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How to Leverage User-Generated Content in Email Campaigns
Tap into the Creator Economy With UGC & Email
Brandon Storey
October 5th, 2024
Email remains a core pillar of any successful marketing strategy.
But, with the increasing number of advertisements that bombard us daily, and increased privacy concerns online, consumers are more cautious than ever before.
Between 2021 and 2022, the number of consumers who believed trustworthiness and transparency were the most important aspects of a business increased from 55% to 60%.
If six out of ten consumers want more trustworthiness, then it’s crucial you focus on authentic marketing.
But, how do you make sure you don’t turn off your audience?
How do you build trust and keep them engaged?
The answer is user-generated content or UGC. And, while many brands are leveraging UGC in their social media marketing, it’s rarely being leveraged enough in email marketing.
In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about user-generated content in email campaigns, the benefits, and how you can collect and incorporate UGC into your email marketing strategy to increase trust and build a successful brand.
Table of Contents
TL;DR
The modern consumer craves trustworthy brands
UGC in email marketing boosts authenticity and engagement
Effective collection strategies include collecting reviews and running contests
Use automation to streamline UGC creation
Incorporate UGC into your content via customer photos and reviews
What Is User Generated Content (UGC)?
Before we dive into how user-generated content (UGC) fits into email, let’s back up a bit.
What exactly is UGC?
User-generated content is any form of content that consumers create about a product or service. This can be any kind of content, including text-based social media posts, images, short-form videos, reviews, testimonials, blog posts, YouTube videos, or even podcast mentions.
Basically any time a consumer creates any form of content online to speak positively about a brand, whether through text, image, audio, or video, they are creating UGC.
UGC is most prominent on social media platforms, where the general public is posting personal content on a regular basis. So, naturally, users tend to post their experiences, even if they’re commercial like something they ate at a local dessert shop.
In some cases, UGC is simply discovered. For example, if you notice that someone tagged your brand on Instagram when they posted a picture of your product.
In other cases, UGC is requested. For example, you may want to run a contest on social media asking your customers to share images of themselves with your product for a chance to win a free product.
No matter how UGC is created, as a marketer or business owner, you can use it to increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue — especially in your email marketing.
Why Listen to Me? I’ve generated over $1 million with email and written over 1,000 blog posts. I run Storey Time, a newsletter where I teach people how to become full-time digital writers. Feel free to reach out to me on X anytime!
Benefits of UGC in Email Marketing
Thinking of incorporating user-generated content in your email marketing campaigns?
Well, it’s not just something you should do because you have to. It’s something you should leverage because it can help you grow your business.
Here are a few reasons why you need to start using UGC in your email marketing:
Improve Trust
Trust is everything.
And as the years go by, it continues to be even more important.
Why?
More ads are being shown to us daily
Digital privacy breaches
Increased use of AI
As a brand, you must be making it your top priority to evoke trust. And UGC is a great way to do that.
In fact, 86% of consumers admit they’re more likely to trust brands that share user-generated content.
Why?
People trust people over brands. UGC is social proof, and is a spin-off of word-of-mouth marketing.
Think about it. Who are you going to trust more:
A brand telling you to buy (when you know they have a monetary incentive for you to give them their money).
A random consumer telling you to buy (when they have their reputation on the line if they recommend something bad).
UGC is the new, digital word-of-mouth marketing. Leverage it in your email campaigns and your audience will trust you more.
Increase Conversions
We know user-generated content increases trust. But, how does that impact your revenue?
Well, without trust, you can’t generate sales. If you can tap into new levels of trust with your audience, you’ll automatically tap into new revenue.
In fact, Yotpo conducted research to look at customers who viewed UGC before a purchase and those who didn’t. They found that customers who viewed UGC converted at 5.6% while those who didn’t converted at 2.1%.
The UGC viewers were almost three times more likely to purchase than the non-UGC viewers!
If you want to increase conversions, increase UGC output in your email marketing.
Generate a Higher ROI
So, how about the return on investment?
How does UGC stack up?
UGC ads have 4x higher click-through rates than non-UGC ads. They also have a 50% reduction in cost-per-click (CPC) than the average CPC.
Additionally, UGC boasts 29% higher web-based conversions than campaigns without it.
This means if you want to get a greater return on your marketing efforts, you should start implementing UGC into your email marketing now.
Create an Engaging User Experience
Keeping your audience engaged with your brand is crucial to draw people down your sales funnel towards your products and services.
But, how do you keep people engaged on a regular basis?
It’s simple: you interact with them.
This means, that rather than thinking of your marketing as a one-way conversation, encourage them to take action. This doesn’t always mean asking someone to buy something. It could be getting them to read something, watch something, or reply to your email.
In the case of UGC, it could mean asking them to post an image of them using your product or service on social media for a chance to win a contest.
Collecting UGC content through something like a contest isn’t a regular “ask” from your audience. You’re creating a fun and exciting experience for your audience in the process, which will help fuel future engagement with your brand.
How Do You Collect User Generated Content?
User-generated content is created by the user, not you (as the brand owner).
So, how do you collect it?
And, how do you get your audience to create more of it for you to improve your email marketing?
Here are a few tips:
Ask for a Testimonial After Someone Purchases from You
One of the most powerful forms of UGC is a customer testimonial.
Your copywriting may be effective. But no one will convince your audience to buy better than another customer.
But how do you get more testimonials?
It’s simple: start asking.
Every time a customer buys your product or a client buys your service, you should ask them for a testimonial. This should be part of the offboarding process.
Once you’ve finished your service for a client, or your customer has had some time to use your product, ask them to leave you a testimonial, whether by emailing, calling, DMing, or texting them.
Place a Review Link in a Post-Purchase Email Sequence
Want to automate your testimonial or review process?
If you don’t have time to manually ask each person to leave a testimonial, and you have a higher volume of customers coming through your sales funnel, then it may be best to automate the review acquisition process.
One of the easiest ways to do this is with a post-purchase email series.
Once your customer buys your product, you should send out an automated email sequence that’s relevant for a brand-new customer.
For example, in the first email, you’ll want to say “Thanks for purchasing.” Then, maybe 30 days after they purchase, you’ll want to ask how the new product is. This is a great opportunity to ask them to leave a review on your website. You can use review software to automatically capture reviews, or, leverage beehiiv’s form feature to collect reviews on your beehiiv website.
To get the review, simply add a link to your post-purchase email and collect emails on autopilot that you can show off later in your marketing emails.
Contests
Another great way to collect user-generated content from your audience is by running contests.
You could create a contest to win free products if users submit a photo or video of them holding the product to a submission form on your website.
Or, you could get them to post it on social media like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), or TikTok to fuel engagement on social media.
Robin Arzón is a world-renowned fitness instructor, bestselling author, and founder of the beehiiv newsletter, The Pivot.
Arzón uses contests to do three things:
Fuel engagement on social media
Collect user-generated content
Get people onto her newsletter
People love contests since it gives them the opportunity to win products, services, and other merchandise from the brands they already love.
Considering how much UGC you can receive from a contest, it may be worth investing a few hundred dollars into a giveaway to fuel your marketing efforts.
You don’t need to have super robust UGC collection systems set up when you start.
You can start simple.
Did someone comment on your social media post?
Did a customer or friend DM you to endorse you?
Did someone share your social media post?
Screenshot it and share it in your emails.
Social proof is social proof. While some people may want to stray away from screenshotted DMs or comments on an Instagram post, the reality is that showing these off demonstrates authenticity.
That’s something I’ve leveraged in my own newsletter, Storey Time.
When I released a free course for new copywriters a few months ago, I asked some friends if they’d like to leave me a review or endorse it.
Then, when I promoted the course with my beehiiv newsletter, I shared screenshots of their endorsement, which helped drive more people to download and consume the free course.
How Do You Incorporate User Generated Content into Email Campaigns?
Now that you know what UGC is, why it’s beneficial, and how to collect it, there’s one more question to cover…
How do you incorporate UGC into your email campaigns?
And how do you make sure it’s effective?
There are two main ways you can use UGC in your emails:
1. Customer Photos
Consumers love visual content.
This is why it can be powerful to include some level of design finesse in your email newsletter.
But, what kind of photos should you include?
Nothing beats a photo of a happy customer.
You should leverage these as much as you can in your email campaigns. Want to take it to the next level? Show off happy customers using your products or services.
One of the key principles to generate more sales is to help your prospect visualize themselves using your product or service. In the digital world, you can’t exactly get them to touch and feel your product through their smartphone or laptop.
But, what you can do is visually show them other people happily using your products and interacting with your brand
Urban Outfitters did a UGC-dedicated email showing off Instagram posts of different customers wearing their apparel.
This is a great way to help their audience see how their outfits will look on real people, rather than models, and the added credibility here is the fact that they show their Instagram handles on the bottom left of each image.
2. Customer Testimonials & Reviews
Another way to show off user-generated content in your email campaigns is with customer reviews and testimonials.
Showing off reviews of your products or testimonials of your services is one of the most non-threatening ways to sell your subscribers on becoming a paying customer.
Check out Arnold Schwarzenegger’s beehiiv newsletter below.
In Schwarzenegger’s newsletter, he will sometimes promote his fitness app, “The Pump App.”
In this example, he links to a YouTube view of a happy Pump App user who created a video review of the app.
Rather than just relying on his own copy to try to persuade his readers to use his app, he leverages UGC in the form of a long-form video review to do the selling.
With beehiiv, your newsletters aren’t just sent as emails. You can also simultaneously post them on your website as blog posts like Schwarzenegger does here.
That means when your subscribers come across your web-version content, they can watch a YouTube video (whether it’s UGC or any other content) right within your newsletter without having to leave the page.
Start Leveraging UGC in Your Emails With beehiiv
User-generated content is like gold in the modern era.
With consumers hesitant to trust brands, there’s never been a more important time to build authentic, trustworthy content with your audience.
By leveraging user-generated content in your emails (like photos, videos, and testimonials) you can close the trust gap with your audience and generate more revenue.
With beehiiv, you can easily leverage UGC in your email marketing:
Ask for reviews on autopilot with beehiiv automations
Collect reviews and testimonials with custom surveys
Promote UGC video content with web-based newsletters
Ready to power up your email strategy with UGC?
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