About
– Black Friday / Cyber Monday Content – Get ready for the most online Black Friday & Cyber Monday in history with The 2020 Ecommerce Holiday Countdown! This episode features Ivonne Aldaz, Marketing Specialist at TINT, who will be sharing innovative user-generated content ideas to inspire your holiday campaigns.
With budgets slashed and content production grinding to a halt in 2020, there’s no better time to ramp up your UGC game. Ivonne will show how brands can use this moment to stop talking “at” customers, and start facilitating more authentic connections through shared customer experiences.
Listen in to hear her thoughts on:
- Shoppable UGC that converts in as few clicks as possible
- Letting your testimonials do the talking with repurposed UGC
- The increasingly blurred line between product and experience
- Being present everywhere vs doubling down where your customers are
- Tapping into the impulsivity and fast-paced nature of UGC purchases
If you’ve been waiting for a sign that it’s time to explore user-generated content for ecommerce, 2020 has been it. Find out how to incorporate it into your upcoming campaigns with The 2020 Ecommerce Holiday Countdown!
The 2020 Ecommerce Holiday Countdown
The 2020 Ecommerce Holiday Countdown is a series of videos focused on inspiring your holiday campaigns and help you prepare for the most online Black Friday & Cyber Monday to date. Our expert guest speakers shared their insights on how retailers can tap into:
- Branded content marketing
- Nano-influencer opportunities
- Behavioural and triggered email
- User-generated content and social commerce
- Paid advertising
Welcome to the 2020 ecommerce holiday countdown a webinar series where e-commerce experts bring you some holiday cheer and hopefully a little inspiration black friday and the entire holiday shopping season are going to be just a little different this year so we’re here to share ideas advice and expertise to help online retailers feel prepared my name is joanne martin vp of marketing at Searchspring and in this episode i’m joined by ivan aldes marketing specialist at Tint welcome yvonne hi thank you so much for having me today yeah it’s awesome to see you so for those listening who aren’t familiar with you tell us a little bit about your background and your role at Tint yes of course so you know i actually started working in retail when i was 16 years old so it’s kind of interesting that i’m talking about this topic years later um i have been in the marketing industry for maybe about 10 years now i you know didn’t really get into the field until i was in college and kind of just followed me around by complete accident and i graduated from college i was running a marketing department decided to get my mba in the evenings i did that i had another opportunity where i went to germany to study a couple of months i went to grad school over there studied international business and economics as well and you know started my own business while i was abroad came back to the states because i wanted to you know get into the tech industry i found tint and the rest is history so you know tint i actually joined the company in february of 2020 so literally like two weeks before the pandemic hit and it’s been quite a ride it’s you know working with some incredible people on some incredible technology and um i joined tint specifically to take on an initiative called future of marketing where we’re teaching brand strategy and user generated content to marketing leaders around the world so you know i’ve been kind of in charge of sending out a weekly newsletter for the last 27 plus weeks so it’s been quite fun we do a lot of ugc breakdowns there and you know just analyzing what’s going on in the world and how brands are adapting so it’s been quite interesting but yeah most of my times you know wearing a different hat so it’s like strategy writing designing working on the website so every day is different amazing so one one thing i’m most excited about today is you have the benefit of in working with ten seeing the ways that different brands will leverage user generated content um and so we we hear merchandisers talk often about the fact that user generated content is something they’re really interested in incorporating into their merchandising into their store into the experience and they believe it can have a really powerful effect on conversion and on loyalty in general and as as we know this year is going to be a little bit different or we anticipate that it will be different um so let’s talk a little bit about the holiday season in particular so what are some of your all-time favorite campaigns that you’ve seen from brands going into the holiday season or in general what goes through all of the noise at that time of the year and really makes you want to buy so there are actually two companies that i’m going to be talking about first off is warby parker you know they’re doing a fabulous job just disrupting the whole eyewear industry they you know they have a mission to be accessible to be affordable to be stylish and they have this program where you can try them on at home and you know that’s already kind of serving the people who are at home and so there’s a there’s actually a campaign that they launched back in 2013 if i’m not mistaken it was called warby snowman and so what they did with this campaign is they were sending their gift card purchasers um you know like a diy snowman making kit and so what happened was a lot of the people were you know putting these like the eyes and the carrot and into like making snowman they were even putting them on their dogs and taking pictures of them and so you know what ended up happening here was there was a flood of user generated content you know coming into social media and you know it was a really interesting way for you know an eyeglass company to you know use user generated content to humanize the experience you know so that was really interesting and then two and it’s friend body is another brand that i really like and i actually wrote about this one as well and i like this company a lot because they got started with just five thousand dollars um they had you know no marketing budget they had just one single product that came literally from just listening to what was going on you know the one of the founders kept seeing young ladies coming into his coffee shop asking for you know leftover coffee grinds because they were using it as body scrub so you know they capitalized on this idea and that alone it was really cool but before launching their website they actually sent out some of these samples to micro influencers in australia and what you know people started sending over their feedback they started getting you know before and after images and they got so many images that they actually turned they had they had a separate instagram account called frank feedback so now if you go on instagram you look up that account it’s literally all just before and after images you know you know all of testimonials which is what people want to see they want to they want to know they can trust your product that it’s actually making a difference and you know not to mention this company does really good job with their messaging they you know they they’re everything millennial they speak in first person so they use i and me in their language which is really interesting and this is a brand that really listens to their customers so if you go on their website you’ll you’ll see that they have a ugc gallery you know and they it’s called hashtag babes in the wild and so they’re pulling all of this content from social media platforms women you know sharing their before and after images or or their new products and stuff and you know they took it a step further and you can actually click through these images and you can shop the image right from the website well right from the gallery without having to go through all of these other steps so that’s another one and i was actually trying to see what holiday campaigns they launched in the past and i and i and i saw that they they incorporate they they changed their messaging in certain areas so it wasn’t anything crazy you know they they just changed it to secret santa’s stocking stuffers or gift boxes so it wasn’t it wasn’t about going and doing something super innovative it was just figuring out where the people were going to be shopping and just tailoring what they were saying accordingly so that was that was another brand i really enjoyed yeah that seems to be a theme that i’m hearing as we talk to people through this series and we talk about a lot of different channels that brands are using to acquire business in the holiday season and whether i’m talking to someone who [Music] is an expert in micro influencers or email channels or social media or comms it is all about creating that experience for the user in a really remarkable way that’s shareable and then we hear people who talk about email talk about using that in email marketing we hear talk people who talk about comms talk about using that in your pr and i think it’s such a beautiful but also interesting trend that your users or your customers ultimately ultimately become your advertising absolutely and i mean going back to your other question like what is it that cuts through the noise well i mean in my i i honestly think it’s just three things here you know you have to have a great product and product that actually solves a problem and then two you have to build a trustworthy brand and martin neumeyer he’s an author of the brand gap really good book and he he quotes a brand is a gut feeling about a person product or organization and so how do you influence this gut feeling well you treat your employees well you know you give your customers an experience they worth talking about you know it your pricing there are a lot of elements that go into your brand so that’s two and then three is streamline experience you know the faster you can get them to trust your product and check out the better you know you don’t want to lose them because your process or is way too complex and you know i mean the there’s like a i want to say like an 80 shopping cart abandonment rate you know so you want to streamline experience it’s very important people are you know shopping very quickly now we have social media platforms like becoming shoppable too so there are a lot of changes coming up but yeah i do think those three elements the great product the trustworthy brand and a streamlined experience are absolutely important yeah and and this season we’ve talked about how it’s going to be obviously a little bit different no one knows exactly how it’s going to be different right like a lot of us are waiting to see how this plays out a lot of merchandisers are kind of preparing but also just crossing fingers at the same time um but one side effect that we’ve already seen of the fact that people are at home more often and browsing more often is that people are also posting a lot more often they’re sharing what they’re doing during quarantine they’re sharing what they’re buying um whether it’s their new home office setup or their workout gear they’re baking banana bread so social feeds are kind of taking a very different shape so i imagine this is a really great opportunity for brands to try user generated content for the first time if this isn’t something they haven’t explored before what are your thoughts on that absolutely i mean and first of all it’s like the remote worker is a great opportunity on its own you know marketing to them but um yeah i mean think about it content production came to complete health at one point and you know people didn’t know what to do budgets were slashed you know people are stuck at home they have their cell phones they’re creating the content like you said and you know even physical locations close down so social media became the number one form of communication for a lot of people a lot of brands and you know with tighter budgets like as a from a brand standpoint from a person’s standpoint you know from from a brand standpoint i want to save the most money i can you know and from a person’s like a regular consumer they also want the same thing but because they’re reducing their spend you know these people want to make sure that they’re getting the best you know the best value for for their dollar and so a lot of this comes into play where people are going to cut become a lot more selective about the brands that they actually buy from and so brands have to you know compete for that market share and make sure that they’re actually standing out so not to mention social distancing that’s another thing you know you can’t you can’t be producing content like you were a year or two years ago now your consumers are the producers and it’s safe you know it’s the safest way right now just to produce content netflix even release like an at-home movie you know so it’s very interesting to see how everything’s just changing and yeah you know user-generated content just takes it a step further and you know it saves money it feels more authentic it drives word of mouth and you know it’s just easier to scale and it saves you a lot of time yeah so i i know you talk often about how ugc is more than just publishing customer photos on a store or more than just featuring them on a marketplace how can brands take it further to develop it into a full funnel social commerce strategy so user generated content is very interesting i mean we have shoppable ugc like i mentioned with frank body you know that you can shop literally from within the image we have social media platforms also racing to become more shoppable tick tock this week just launched its first live stream like shoppable live stream you know so now you’ll be able to just pick up your camera live and if i like your shirt i’ll be able to buy it right there and then so it everyone’s racing to to you know gain this market share here and then we have technology also coming into play you know we have artificial intelligence we have machine learning this is only going to personalize the experience a lot more for the users so you know you’re gonna get a lot more relevant product recommendations right on the spot and you know and and going back to the whole ugc the shoppable ugc component there’s a brand that i really like and i also wrote about this one’s called yeti you know you’ve heard of that and they have a they’re running a campaign called built for the wild and if you go on the photo you can see it but it’s really interesting because they are capturing all of this content from people traveling around the world and you know showing off their adventures with their yeti cups or their yeti bags and you know and they also incorporate the shoppable component in there so just seeing how a lot of these brands are already using it it’s kind of like you know it turns on a light bulb there and people need to jump on it yeah i love that and we see that a lot in merchandising where brands are now blurring the lines between uh products and content and experiences and introducing ugc just adds another layer of complexity in there where now you’re not only sharing brand created content or brand created experiences you get to loop in real customers using your real product in the wild um yeah revenue generation aside ugc is obviously a great way to build engagement build a community around the brand how would you advise retailers to strike a balance uh to make sure they’re really connecting with their customers keeping their ugc personal and remaining authentic through that i mean the number one thing really is listen to your customers for some reason a lot of marketers hesitate here you know they they feel like asking for feedback is you know they’re going to hear something they don’t want to hear but you know you should know these things you know if something’s wrong with your product or if there’s room for improvement you should want to know this information so number one is you know talk to your product i mean to your product to your to your customers and don’t just assume that you know what they want don’t assume that you know what they need you need to ask them to give you their feedback and you know repurpose us as testimonials even you know that’s only going to generate trust and if they see that you’re actually making an effort to improve that’s just going to increase that trust so yeah and you saw that with actually yeti is a great example of that uh you brought up that brand um where they took a lot of feedback from their products and primarily around them being heavy because if you’ve ever tried to carry a yeti cooler from a car to anything more than 10 feet away your like arms are falling off even if it’s empty and then you add like cans of something and it’s impossible but then they launched an entire campaign around much lighter coolers based on customer feedback so that was a really good example of brands incorporating user content but also incorporating the feedback into their product strategy absolutely what it what advice because i want to make sure that people listening are able to not only hear what we’re saying be inspired but kind of come away with this little mental checklist of like incorporating some really concrete ideas into their store from that from this conversation uh what advice would you give e-commerce retailers who want to incorporate more ugc and their holiday campaigns how would they integrate that into their strategy in a way that drives not only community engagement but also conversion on their store okay so actually user generated content will only be as successful as your your marketing strategy you know your social media strategy you need to you know take a step back and figure out what is it that you’re trying to communicate to who why and how can you find the people you’re trying to sell to where are they you know and instead of trying to be across every single social media platform find one or two where you know your audience hangs out and double down on that one and incorporate user generated content into it by you know again getting testimonials of your product letting them do the talking for you and another thing here is when you’re considering your strategy you want to make it as streamlined as possible you want to make it easy for them to make a purchase and you know this is where a lot of companies tend to fall short and it goes back to the 80 shopping cart abandonment rate you know how can you make this process seamless and there are already companies that are um you know tackling this problem there’s one that’s going to be launching soon called fast you know fast check out and amazon is one that you can already see that’s happening it’s you know the one-click checkout experience so that’s something you want to consider you know how can we get them to trust us and get them to buy from us with the few like the least amount of steps as possible and so two i mean three is the consider just an omni-channel approach you know you can use user-generated content in native advertisements you can use it as testimonials like i said uh on a website gallery that you can shop you know right on the spot you and then another one is like the you can also repurpose user generated content across digital and print assets so by print assets i mean you know magazine and airbnb mag actually does this and another one that i noticed was delta delta i was i took you know a flight maybe about two three years ago with them it was international you know how they give you you know the little packets with the uh the blindfold or whatever whatever you know what i’m talking about right the sleeping mask blindfolds a little bit scary yes anyway um so so they on that packet you would see images of people all around the world just you know and then delta would actually tag them which is you know it’s free exposure for these micro influencers and so i thought that was very interesting back then i wasn’t even like i didn’t even know user generated content was a thing or like as important as it is now but i wanted it to send my picture you know and it just entices you to create the content for the brands and then another one is like you can also repurpose your users user generated content on your social media itself and delta also does a really beautiful job at doing this so i highly suggest you you look at the other site because it’s user generated content everywhere so every single touch point yeah and as you talk about this i think about one struggle that we hear a lot from brands right now which is they’re really trying to be aware of the context that their shopper is in and so there’s a lot going on in not only our country but in the world people are across the spectrum in terms of what they’re experiencing in their family lives their financial lives their social lives and so it it becomes increasingly more complex for a brand to really be empathetic in the way that they might message or merchandise their products and it occurs to me as you’re speaking that user generated content is such a relevant way to do that because you’re no longer just a brand speaking at a customer you’re a brand sharing experiences of people like those who are shopping with you so it’s it is it is not just hey be a great mom uh here are all the products you need to be a great mom it’s look at all these amazing superhero moms like you and they’re sharing their own experiences that are probably very very relatable to what you’re going through right now juggling all the things that your consumers are juggling right now oh yes absolutely and you know and i was reading this the average consumer actually gets exposed to about 5 000 advertisements every single day so what’s happening is a lot of these people are actually becoming experts at identifying when they’re being advertised too so user-generated content is a wonderful way to cut through the noise and just feel more relevant and you know get people to trust you a lot better than you know your branded content so yeah and i mean even as i’ll put my shopper hat on for a second um like as a shopper if you land on a website and let’s use fashion for a moment like i i’m never going to look like the supermodel on your home page and so i i’ll look at a shirt and think oh that’s a gorgeous shirt there’s no way it looks like that on me but i am much more willing to engage if i’m also seeing it on people who look like me and so it’s such an amazing way to become even more relevant even just at the product images level or on your product detail page to really show like that this is for you we have people like you using this product yes absolutely and then you know now with social media becoming a lot more shoppable people are on there and it’s it’s a fast-paced you know thinking so they’re there to shop for like impulsively if you think about it you know so what can i offer that will entice them to shop quickly and i was also reading this and you know it says like you should be considering products that cost under you know 100 because that’s more likely what’s going to what people are going to end up buying you know and if you add an image to that that you know a person that looks like you then you’re probably gonna end up shopping right there and then and now it’s just becoming a lot faster so you know you’re gonna convert them a lot quicker too yeah i love it so you have shared so much great advice for people who are looking to just get into ugc or even elevate their ugc strategy thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise for people who might want to reach out afterward continue the conversation or learn more about you or what Tint does how can people contact you
you guys can just email me at Yvonne tintup.com i’m happy to answer any questions also look me up on twitter i’m very active there um always talking about marketing and user-generated content so also a good place to find me awesome yeah Yvonne’s amazing reach out to her and it’s tintup.com so t-i-n-t u-p-s yes awesome cool so don’t go to tintup.com unless you’re particularly fond of camping i don’t even know what exists there they might get some good traffic from this um thank you so much Yvonne it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today you too Joanne thank you so much for having me
