How To Incorporate UGC In Email

Many marketers ask how to effectively incorporate user-generated content in various marketing channels, particularly how to incorporate UGC in email. 

By integrating user-generated content into our marketing mix, we can harness its potential to establish trust, credibility, and an authoritative relationship with our audience. Highlighting how our products or services are utilized in real-life scenarios showcases our expertise.  

Consequently, in this article, we aim to explore this subject in greater detail to grasp its benefits and implementation strategies fully.

1. Why Should You Use UGC In Email?
2. Why Is It Important To Use UGC in Email?
3. How to Use UGC in Emails?
4. How To Gather User-Generated Content For Use In Marketing Email?
5. When Should You Use UGC In Your Emails?
6. Takeaways

So let’s get into it!

Why Should You Use UGC In Email?

Using UGC in email marketing is just an expedited process of building trust. To understand UGC, it is important to understand that people don’t buy from brands; they buy from people. 

This means that your audience sees people using and enjoying your products and the value they get out of them. This catches your audience’s attention, and suddenly they are interested in your product. 

Showing your customers how other people reviewed your product or how they enjoyed it builds trust and credibility around your specific products and offerings. It also helps establish trust and credibility for your business much faster.

This acceleration of trust happens because they can put themselves in a similar use case. And that is a very powerful thing for a brand because it enables them to build trust effectively and cost-effectively. 

Why Is It Important To Use UGC in Email?

Now that we know what UGC is and why businesses should use it, let’s talk about why it is important to use it in emails to build further an authentic and trusting relationship with your audience, who can use other people’s experiences to predict their use case scenario. 

Builds social proof

The UGC generally helps to build social proof around a product. These social proofs are in the shape of customer reviews.

Before deciding on purchasing a product, most people prefer to look at the reviews about that product. Especially if they plan to make an expensive purchase, e.g., over $50, they first want to look at the reviews and be sure whether that product is worth spending so much on. 

Similarly, most customers are used to reading product reviews on Amazon before buying. And some people prefer looking at their phones to see the reviews of their products in a physical location when walking through a supermarket or grocery store. 

These reviews are social proof that provides a guarantee to the people about the authenticity of the product. It protects them from a bad product experience and makes people feel safe and confident in their purchasing.

Helps to build engagement

Using UGC content in emails also helps build engagement. The incredible thing about this is that it feels like a two-way dialogue where we get the community to celebrate our brand and our community as a brand by providing them an opportunity to interact with us openly. 

And that’s a great way to build a trusting and engaging relationship with your community.  

Cost-effective

If you’re doing everything well and putting time and effort into building effective user-generative content, it can be one of the highest ROI marketing creative pieces you can build. Here you’re creating little of anything. You’re just leveraging what you already have, and that’s very cost-effective. 

SEO benefits

These product reviews also help gain organic traffic benefits later on down the road. This means you can enjoy SEO benefits with this, which can also be beneficial in building your site’s credibility.

How to Use UGC in Emails?

Let’s talk about how to use this UGC in email marketing. If done right, this turns out to be a fun and fruitful thing to do. 

Reviews

Customer reviews are the easiest place to start, so you may first want to incorporate those reviews into your emails. 

These reviews are simple and easy to incorporate into your automation. Such as, when you connect good reviews with the right audience and segment, you can get something great out of it.

So if you have a segment of the audience that uses an XYZ product, it would be very valuable to share a review in your emails. The audience will find it very helpful and informative for their future decisions. It will make it easier for them to visualize themselves using it and feel confident about whether that’s the right product for them.

Media content

Next, we can incorporate social media content in our emails. This is also an easy way to fetch the content about your brand that is being posted out there. For example, you can use Instagram posts about your products and see who has tagged your brand there. 

People on social media are always sharing photos of products they’re using and giving reviews of products. Especially if an Instagram blogger or influencer uses your product, they post product reviews on Instagram posts or stories.

Content about your business is being shared out there consistently. You can always borrow that content, borrow the posts or pictures in which you are tagged, and make something useful. Most brands need to pay more attention to such content on social media that is readily available to them and can prove very beneficial.

This can also be a very nice experience on your customer’s end. Incorporating or mentioning the Instagram handle of the person who shared a review can be wonderful.

You can use their name or picture in your emails with their permission. After all, who’s not thrilled to be mentioned by a brand and to be seen by businesses or public pages? 

Most people feel excited and valued. Even if it’s a smaller brand, that’s something for some people as it can validate them because they might feel like some business is noticing them.

There is another way you can collect reviews and social media content; by asking them for feedback and questions about their product experience. You are asking for that user-generated content. 

You can approach them through email and ask questions like ‘Hey, we’d love to get your reviews on your latest purchase” or “How was your experience with our brand?” You can also ask them to tag you in any posts regarding your product 

All this will give you people’s experiences and honest reviews of your product. This will be helpful for other potential buyers as it will inform them more and shape their view of the product.  

You can then incorporate all this UGC in email marketing and share it with your community so they can be informed. It’s a great way to prime the pump and set a self-benefiting cycle to expedite the process.

The UGC can be produced by running user-generated contests, too, asking your audience to participate in photo-sharing contests in which they post nice pictures of them with your product. This is a very benefiting and valuable way of doing marketing. 

In this, you are not marketing for yourself; you’re piggybacking off somebody else’s network. In simpler words, here, you’re not the ones working to acquire new customers; instead, your audience is helping you acquire new customers. 

When the other people in the community see their friends sharing a photo of your brand or mentioning your brand in front of them, that automatically becomes a powerful value proposition for them because they are hearing about it from someone they can trust. 

So this is the expedited way of using user-generated content in emails and using your e-mail to drive more UGC, which can be a very powerful force.

How To Gather User-Generated Content For Use In Marketing Email?

Ask for it

The simplest and easiest way to gather UGC in email marketing is to ask for such content. Call it out in your e-mails by asking the audience to follow your brand’s pages and site and tag you if they share something.

You must check your social sites by watching your tagged photos on Instagram or using social listening software. Whenever your brand is mentioned, you can grab those tags and borrow them to incorporate into your e-mails.

Survey and feedback 

You can also ask your audience for feedback by asking them to fill out surveys at different points of the year. It’s a great way to get intimate and valuable feedback quickly because customers share their perspectives. You can use this feedback from a marketing lens too.

It is undoubtedly a great way to view this content from a marketing lens. Many e-commerce stores gather those reviews using services like Stamp.io.

Hashtag campaigns

Running hashtag campaigns can also be very effective. You can ask your audience to use a certain tag relating to your product. That would, again, mean that you can piggyback off their network. This would bring more shares and more re-posting on social media.

However, sometimes you have to be cautious with what you want to be shared and what kind of hashtags you would use. You always want those to go right because social media can be wild. 

Use your content

One fast way to get more user-generated content is by using it. You can use it by incorporating them into emails where some people get informed about their product, and others get excited about being featured. 

These primes pump more UGC content by making people feel heard and warm.

Make sharing easy

It is important to tell your audience what, how, and where to share those reviews. When you share photos, you show them what you want them to share. People shouldn’t have to guess what they will do with the content. You must try to make the whole process smooth and easy for them.

Ask questions

That’s another helpful way to get feedback. One of the effective and fun strategies to do that is to create a roundup post with many responses. 

If you do it, it can be seen that this works like magic; take that content from social and then use it to create a blog post or some content for your site. And then, you can share that through your email channels as a piece of content marketing. 

So these are the ways you can use your UGC in many different areas and get much value out of it.

When Should You Use UGC In Your Emails?

User-generated content (UGC) can be a powerful tool to incorporate into your email campaigns, but it’s important to use it strategically. Here are some situations where UGC can be particularly effective:

Product launches or re-releases 

You should consider UGC’s application in product launches or re-releases when incorporating it into your emails. 

In the case of product launches, it is advantageous to offer individuals the opportunity to test and experiment with the product beforehand to obtain feedback in advance. This enables the audience to feel confident, secure in purchasing, and satisfied with their choice. 

Likewise, in the case of product re-releases, similar to the strategy employed by McDonald’s with the McRib, where the product is brought back annually and generates immense excitement among people. It is important to gather user-generated content and social proof to increase its hype and demand further. 

By emphasizing its return due to popular demand, the product becomes more captivating and enticing for potential customers. 

Follow-up

After this, there comes a need for a smooth follow-up. If a new product lacks substantial social proof upon its initial release, we can circulate a message. This message can be sent a month later, stating that the reviews are in. This method is simple yet effective in reintroducing social proof and strengthens your product’s image.

Automation

Another great way to apply this is within various automations. It would be best to try integrating UGC into almost all of your automations. Especially those related to product reviews and customer experiences. 

Prioritize the inclusion of social proof extensively in your automations, particularly in a welcome sequence, where it can be used multiple times, such as showcasing photos of the product being used in real-life scenarios and incorporating reviews. 

This is especially effective when incorporating the reviews of specific target audiences, like parents, grandparents, or gift givers. Giving grandparents a review highlighting the product’s exceptional benefits for their grandchildren can be a significant achievement, as it makes them feel acknowledged and valued. 

Product/services features 

This approach significantly expedites the trust-building process. Therefore, it is crucial to consistently include social proof and user-generated content in our emails, which can be relatively simple to accomplish.

Furthermore, when it comes to product or service features, if you want to highlight a particular product, service, or category at a specific time, you can leverage reviews regarding that specific offering.

This approach will enable you to enhance trust and credibility surrounding those products or services by incorporating additional layers of information.

Promotions and sales

Incorporating social proof in sales or promotion presents a simple and effective opportunity to enhance promotional material.

This way, you can create a balance, ensuring the messaging does not become excessively sales-oriented or heavily focused on marketing. Including human-generated content alongside promotional elements adds a human touch and maintains a harmonious blend of marketing and relatable content.

Showing off use cases

Showing practical applications and showcasing relevant use cases is highly effective. When highlighting a product or a specific feature, it is essential to emphasize the various use cases. 

Illustrating these scenarios enables people to understand the product’s value and purpose. This is specifically advantageous when introducing the product to a new audience.

Seasonal Campaigns 

Seasonal campaigns provide an excellent opportunity to leverage user-generated content effectively. 

For instance, if a customer has utilized your product in a seasonal context, such as pets or dogs using your products during the holidays or a special holiday edition of your product, it becomes effortless to share and showcase such content. 

Similarly, as a publisher, if individuals share photos of themselves engaging with your holiday edition of XYZ, it becomes a valuable asset to share and promote.

This approach not only allows you to share engaging content but also enables you to maintain a steady stream of content throughout the year. By repurposing and recycling such dormant content the following year, you maximize the utility of user-generated content.

Takeaways

Hopefully, this article was helpful. If you follow these guidelines, you will become the rock stars and champions of utilizing user-generated content in email in no time. Though it’s still a less understood approach to email marketing, the more you get into it, the more you reward your community for sharing it. 

This article illustrates a few points and answers your queries. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below!

You may also like:

• 3 Essential Ecommerce Email Templates To Grow Your Business
• Content Marketing: Where to Start and How to be Successful?
• Hygiene, Hub, and Hero Content for Email Marketing