If you're in ecommerce (Shopify, etc.), can I get your feedback on a low-cost marketing idea?

In the past few months I've been consulting for a couple of clients and helping them with influencer marketing. They wanted to have more of a "natural presence" on Instagram and Facebook, but didn't have the money to pay for a big influencer and didn't have the time to reach out to hundreds of "microinfluencer".

I came up with the idea to use their customers as influencers - and together we built a system that would automatically ask customers if they'd post a photo to Instagram or Facebook after they bought their product. When they did, we'd verify the photo and send them a discount code for money off their next order.

This worked pretty well - we had a decent response rate without really putting a lot of work into the solution, and we also saw our Instagram hashtags become more popular and definitely more "genuine" as it was regular people posting photos and not blatant advertising.

What do you guys think of this idea? I'm in the processing of building it out (starting out with Shopify, but the principle applies to all ecommerce) and I want to talk to as many shop owners as possible to really understand the need (instead of jumping into an idea that only worked for a handful of consulted clients). Appreciate it guys!