Getting customers to review the products they purchased has been one of the biggest trends in online retail in 2009. A number of factors have contributed to the rise in popularity. Probably the most important has been a slew of tools that help medium to small online stores get reviews engines on their site in a turnkey fashion.
Of course a reviews program is only valuable if past customers actually submit reviews. Of course the best way to get someone to do something is to ask. And, what better way to ask thousands of past customers than email?
For the past 6 months we've been working with a number of reviews engines making it so any Yahoo! store can quickly and easily send out two very important reviews emails. This is a general overview. If you are looking for a detailed tutorial, click here to get one from the Top Right online help system
The first email message is what we call the "blast". It's an email that goes out to recent past customers asking them to review the specific products they purchased. This isn't "Hey, come write a review". It's "Hey come write a review of the Widget XL 454" that you bought. In most cases it even includes a picture.
The second is actually an automated email message that goes every day.
Aside: there are lots of terms people use to described automated messages like triggers, recurring campaigns, auto-responders. At the end of the day, if you have a powerful email marketing tool you should be able to automate all kinds of emails. For example, something happens and an email gets sent automatically:
- a shopper starts a shopping cart and leaves, minutes later he'll get an email offer;
- a shopper subscribes to a list and gets an almost instant coupon offer;
- 21 days after a purchase a customer gets an email asking her to review the products purchased;
- 6 months after a purchase a customer gets an email reminding him to replenish his supply;
- a subscriber clicks on a message but doesn't make a purchase, the day before the sale ends he gets a "last chance" email.
If your email tool doesn't give you ALL of these options, you are missing out on the type of automated email marketing programs that MAKE email marketing so powerful. It should happen in one system, not many...
Ok, back to the point. The second email is actually an automated email message that goes out every day. The tool automatically finds everyone who made a purchase 21 days ago (or however many days you like) and sends a message to them. Once again it inserts the products that were purchased with images, etc. and asks them to write a review.
What does the email look like and what does it say? Working with our reviews partners, we've devised a template that focuses on one objective - getting the reviews. The email contains your logo, a greeting and up to 3 products that the customer recently purchased from your store. The email links directly to the reviews page for the specific product. And, the email can feature an image of the product (that links to the reviews page as well). Since it's a template, you simply update the logo, modify your greeting and closing and the Top Right system takes care of the rest.
How do I get the product data into the emails? Leave that to us, that's our specialty. We have a very specific recipe for getting the data out of your store and into the emails. It's all point and click and doesn't require any programming help.
The final point is that you shouldn't view your reviews emails as an island. If you are sending your reviews emails from one system, auto-responders from another and marketing messages from another - where is your "unsusbscribe list of record"? That is, could you possibly send an email to someone who asked not to receive messages any more? Yes, you could and that's not good for your sender reputation - a critical element to delivery. You could also be sending too many messages - annoying customers in the process. Sending from one system allows you to control overall volume.
Want to learn more? Click here to check out the detailed tutorial on the Top Right online help system. Or, drop us a line Contact Top Right.
