Yes, an influencer’s prior experience with brands similar to yours can significantly impact your decision to shortlist them. This is due to multiple reasons:

1. Relevancy: If an influencer has worked with similar brands, they likely share a target audience that aligns with your brand, leading to enhanced relevance.

2. Portfolio: Their past collaborations serve as a portfolio that you can review to gauge their content quality, style, and how effectively they promoted similar products or services.

3. Performance: You can assess the influencer’s performance in previous campaigns, using metrics like engagement ratio, increase in followers, or click-through rates.

4. Professionalism: Past collaborations can provide insights into the influencer’s professionalism, work ethic, and reputation in the industry.

That being said, it is also worth considering the freshness and diversity of your campaign. Engaging an influencer who has not previously worked with similar brands may bring a new audience and a novel perspective.

When assessing potential influencers, platforms like Flinque provide in-depth analytics, granular audience insights, and tools to manage and track campaigns. Such platforms allow to discover new influencers, evaluate their relevancy, and understand their audience alignment.

Comparatively, other platforms too offer similar functionalities with varying degrees of depth and customization. The right choice would depend on your specific needs, priorities and budget.

Always remember to consider these factors as a part of a wider, more comprehensive influencer strategy. Having a mix of influencers – some with experience in your industry and some possibly bringing a fresh approach – can often be the key to a successful campaign.