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 need to spend time on (except, in fact, you’re Taylor Swift).
So, what are you able to do to win their consideration and interact with them?
The reply is easy. As an alternative of promotional content material, concentrate on 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 electronic mail advertising 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 nations in solely two weeks!”) as a substitute of relatable content material.
Nonetheless, 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 seem like them as a substitute of trusting the credibility of a no-face model whose agenda is more likely to promote one thing.
For instance, in case your viewers and influencers had been to make use of the identical headline used above, it’d look one thing like this: “How I visited 5 nations for beneath $3000 (and the way you are able to do the identical!).”
This relatability issue makes your advertising message (and, ergo, your product/service) attainable, which is what motivates customers to transform.
2. Use Them for Social Proof
One other nice technique 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 possibly can contemplate are:
1. Earlier than-and-After Images
Earlier than-and-after photographs act as product-led content material and present your viewers how helpful your merchandise truly are. This format works properly as a result of it’s not imprecise promotional content material that floods everybody’s inbox.
For instance, contemplate Hims & Hers advertising technique — they normally companion with influencers who can vouch for the effectiveness of their merchandise towards 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 possibly can replicate it for electronic mail advertising, too.
2. Sharing Concrete Knowledge
Getting in contact with prospects for UGC may additionally present insights into how helpful the product was for the person.
For instance, contemplate getting concrete information from our prospects like “It helped scale back bottlenecks by 80%,” “It elevated productiveness 2x,” and “It was helpful in managing X, Y, and Z issues in my workflow.”
3. Sincere Conversations
Oftentimes, the conversations round your model and product/service aren’t those you’ve participated in however the ones your prospects/influencers have.
For instance, a person might’ve really useful your product to their buddies by way of texts, and/or an influencer would’ve talked about your product’s advantages whereas replying to a remark — these are the sincere conversations you may get from influencers/customers that may be leveraged in a while.
We perceive you’ve got busy lives, and it could be inconceivable to sit down and craft each electronic mail across the UGC and influencer content material you obtain. In that case, leveraging AI advertising instruments to place your complete factor on auto-pilot could be simpler.
Meaning leveraging AI to seek out the highest influencers and producing templates to contact them. However wait, there’s extra. It’s also possible to use magic hyperlinks to obtain social proof from them and create emails across the content material you obtain from them. Working smarter, not tougher, on your subsequent electronic mail advertising marketing campaign.
3. Use Them for Case Research and Buyer Tales
One other technique to leverage influencers and your prospects is to create case research and/or buyer tales round how your product/service helped them.
Contemplate these examples by Descript (for case research) and Loom (for buyer tales).
One of these content material may also enable you establish:
- What your prospects discover most helpful about your product/service
- How your prospects speak/frequent phrases they use
- Buyer sentiment surrounding your model
- Distinctive use circumstances of your product
- Frequent buyer ache factors
All of this may be extraordinarily useful in creating future advertising 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 significantly impression your model.
For instance, suppose the goal of corporations 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 one of these user-generated content material into your electronic 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 when you companion with the very best entrepreneurs and get a celeb to endorse your product, it may appear disingenuous if it doesn’t come from somebody who is aware of what they’re speaking about or doesn’t have direct expertise together with your product.
5. Use Them for Exploring Newer Subjects of Dialog
Getting in contact with prospects and influencers for UGC and influencer-led content material also can lead you to discover new concepts for content material, primarily as a result of they’d be talking from private experiences and might 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 had been asking about the advantages of being a contractor vs. an worker (particularly a distant worker).
Primarily based on this development, it began pushing influencer content material about these (or surrounding) subjects.
Even right now, it pushes and reposts content material from influencers that generally speak in regards to the particular person advantages of distant work and the advantages of being a contractor (albeit that is all by way of social media).
6. Use Them for Constructing Relationships
With the assistance of relatable and fascinating user-generated content material, you possibly can maintain your viewers invested in your electronic mail advertising campaigns.
However except for simply this, you possibly can 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 suppose 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 together with your model.
Furthermore, in case your viewers and influencers promote the content material they generate on their social media pages or blogs, it’s also possible to start creating relationships with their audiences.
7. Use Them for Totally different Views
When creating electronic mail advertising campaigns, many people play a guessing sport about what we imagine our audiences will like, what their journey appears like, and what their day by day life (and day by day life issues) seem like.
Tales and content material out of your customers (equivalent to UGC) enable you take away these rose-colored glasses and contemplate completely different views, ache factors, and concepts.
Primarily, UGC can assist you type an id decision about your buyer that isn’t truthful to a thousandth diploma as a result of it straight comes from them.
Apart from this, UGC may additionally present some insights into your buyer’s behavioral patterns. You’ll be able to then complement these insights with information from gross sales enablement instruments to create advertising campaigns certain to transform.
For instance, with the assistance of UGC and gross sales instruments, you would possibly notice your viewers prefers shopping for product bundles as a substitute of singular gadgets.
8. Use Them for web optimization Functions
Final however not least, one of many principal advantages of user-generated and influencer-led content material is that they’re additionally glorious for growing your web optimization rating. Why? Primarily as a result of each content material varieties can provide you backlinks, visibility, and social alerts.
For instance, if an influencer posts about your model on their web page, that may enhance your visibility follows, likes, and social alerts proper then and there. Or, if a person pushes your product ahead in a visitor put up, that’s a backlink you earn.
Backlinks straight have an effect on your web optimization rating. Social alerts and visibility additionally play an enormous half in how search engines like google and yahoo crawl and eat your information and consider you as an authoritative determine.
And the extra authoritative search engine algorithms suppose you’re, the upper your rank and the higher your web site area score (DR).
Get Notified About Your E-mail Advertising Efforts
We all know it’s simple to listing a thousand methods to leverage content material to enhance your electronic mail advertising campaigns; nevertheless, the tough half is beginning.
When you’ve climbed that hill, you continue to must ship emails at a good cadence, work together together 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 leads to something fruitful.
Briefly, electronic mail advertising isn’t simple. Not even shut. Nonetheless, reaping the advantages of user-generated content material and relationships with social media influencers is properly well worth the effort.
Our greatest suggestion to optimize your campaigns at first is to start out small. A technique to do that is by utilizing a easy electronic mail advertising service, like Benchmark, that will help you.
You’ll be able to use Benchmark to create your first electronic mail (don’t fear, it’s utterly free). Now we have all of the electronic mail templates, integrations, and analytics you want, so that you don’t must stress a lot and might depart the heavy lifting to us.
Writer Bio
Jeremy is co-founder & CEO at uSERP, a digital PR and web optimization company working with manufacturers like Monday, ActiveCampaign, Hotjar, and extra. He additionally buys and builds SaaS corporations like Wordable.io and writes for publications like Entrepreneur and Search Engine Journal.
