Earn More Product Reviews with an Automated Email Campaign

When shopping online, most of us have run into a situation where we are stuck deciding between two or more options. The prices and product descriptions are similar. So what serves as the tiebreaker?

The answer, especially on Amazon, is almost always product reviews. Given the choice between two or more similar items, a buyer will almost always choose the product that has more favorable reviews. If the number of stars on the two items is also similar, the item with more reviews is likely to get the edge as that larger number represents a larger sample size of satisfied customers.

Once you appreciate the value of product reviews on Amazon and how important they can be to your brand’s success, making review acquisition a priority becomes an obvious decision. With that said, business owners are extremely busy and have so many things to work on that spending a lot of time on reaching out to customers for feedback can seem unappealing. This is where automation comes into play.

Automating the Product Review Request Process

One of the most proven and effective methods of receiving a review on a product is to email the customer with a feedback request. As you will see in this article, an effective email campaign can use anywhere from 2-4 emails to build a rapport with your customer while also politely requesting a product review.

Without automation, this would be an extremely time-consuming process. Even with pre-built email templates saved on your computer, looking up customer orders and sending emails manually after every order would be a lot of work. This process would become even more troublesome when you were scheduling follow-up emails and trying to keep track of when each one is supposed to go out.

Fortunately, FeedbackWhiz eliminates the headaches that would come with trying to run an email campaign manually by automating the entire process. Sellers can choose from templates that will be sent out at scheduled intervals after a customer has placed their order. These templates are fully customizable and are built with smart tags that automatically populate for each unique order.

For example, “Hi [[Customer_First_Name]], we hope you enjoy your [[Item_Title]]” will show up as “Hi Stacy, we hope you enjoy your Bose Headphones” to one customer and “Hi Greg, we hope you enjoy your Apple iPhone” to another. Feedback Whiz’s software allows its users to have these types of emails automatically produced and sent out on a predetermined schedule, taking all of that work off of your plate.

Starting with a Simple Order Follow Up

The first email you send out to the customer after their purchase should be designed to build a positive relationship with them. This can be achieved by letting them know you are there for them if they have any customer service needs and by offering something of value within the email.

For example, if the item is complicated to use in any way, you could offer some tips that might be beneficial. If humor is applicable to the product or brand, you could add a funny GIF or some “outside the box ways to use our product”. Of course, a simple email like this one could also be effective when scheduled to send after the item has shipped.

Hello [[Customer First Name]],

We just wanted to let you know that your [[Item Title]] is on its way! You can keep up with its progress by tracking your shipment with this link: [[Link Shipment Tracking]].

Here at [[Company Name]], we strive to make sure that all of our customers are happy with their new products. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns about your order. [[Contact Seller Link]]

Thank you,

[[Seller Name]]

This email establishes that they can come to you if anything goes wrong with their product and gives them the chance to check in on the status of their delivery on the spot without needing to pull up their order confirmation.

Looking for a Call to Action with the Next Email(s)

Before sending out the second email asking for a product review, you want to give the customer the chance to use and enjoy their product. For a simple product like a cell phone case, the customer probably knows pretty quickly if they like the fit and feel of their new case. For a new supplement, it would probably be best to wait 2-3 weeks before the buyer can notice the changes. Because you can set up a different template for each individual product at FeedbackWhiz, you can decide what time frame makes sense on each project.

Whenever you decide is best to send out this email, it should politely ask the customer to leave a review on your product. Keep in mind that Amazon’s buyer-seller messaging guidelines strictly prohibit sellers from explicitly asking for positive feedback, offering something in exchange for positive feedback or even using an if/then statement. For example, it is now against Amazon’s policy to say “IF you are having a bad experience, contact us. If you are having a good experience, THEN leave a review” as this pushes them towards positive reviews.

With these guidelines in mind, here’s an example of what the second email in this campaign might look like:

Hello [[Customer First Name]],

This is [[Seller Name]] with [[Company Name]] here. We saw that your product was delivered about a week ago and wanted to follow up to see how you were enjoying it so far!

Your feedback helps Amazon buyers like you in their purchasing decisions. It also helps sellers like us to make sure that our customers are satisfied. Would you be willing to leave a product review on [[Item Title]]? It would be greatly appreciated! [[Item Review Link]]

If you have any questions about your product or any issues we can help with, please let us know at [[Contact Seller Link]]. Thanks again for your purchase!

FeedbackWhiz lets its users know when a customer has left a product review. If the buyer still hasn’t left a review on their purchase after receiving this email, it may be worth sending a third one. This should be structured in a similar way to the second one, once again asking the customer to help out the Amazon community with a review and letting them know you are there for their customer service needs.

Tweak Your Campaign Until It’s Just Right

In addition to being able to see when a customer has left a review, Feedback Whiz offers another helpful tool for market research with it’s A/B Testing feature. Users can set up two (or more) different titles on their email campaigns and then receive analytics on which title received the most opens.

Finding the right title to make sure that your emails are being opened as often as possible is important, as is turning those opens into successful conversions. With so many styles and images and colors to choose from, the process of putting a successful template together can feel a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, FeedbackWhiz has plenty of ready-to-go templates that will require little to no updating to be effective.

Of course, each brand and product and customer base is unique. Experimentation with your email templates will help you find the right recipe to maximizing the number of customers that you receive product reviews from, which will, in turn, lead to a nice boost in sales.