same creator again within 60 days. It is a measure of behavior on that marketplace, rather than a universal retention rate for influencer marketing.
A January 2026 EMARKETER forecast projected that US social media creator revenue would increase 16.2% to US$20.6 billion in 2026. That market forecast shows the scale of creator commerce; it does not measure repeat purchases on Collabstr.
Kyle sees a difference between completing a transaction and forming a creator relationship. The first booking shows that a marketer found someone, agreed a price and launched a campaign. A second one comes after the brand has experienced the work: whether the creator understood the brief, handled feedback and delivered something the team could use.
That second decision can reveal value that reach and engagement reports miss. A marketer might be pleased with a video's views but unwilling to repeat the production process. Another might receive moderate engagement yet keep the creator because the content is reliable enough for further tests.
Why one creator got four more bookings
Kyle's example of a multinational consumer-technology buyer shows what that looks like. The creator's Instagram audience was relatively modest at 26,000 followers, and average engagement was 2.8%. The brand nonetheless received high-quality content within 5 business days and returned to the creator 4 more times over 60 days.
The brand and creator were not named in the interview, and Collabstr did not provide conversion or sales results for this case. The repeat bookings therefore establish what the buyer chose to do, rather than prove that the creator generated a particular return on ad spend.
Reliability mattered in Kyle's account: the creator communicated well, was timely and produced content the buyer liked. Those qualities matter when a team needs several versions of an ad, another round of product footage, or a familiar collaborator for a new brief. A second booking saves the team from discovering those working habits all over again.
Why reliability outweighs a single engagement score
On Collabstr, buyers rate creators for three parts of the experience: communication, timeliness and satisfaction with the delivered content. Kyle said creators who receive a perfect 5/5 rating are 11x more likely to be hired than creators rated 1-3 stars. Creators rated 4/5, he added, were "2x less likely to be hired again by the same brand." His answer did not specify the comparison group for that figure.
Delivery speed points in the same direction. According to Kyle, orders that led to a rehire were 27% faster from booking to finished content than orders that did not. These are associations in Collabstr's transaction data; they do not establish that a quicker handoff or a five-star review causes the next purchase.
A brand that gives a creator a good rating but hires someone else may simply need a different audience or format. One that books nobody for months may have paused spending. Kyle cautioned that a missing rehire cannot, by itself, distinguish weak creator work from changing plans or a stalled approval process.
The first booking tells you very little
The median Collabstr brand makes its first creator hire in under 72 hours after signing up, Kyle said. Once a brand posts a campaign, the first creator application typically arrives in about half an hour. Finding someone to work with can be fast.
That pace can disguise an early mistake. Kyle described a common pattern in which a brand facing a launch deadline books one creator, expects a single post to lift sales, and then quits after the results fall short. In his words, the brand tested influencer marketing with a "sample size of one".
A second booking follows a different calculation. As Kyle put it, "The second booking is different in kind." By then the buyer has seen the work and experienced the coordination. A marketer can judge creative fit, production quality, responsiveness and the team's ability to reuse or improve the result. Fast recruitment measures access to creators; a thoughtful rebooking decision measures what the first collaboration taught the brand.
Who keeps the creator relationship after the first deal
Kyle's buyer-type breakdown shows considerable variation. In the figures supplied to ContentGrip, enterprise buyers had a 32% rehire rate, compared with 23.2% among marketing teams, 22.5% among agencies, 14.5% among founders and executives, and 11.8% among solo operators. The source does not specify the group sample sizes or provide enough information to reconcile this identified-buyer breakdown directly with the overall 10.35% figure.
The groups also differ in where knowledge of a successful creator ends up. A founder often writes the brief, approves the content and makes the next hiring decision personally. An agency may know a creator delivered well for one account, but that knowledge has to be accessible to colleagues serving another client.
Large organizations face a different problem. Kyle described enterprise bookings where legal reviews contracts, finance handles payments and procurement manages purchase orders. The marketer who liked the creator may not be the person placing the next order. Performance notes can become separated from the brief, approvals and payment records.
He cited Avery as an example: before moving to Collabstr, the company sent creator contracts through legal review and payments through purchase orders and finance approval, a process Kyle said could take six months. He did not provide additional identifying details about Avery, so the example should be understood as his account of a workflow, not an independently verified customer case study.
Why the 60-day window can hide a working relationship
Among the repeat hires Kyle described, 29% happened within 7 days and the median interval was 23 days. That suggests many buyers who choose to repeat move fairly quickly. But Kyle also said larger organizations can spend more than 60 days getting legal or finance approval for a second booking.
A 60-day rehire score can therefore miss a delayed return and cannot explain why a creator was not booked again. Marketing teams need to keep those cases separate: poor results, no current campaign, a different creative requirement, and an internal process that has not finished.
For brands, the practical fix begins before the first campaign ends. Record who owns the creator relationship, what was delivered, whether the work arrived on time, what the team approved, and whether another brief is planned. Review engagement and sales evidence where it exists, but keep production experience in the same record.
Then ask the question that a first booking cannot answer: if we needed another piece of content next week, would we choose this creator again?
