TrustSpot sends millions of emails per month and from that data we were able to find key insights into how well request emails work for our customers. Along with these insights are some of our best practices into how to ensure you have a high email open rate and conversion rate.
Subject Line
The Subject Line is one of the most important areas to focus your attention on, because it won't matter how great your email is - if customers are not opening it to begin with. Based on our insights, we were able to determine the following to increase your open rate & review response rate:
Include your company name
Ask a question
Do not use words in all uppercase
Incentivize the customer with a special offer
In addition, adding your Company Name in the "From" field in the email settings helps.
From these 4 insights, we looked at which subject lines converted high:
1. How was your experience at AwesomeCompany?
2. Did you enjoy your recent purchase at AwesomeCompany?
3. What did you think about AwesomeProduct?
4. Please review your experience at AwesomeCompany
Beyond these question based subject lines, we also noticed subject lines with coupons attached help increase the conversion rate further.
We have mixed insights on things like:
Emojis
Symbols
Overuse of any of these could be viewed as spam, so we recommend avoiding using too many of them in your subject lines. Usually the cleanest way is the best.
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Email Content
Once customers actually open up your email, the next step is captivate them with your email content, to encourage them to follow through and post a review.
Similar to the subject line, we recommend keeping the email short and sweet, by providing key information about what you're wanting the customer to do.
From our insights, we learned the following about the highest converting emails:
Length is kept short
Incentivize with a coupon offer (especially Coupon Events)
Mention of the product name in the email body
Keep the tone personal versus sales based (you've already sold the customer, now you just need to politely ask for a review form them).
Customize the button color / text to match your branding
Speaking about Coupon Events, we a slight uptick in conversion rate for the mention of different coupons. With our Coupon Events feature you can effectively create different coupon codes based on the customer's engagement level during the review process, such as writing a review, uploading a photo or sharing on social media.
Example text:
" Please share your feedback with us to receive a 10% coupon off your next order. You can even upload a photo with you review, to earn a 15% coupon instead"
or
"Tell us your thoughts about AwesomeProduct, and receive 10% off your next order. Share a photo to earn a 15% coupon instead. We look forward to your amazing review!"
Beyond the coupon, its important to remember that most customers are opening on a mobile device, which means they don't want to scroll down a wall of text when they open the email. Keep it personal and light, such as:
"Larry,
Thank you so much for your recent purchase at AwesomeCompany. We're growing everyday because of customers like you.
We would greatly appreciate your feedback about your experience & purchase with us. As a token of our thanks, we will send you a coupon for 10% off your next order after the review is submitted - good or bad. You can even upload a photo to show off your purchase to other users.
Thank you again,
AwesomeCompany"
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Send After Delay
Each company is different in how it handles emails and their send delay. Based on our insights, we see the following send after delays converting the best:
7 Days
10 Days
14 Days
7 Days is used more frequently by companies shipping domestically, while at the same time if a company is shipping internationally as well, the most used timing is 14 days.
[Product Reviews] The send delay is important because you want to ensure your customer has the product in hand to try it out before being able to leave a qualified review.
[Company Reviews] The send delay for company reviews is a bit different, because usually a company review is for something service related (customer service, shopping experience, business service completed, lending application approved, etc). If we breakdown Company Reviews (ONLY), we see the top conversion rates being:
5 Days
7 Days
10 Days
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Smart Reminders
Sometimes despite your best efforts including perfecting a subject line and email content, customers open your email but just don't leave a review. Don't Panic!
Customers may forget, or simply receive other email and push it down their inbox. TrustSpot has a feature to help allievate these issues and increase your response rates.
This feature is called "Smart Reminders".
Essentially, after a few days our system will automatically resend the customer an email asking them to leave a review for company or product (based on your settings).
Based on our insights, the following settings work the best:
Minimum 2 reminder emails
Interval of time 3-5 days apart
The max number of reminder emails that can be sent are 3; as we do this to prevent appearing "spammy" to the user.
In your account a good setup would be:
2 reminder emails
Reminder 1 send after 5 days
Reminder 2 send after 10 days
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Conclusion
The Review Request is a critical component of your business, so its important to use a subject line, email content and additional features to maximize your response rate from customers. Every company is different but despite that the insights above are able to shed some light on what works best for everybody, and how you can increase this further.
Have a question or need support on any of the features mentioned here?
Please contact our support team from here.