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Have you ever wondered what the best way is to get your customers to review your eCommerce store? If you answered yes, then you are at the right place. Now, there are several ways to approach this and you may have tried out a few but none of them seemed to have worked like you wanted them too. So, what is the best way to ask for feedback and how do you even go about it? Yes, you may have a lot of happy customers and also repeat business, but if your reviews don’t reflect that then this could be stopping your business growing.
Customer reviews can be one of the strongest tools in your eCommerce sales toolbox, it’s understandable that you may get frustrated that your ‘happy’ customers aren’t sharing that happiness with others.
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Customer reviews can be one of the strongest tools in your eCommerce sales toolbox, it’s understandable that you may get frustrated that your ‘happy’ customers aren’t sharing that happiness with others.
In order to help you build a plan to convert those happy customers into satisfied reviewers you should start looking at your options, and while the use of email is not the only way to encourage your customers to leave reviews, it’s still a very useful channel to start with when you’re looking to solicit reviews from exactly the right people.
So, if you have tried email and not got much success before, this might be finally the fix you’re looking for.
Identify Customers Likely To Leave Reviews
Sending a generic email is just taking the blanket approach and using this method to ask for feedback might not get you the results you are looking for, and that to generate reviews, you should be focussing on customers who’ve recently (or consistently) had a positive experience with your business. These are the people most likely to post a review in the first place.
If you’re wondering how to find who those customers are for your brand, there is a way how you can target the people most likely to leave you reviews and glowing ones at that.
Have these customers bought more than one product from you? Have they reordered the same product multiple times? These are the types of indicators that they’re a loyal and happy customer who would be more inclined to leave positive reviews.
Another data point you could look at is the value order. People who spend a lot on your site are likely to get a lot of value out of your products, and they’re an ideal customer to ask for a review versus a customer who bought just one cheap product to try it out for the first time.
Ask For Customer Reviews
Now that you are building a profile of which customers might be poised to leave you that all-important feedback and hopefully great feedback at that. It’s now time to start asking. This is where the power of email can really help you make a solid impression, and increase your chances of getting those reviews rolling in.
The beauty of email is you can have a one to one and very personalised conversation with someone, but you can extrapolate that and have it at scale with dynamic content.
When you are asking for reviews, its better to learn more towards a plain text email, a format that looks and feels personal, instead of a template that is heavily over-designed. Use a bit of personalisation in the email so include details such as addressing the customer by their first name, or maybe showcasing the product they’ve purchased as a reminder.
The above example would be a good idea to send to a segment of customers who have purchased a specific product more than once. Additionally, you can use your email tools to identify people who haven’t opened or clicked on the email after some period of time, and resend it just to those people but make sure you include a new subject line.
As you send these email to your list, it’s important to keep track of which ones are generating meaningful results, and where you might want to make these adjustments to your strategy, segmentation or email copy.
Automate From There
Luckily, once you have found that magic formula for getting reviews via email. It’s something you are able to automate. However, automation should be your last step and not your first.
When it comes to email, it’s important to work backwards. You start by identifying goals which in this case it positive feedback. It’s then you can deliberately look for people who inclined to give you good feedback but maybe haven’t done so because they haven’t been prompted. Once you find them, you look for similarities between these people, which in this case might be repeat buyers.
Now that you have figured out the right people to message, you can have your email trigger automatically after someone places a second order, which means you can send your request for a review on autopilot at just the right time. That frees you up to continuous monitoring results and optimising the email content, as well as parsing the feedback customers send your way.
If however, you are fairly new to the world of email marketing, pairing this advice with the right tool might seem like a lot to take in. Luckily, there are a number of email marketing tools that can integrate with your online stores and help you implement this strategy.
Start With Email, Then Build Up
Sending personalised notes at scale to happy customers is a great place to start gathering those reviews for your products, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. You can take what you have learned from your early results and expand to other platforms, especially ones you know your customers really love.
If your customers frequently Instagram your products then glowing captions, that could be a great place to source reviews in a more hands-on way. But as a very first step, start with the scalable strategy that can connect you with your existing happy customers: email.