Does anyone buy anything online without having read at least a few reviews? Apparently not! Stats on this subject abound, but let’s start with these three;
Turns out, people trust people a lot more than they trust companies, which means if you’re selling a product, you need people talking about how great your product is if you want to supercharge your sales. But how do you get your customers to leave reviews for you to share with prospective customers?
Getting reviews for your products
Getting reviews for your products starts with understanding the product buying cycle.
Broadly, the cycle looks like this:
Awareness
customer becomes aware of the product.
Consideration
customer considers options and product itself by doing research and reading product reviews.
Purpose
customer purchases the product.
To move a prospective customer through the cycle from Awareness to Purpose you need to win them over during the consideration phase and this is where reviews can be a game-changer for your business. Given what we know about the power of reviews (remember those stats), it makes sense to have reviews for your prospects to read as they consider their purchase and compare you with your competitors.
But reviews are also great for SEO. Because Google rewards you for regularly updating content on your website, adding reviews on a consistent basis will help your customers find you online in the first place.
Here’s how…
When you connect Maropost Commerce Cloud with all-in-one marketing platform Mailchimp, you have the ability to automate a series of product follow up emails, triggered by a purchase through your Maropost Commerce Cloud store. We talked about the types of product follow up emails you should be sending in this blog post.
As Mailchimp says, this series of emails is an excellent way to keep the conversation going with your customers, get feedback and reviews and recommend other products.
A Review Campaign can be one, or several emails within the product follow up campaign, triggered when someone makes a purchase. These emails are designed and written specifically to collect reviews from your customers. The emails can be automated to suit your own marketing needs, which means you choose when they are sent and to which customers (repeat, new, specific product or product category).
Asking for reviews doesn’t need to be cheesy or sleazy!
Here are some tips to help you automate an effective email review campaign:
- Keep it simple, with a clear call to action; making it easy for your customers to leave the review.
- Ensure the email is consistent with your brand so it’s immediately recognisable to your customer – Maropost Commerce Cloud for Mailchimp makes this easy for you.
- Offer a reward such as a discount off future purchases. Incentivising reviews have 2 big benefits; they help increase review collection rates and they help drive customers back to your website once the review is completed.
- Consider how to make the experience of leaving a review fun – infographics and attractively designed surveys can help with this.
- Make your email personable by using their name – remember this email is going to your customer. Show them you value their business by using their name within the email.
…about getting reviews for your awesome products!
