Using UGC in email and Klaviyo flows
Customer photos and video outperform studio creative in email because they read as real. Put cleared UGC across welcome, abandonment, post-purchase and win-back flows.
The brand's Klaviyo welcome flow ran three emails and zero customer photos. Drop one customer photo into each email and click-through jumped by a margin the email team had stopped expecting. The photo did not need to be perfect. It needed to be real.
In this article
Email is still one of the highest-return channels in ecommerce, and most of it is filled with brand-made creative. Swap some of that for customer content and the same flows tend to do more, because a customer photo reads as real where a studio banner reads as an ad.
Why does UGC lift email performance?
An inbox is a sceptical place. Polished brand creative announces itself as marketing. A real customer photo or video does not. It carries the same credibility it has on the product page, and it makes the email feel like a recommendation rather than a push. The mechanism is the same one that lifts the PDP, documented in how UGC lifts conversion: evidence beats assertion, and the email inherits that effect.
Where does UGC fit across the Klaviyo flows?
- Welcome flow: a wall of happy customers as first-impression proof the brand is trusted.
- Browse and cart abandonment: UGC of the exact product the shopper looked at, answering the doubt that stalled them.
- Post-purchase: customer content that reassures the new buyer and prompts them to create their own.
- Win-back: real customer results as a reason for a lapsed customer to look again.
| Flow | UGC to use | Job it does |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome | A grid of varied customer photos | First-impression proof the brand is real and used |
| Browse / cart abandonment | UGC of the exact product viewed | Answers the doubt that stalled the purchase |
| Post-purchase | How-they-use-it clips, a prompt to post | Reassures the new buyer; seeds fresh UGC |
| Win-back | Recent results from real customers | A concrete reason to look again |
Doing it well
- 1Use only cleared content: your licence must cover marketing use, not just on-site.
- 2Keep it relevant: the UGC should show the product the email is actually about.
- 3Keep images light: heavy email images hurt deliverability and load.
- 4Link it back: the customer content should lead to the product page, which carries more of the same.
The licence point is the one that trips brands up: content cleared for your website is not automatically cleared for email or ads, so scope rights per use the way the UGC rights and permissions guide sets out.
Sources & notes
- 1Klaviyo, lifecycle flow benchmarks · Flow structure and creative performance.
- 2Bazaarvoice, UGC in marketing channels · UGC creative versus studio creative.
- 3Nosto, Consumer UGC research · Shopper trust and purchase influence of UGC.
+0%
Median PDP CVR lift
Idukki dataset, 2,400+ brands
+0%
Lift among UGC-engagers
Bazaarvoice 2025 SEI
0%
Consumers say UGC highly impacts purchase
Nosto
0.0x
Video review vs text-only
PowerReviews, 2023 baseline
Continue reading
8 pieces in this clusterThese long-form pieces on the Idukki blog link back to this article, go deeper on the cluster.
- Strategy
Syndicating UGC to Google Shopping & Meta Catalog Ads
Your product feed already carries titles and prices. Add verified ratings and customer photos to it and the same Shopping and catalog ads earn more clicks at the same spend.
- Strategy
Using UGC Across Klaviyo, Gorgias & Recharge (Lifecycle, Support, Subscription)
Pull the same library of customer photos and videos into Klaviyo flows, Gorgias replies, and Recharge win-backs from one source of truth, so every lifecycle touch carries proof instead of stock copy.
- Strategy
Adding UGC to a Custom Storefront with the Idukki REST API + Webhooks
A custom or headless storefront can show shoppable UGC without dropping in a vendor widget: fetch a gallery over a REST API, render it in your own React or Vue components, and keep it fresh with webhooks. Here is the integration path, with representative code.
- Strategy
How to ask customers for reviews, and actually get them
Ask once the customer has used the product, make it one tap with media invited by name, follow up once: most under-collection is timing and friction, not refusal.
- Strategy
Repurposing one piece of UGC across every channel
A great customer video should not die in one gallery. Clear it broadly, organise it so it stays findable, and one asset works across your PDP, ads, email and social.
- Strategy
Threads as an emerging UGC source
Threads is young, conversational, and a growing place where customers talk about what they bought. Here is how to treat it as a UGC source without overcommitting to it.
- Strategy
SMS and WhatsApp social proof: UGC in the messaging channel
Messaging is the highest-open-rate channel a brand has. A review snippet or a link to customer UGC, used carefully, makes SMS and WhatsApp messages convert harder. Here is how to do it without burning the channel.
- Strategy
Omnichannel UGC: consistent proof everywhere a shopper meets you
Omnichannel UGC means one cleared, tagged library feeding every surface, so the proof reads the same in an ad, on the PDP and in email. The weakest surface sets the trust level.
More from Rohin Aggarwal
- Industry playbook
How to run a UGC competition that fills your gallery, online and in-store
A prize plus a deadline plus a clear ask turns a trickle of UGC into a stream. The runbook: five formats, a schedule, copy templates.
- Conversational commerce
Why we built the Conversational PDP
A Conversational PDP answers the silent question that drives most product-page exits: curated Q&A first for the common doubts, an AI concierge scoped to your own data second.
- Strategy
PDP before and after UGC: what actually changes on the page
Add verified customer photos, video and reviews to the middle scroll of a brand-only PDP and conversion lifts. Here is what moves, scroll by scroll, and where "just add UGC" gets oversold.