More and more brands are realizing the value of user-generated content (UGC) in building customer trust and relationships. It is a proven way of adding more punch to your marketing efforts. UGC resonates instantly with your customers as it is sourced from the community itself.
Marketers can depend less on in-house generated content by doing some smart UGC curating. It has emerged as a vital marketing tool for social media campaigns. More importantly, it can also help boost email marketing conversions - something that has spurred immense interest among digital marketers and professionals.
A section of your newsletter can be dedicated to UGC. Subscribers must be made aware that they can share their views on this forum while ensuring that you have their permission to use the content.
There are six ways in which you can incorporate user-generated campaigns in your email campaigns:
Experience has proven that nothing triggers customers' interest like a well-planned contest. It is also the best way of sourcing content from users. The offer of an attractive incentive can make them rush to your page with their videos and images.
[bctt tweet="When the incentive is in the form of a contest, the effect can be more pronounced." username="relevance"]
It is a great way of reaching out to friends and families as well. A simple but valuable reward can do the trick.
UGC contests are routinely hosted on social media for their ability to offer a wider organic reach to audiences. Emails can serve as one of the best channels for a contest and creating brand awareness.
A few tips for making a success of the email content:
Marketing is driven more by personalization in recent years. Email marketing is a great way of doing this right. Individualized newsletters and email correspondence are helping marketers achieve enhanced brand-customer relationships.
With the customer profile of the target audience already available in your database, you can run through the content sourced from users, and pick on the ones most relevant to target segments. It is recommended that you peer through the analytics as well before creating an email personalization strategy.
These tips can help you do it right:
Presenting UGC targeted for subscribers can help boost email open rates as customers will be responsive to the messaging as they will quickly identify with the same.
Some content from a user-generated content campaign may not be brand-appropriate. Marketers might have to spend some time sifting through the content pile to pick the content most relevant to subscribers. This might be a time-consuming task but it will be well worth the effort.
At the same time, this is a vital step as low-quality content and badly-made videos, and poorly clicked images can cause immense damage to brand image and integrity.
That’s why curating the best content and discarding the ones with lesser value is important. Also, ensure that the curated UGC even if it is of the finest quality, aligns with the needs of email subscribers.
Use these tips to get the best out of the thematic content approach:
Content in the form of user reviews and testimonials can have a huge impact on marketing outcomes. You can enhance the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy by adding user recommendations or endorsements. A positive review from a genuine customer can create as much impact as a strong visual or quality text.
With people looking for ways of finding products and services that can genuinely improve their lives and enhance the level of comfort, customer testimonials can be the perfect way of easing the apprehensions.
When the reviews are posted with images of the customers, the impact can be significantly bigger. Customers feel that a real person is endorsing your brand. It can help them cement their buying decisions.
What else can you do with this strategy?
A section of newsletters can be reserved for testimonials and reviews. This can improve click rates and add value to your brand.
It feels nice for any business to have a steady stream of customers but the real test comes from repeat customers. If customers come back to buy your products or order your services, it means you are doing a great job. That’s why retargeting customers must be a key component of your marketing strategy.
You can retarget customers in many ways.
The high ROI associated with email marketing makes it one of the preferred ways of retargeting customers for many businesses.
User-generated content of products that customers will find of great value can be used in newsletters. The best strategy is to include USG videos of people using the product with a testimonial stating its value and benefits.
Building content communities is another powerful way of putting USG to good use. There must be a conscious effort to create a larger community of fans, customers, and followers. Sourcing user-generated content can be more streamlined by adopting this strategy. Your subscribers will create the appropriate content, knowing fully well about your preferences.
A carefully created community can make this happen and also make the job of showcasing winning brands easy.
USG allows empowering email campaigns and is an effective strategy for driving sales. The strategy is simple but powerful enough to deliver impressive dividends if utilized carefully and smartly. Marketers simply have to make use of available content, ensure the display of products in real settings, and create an atmosphere of trust. This can help achieve greater conversions and generate better revenue.
