Like Netflix and chill, Tuesdays and tacos or S’mores and campfires, user-generated content (UGC) and email marketing are better together. Yotpo recently conducted a study explaining the value of data science and one of the key takeaways was just how important UGC is for eCommerce marketing.
The Reasoning Behind Using UGC
It was ultimately discovered in the study by Yotpo that the average conversion rate of visitors who saw UGC is 166% higher than those who didn’t. In short, technology has made it easier for customers to make their opinions count, and email marketing has made it easier for eCommerce companies to collect those opinions. As a business with an eCommerce store, leveraging user-generated content is no longer an option but a requirement. It is, simply put, the best way to consistently deliver relevant and engaging content to your audience that’s guaranteed to result in a qualified lead.
If you are a business that has relied on traditional email marketing techniques like promotions and seasonal campaigns, not to worry – we’ve broken down several ways you can easily get started incorporating UGC into your eCommerce email efforts.
The How-To
1. Request Visuals: Think about creative ways to highlight UGC that both showcase your brand in a favorable way and put your intended audience front and center. This can often be done by requesting your customers to post and send pictures of themselves wearing, using, or demonstrating your products.
Use your email marketing to attract submissions for this type of content and also encourage customers to take things a step further. Sending emails to your customers that promote the creation of visual campaigns should not only empower them to capture different images and share them on their own social media with certain hashtags but ultimately serve toward amplifying your messaging and audience reach even further. Yutpo estimates that over 75% of customers prefer user-generated photos over commercial or stock media. UGC allows potential customers to see themselves enjoy a similar experience with certain goods or products.
2. Test Your Testimonials: In the same vein of authenticity, customers seem to trust human-interest stories the same way they do user-generated images. Testimonials can do more than just serve as a dialogue between a customer and business. For eCommerce companies, testimonials are a great option to schedule and further curate your email marketing while incorporating UGC. Testimonials are different from reviews since they are on average 80-200 characters long and most often have a positive spin. Fitting them right into the body of emails or newsletters will help tell your company’s story.
3. Put Your Trust in Hashtags: Many nonprofits have seen how powerful hashtags can be for spreading awareness about a social cause. For eCommerce companies, using hashtags can have just as much power. Integrating them into your email marketing is one way to unleash the full potential of hashtags and social campaigns. Popularizing specific hashtags by using them in your emails can help build brand awareness and engage your audience. And as we already know, an engaged audience is more likely to buy. It’s important to create hashtags that are easy to remember and stay consistent with your brand and overall messaging in addition to certain sales and seasonal information you’re looking to promote.
4. Repurpose Reviews: According to a Consumerist study, 70% of consumers say they look at product reviews before making a purchase. Reviews result in increased traffic to your website and, when shared, enhance conversion rates. Encouraging customers to leave reviews is a practice in enhancing your brand’s reliability. The same study concluded that email marketing efforts encouraging customers to leave reviews are the most successful. Once the reviews are gathered, so long as certain permissions allow, using quotes and real-life examples from customer reviews should attract new business and at the very least build a retained audience.
Including user-generated content in email marketing can help solidify any brand’s image. But for eCommerce companies, UGC and email marketing go hand-in-hand and enable them to get a competitive edge.
Learn more about how MailCon can help amplify your brand’s voice even further today!
