On common, your subscribers obtain and ship over 121 emails per day.
They’re inundated with emails, and studying an replace in your model might be the very last thing they wish to spend time on (except, in fact, you’re Taylor Swift).
So, what are you able to do to win their consideration and have interaction with them?
The reply is easy. As a substitute of promotional content material, give attention to being relatable. Make the most of influencer-led methods and user-generated content material (UGC).
Whereas there are millions of methods to leverage the 2 in your e mail advertising and marketing technique, listed below are eight confirmed methods to reap the advantages of user-generated content material and social media influencers.
1. Use Them for Relatable Content material
When manufacturers craft campaigns, we regularly make aspirational statements (e.g., “Discover 5 international locations in solely two weeks!”) as a substitute of relatable content material.
Nevertheless, influencers and customers occur to fight this, primarily as a result of they’ve already established their credibility by merely being who they’re.
In different phrases, your subscribers will belief individuals who speak like them and appear to be them as a substitute of trusting the credibility of a no-face model whose agenda is prone to promote one thing.
For instance, in case your viewers and influencers have been to make use of the identical headline used above, it’d look one thing like this: “How I visited 5 international locations for underneath $3000 (and the way you are able to do the identical!).”
This relatability issue makes your advertising and marketing message (and, ergo, your product/service) attainable, which is what motivates customers to transform.
2. Use Them for Social Proof
One other nice strategy to leverage UGC and influencers is to make use of their content material to construct social proof.
For instance, some design/content material templates you may think about are:
1. Earlier than-and-After Pictures
Earlier than-and-after images act as product-led content material and present your viewers how helpful your merchandise truly are. This format works effectively as a result of it’s not imprecise promotional content material that floods everybody’s inbox.
For instance, think about Hims & Hers advertising and marketing technique — they often accomplice with influencers who can vouch for the effectiveness of their merchandise in opposition to hair loss, misuse of ED remedy, psychological well being points, and many others.
Whereas they primarily use this content material format on social media, you may replicate it for e mail advertising and marketing, too.
2. Sharing Concrete Information
Getting in contact with clients for UGC may also present insights into how useful the product was for the person.
For instance, think about getting concrete knowledge from our clients like “It helped scale back bottlenecks by 80%,” “It elevated productiveness 2x,” and “It was useful in managing X, Y, and Z issues in my workflow.”
3. Trustworthy Conversations
Oftentimes, the conversations round your model and product/service aren’t those you’ve participated in however the ones your clients/influencers have.
For instance, a person might’ve advisable your product to their mates through texts, and/or an influencer would’ve talked about your product’s advantages whereas replying to a remark — these are the trustworthy conversations you may get from influencers/customers that may be leveraged afterward.
We perceive you’ve got busy lives, and it is perhaps unattainable to sit down and craft each e mail across the UGC and influencer content material you obtain. In that case, leveraging AI advertising and marketing instruments to place all the factor on auto-pilot is perhaps simpler.
Which means leveraging AI to search out the highest influencers and producing templates to contact them. However wait, there’s extra. You can even use magic hyperlinks to obtain social proof from them and create emails across the content material you obtain from them. Working smarter, not tougher, in your subsequent e mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign.
3. Use Them for Case Research and Buyer Tales
One other strategy to leverage influencers and your clients is to create case research and/or buyer tales round how your product/service helped them.
Take into account these examples by Descript (for case research) and Loom (for buyer tales).
Such a content material will even aid you determine:
- What your clients discover most useful about your product/service
- How your clients speak/frequent phrases they use
- Buyer sentiment surrounding your model
- Distinctive use instances of your product
- Frequent buyer ache factors
All of this may be extraordinarily useful in creating future advertising and marketing supplies and updating your gross sales scripts.
4. Use Them for Constructing Authority
Influencers’ testimonials and phrases of confidence (particularly these with a big following) can vastly affect your model.
For instance, suppose the goal of firms equivalent to Cruise America is to get customers to purchase used RVs. In that case, it’d profit from the testimonials of journey influencers who have already got credibility and authority of their area of interest.
A easy video showcasing the influencers’ adventures and excursions of a possible RV on the market naturally encourages viewers in regards to the possibility to save cash by buying a used RV.
Integrating this sort of user-generated content material into your e mail campaigns can present a contact of relatability and authenticity, permitting recipients to think about their very own experiences with the product.
Why is that this so efficient? Even if you happen to accomplice with the very best entrepreneurs and get a star to endorse your product, it might sound disingenuous if it doesn’t come from somebody who is aware of what they’re speaking about or doesn’t have direct expertise along with your product.
5. Use Them for Exploring Newer Subjects of Dialog
Getting in contact with clients and influencers for UGC and influencer-led content material can even lead you to discover new concepts for content material, primarily as a result of they’d be talking from private experiences and may need completely different tales to share.
For instance, Distant, an organization that helps make use of distant employees, noticed a development in conversations amongst its community after the pandemic. Most of their audiences have been asking about the advantages of being a contractor vs. an worker (particularly a distant worker).
Based mostly on this development, it began pushing influencer content material about these (or surrounding) subjects.
Even immediately, it pushes and reposts content material from influencers that typically speak in regards to the particular person advantages of distant work and the advantages of being a contractor (albeit that is all through social media).
6. Use Them for Constructing Relationships
With the assistance of relatable and interesting user-generated content material, you may preserve your viewers invested in your e mail advertising and marketing campaigns.
However apart from simply this, you may construct stronger relationships with them by asking them to share their private tales, sending them social proof that makes them belief your model, and pushing relatable content material that makes your reader assume you’re conscious of their points/ache factors.
Whereas that is intangible, the position of UGC impacts how your audiences understand you and construct relationships along with your model.
Furthermore, in case your viewers and influencers promote the content material they generate on their social media pages or blogs, you may as well start creating relationships with their audiences.
7. Use Them for Totally different Views
When creating e mail advertising and marketing campaigns, many people play a guessing recreation about what we imagine our audiences will like, what their journey appears to be like like, and what their day by day life (and day by day life issues) appear to be.
Tales and content material out of your customers (equivalent to UGC) aid you take away these rose-colored glasses and think about completely different views, ache factors, and concepts.
Primarily, UGC might help you kind an id decision about your buyer that isn’t truthful to a thousandth diploma as a result of it instantly comes from them.
Except for this, UGC may also present some insights into your buyer’s behavioral patterns. You possibly can then complement these insights with knowledge from gross sales enablement instruments to create advertising and marketing campaigns sure to transform.
For instance, with the assistance of UGC and gross sales instruments, you may notice your viewers prefers shopping for product bundles as a substitute of singular objects.
8. Use Them for search engine optimisation Functions
Final however not least, one of many most important advantages of user-generated and influencer-led content material is that they’re additionally wonderful for growing your search engine optimisation rating. Why? Primarily as a result of each content material sorts can provide you backlinks, visibility, and social indicators.
For instance, if an influencer posts about your model on their web page, that may enhance your visibility follows, likes, and social indicators proper then and there. Or, if a person pushes your product ahead in a visitor publish, that’s a backlink you earn.
Backlinks instantly have an effect on your search engine optimisation rating. Social indicators and visibility additionally play an enormous half in how serps crawl and devour your knowledge and consider you as an authoritative determine.
And the extra authoritative search engine algorithms assume you might be, the upper your rank and the higher your web site area score (DR).
Get Notified About Your E-mail Advertising and marketing Efforts
We all know it’s simple to checklist a thousand methods to leverage content material to enhance your e mail advertising and marketing campaigns; nevertheless, the tough half is beginning.
When you’ve climbed that hill, you continue to have to ship emails at an honest cadence, work together along with your audiences, take into consideration new concepts, plan methods to push your merchandise and analyze your efforts to see if all of the funding ends in something fruitful.
Briefly, e mail advertising and marketing isn’t simple. Not even shut. Nevertheless, reaping the advantages of user-generated content material and relationships with social media influencers is effectively well worth the effort.
Our greatest suggestion to optimize your campaigns to start with is to begin small. A method to do that is by utilizing a easy e mail advertising and marketing service, like Benchmark, that can assist you.
You possibly can use Benchmark to create your first e mail (don’t fear, it’s fully free). We’ve all of the e mail templates, integrations, and analytics you want, so that you don’t have to stress a lot and might go away the heavy lifting to us.
Creator Bio
Jeremy is co-founder & CEO at uSERP, a digital PR and search engine optimisation company working with manufacturers like Monday, ActiveCampaign, Hotjar, and extra. He additionally buys and builds SaaS firms like Wordable.io and writes for publications like Entrepreneur and Search Engine Journal.
