When we speak with our clients to assess goals, we hear the same thing over and over: more content. PowerReviews provides the engine to do so, but it’s important for you to provide some fuel — and with the benefit of our decade of experience in the user-generated content space, you can maximize content to drive more sales.
Send a Follow Up Email to Every. Single. Purchaser. (Including In-Store Purchasers!)
Your first and most important step in generating content is to send that follow up email. Getting the most out of the email requires the implementation of a few key best practices.
- Personalize it. Use the customer’s name and thank them for their purchase.
- Keep it simple. Remember that the purpose of this email is to solicit a review.
- Keep it short. The subject line should be less than 55 characters.
- Don’t distract from the write a review action. Try not to include any other calls-to-action or marketing language.
- Include an image and link to the product. Let the customer see their purchase.
In-Store Purchasers Matter — Don’t Forget About Them
If you have a brick and mortar store, soliciting reviews from in-store purchasers can make a significant difference in the volume of review content you’re able to collect. In May of this year, The Sports Authority began soliciting reviews from their in-store purchasers by leveraging their already existing transactional loyalty program to link customer email addresses with in-store purchases. This push combined with the implementation of a simple, mobile optimized email template resulted in a 178% increase in month-over-month content.
Mobile Optimization is Key
Based on PowerReviews’ client data, more than 50% customers are opening their emails on mobile devices — which means that follow up email that you’re sending is likely to be opened on your customer’s phone. PowerReviews’ follow up email solution is completely mobile-optimized and allows for a simple and elegant user experience. With our mobile template, customers saw up to a 20% increase in mobile conversion rates.
Having a mobile-responsive email isn’t enough — you also need a mobile-optimized write a review experience. Customers want to easily be guided from one step to the next, with consideration of details like clicking with your finger rather than a mouse. Our responsive write a review form, available to all clients, saw a 40-85% increase in mobile completion rates during its pilot phase.
Choose the Right ‘Write a Review’ Template
The write a review form itself should be intuitive with prominent star buttons and customized questions for the product that’s being reviewed. If it’s a couch that your customer is reviewing — don’t ask if the fit was too big, too small or true to size. If it’s a pair of pants, don’t ask if they’re good for decorating. Customers count on you knowing your product, so give them options that matter to them and that will matter to other customers. PowerReviews’ Tag Based approach makes this easy, with forms specific to 3,000 product categories.
Use Best Practices from Start to Finish
Generating content isn’t an exact science, but it can be managed with careful consideration of best practices and the flow from the initial purchase to writing a review.
- Sending a follow up email is essential, and will always be the first — and most important — way to solicit a review. Don’t forget offline shoppers when sending that email, in-store purchasers can be valuable content creators.
- Make it mobile-friendly. Since you have a 50% chance that your customer will open your email on their phones, you need to play the odds.
- Customize the write a review experience. PowerReviews offers more than 3,000 templates for a reason — so that you can ask the right questions. Customized templates take the guess work out of sharing an honest opinion of a purchase.
