Capturing and marketing reviews is a great way to give your products or services "social proof" for potential customers.
More reviews and better ratings help you harness the power of 3rd party online review sites to improve your website's visibility and ranking in search. With multiple ways to add 1st and 3rd party reviews to your website, you can use your reviews to turn your site into a sales funnel.
Here are 8 great tips to increase your online review conversions
Tip #1 - Subject Line
This is the critical first step in the funnel. If your email doesn't get opened then you can't get your clients into a review funnel. A great subject will be compelling.
Tip #2 - A/B testing your Subject Line
A/B testing of your subject line is a worthwhile activity to see which creates more responses. To do so, turn off Communications Method: Automatic and manually send out a group of emails with a unique headline and see which results in increased feedback. It is helpful if you have more rather than less recipients to improve the results.
Tip #3 - Email Text
Let your clients know exactly what to expect about what you are asking them to do. It is against FCC guidelines to incent them with coupons or offers but often just asking them to do it as a favor to help you improve can be motivating.
Tip #4 - Selection of Review Sites.
Google has high barriers to leaving a review. Selecting a site that is more accessible might increase the number of folks that will leave a review. A review at Facebook or Citysearch is infinitely more valuable than no review and everybody has a Facebook login that will work at either site. Our research shows that Facebook has become the world's second most popular review site behind Google. It is particularly popular with women.
Tip #5 - Follow up Email.
Be sure that if you are using the automatic communication method that the box is checked for an automatic follow up email to be sent after three days.
Tip #6 - Reducing the Positive Feedback Page Threshold for reviews.
If you ask more of your customers for reviews you increase the chances of getting a review
Tip #7 - Set the Positive Feedback Page Threshold to Zero.
This seems risky but recent tests have shown that when combined with a compelling email explaining exactly what the user would expect in terms of feedback and reviews led to a significant increase in the number of reviews. Our stats show that roughly 95% of all feedback is overwhelmingly positive and and another 2.5% is neutral. That means the chance of someone leaving you bad feedback AND a bad review is less than 2.5%. A risk well worth taking.
Tip #8 - Upload a high quality company logo and feedback page banner.
Adding a high quality logo and banner will drastically improve the look and feel of your feedback request email as well as feedback page. Do not skip this step. Good looking pages and emails will convert better. If you need a professional logo or banner contact us
If you do not have a review management platform set up please feel free to contact us