How to Use Social Proof in Email and on Your E-commerce Site

Retailers constantly seek ways to stand out in crowded inboxes and influence subscribers to make purchases, some of them by offering deep discounts. But for companies that either can’t or don’t want to shrink their margins, finding another way to influence purchase decisions inside emails is essential. This is where using social proof in your email marketing can be a powerful sales tactic.

Luckily for companies — especially online retailers — they already possess a lot of content that can be used for social proof. Here are a few ways retailers can utilize this content in their email marketing programs to influence purchases.

How to Use Product Reviews in Email Marketing

Product reviews matter to consumers. Sixty-five percent of consumers check product reviews before making a purchase. When it comes to Gen Z, 67% of them read three or more reviews before making their first purchase. You’ve worked hard at collecting reviews, and now it’s time to put them to good use.

Look at the elements of product reviews you can use, including the actual rating, customer quote, and even a piece of user-generated content (UGC), like a picture or video. From here, you can use these elements to showcase top-rated products for different categories or sets of products. Using one or all of the elements can make the customer feel confident in their decision to purchase from you.

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Here’s an example from HalloweenCostumes.com that combines all of these elements in the recovery section of the email.

A great part about using product reviews in emails is that they fit well in a variety of email messages, from promotional emails to automated lifecycle messages like a welcome series or abandoned cart messages.

How to Use Social Media in Email Marketing

Social media provides a brand with the ability to engage in back-and-forth communication with consumers. It has also given brands a new outlet to let customers advertise and spread brand awareness for them. When someone shares a picture using a brand’s product on social media, it provides some level of brand and product credibility.

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Secondary content:  Include user-submitted photos as secondary content in each of your emails. You can even start a hashtag to showcase how customers use your products, such as in this example from Crocs.

In this email, the main content is their standard promotion creative, but they use UGC as secondary content to showcase how these products fit into their customers’ lifestyles.

Entire email: UGC does not have to be reserved for secondary content. As you can see in this example from Gone For A Run, the entire email is built by featuring a few of their customers from social media. Using customer photos like this provides an easy — and relatable — method for promoting products.    

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Influencers: We can’t talk about social media and not mention influencer marketing. If you do use influencers, find ways to incorporate them into your email promotions.

You can do this by creating an email where they showcase products, such as their favorites or top trends. And when it makes sense to do so, consider putting messages like these into your lifecycle messaging series.

Top posts: Monitor your social feed for your most engaging posts. If a specific post receives more than the average number of likes or comments, you know it has engaged your audience — use these actual posts in of your messages.

If an outfit posted on Instagram is popular, feature that post in your emails with a screenshot of the actual post or show the outfit itself. Using screenshots or referencing the social media post might prove more effective as it directly ties the social aspect to the promotion.

How to Use Your Employees in Email Marketing

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Customers trust your employees. Whether walking into a sporting goods store or a wine retailer, employee recommendations are trusted. This trust can be a powerful sales tool, so find ways to incorporate your employee product recommendations into your email marketing.

You can see in this example from REI that they humanize the email by showing staff pictures, names, locations, and quotes about why they recommend the products.

One great place to use recommendations like this is with browse recovery emails. Showcasing employee recommended products for the same category of products subscribers were viewing on their website can be a great tool in helping the customer decide on a product to purchase.

The Social Proof is in the Pudding

Using social proof to drive email conversions works. One company tested this by isolating website browsers based on the category of products viewed. They sent these consumers a “top-rated products” email based on that specific category and sent other non-category browsers a generic marketing message.

The social proof-driven message saw significant increases in all major email metrics, including an almost 8,000 percent lift in revenue per email. Even better, this email had only 3% of the volume of emails sent compared to the generic message — but it drove 140% more revenue.

Social proof comes down to finding the right opportunities to incorporate it. Look to your social networks, product reviews, and your employees to serve as proof for why they should purchase from your brand.

Trust me, they’re open to suggestions.

Read more of my thoughts on using social proof here

Confessions of a Holiday Shopper: Why I Didn’t Wait Until Black Friday

This holiday season was predicted to be the best yet for online retailers – and it was. Fifty-eight out of 61 days drove over $1 billion in online sales, including every single day in November. Gray November, the month-long period of deep discounts, is now commonplace. But do people buy more or simply buy earlier?

This year, I wanted to find out how early discounts affected my own shopping behavior and see what lessons it might offer for retailers. So, I conducted a little experiment.

A Little Background

My yearly holiday shopping comes with a double whammy. See, my wife’s birthday falls one week before Christmas. After buying gifts for my wife and the kids, my digital wallet looks more like a countdown clock in an email message, getting smaller and smaller as the seconds tick away.

I traditionally draft my gift list a few days before Black Friday and then purchase over that weekend. But this year, I pivoted. Having tracked the Gray November phenomena over the past several years, I felt confident that the discounts would be just as strong prior to Black Friday weekend as during it.

You can’t write about holiday shopping (or conduct your own holiday shopping experiment) without addressing the elephant in the room – Amazon. Although I purchase from Amazon, I am not a Prime member. Am I allowed to say that? I guess the first step is admitting it. As a non-Prime member, here's what I was looking for in my shopping experience:

• Could other retailers compete with Amazon for my attention and wallet?

• Would I regret buying “early”

• Was Amazon the right retailer, or did someone else offer value or service that was better?

• In the end, how much wallet share would Amazon nab, and why?

Let the Purchasing Begin

Although my very first purchase took place on November 13, my primary shopping started on November 16. I completed 75% of my shopping prior to Thanksgiving Day and 92% prior to Black Friday.

To Amazon or Not to Amazon?

HitWise reported that Amazon accounted for 55% of Black Friday sales and 45% of Thanksgiving Day sales. For the holidays overall, GBH Insights estimates Amazon accounted for about a 50% share of online revenue.

For me, 33% of my purchases were made on Amazon, accounting for 11% of my wallet. However, my November 13 purchase was a one-time, big-ticket item. By removing this specialty purchase, the adjusted wallet share Amazon earned from me jumps to 29%. Even though money spent is money spent, I view this adjusted 29% as a more accurate number, as it's based on my typical gifting habits.

One of the main reasons I chose Amazon was the convenience of buying many diverse products in a single order at a price that was comparable to or better than a competitor’s. When the price was comparable, I mostly leaned toward Amazon for value-add reasons, such as my confidence in their customer service.

But Amazon certainly lost out on a few of my purchases. Twenty-five percent of the time, the price was higher. Another 25% of the time, I was concerned about the quality of the Amazon offerings (particularly the private-label offerings), and 17% of the time, Amazon didn’t carry what I was looking for.

My Black Friday purchases all came from Amazon. I purposely shopped for the items prior to Black Friday, placed them in my cart, and left them abandoned. The prices at this time were comparable to other sites, and I knew that come Black Friday, I’d get a deal somewhere. Interestingly enough, Amazon was the one that came through with the largest price drops.

Customer Service and the Consumer Experience

I had two notable customer service experiences while shopping. The first was from Amazon. For one purchase, I ordered a product that was fulfilled by Amazon. The product quantity showed there were six remaining. One full day after placing my order, I received an email from Amazon stating the item could not be fulfilled due to the product not being in stock. But the website still showed the product as in stock and ready to ship. Needless to say, I found this to be a very poor customer experience.

On November 18, I placed an order from a national omnichannel retailer. They had a 50% off sale on several items I was shopping for. However, one of the items on my list was not on sale. The question became: do I purchase now or wait to see if the other item goes on sale? I assessed the situation. Because they offered free shipping and free returns, I had nothing to lose. After all, if they discounted the item later, I could simply return the order and place a new one with all of the items on sale.

So I purchased, paying full price for the one item. The very next morning, the full-price item went on sale at 50% off. Because it was less than 24 hours since the order was placed, I emailed customer service asking if they would credit the difference. They declined to do so, instead instructing me to sign up for their emails so I don’t miss a future sale. Umm, OK. Instead, I let them incur the cost for not only shipping the new order but also processing the return. This incident reduces my chances of doing business with them in the future.

These two experiences highlight a lesson for retailers: Be sure the product counts on your website are accurate and that your customer service policies allow you to meet customer expectations. In both cases, I had a negative experience. For Amazon purchases, I’m skeptical of the value of paying for Prime. For the other retailer, knowing they won’t address a simple price adjustment gives me little confidence that they would satisfactorily address a more complex customer service issue.

Final Thoughts

I’m just one shopper, but I feel confident my buying behaviors are fairly representative – customer service and value trump price. Don’t leave the success of your business dependent on discounts. If you're a retailer, spend the next six months forging stronger relationships with your customers. Review your customer service policies. When issues arise, don’t just say you’re sorry. Go out of your way to make things right! Communicate value-adds that are meaningful for your customers.

When it comes to purchasing from you or a competitor, give shoppers a reason to choose you. If you rely on price alone, you’ll eventually lose.