Two-thirds of shoppers will trust online reviews more than their ex-partners.
That’s an interesting fact. But, as a brand, you need to get those reviews.
And you need to do it clever.
(More clever than your competitors, though).
This post will show you how to do that.
Send a Clever Review Request Email
Let’s start with the obvious one.
Without any doubt, emails are the most effective way to ask for reviews. Over the last 12 months, Loox customer review request emails helped to collect 5,844,506 reviews for our customers.
It comes as no surprise. Loox’s review request emails see an average open rate of 50%. But having high open rates are only half of the journey. You also need to write a really compelling email. An email that makes people want to leave a review.
If you’re a great copywriter, you’re lucky. Then this part will be fairly simple for you.
But if you’re struggling to come up with a great email, we have something for you. In this post, we cover how to craft a winning review request email. You’ll even get eight different templates you can use to convert buyers into raving fans who will leave a review. And if that's not enough, you can find more post-purchase email examples here.
Let's dive in!
Leverage SMS For More Reviews
Direct messaging through SMS is a straightforward and instant method to ask for reviews.
Studies show that people are more likely to see and respond to SMS than emails. According to eztexting.com, 90% of mobile phone users will read their SMS within three minutes.
To make this channel work for you, you have to be polite and concise when requesting reviews. The easier you make it for your customer, the more likely you'll get your reviews.
Want to send review request messages via SMS? Try our review request for Klaviyo integration.
Gather Reviews Using Your Website
Your website is where everything happens. It’s the place where you turn random visitors into lifelong fans. So why not use that to your advantage?
Placing review buttons on your website can become one of your most effective sources of reviews.
Here’s how multi-million dollar brand BlendJet does it on their product pages:
It just works.
You don’t need to hire a designer or even a developer to make them work. For Shopify stores, you can use our no-code solution.
The Old-School Way: Ask in Person
Asking for in-person reviews is often very effective for businesses with brick and mortars. Brand owners can interact directly with repeat customers to learn more about their shopping experience.
It’s different for digital brands. These companies may have to host (or attend) events to interact with their customers in-flesh. But it can pay off. In-person events allow brands to deeply connect with customers on an emotional base.
Events are also an opportunity to discover your customers' sentiments. Attendees are in the right mindset to share their opinions about your products. Otherwise, they wouldn’t participate in the first place.
But there’s a problem. Hosting in-person events are very expensive and take lots of time to plan and execute.
A Few More Clever Ways
All of the above-mentioned tactics work. In fact, these are the most converting ones. But as you scale, you might also want to scale your review request efforts.
So here are three more ways to ask for product reviews:
- Send review request messages via Facebook messenger.
- Ask for reviews through push notifications.
- Get more reviews with the help of WhatsApp.
Need help with setting these tactics up? No problem. You can find in-depth instructions here. Or just send us an email to support@loox.io – we’re available 24/7 for you.
Automate Clever Ways to Ask for Reviews
As much as reviews are essential, they can be a lot of work to ask for, gather and share with your customers. Doing this manually might work in the very early stages of a business, but definitely not if you want to grow. So why not let software take over all the heavy lifting for you?
Good customer review software generates, stores, and auto-posts reviews to your site. More reviews, less hassle.
Automation of the whole customer reviews process can be a golden opportunity to improve the customer experience on your site. With reviews gathered in real-time, you'll have an ever-growing source of social proof. Making your store a bit more trustworthy with every single review.
Incentivize Your Review Requests Program
Since we’re speaking about clever ways to generate product reviews, we can’t end this conversion by mentioning incentives. Giving customers something in return for their feedback helps boost conversion rates.
Incentives can help you increase response rates regardless of what method you use. A review request email that includes an incentive is likely to have a higher response rate than the one without an incentive.
By using Loox, you can offer a percentage discount or a fixed dollar discount. It’s up to you which one you chose.
Honest Appreciation to Attract Reviews
Saying “thank you” goes a long way.
It’s a simple but effective way to acknowledge customers' support. It's a form of appreciation that can make customers feel honored.
Needless to say, it needs to be honest and genuine. It's not the value of the token that goes with it that matters but the actual meaning behind the word “thank you.”
A great way to back up your real appreciation is by handing out the promised incentive in the same email you’re saying “thank you”.
Here’s the BlendJet way:
Take Advantage of “Happy Customer Moments”
I bet you have customers who are happy to use your products. The last thing you want to do is to miss out on a chance to encourage them to share an experience they're pleased with.
These happy customer moments are what turns customers into advocates. The happier someone is, the more likely they are going to leave a great (5-star) review. There’s no doubt about that. We’ve seen it more than a million times.
The kicker: You’ll not just acquire more product reviews, but also increase the chances of referrals.
And since we mentioned BlendJet a couple of times already, we do it again. They made more than $230K from their post-purchase referral program.
Here’s how it looks:
Ask Custom Questions
The best reviews are the ones that not just generically review the product, but give more insights. Contextual insights to be accurate.
Depending on the product, these can be:
- Specific usage of the product.
- Attributes of the customer (eg. if you’re selling skin-care products).
- Type of complementary products in use (eg. if you’re selling phone cases for Android and iPhones)
It not just helps a future customer understand your product faster and let them make an educated decision about the purchase, but also lets you build and connect a tribe. If shoppers see that like-minded people purchased the same product they’re considering buying, it increases the chance of conversions.
Here’s a great example:
Everyone who’s considering buying a blender for the same reason will instantly see that their search of a perfect product has (finally) come to an end.
Asking the right questions and then displaying the answers make a difference. Really.
Looking For More Clever Ways to Ask for Reviews?
Customer reviews will help your business become a trustworthy brand. Investing into strategies that capture and display genuine reviews is vital. For any size of businesses. From small to enterprise.
But we understand that you can’t spend 12 hours a day collecting reviews. You have better things to do. That’s why we built and optimized our Shopify app to do exactly that for you. On auto-pilot. Wanna try? It’s free for 14 days. Just click here.
Tim Kock
Tim has a puppy called Rosa. (He also does marketing at Loox).
