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How to effectively launch your LoudCrowd ambassador program
How to effectively launch your LoudCrowd ambassador program

An effective launch strategy is key to the long term health of your UGC.

Al Nafea avatar
Written by Al Nafea
Updated over a week ago

You've built out your landing page, set up your rewards, and designed your email/SMS comms. Now what? As a last step before going live, you'll want to lay out a concrete launch strategy and timeline. Adhering to that strategy is going to be crucial to ensure a momentous launch. Check out the below for key insights to propel you towards your UGC goals.

Announcement Email

An announcement email is your quickest way to reach all of your customers. Unlike any other outreach method, you'll almost always have an email address for the people who have purchased your products in the past. While blasting an email to your entire database is always recommended in order to maximize sign ups, resorting to particularly crafted segments is an acceptable first step as well.

Your announcement email should accomplish three things: get your customers excited about the perks, explain to customers how easy it is to earn rewards, and drive traffic to your program landing page.

While you can easily reach hundreds of thousands of people relatively quickly, email unfortunately has a minimal conversion rate. Most emails will yield about a 1% conversion rate, with the most engaged customer bases barely reaching 2%. This is due to the weaker nature of email in terms of deliverability, open, and click through rates. As such, it is strongly recommended that email blasts are coupled with other outreach strategies.

Finally, to maximize your email blast, you should send a follow up email to anyone who did not open the initial.

Announcement SMS Campaign

Compared to email, SMS has significantly higher delivery, open, and click-through rates. Where possible, SMS is always recommended in conjunction or as a replacement to email for several reasons detailed here. Undoubtedly, incorporating SMS will accelerate program sign ups.

While SMS has a higher conversion rate, it's likely that you don't have nearly as many valid phone numbers as you do emails. As such, it is strongly recommended that SMS blasts are coupled with other launch strategies.

Social Announcement

Social announcements are a great way to reach your most engaged customers. The customers that follow your brand on social media are likely the group most active on social and most willing to talk about your brand. A great social media strategy incorporates an Instagram story series, in-feed post, Reel, and TikTok announcement.

Instagram story series should announce the program, detail the perks, and explain the program. Ensure story series are subsequently saved as a highlight for future referencing. In-feed posts should accomplish the same via a carousel. An accompanying Reel, featuring a member of your social team explaining the program, has demonstrated success for many as well. Your TikTok announcement should combine all of the above creatively via today's trending sounds. Collectively, this holistic approach ensures long-term success of your program launch.

Story Series:

Instagram In-Feed Post:

Unfortunately, social media is saturated with branded content, making it difficult for announcements to triumph in social's attention economy. As a result, brands can expect social media announcements to yield about a tenth of a percentage of their follower count into joining an ambassador program.

Personalized DMs

Personalized DMs, while not scalable into the thousands manually, are the most powerful way to recruit members into a program. Brands can expect to convert upwards of 50% of their current customers by shooting them a personalized DM. Brands can expect to convert nearly 10% of new customers (think people who haven't previously mentioned you on social media or purchased your products) into a program. Ensure your DMs are tailored towards whether your program is all customer versus exclusive. Examples of each, across a variety of different brands, is included below.

Compiling a list of potential ambassadors to DM is easy by leveraging LoudCrowd's Segment and Social CRM functionality. Refer to this article to create your list of potential DM recipients.

On top of that, Auto Story Replies can help you scale your DM outreach efforts. Auto Story Replies enable you to automatically invite anyone who tags you in a story to a LoudCrowd program. Refer to this article to learn more about leveraging Auto Story Replies for program recruitment and other purposes.

Now that you've launched... how to keep the momentum going?

Website Push

Adding landing page links throughout your e-commerce site is a low touch way to continuously drive new traffic to your landing page. There are several areas to add your landing page link:

  • Banner at the top of your site

  • Link in a drop down

  • Footer

  • Pop up immediately after purchase [most effective]

You can expect a handful of sign ups per week (5-10 sign ups), depending on your website traffic, simply by implementing one or more of the above.

If you have an existing points loyalty program, think Yotpo or Loyalty Lion, adding a button to your rewards page is another easy way to get sign ups. Read here for more on integrating with Yotpo and here for integrating with Loyalty Lion.

Post Transaction Notifications

Post transaction emails/SMS have the highest open rates amongst all types of emails/SMS because customers are actively searching for order confirmations and shipping details. Post transaction additions can manifest in one of two ways: as a banner at the bottom of order confirmations or as entire subsequent emails/SMS days after the order. In fact, post transaction emails have seen conversion rates upwards of 4%, with post transaction SMS being even higher.

QR Codes

QR codes are a great way to combine a delivery/experience with a call to action. Individuals are going to be most excited to talk about their new products/experiences when they first receive / experience them. If your business delivers new products to individuals, include QR code inserts within each package. Ensure the insert explains the program and links to the landing page. If you are an experiential based business, like a restaurant, scatter QR codes throughout your establishments. Similarly, explain the program, perks, and how-tos, while having a clear call to action via QR code.

Consistent Social Pushes

Ensure you are saving your story series to your highlights and that your in-feed announcement posts are pinned. On top of that, you should frequently feature the content coming from your ambassadors, highlighting their awesomeness, while driving others to join the program simultaneously. Additional story announcements, in-feed posts, Reels, and TikTok pushes are recommended, at least on a monthly basis. As mentioned above, Auto Story Replies are a great way to recruit new individuals engaging with your brand on social.

Include the link to the ambassador program in the bio of your socials, especially if you have a linktree or any other similar directory.

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