Getting online reviews is one of the best ways to boost your business. Reviews give ‘social proof’ of your brand’s quality, reputation, and authority. Getting good, positive reviews help to influence consumers’ decision to buy your products or services.
Most people only leave reviews when they totally love a product or totally hate it. This means that the only way to get online reviews from your other customers is to ask them for one.
What is the best way to get reviews? Do you think that texting or email is the best way to elicit reviews from your customers?
At Starloop, we have found that email, rather than texting, is the best way to encourage your customers to leave an online review. For example, one of our members, “Odds On Home Inspections” have received over 880 reviews without sending one text to ask for them.
Although we live in a mobile world, you never know when the best time to send out texts is. Your customers could be in the middle of an important meeting, they could in the middle of a crisis, or they may be wanting to relax.
This means you’re essentially guessing whether it’s a good time to text them – and taking a risk that right now is actually not a great time to be texting (e.g. annoying) them.
Another reason why texting is inferior is that it is difficult to correlate text messages to specific actions. In other words, you have no way of knowing if your customer has responded to the text or not. Unfortunately, you could end up irritating a satisfied customer by texting out requests for reviews when they have already left one.
Why Email is the Best Way to Get Reviews
Why is email the best way to get reviews from happy customers? There are a number of reasons.
First of all, people usually read emails when they have a spare moment. Even if they have instant notifications turned on, they will check their email when they have time. This means that you’ll rarely cause irritation by sending out emails.
Another reason why emails are more effective than texting is that you can track customer behavior.
With Starloop, the user enters details of customers who have used their services. The customer receives an email with a request to leave a review. There is also an incentive for the customer to do this; a tree is planted for every online review.
There could be many reasons why a customer doesn’t respond to the first email. The email could have been lost, forgotten about, or ignored for some other reason. The customer will then receive a friendly second email with a reminder. If they respond and leave a review, that is it. If they don’t reply to the second one, a third email will be sent.
In this way, friendly pressure is applied with incentives for the customer to leave a review in line with Google’s online review policy. If it is clear that the customer is not interested in leaving a review. They don’t receive any more emails.
In the end, the emails are not invasive and they don’t arrive at inopportune moments. There is another factor to consider. When a person checks their email, they are usually in a positive frame of mind to respond.
How to Get More Online Reviews
Of course, asking for reviews in an email is just one step in increasing the number of reviews you receive. It is important that you have a well-thought-out strategy for getting online reviews.
One of the best ways is to create meaningful incentives. Why not offer an incentive that makes you stand out with something different? At Starloop, a reviewer’s positive action will do something positive for the environment as a tree gets planted for every online review.
Starloop’s review management system plants one tree for every review that our members receive. For example, with our case example of Odds On Home Inspection services, over 800 trees have been planted due to reviews left on that website.
Another way to boost the number of reviews you receive is to make the review process as simple as possible.
Need to get reviews? Get in touch with our reputation experts at Starloop to find out how you can increase your revenues by increasing your reviews.
