If you're reading this, you probably know happy customers are hard enough to come by to try to maximize your review collection rates. CRM success really comes down to the right mix between segment, message, and call to action.And it works exactly the same way for review collection.We built seven review email templates for this post, each with a specific segment and trigger. We call that trigger "alibi": the idea is you need a valid pretext to be reaching outWe ordered the templates based on the size of the segments you can send them to: from smallest and most likely to review, to biggest and least likely to review (noisy).As a rule of thumb, don’t blast your whole contact list. Start small, optimize your segments and templates, and as you gain a better understanding of what actually drives reviews, move gradually towards bigger segments.
#1 The NPS promoter review email
NPS is really the first thing that comes to mind when looking for satisfied customers.If you're not familiar, NPS stands for Net Promoter Score. It's the classic "On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend XYZ to your friends and family?"Segment: If we stick to the definition, NPS promoters are those who answered 9 or 10 to that question. But you can extend the segment to include the "passives" (7 or 8). So your segment could be something like all the users or clients with an NPS score higher than 7.When to send: The idea of this template is to follow up almost immediately after the client answers the NPS survey. The easiest way to do this is to just send a follow-up email right after you capture the NPS answer. An even better way would be to immediately follow up on the survey screen. Users confirm their submission, and land on a thank you page asking if they'd be willing to make that feedback public.The email could look something like thisSubject line: Thank you for your feedback!
Hi {{first_name}}, thanks for giving us your feedback on {{product_name}}!I was wondering if you'd be open to making that feedback public?It really helps us get the word out and show what {{product_name}} can do.Here's the link. You can signup with email or linkedin, and you can decide whether you want your review to stay anonymous at the end of the form
#2 The How did we do? review email
NPS is great, but the reality is 95% of your customers never answered that survey. And as much as building products is incredibly hard, people love people, not products.That's why customer support interactions are incredibly valuable if you're hoping to generate positive reviews.Segment: Customers with a positive satisfaction score after a ticket is closedWhen to send: Keep it as simple as you can here. Most ticketing tools will have some sort of automated CSAT survey sent out to customers after you close a ticket. Once you get a positive score, follow up with an email asking if they'd be willing to make that feedback public.In an ideal world, you could even pre-fill whatever review survey you’re sending them to with their CSAT feedback (if any) – It's very usually a lot easier than it sounds if you play around with the survey URL from the platform.From: {{CS Agent first name}}Subject Line: Thank you!
Hi {{first_name}}, thank you for your feedback! I'm glad I was able to help you figure this out.I was wondering if you'd be open to making that feedback public?It only takes a minute, and it has incredible value for us.Here's the link. You can signup with email or linkedin, and you can decide whether you want your review to stay anonymous at the end of the form
#3 The congratulations review email
Still need more reviews? You can extend your review generation campaigns to all the users or customers who complete a somewhat important action.Segment: Active users that completed a specific action in the last X hoursWhen to send: Everything is in the action you pick. It needs to be significant enough that the user likely got to the “aha moment”, and completed by enough users to constitute a segment.Try to stay away from new features, beta programs and things like that, and focus on core features that you know the product handles perfectly.The email could look something like thisSubject line: Congratulations! 🎉
Hi {{first_name}}, looks like you {{action verb}} for the first time!It's might feel like a small step for you, but I hope it will be a giant leap for {{company name}}'s {{topic you're helping solve}}I thought I'd use the opportunity to ask you if you'd be willing to share your thoughts on {{product_name}} in public?It really helps us get the word out and show what {{product_name}} can do.{{Platform}} usually sends out coupons for $XX once reviews go liveHere's the link: you can signup with email or linkedin, and you can decide whether you want your review to stay anonymous at the end of the formThanks!!
#4 The How are we doing review email
If you're running out of valid pretexts, you can always refer to an action completed at a set number of days ago. That's the oldest trick in marketers' books, but it works quite well. You're essentially leveraging the exact same trigger as our congratulations email, only a little bit later, like 30 days or 60 days later.The only downside is you'll need to be able to filter out customers or users who churned or became inactive since they completed the action. Typically that wouldn't account for too many people – or you'd have bigger problems than getting reviews – but you really want to get this right or it might stir up unwanted conversations.Segment: Active users that completed an action X days agoWhen to send: Here, time is the main indicator of whether a contact is likely to be satisfied. That’s very imperfect, at best, so use with caution.As a rule of thumb, any user that has been sticking around and active for 3 - 4 months is a lot less likely to churn than a user that signed up less than 3 months ago. That’s the segment you’re going for.This template makes a lot of sense for actions that won’t yield immediate results. As an example, for reviewflowz, when customers activate a review flow, they get notifications whenever they get a new review. This can happen daily for bigger companies or once a month for smaller clients. The activation of a review flow is therefore a very imperfect trigger for a congratulations email since the value might not be obvious immediately.The way we handle this is by asking customers who received at least 3 reviews since signing up and signed up more than 7 days ago to review us. And our conversion rates aren’t too shabby 🙂Subject line: {{First Name}}, how are we doing?
Hey {{first name}}, I hope you're doing well.I'm reaching out because you've been using {{product_name}} for X days now, and I wanted to ask you if everything was going the way you want it to?Is there anything I can do to help?And if everything is to your liking, would you be willing to make that public on {{platform_name}}?It only takes a minute, and it has incredible value for the team.Thank you!
#5 The can you beat me review email
When all else fails, and you can't think of a valid reason to reach out, you can still try to reach out to your customers as long as you can think of a relevant pitch. Instead of a trigger, you can rely on demographics here.Segment: A specific demographic among your clients – For example, WordPress plugin users. Even if it might sound like a good idea, do not blast your entire contact list, it won’t work. While positive reviews are hard to come by, let’s not forget happy customers are what’s really difficult to generate.When to send: I'll use an example here. Back when we were working in an email marketing SaaS company, we needed a strong influx of reviews on the Wordpress plugin platform. We wanted to blast a more comprehensive segment than the ones we mentioned before in this post because plugin users only represented a small portion of our customer base, and you need a WordPress account to leave a review.But to get any sort of results, we needed an “alibi” to reach out.So I came up with this – admittedly goofy – idea of beating my time to drop a review. Results were surprisingly good (15% of the segmented contacts left a review), I think mostly because the pitch was in line with the somewhat “geeky” audience of WordPress agencies and developers.This is meant more as an example than anything else, I doubt this play would work on any audience, but the main idea is to show that you can (and should) always be creative to find a pretext to reach out.Obviously, you need to make it very personal to have any chance of getting this to work.Subject line: {{First name}}, can you beat 37 seconds?
Hi {{first_name}}, sorry for the cryptic subject line.We're looking for Wordpress reviews so I can convince our plugin squad that it's well worth investing more time into updating it, and I couldn't really think of a better way of reaching out.I tried to drop fake reviews, and got my time down to 37 seconds before I got in serious trouble with the wp.org team.So I thought I'd issue a challenge: can you beat 37 seconds?I'll personally send you a Mastercard virutal card for $XX if you can. And if you can't, be sure to let me know what your time was, we might have a consolation prize 😇Best,
#6 The follow-up review email
Segment: Some (experts?) would say you should only follow up with those who opened, or didn't open, or clicked, or decided to open and not click and then come back and click. I generally follow up with anyone who hasn't replied, but I try to make sure I don't include anyone who unsubscribed or replied. If you can ensure that, you'll be more than fine.When to send: Leave a few days after your first email (7 - 10 days) and be as clean as possible about removing anyone who did drop a review from that follow-up. This can be quite hard to setup though so don’t spend insane amounts of energy to remove the 1% of very exceptional cases, they’ll forgive one irrelevant email.Subject line: RE: {{previous subject}} – Don't overthink this, thread it.
Hi there, just a quick follow-up to ask if you'd be open to reviewing us?I realise this will make its way to the bottom of your priorities really fast, but I'm a big believer in karmaIs there anything I can do to help convince you?Let me know, I'd love to get the word out!Best,
4 best practices to maximize review collection rates
1. Follow up consistently
This is old news. Woodpecker measured it years ago, and showed that following up can increase your reply rates 3X. Yet marketers are still often uncomfortable following up on emails, assuming people don't reply for a good reason.People don't reply for a million of reasons. Get your campaign right. Have something to say, and something to offer. And then commit to it, and follow up properly, automatically, and consistently.
2. Make it as easy as possible
This might sound obvious too, but you'd be surprised. Just the other day, I received a review request sending me to a Capterra search page. One click. That's how lazy whoever wrote that email was. And all those who received the email were supposed to take care of the extra 3 clicks.You're reaching out to customers, asking for something. The least you can do is get the link right don't you think? If you're looking for best-in-class software to handle this, check out our top 10 testimonial collection software selection. And that's not even the trickiest part. Some platforms (did I mention Salesforce already?) have incredibly complex authentication and validation processes. They'll require you to sign up, confirm your email, setup double-auth, and setup a secret question before you can review. In this case, try to give as much detail as possible in your review request email. What you can avoid, shortcuts you can take, things it'll ask you but that you don't have to do, etc.Just don't make it sound too complex either, that would go against the objective.
3. Incentivize
Can you buy reviews? Yes.Should you buy reviews? Yes.There is no such thing as a "legitimate" review.Have you ever filled in a survey on g2? It takes a solid 5mn. Nobody will go out of their way to say nice things about something they're paying for.Just accept it, move on, and join the real world.You then have two options:
- Incentivize customer facing teams to convince your customers. The benchmark here is between $20 and $50 per collected review
- Incentivize your customers directly with coupon codes on your product (ideally) or virtual credit cards,
It ultimately comes down to who your clients are.
4. Show and celebrate
Getting positive reviews is great for acquisition, it's great for reputation management, and it's great for your sales team to use on their calls.But while you may incentivize customers to go out and review you, you're not force-feeding them any review content. Their reviews are the honest, unbiased opinion of your customers. Share it with your team, and celebrate positive reviews like you should. This is what the entire company is working for.As an added bonus, showing reviews is the best way to motivate everyone on the team to ask for reviews.
