To stand out in a noisy digital crowd, brands always search for creative ways to showcase their benefits. A solid digital marketing strategy includes many aspects of brand promotion, and customer reviews occupy a very important place in it. For some demographics, positive customer reviews are the best proof of the company’s worth, as the vast majority of millennials and GenZ disregard conventional advertising and focus on user-generated content while researching brands they aren’t familiar with.
But reviews are way more than just a means to prove your worth. They also offer a unique opportunity to collect genuine customer feedback, discover your products’ flaws and, consequently, find solutions to eliminating those flaws in the future. At the same time, encouraging customers to share reviews is not always easy — most people today have very hectic schedules, which means that the service has to be either strikingly good or exceptionally bad to inspire sharing feedback without any extra incentive from a brand.
The good news is that customers can be inspired to leave honest feedback — with just a little help from the company. Below, we will discuss the best strategies to encourage more customer reviews and explain how top brands build meaningful connections with their clients.
Consider the Best Timing to Request Reviews
Marketing is all about the right timing, and the same is true for asking clients to review your product or services. There is no universal timeframe here — everything depends on business and exact product specifics. So, if you’re looking for food venue reviews, it makes sense to encourage visitors to share their feedback shortly after the meal — possibly even mention this straight after you’ve taken their check. But if you sell kitchen equipment, you should give clients some time to use your product first because it boosts your chances of receiving valuable feedback instead of a generic “good price, quick delivery, thanks a lot.”
Clearly, the biggest challenge here is figuring out that perfect timeframe. On the one hand, customers need some time to figure out your product’s benefits and limitations to come up with honest feedback the brand and other prospects will find useful. On the other hand, the excitement from the purchase should still be there — you can’t expect someone to write a detailed review of a coffee grinder months after the purchase, when they already take that piece of kitchen equipment for granted.
Here, the only effective suggestion is to keep A/B testing — it takes some trial and effort, no doubt, but this is the only way to ensure you figure out that perfect timing for each of the products you market.
Personalize Review Requests to a Maximum
Even though automation software saves us tons and time and effort, finding creative ways to personalize the messages and make them relatable is still the primary role of an email marketing specialist. There is so much that software can do today, but real email personalization is not just about addressing the recipient by name. It is about segmenting all clients into carefully targeted email lists and sending each category different promo materials. The same logic applies to encouraging reviews — make sure the email looks as human and personal as possible. In other words — segment, segment, and segment once again — the narrower, the better.
Explain Feedback Importance & Offer Incentives
As you contact customers with your requests for feedback, it makes sense to explain why reviews are so important. The best policy here is to make it all about the customer. Everyone understands that brands love five-star reviews because those improve their online reputation. But smart brands make use of a customer-centric approach and emphasize the importance of constantly improving their products or services — and that is a way better reason to urge honest feedback.
A good example here is Hyatt hotel corporation that scored 80 in customer satisfaction — quite above the industry average of 75. The brand achieves this through sending their customers surveys after each stay and making full use of the social listening. They also offer incentives for each completed survey — up to 500 points on a bonus account that can be later converted into factual discounts on the next stay with the hotel chain.
Still, useful as tangible incentives are, a way more important thing is establishing that personal connection and showing customers that you truly care. Apple, for example, never bothers with actual discounts but the corporation always asks customers to review their stores after each visit. This policy also reaps generous rewards because it sends a very clear message — the brand is relentless in ensuring only the best customer service for its users and is always ready to listen to honest feedback. No wonder that Apple customers gladly reciprocate the gesture and praise their beloved brand on every corner.
Leave No Review Unnoticed
The best brands, invested in nurturing meaningful relationships with their clients, always respond to customer feedback — and this dialogue goes beyond a generic ‘thank you’ under each review. Ideally, the replies have to be manually written and personalized. In some cases, generative AI can help with that, but if you do not have to handle too many reviews, a personal response is a better strategy, especially when it comes to negative feedback or reviews that voice suggestions on improving the product or service.
Responding to social conversations about your products or services is another good strategy to show customers that you care. Think about it this way — every social mention is a chance to start a dialogue that could help build a lasting relationship with a customer. If Tesla CEO Elon Musk takes time to respond to X mentions about his brainchild, so can other brands.
Simplify the Process for Customers
This may be one of the most important aspects to work on — make reviewing as easy as it can possibly get. No matter how great your product may be, or how invested customers may feel, you can’t expect people to overcome a series of technical challenges before they can publish a review. One of the obvious steps to simplify this process is to send customers a review generator link to a relevant platform directly over email.
However, you should not disregard social reviews either — highlight relevant review buttons on all the accounts you manage. The same stands for your website — carefully place CTAs and make sure leaving a review is easy. Some brands might even consider review presets or semi-automatic review forms that evaluate different aspects of a product or service, i.e.,price, quality, delivery, or anything else that applies. Such pre-made forms may not be as good as manually-written reviews, but they are easier to fill in — after all, not everyone is prepared to write an essay about a new gadget or a domestic appliance.
Finally, don’t get discouraged if your first review request is left unnoticed. As already mentioned, most people have hectic lifestyles today. So, follow-up once or twice (but no more) — often, follow-up emails have higher response rates.
These strategies are the main building blocks any brand needs to inspire customer feedback and improve its visibility online. But of course, your customer interaction journey should not be limited to these steps alone. Keep in mind that customer-centric brands always win in the long run — so always look for ways to adapt to your clients’ needs. In essence, this is the best strategy that always pays off.