5 Tips to Rev Up Your Customer Reviews With Email

In the mad drive to build credibility for your brand, few avenues carry as much weight as customer reviews. With more than two-thirds of global consumers trusting the opinions posted by other consumers online, these social signals can make a giant impact on your overall marketing success.

If you don’t already have a plan for encouraging customers to recommend your products or services, it’s time to get started. Email can be a fantastic tool for beefing up your reviews-so long as you follow these best practices.

Tip 1: Stay On Brand

Your brand is your marketing equity, so wear it loud and proud. Every email you send should match the tone, style, look and feel of your brand, so your customers enjoy a consistent, cohesive experience. This inspires brand loyalty.

It’s clear the marketers at Victoria’s Secret know their brand intimately (pun intended!), because they ask for the review in a way that’s both on brand and on target:

Tip 2: Make It Easy

We live in an era where “busy” is the most common response to the question, “How have you been?” Everyone always seems to be running 100 miles per hour. Making rating a purchase too complex or time-consuming for your customer probably means losing the opportunity.

American Eagle Outfitters makes the review process quick and easy by letting the customer select the number of stars for the review right in the email:

Tip 3: Make It Personal

I love the way ThisWear, a clothing retailer on Amazon.com, turns its email into a personal request. We immediately see the email has been sent by a real person (Kayla even included her picture), and we have to learn more about the company’s story. After reading all of this, of course we want to help them.

Tip 4: Reward the Customer

Keep in mind, your customers are always wondering, “What’s in it for me?” While plenty of people are willing to post a review simply because they love a product, including a small offer with your request can boost your response rate even more.

Consider how Best Buy entices the customer with the carrot of 25 points added to the customer’s loyalty account. It’s a small token of gratitude that can mean a lot.

Tip 5: Don’t Worry About Being Fancy

Euromaids is a relatively small house-cleaning service in the Chicago area. For this organization, reputation is everything. That’s why it does everything it can to boost its reviews on Yelp. This email may not be fancy, but it’s sincere, it’s personal, it offers the customer a great reward and it’s hugely effective.

Customer reviews are essential to your brand’s continued success, and leveraging email can help you create the buzz you need to take your business to the next level. By following the examples set by these brands, you can fill your marketing arsenal with the words of plenty of happy customers.

The quickest way to a customer’s heart is through a personalized email. Learn who your customers are and improve your engagement with Email Intelligence. Try a free match test today!