Collect user-generated content from customers

The best customer to ask is someone who has used the product long enough to love it and recently enough to still be excited about it. Kite looks for those customers in three places.

• Your order history. With your online store connected to Mailchimp, Kite reads your customers, their orders, and the products they bought. It can find, for example, everyone who bought the rain jacket two to four weeks ago, which gives the jacket time to arrive and see some weather.
• Your support conversations. With Intercom connected, Kite reads your conversations in full and finds the ones that ended well: the customer whose sizing question got sorted out and who wrote back "perfect, love it." That's a person who feels good about your brand right now.
• Your inbox. With Gmail connected, Kite searches your mail for customers who have written to thank you or to tell you how they're using the product. They have already shown they're willing to share.

Kite also decides who not to ask. A customer with an open complaint, a recent return, or an unanswered support ticket shouldn't receive a cheerful request for photos, so Kite leaves them out and tells you why. If you sell several products, Kite favors the ones where customer photos would help most, such as a new product with few reviews or a product your ads are about to feature.

A good request asks one specific customer for one specific kind of photo or video. "Share your photos with us!" gives the customer a job with no instructions. "Would you send us a photo of your jacket out on a walk? A rainy one is even better" gives them something they can do the next time they're outside.

Kite writes each request from what it knows about the product and the customer. A typical request names the product they bought, suggests one or two shots that would help, explains in a sentence where the photo might appear, and asks them to reply with the photo attached. It also asks for permission in plain words, such as "If you're happy for us to use it on our website and in our ads, just say so when you reply." That way one reply carries both the photo and the yes.

Kite adjusts the ask to the product and the format you need. For a skincare product, it might ask for a short before-and-after video. For a piece of furniture, it might ask for a photo of the room it ended up in. If you offer something in return, such as a discount on the next order or a feature on your Instagram, Kite writes that into the request. Every request is written in your brand voice, so it sounds like the same company that sent the order confirmation.

Kite sends each request where the customer is most likely to answer it, and it shows you the requests and their recipients before anything goes out.

• From your Gmail address. A personal note from a real person gets more replies than a campaign, so Kite uses your Gmail for the customers who matter most: repeat buyers, people who have already written to you, and anyone you know by name. It can send the email for you, or leave it in your Drafts folder so you can add a personal line and send it yourself.
• Inside an Intercom conversation. When a support conversation ends on a happy note, Kite can reply in that same conversation with a short request. The customer is already talking to you, so a quick "glad that worked out, would you send us a photo of it in use?" feels natural. Kite tags the conversation so your team can find every request it has made.
• As a Mailchimp campaign. For a larger group, such as everyone who bought in the last month, Kite writes a Mailchimp campaign, sends you a test, and sends it to a segment of those customers once you approve. Customers reply to the campaign with their photos.

Kite asks before it sends an email or replies to a customer by default. Once you're happy with how the requests read, you can let Kite send them on its own.

Many customers mean to send a photo and then forget, so a short follow-up often brings in more photos than the first request. Kite reads your sent mail to see who hasn't answered and, about a week later, follows up inside the original Gmail thread so the customer sees the first request right below it. For Mailchimp campaigns, Kite reads the report to see who opened the request, and it can resend the campaign with a new subject line to the customers who didn't.

As replies come in, Kite keeps them organized. In Gmail, it creates labels and filters so every reply to a request lands under a label such as "Customer photos," and it opens the attachments to see what arrived. It can tell a sharp, well-lit photo of the product in use from a blurry shot of the shipping box. In Intercom, it tags the conversations where customers replied. Anyone on your team can also drop photos or videos that customers sent some other way, such as through a text message, into the Kite web app conversation, and Kite adds them to the same review.

The permission you need to use a customer's photo is their own written yes, and the safest place for it is right next to the photo. Because Kite asks for permission in the request itself, most replies carry both. Kite reads each reply to check that the customer agreed, and to what. "Sure, use it anywhere" is a different answer from "happy for you to post it on Instagram."

When a customer sends a photo without saying yes, Kite drafts a short reply in the same thread asking whether you can use it and where. It sorts the threads in Gmail by where they stand, such as received, permission given, or permission still needed, so you can see at a glance which photos are cleared to use. When a customer says they only want their first name shown, or no name at all, Kite follows that wherever it uses their photo.

Kite brings you the strongest photos and videos with a suggestion for where each one belongs. A photo of the jacket on a rainy trail might make a good image ad for a wet-weather campaign. A short video of a customer unboxing the product might suit the product page. A set of photos from different customers might become a carousel post.

Once you agree, Kite does the work. It writes the ad copy for Meta, TikTok, and other platforms around the photo, checking every line against each platform's limits, and delivers the batch for your team to review. On a website it hosts, it adds the photos to your product pages and publishes them when you approve. It can also edit a photo, such as cropping it for a vertical ad or removing a busy background. When Kite makes a video for social media, it uses footage your customers sent and you cleared before it generates anything new.

Kite keeps track of what the routine is producing. It counts how many customers it asked, how many replied, and how many photos you were able to use. It reads Mailchimp reports to see which requests got opened and clicked. On a site Kite hosts, it can compare how product pages perform before and after customer photos go up. Kite uses what it learns to change the next round of requests, such as asking a week later, asking for video instead of photos, or leading with a different shot idea.

Customer content stays fresh only if the asking keeps happening, so Kite can run the whole routine on a schedule. You might agree that every Monday, Kite finds the customers who bought two to four weeks ago and the support conversations that ended well the week before, writes the requests, and brings them to you for approval. The same schedule can check the threads from earlier weeks and follow up with anyone who hasn't answered.

Each week's results arrive in a single update: how many people Kite asked, who replied, which photos are cleared to use, and what it plans to do with them.