Creative Ways to Ask for Review from Customers (and actually get them)!

Review AddressTwo CRM?

In today’s world, running an online business can be a difficult task to tackle. A lot of online business or online products will live or die by the customer review and if there’s one thing that many businesses will experience is that customers tend to complain far more often than they’ll leave a compliment.

Is that the fault of the company? Is it the fault of the product? We are living in an age of instant gratification and people will look online for services or products, do their research and make a choice based off of the information presented to them. In the United States, 55% of shoppers start their shopping journey online through giants like Amazon. Those that buy products, between 5 and 10% of them will actually leave a review. Furthermore, 20% of the sales for that particular product are driven by reviews and a third of all online shoppers say that they won’t buy a product that hasn’t been reviewed positively. These are some disturbing numbers, but let’s not forget another absurd statistic: if customers don’t see a few negative reviews, they’ll think the system is flawed. These statistics are from the same research that shows the optimum Amazon rating for products is between 4.2 and 4.4.

Leave AddressTwo a Review?

 It then becomes quite a massive task for smaller online retailers or products to compete with the likes of the giant companies and they’ll look for new and creative ways of asking a customer to review the product or service. So how do you go about doing that? We’ll tell you.

Ask in a Different Way

Perhaps one of the most underrated methodologies, you could ask your customers in a different way. Most people won’t feel compelled to write a review, especially if it’s positive, if the product or service does what it says on the box. This is why you should approach the customer in a different way. If you can, ask them in person. If you only have a few customers, there’s nothing wrong with a phone call, especially if you’re a small, family business. Failing that, there’s always a personalized email. Any of these methods can go a long way and even if they still aren’t interest, worst case scenario, you’ll get to know your customer and more likely, have a repeat customer.

Incentivize

While it may sound simple, incentivizing customers is a really effective way of asking customers to leave a review. Studies have shown that offering some kind of financial incentive is 18.5% more likely to end up with the customer leaving a review. It’s not a huge number, but it definitely helps with conversion rates. Not only with their online reviews do magic for your company, should you be open to the criticism, but it will also help you in keeping customers happy.

Make it Easy and Timely

This is perhaps one of the most important aspects. You’ll want to ensure that leaving a review is very easy for the customer. Make sure login details are remembered and head back to the product or service they purchased so they don’t need to go through the list. Timing also matters with this. You’ll want to wait until the customer uses whatever they’ve bought before they review it. Sending out a request for review before the parcel has even arrived at the client is just bad planning.

Mobile is the Key

Mobile is definitely the way of the future and it should come as no surprise that customers are more likely to respond to a review request on a mobile device. Phones and tablets have a far higher conversion rate than desktop, so it makes the most sense for you to ensure that your request for review is mobile friendly.

Respond to Reviews

More often than not, customers will be more interested in leaving a review, whether it’s positive or negative, if the company in question responds. It may seem like you’re opening up a can of worms at times, but there is no secret to a successful business here, you want to create an open and honest line of communication with your customers.

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One may think that there is some sort of trick to keeping customers happy or getting more customers to your business but it’s relatively straight forward. You need to ensure that you as the business are open and honest with customers and clients, you offer the service you promise and you put yourself in line with expectations.  You’re asking a customer to take time out of their schedule to leave a review for something you’ve given to them, make sure it’s an experience they can do quickly and easily, and still get something positive out of it. 

Oh, and if you don't mind... Please Leave Your Favorite Small Business CRM a Review?

Who Is The Mystery Person Behind Support@AddressTwo.com?

If you’ve ever wondered who is behind the “Regards, Support” signature (and let’s be

Hi I'm Ann!

honest, you probably haven’t, it’s cool though) it’s me. Hi, my name is Ann. /waves.

A little bit about me, my passion is behind-the-scenes problem-solving. If there is a solution, I will find it, darn it. Things that really bug me (pun intended): things that should work, don’t. Seriously, one time a friend couldn’t get their fancy-smancy alarm clock set correctly and wouldn’t let me give it a go. When we were leaving, I faked a reason to run back inside and fixed the alarm clock in under one minute. Again, that kind of thing drives me bonkers. Yes, I used the word “bonkers”.

My background, I grew up playing a fair amount (a lot) of video games (aka puzzles, aka problem-solving), played a variety of roles in tech theatre (sound board operator to backstage manager), and once owned a copy of a book on ethical hacking.

I have a number of classic game favorites such as Super Mario, Sonic, Toe Jam & Earl, etc. However, one of my all-time favorite game series is Portal. It’s a humorous puzzle game in which you are a mere test subject at the behest of an AI entity known as GlaDOS, who relentlessly mocks you but keeps promising cake at the end (it’s a lie). I heart puzzles and sardonic humor. And no, I don’t have a Portal mug, doormat, plushie, action figure, sound scheme for my phone and computer, or plan to one day run the Monumental Marathon (half) cosplaying as the main charachter…

Anyway…

Because of gaming, I received my first lesson in tech at a young age. It was simply how input/output worked by learning how to connect the NES and VCR to the TV simultaneously. I consider this my starting point on my path to logic and technology. I was five.

When I wasn’t at home playing games, I could often be found at the local library on the computer. I did everything from playing games, exploring the file system, to typing my homework, even math. I spent so much time on the computers there (pre-internet, gasp!). I might have even been occasionally scolded by the librarian for hogging them. Consequently, it’s one reason I have been able to clock myself at  90 wpm on a good day (a really good day); I’ve never taken a keyboarding class (another story, another time). Related, my first computer class of any kind of was Computer Programming I as a senior in high school; it was a piece of cake.

Our family purchased our first home computer around 1997 (age 12); I set up everything. It also just so happened that right at that time the “world wide web” was becoming more accessible, courtesy of the AOL disc torrent. Hello young internet and plethora of information. Also, a lot of arguments about tying up the phone line.

Now, with the internet at my fingertips, I started playing around with making personal web pages, tinkering with HTML and some Java applets. Remember geocities? That. My flavor was Sailor Moon fan pages. I learned to love playing with code. Little did I know how those ridiculous fan pages would come into play 20 years later.

Despite all that fun, art was my focus, specifically drawing. No, I totally didn’t draw a lot of Sailor Moon fan art (yes, yes I did). The aspiration was to become an animation artist. However, as life goes, my attempt at a college degree in art fell through due to funding.

After a brief hiatus and turning 24 (now an independent in FAFSA’s eyes), I began to explore other career choices. I may have also realized that the art degree was unlikely to get me far and starving artist was no longer as romantic as it once was in high school. I looked into academia, biology research, and more, feeling a bit clueless about my direction.  As the Cheshire cat once said, “Oh, you're sure to [get somewhere], if only you walk long enough.”

Then it finally dawned on me, “Derp, computer science.” /facepalm. I’ve always had an aptitude toward tech and problem-solving but I thought of it as more of a hobby. As much as I like to problem solve, this took me a while to figure out; it’s difficult to be objective about your subjective experience. With some outside objective help, I explored various computer science fields, system admin, security, database admin, etc.

And then, I rediscovered code. It resonated with me; I remembered the countless hours I spent tinkering with code on those silly fan pages. This was it. I made my decision, I am now an aspiring software developer.

Through happenstance, I fell into Ruby as a language and ran with it. If it was the “wrong” language for me, then I still learned something and could continue to move forward. As a self-described autodidact, I made use of local and online resources and started teaching myself, because yah, student loan debt, no thank you.

Since a lot of trial and error (which is exactly what software development is) and odd jobs (retail, banking, office manager, barista) I somehow navigated into AddressTwo as your CRM support specialist and switched to front end coding languages. I finally have my foot in the door of the tech industry. And for the first time, I absolutely love what I do (unlike retail), not that it doesn’t come with it’s own unique set of problems and headaches, but the problems I like to solve and the headaches I can handle.

If there is a solution, I will find it.

Can't get a prospect to answer the phone? Try drip email marketing to make them call you.

The focus of this article is email drip marketing for lead nurturing campaign. In today’s busy times, potential customers rarely have the time to learn everything about your company. So this is where the drip email campaign comes in. Today’s buyers want to make an informed buying decision, so why not take advantage of this and help them out.

Your prospects are your main source of income, and you constantly have to look for new ways to approach them the right way. When you’re cold calling people the chances they’ll be interested are slim. The ideal situation is to have them call you. But that sounds a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it? Maybe not.

Drip marketing is a direct marketing strategy where you come into contact with your potential clients prior to contacting them directly. It’s called ‘drip’ because you send emails to your prospects bit by bit before actually getting them on the phone. The only difference being that you’re sending out promotional emails over a period of time to get them to call you.

Crucial flow of email drip campaigns is as follows:

Find out who is your target audience  
Knowing your target audience is the crucial part of any marketing campaign, and drip email
campaign is no exception to the rule. Identifying your audience and their profile is the key to your approach and successfulness of your campaign. If you want to spark their interest, you need to understand them and their pain points. There’s no chance they’ll call you unless you offer them something they can’t refuse. That is only achieved if you truly know who you’re talking to.

What is your offer/message/goal that you want to convey to end user 
Second most important thing is formulating the message that you want to convey. Your message has to incorporate all the important elements that will trigger their interest and get them to call you. Remember that your message will be delivered in several ‘drips’ so it makes sense to distribute the bits of information evenly so as to retain their interest.

Create a strategic plan - how many emails, what triggers you want to include in each
The third thing you have to figure out is how many emails you want to send out and what to include in each. This depends entirely on your message, of course, but also on your target audience. If you have more than one trigger you can distribute the triggers into several emails. Also, think about the timing and how long you want to wait before sending a follow up email.

Measurement
As with every other marketing endeavour - always measure. Measuring is crucial if you want to learn from your mistakes, and you’re bound to make some, especially in the beginning.

Drip marketing campaign is a great way of sparking interest and ultimately making people call you. This type of campaign allows to gradually build rapport and stay top of mind with potential prospects without being too pushy. If your content and timing is good enough, they will eventually come to you.  Here are a few more email marketing tips we have for you.