Unbox the Inbox | Email Marketing for Online & Offline Businesses

[Boost Sales] Harness the Power of UGC for Your Subscription Business

• Gary Redmond • Season 1 • Episode 51

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Unlock the secrets of user-generated content (UGC) and revolutionize your subscription business.

Join me, Gary Redmond, as we explore how leveraging the power of authentic customer content can not only build trust but also skyrocket your sales. Imagine converting casual browsers into loyal subscribers through the simple act of sharing their experiences.

By creating engaging competitions and rewarding your customers for sharing photos and videos of your products, you can generate a treasure trove of genuine, impactful content. Learn the strategies to motivate this content creation and discover the dual benefits of boosting your organic reach while simultaneously attracting more referrals.

Transform your marketing approach with UGC and watch your conversions soar. Hear how incorporating customer testimonials and vibrant collages in your emails can make your brand stand out, fostering credibility and closing sales.

Dive into the world of paid advertising where UGC shines, offering an organic feel that lowers resistance on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Discover the magic of a successful campaign featuring happy dogs and subscription boxes, demonstrating the persuasive power of relatable, visually appealing content. 

Consistently showcasing UGC on your website and across various channels not only builds long-lasting trust but also provides a cost-effective way to engage potential customers and drive business growth. Join me in this episode and embrace the untapped potential of user-generated content.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Unbox the Inbox with me, your host, gary Redmond. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your subscription business using the power of free and mostly automated email marketing, and we'll hopefully have some fun doing it too. I'm a co-founder of BusterBoxcom and alsoa mentor and coach, helping founders like me and you create their dream life through their online business. So, on today's episode, we're going to talk about something that is very, very important, but it's often overlooked by a lot of founders, particularly in the beginning of your business, when you're not quite sure, you're not quite aware of the potential and the value of generating user-generated content. Okay, it's one of the most powerful tools that you can use to build trust and increase your sales, and the best part about it is it's just about being aware of it and actually trying to collect the user-generated content as much as possible and actually using it in your emails, in your ads and in your marketing. Okay, so what is user-generated content? This is essentially content generated by your users UGC okay, so it's pictures, videos, positive reviews, particularly pictures and videos, okay, of your customers using, receiving and enjoying your products or services. Okay, so it's going to be real life images like, not ads, not like. I mean, you can use influencers and stuff like that, but what I'm talking about here is actual, just like general. You know regular Joe Soap customers and trying to get them and trying to encourage them to actually take pictures, take videos of them using your products when they arrive, using your box when they arrive, and then sending them to you and then you can use them in your marketing. Okay, so you've been running a subscription box for a while. You may know that customer reviews and testimonials are obviously key to convincing people to buy. But if you can go beyond words and actually show your happy customers visually, that's where a lot of the trust is built, and the user-generated content is great for that, because it's one of the most cost-effective and impactful ways to increase conversions. Plus, if you don't have a content team which most people don't, including me if you don't have even a good camera or you have to pay a photographer to get good pictures of your boxes that was also me in the beginning too then user-generated content and having a steady supply of new pictures and images and videos of your box is very, very important.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so in today's episode, we're going to talk about two key topics. The first one is going to be how to generate tons of user-generated content okay, ugc. And then I'm going to be how to generate tons of user-generated content okay, ugc. And then I'm going to talk you through the ways that I've found to be effective to use UGC to maximize your sales. So let's dive in. So, number one generating tons of UGC.

Speaker 1:

How do you actually get your customers to create content for you? And the answer is simple and it's not too complicated to actually execute, but I hope you guys are doing it. And if you're not doing it, at the end of this episode I hope you have a plan to put, put put in place to do this. And the answer is basically to make it fun for your customers and give them an incentive. So if you, if you make it interesting for people, if you give them a reason to actually generate content and by it by generate content, I mean take pictures and you know, share, share their, in our case, their dog with the box okay, it might be harder for you because, okay, gary, your business is easier because it's dogs and everybody wants to take pictures of their dogs. Yes, that's true, but that doesn't mean it won't work for you. Okay, you just need to figure out a way to make it fun and make it interesting for people, and the best way that I've found is to run a multi-competition. The way it works is step one decide what your competition is okay and what are they going to win and what are they going to. What's the prize going to be okay, like, um, how is it going to work? Do they enter once a month, once a week? How exactly do they enter? By? By going to your social media, by emailing in, whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

Generally, you want to choose social media because it's going to get some, they're going to get some organic reach by posting and tagging you and their friends will see it too. But the way we do it is we say, basically take a picture, post it on social media and one person, two people, will win. One person wins best video of the month, one person wins best picture of the month. So just post on instagram or facebook and tag buster box. It's important that they, if possible, they post on Instagram or Facebook and tag BusterBox. It's important that they, if possible, they post on their own Instagram and tag you, rather than posting in your Instagram or Facebook. Okay, because, as I said, if they post on their own, all their friends will see it and it's more trustworthy. It's going to get probably a better chance of getting word about referrals, whereas they post on your Instagram or your Facebook page. Only your followers will see that, usually. Okay, so that's just a little tip and a little hack.

Speaker 1:

So now that we've decided what our competition is, we have to promote it. Okay, so the way we do it is we have an a leaflet inside of our box or on the box leaflet. We basically have an announcement. We let them know that every month, you have a chance to win a free box, um, or more, depending on if we're doing a real push. We might give a three month subscription away, particularly around christmas time, and or they can get some other prize. If you don't want to give away a free box. If you're just in the beginning, maybe they can win a free upgrade or whatever. But the way they, the way they enter, is to share a picture or video and tag you on instagram or facebook. Okay, obviously, then you need to go in and monitor that, but we'll get to that later, okay, the second thing you want to do is if you really want to get your customers to participate. Just two ways you can do it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I like to use email, so a couple of ways you can use it with email is you can actually include like you can edit your boxes shipped email, your payment has just gone through email. It's a way of leveraging these events that are happening every month with your customers. Every month, usually a box is gonna ship or a payment is going to be taken. So what you can do is you can actually in even those transactional emails you can say hey, remember, each month some customers will win two free boxes, or two people win a free box for best picture and best video. Here's how you enter, don't forget to enter, and that's just a reminder that goes out. And also what you can do is you can blast your entire email list, too, or your customer list right before the box is shipped, or right after the box is shipped again, just to remind people, because people get busy, they forget. Little nudge can just help. So you decided a competition, you decided how to enter, you've put it on the leaflet in the box, we've sent an email about it. We may have even added it, added a reminder, into our transactional emails.

Speaker 1:

The next thing you want to do is obviously monitor your social media. Step three is to monitor, pick winners and announce the winners on social media, again, because when you do this, you make it a celebration. You tag the winners, you comment, engage and let everybody see that you're actually taking the effort to shout out people who are sending in pictures to you. Okay, it brings your community around you and it motivates people to join in the next time. Because, hey, like you know, this month's best picture winner is Jenny, okay, and she's won a free box, and it's just because she sent us in a great picture. This is the picture. If you want to join, you want to win your next month free. Simply, you know, enter the competition next month if you're a subscriber, if you're, even when people don't win.

Speaker 1:

I think it's very important that you do this. Is you engage with people? Okay, like, not a lot of this is going to use. Sometimes it can lead to sales itself, okay, but you wanna generate, you wanna use as much possible leverage as possible to get your social media moving without you having to constantly put out content on it, okay, so when people post a video or a photo, obviously you wanna respond to them, you know, maybe even share it. If they don't win or whatever, you can still comment. You can say thank you so much, like the more interaction that they get and other people see like this big brand is interacting with their customers. You know, thanks so much for sending a picture. In our case, oh, your dog is beautiful. In your case, you can say it looks like you're having so much fun, whatever it is you sell, and the more interaction you're giving. Obviously, it pushes the algorithm, but anyone who's following your page or following this other person is going to see that this company is actually engaged.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and the beauty of this strategy is that, in terms of like return on investment, in terms of cost like for the price of a box or two each month we get hundreds of pictures every single month of people not only posting about us on social media their friends are seeing it but the pictures that they send us are actually very, very valuable and we're going to get to that in the next section about how to use them. But if you're just starting out and you and you know you need great imagery of your boxes, you want pictures of your customers with your products. This is a very, very easy way to get it. Make it fun and make it. Give them an incentive okay, like you could even have, I don't know. There's ways you can make it way more fun than what we're doing.

Speaker 1:

Our version is very simple. As I said, we kind of have a bit of a boost because people want to take pictures of their dog with the box anyway. But if you're struggling to get people to do it, or do you want to pivot the way the competition works, or you want to increase the incentive and actually like really the same with everything in online business or in anything that you sell, the offer is key. So if you're not getting people to really engage, maybe you should bump up your offer. And again, you're only going to give it to one person a month, or maybe it's once every three months. Whatever way you want to do it, depending on where you are with your business, but the more user-generated content you generate, the more credibility and social proof you'll have to work with when we actually go to use this user content, which I'm going to talk about now in the second part of this episode.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so part two we've generated as much user generated content using the best way that I know, which is a monthly competition. And then we wanted to talk about how we're going to use this. Okay, because at this point you might be thinking, oh, like that sounds great. People are posting pictures and stuff, but it's not only about the social media, it's about actually having these assets. Okay, and by assets I mean pictures, videos. You can use these over and over and over again in your marketing messages, which is going to be, for us, it's our website, our emails and our ads. Okay, and the magic of the UGC lies in it's authentic, okay, it's not staged. It doesn't look like an ad. If you run it as an ad, like a video or pictures, it doesn't look like an ad, which usually makes the best kind of ads, because people usually put their guard up when they see something that's clearly a promotion. Okay. So when you have real people, actual customers, using and loving your products, it's much more powerful for conversions, okay.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about the three different channels that we use to leverage all this user-generated content, and the first one is going to be your emails, okay. So at the bottom of our emails, we can we always usually put photos or videos of happy customers usually photos, obviously, if it's an email, but you can link to your instagram if you want. And and the best thing that I find is when you put like a five-star review with a photo, that's a winning formula okay, because it's not just words telling a story. Because obviously everyone knows reviews can be fake. It could be your sister, it could just be you writing that review, but if you actually see a person with the box or a dog with the box and a good review, it's like kind of proof, it's solid, like you can see. You can't really fake that, like you know what I mean, um, or at least it doesn't look fake.

Speaker 1:

An example if you're running a, so like a special offer, if you have a collage or a testimonial follow at the bottom of the email, it increases the trust, okay. And like, if you have a message in your email, obviously of course the company is going to say that, but if you can back up your messages with positive reviews and pictures, it makes it much more likely that someone will actually click through and make a purchase because that trust is there, that social proof is there, or they can see other people actually enjoying your product and reading the review, then obviously again, it's, it's stronger, okay. The next way, um is to use it in your ads. Okay. So it works like a charm in paid advertising, especially on platforms like facebook and instagram, because, as I remembered, it feels organic, like something a friend might share, and it lowers the resistance potential customers might feel. So, believe it or not, one of the best ever ads we've had in years. It still performs like seven years later.

Speaker 1:

It's basically putting together a collage of six different pictures of dogs with the box and it literally has run for years as one of our top performing ads and it just keeps continuing to work because it's just pictures of the dog, of a box, of the dogs with boxes with our box, and like they're happy and they're colorful and there's like five or six of them together, so it's not just like one picture they might get sick of seeing and literally like it's not just my opinion, it literally works over and over and over again every time we send them out, whether it's retargeting for our, for our, for people who've already been on our website, or even out to call traffic just pictures. Look at these dogs, look how happy they are. Here's our offer sign up. Okay, because people relate to others seeing them enjoying the product and it basically helps them to picture their dog getting that result. Okay, and it gives them confidence that your product is worth their time and actually investing in their money.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and the final thing is, again, you might end up using this user generated content over and over and over again. Don't worry about someone might've seen the picture before, or something like that. Again, like put them together into multiple different collages or, you know, switching things out in your emails quite regularly. You can make a little go a long way. So the final one then is your website. And if your website and remember, like this is your digital storefront, like everybody has to go through your website to buy, so it should be packed with user-generated content.

Speaker 1:

And if you're not using user-generated content and pictures and videos, or at least pictures at least, of happy customers using your boxes, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to build trust with visitors who are on the fence. So, as I said before, on our website we have both five-star reviews and images of the customers from the center. Okay, so like if you even had a happy customer section, or, if you wanted, you could scatter one or two UGCs around the website. Okay, um, but like in our case, we just have a section of like over 1 million dog products shipped and then loads of pictures of happy dogs and then loads of five-star reviews and trust pilot. It really helps to to help people see other dogs enjoying the product and help to build confidence and remove doubt that it's actually going to be good for them.

Speaker 1:

Um, but, like, that's just social proof anyway, like I've talked about this before on the podcast, like if you go to two restaurants and you're in you're on vacation, you go to two restaurants. One of them is full of people that queue outside. The other one has one dude and his dog sitting there eating and all the tables empty. Like which one do you want to eat? At right, of course you want to queue up for the other one because they must be better, okay, so, um, yeah, so social proof is very powerful and I hope this makes sense that this is just a simple like. It's a simple competition.

Speaker 1:

It's a steady supply of user-generated content pictures, videos and if you use them in your websites, your emails and your ads, it's a very low investment, low cost way to maximize your conversions and build up that trust with you, because the overall reason why the strategy works is UGC gives you the best of both worlds. It's authentic, it's social proof, but it also has that visual impact. So, of course, as I mentioned, reviews are great, but reviews with pictures are, are, like you know, top dog. Okay, because when you combine the two of them, that amplifies your message and makes it hard to resist and hard to doubt what you're saying is true. If I say this is going to make your dog super happy, and then the five there's 16 five-star reviews who are agreeing with me or agreeing with BusterBox, and there's pictures of dogs everywhere looking happy, you're kind of going to believe it, right? So that's really, really makes it hard to resist for the customers. Plus, the cost to you is almost zero. You get more content that drives sales, builds trust and increases your conversion rates and, as I've mentioned, for beginners, to get those few customer photos and build a bit of proof that your product is a real deal. This is a very, very simple way to do that. You can do this with 10 subscribers, 20 subscribers, as long as you make sure that you put together a good competition, you remind them of it and you announce the winners. So, to recap, here's how to make UGC work for your subscription box.

Speaker 1:

Business. Number one generate it by running a monthly competition, emailing your customers and engaging with them on social media and announcing winners. Number two use this UGC in your emails, your ads and your website by combining your positive reviews with these photos and user generated content to maximize trust and maximize conversions, because, when done right, ugc can actually massively increase your sales and build that credibility for your brand, which is very important at all times in the beginning, in the middle and again, whatever that is. But, as I said, it's a simple strategy, very effective and something you can get started with today. Shouldn't be something that should take you six months to get set up.

Speaker 1:

After this podcast episode, think about how you're gonna you're gonna what you're gonna give away, how you're gonna structure it and how you're gonna announce it, how you're gonna remind them and then how you're going to structure it, how you're going to announce it, how you're going to remind them and then how you're going to use user-generated content. It's all in this episode, okay, so that's it for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you found this helpful, please make sure to share the podcast, leave a review or if you have any questions or want to connect with me. You can find me in the subscription box success Facebook group or gary at garyrebbannet.

Speaker 1:

Just before I go, I'm running a workshop on October 23rd 2024, and it's going to be showing you how to use what the assets you already have in your subscription box business to maximize profits this Q4. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be creating new types of products, one-time products and upsells and be able to maximize the stock that you have in your warehouse, and we're going to package things up and we're going to sell as much as we can to your current email list and your current customer list. It's called Cash Friday. If you want to learn more about it, you can just email me cashfriday the words cashfriday to gary at garyrevinnet, and I'll show you how you can get access. I'm running a discount on it at the moment and, yeah, like it's going to be a very easy way For you to make a massive return on your investment For this workshop.

Speaker 1:

It's not going to be too expensive. It's not too expensive and if you want to get access, just go ahead and email me Cash Friday and I'll give you the details. But basically, every year in BusterBox we make Between 30 and 50 thousand dollars In extra profit proceeds and put it in our back pocket as our, as our, christmas bonus. So if you feel like doing something similar this year, then go ahead and email me. You can check out the facebook group. I have a post up in there as well. If you're on my email list, you will receive emails about it over the next week or two. So other than that, thank you for tuning in and I'll see you guys next week.

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Gary Redmond

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