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Originally Posted On: 3 Step Guide To Creating The Perfect Review Request Email – Arrivala

You won’t know unless you ask.

You’ve probably heard the phrase before and it certainly applies to review collection. The first step to soliciting reviews from your past customers, clients, employees, etc. is to ask. BUT, there is an art to the asking process. In this three-step guide, we’re going to go over the essentials in order to create the perfect review request email template.

Why Listen To Us & Who Are We?

We’re Arrivala.  We’re a review collection and reputation management company that helps businesses all over the world automate their review collection process.  We do this by automatically sending review request emails and text messages to your past clients.  Our system tracks which customers have responded to the requests and can automatically follow up with the ones that don’t.  It’s the single most effective way to generate large amounts of reviews for your business without it becoming someone’s full-time job.  Since debuting Arrivala back in 2018, we’ve studied hundreds of thousands of review requests that have been sent out by our clients.  Utilizing that knowledge and data, we feel we’re pretty qualified to write this article .  If you’re interested in learning more about Arrivala, you can see our review collection features or even affordable review collection plans.

Step #1 – Crafting The Perfect Email Subject

If your review request recipient does not open the email, steps two and three don’t matter so let’s not overlook the importance of the email subject.  The overall goal of the subject should be to accurately describe the reason for the email without using common ‘spammy’ characteristics.  What are common spam characteristics?  Let’s go through a few:

• Using the recipient’s name in the email subject – While some argue this makes it personalized, we disagree.  Think about all the emails that you receive from co-workers or friends, do they put your name in the email subject?  Likely no.  Therefore, let’s not do it in your review request email template.
• Using Too Many Emojis – Emojis are new, fun, and add some spice to the everyday email.  That’s why we’re okay using them in your email request subject.  However, a max of two emoji icons keeps it looking clean and professional.
• Excessively Long Subjects – Be detailed in your subject but keep it concise.  You’re asking the recipient to take time out of their day to review you and you want to make the process is as quick as possible for them.  When you’re concise with the subject, it conveys to your recipient that you’ll be concise with the review process.

Are you going to give me some good examples of review request subjects that have worked for your customers?
The only way to unlock our tried and proven review request email subjects is to sign-up for Arrivala.  Even the free version of Arrivala unlocks our recommended email subject.

Step #2 – Linking Your Review Platforms

Your customers want to review you, they want to share how awesome you are, they just don’t want to take up their day doing it.  The key to getting hundreds of positive reviews on Google, Facebook, etc. is making it as easy and least time-consuming as possible.  The best way to do this is by providing direct links in your email body that takes the recipient directly to where they actually write the review on the third-party platform such as Google, Facebook, etc..

How do you locate these direct links?
Some are easy to find, some are more difficult.  For example, to go directly to the review tab on Facebook, it’s as simple as appending /reviews/ onto your page URL.  Meaning, if your Facebook page URL is https://www.facebook.com/business-name-123/, a direct link to your reviews would be https://www.facebook.com/business-name-123/reviews/

Other platforms like Google are more complex.  Until recently, you had to use a tool like Arrivala’s Google Review Link Generator to get a direct link to your Google review URL.  Now, Google does supply a direct link to get reviews but you still must go hunt for it inside your Google My Business account.  Here is a guide to find that URL.  Or you can still use the Arrivala tool provided above.

Once you have these direct links, format them in an easy-to-read text link giving clear instruction on what you’re asking the client to do (see example in image).

One of the many benefits to services like Arrivala is that we format all of the links for you automatically to make it as easy on the customer as possible.

Step #3 – Plan The Follow-Up Templates

Okay, we may not have been 100% truthful when we titled this article “The Perfect Review Request Email” as it should have been “The Perfect Review Request Emails“.  No matter how much time and effort you put into crafting the perfect review request email, you’ll never get a 100% response rate.  Therefore, you need to have review request follow-up templates at the ready.  These templates are fairly easy to create as they’ll basically contain the same information as the first outreach but you do want to make them seem unique.  Do this by:

• Change the email subject
• Change the entry paragraph or body content in the email
• Send it at a different time of day.  Maybe your customer is always dropping their kids at school at 8:30am and the to-dos are already piling up.  Sending a follow-up at 3pm might catch them at a better time.

How quickly should you follow up?
Good question!  Here at Arrivala, we set the default review request follow-ups for three days after the initial request, and then five days after the second request a third request goes out.  This seems to be a good medium but we recommend our clients alter this schedule based on their type of business or business needs.  Generally speaking, we tell Arrivala customers that if you operate a business where you don’t establish deep relationships with the customer then the follow-up window should be tighter.  An example of such a business would be a brick-and-mortar store where they simply made a one-time purchase.  This is because a week after purchasing an item from your shop, the customer’s memory of the shopping experience and willingness to write a review has already shrunk.  Alternatively, if you run a business where you build custom homes and work with customers for 4 months on a project, extending out the review requests is perfectly acceptable.  The customer’s memory of the experience is likely engraved for life so giving the customer more time to write the review and not badgering them is the route to go.

Wrapping Up

The review request (and follow-up) templates are essential to ensure you’re getting the most reviews possible from your customers.  Spend some extra time on them double-checking spelling, punctuation and make sure the message is clear.  We also highly recommend review collection automation services like Arrivala as we’ve already done the hard work for you. We have recommended email templates, text message templates, can automate the review request follow-up process and so much more.  If you have any questions or feedback on this article or Arrivala, please let us know at [email protected].