5 Review Request Email Examples That Work

Collecting customer reviews is a strong marketing strategy that helps you better understand your business. Customers will be able to point out things you might not have noticed yourself while adding reviews for potential buyers to read as well.

Unfortunately, as many of us know, getting reviews and feedback can be quite challenging. Customers are quick to respond when something goes wrong and often quite a bit slower when it comes to writing reviews proactively.

One of the best ways to circumvent that issue is by sending review request emails. Yet, they can’t be done wildly as it’s just as easy to get a negative reaction if you send out too many emails at once.

Table of contents

• What Is a Review Request Email?
• Why Review Request Emails Are Important for Your Business
• Excellent Review Request Email Examples
• How To Ask for a Review From a Customer?
• Review Request Emails Are Important

What Is a Review Request Email?

A review request email is sent to a customer to ask for their thoughts and feedback on the company’s products or services. These emails are part of a customer relationship strategy.

Unlike many other types of emails, review requests have a fairly rigid structure, and there’s little room for creativity (when compared to other types, at least). There is some flexibility, however, at the point of the customer’s journey. In other words, there’s not much you can do with the content, but there’s flexibility in delivery.

Finally, if you get a well-written response from a customer, be sure to thank them personally. Sending an automated “thank you” may cause a negative reaction if the customer had put a significant amount of effort into the review.

It would be even better if you could implement the provided feedback, but as experience dictates, some ideas will be hard to implement or too costly to be feasible. In these cases, however, be sure not to discourage the customer as they may have more valuable feedback further down the road.

Why Review Request Emails Are Important for Your Business

There’s no better source for information about your business than customer feedback. Customers get to see the business without the same bias that you or your employees have, so it’s as close to having an objective evaluation as possible.

Additionally, there are numerous marketing reasons that support the idea of requesting reviews. First, according to research, 77% of people regularly read reviews when looking for local businesses.

According to the same article, 57% say they would be either not very likely or not at all likely to use a company that doesn’t respond to reviews. So, as outlined above, be sure to write an answer if someone leaves feedback.

On the other hand, having many customer reviews lends credibility to your business. Consumers avoid companies with little to no reviews available online, regardless of industry.

Finally, positive reviews can be free marketing as they entice people to buy products. In addition to that, many review aggregator websites, such as TrustPilot, give you a rating and a widget that can be added to your website. Both of these add value to your business and attract more customers. Also, you can hire dedicated react JS developers that will add any widgets that you may need.

Excellent Review Request Email Examples

VOLT Lightning

Volt Lightning might not be a company you’ve heard of. They’re a business dedicated to providing professional landscaping lighting, so most of its customers are professionals in that industry.

As you may see from the email, there’s no flashiness in it. Their target audience is professionals in a highly specific industry with little to do with marketing or hype. So, the company sends out a basic email with only the most necessary details in it.

Additionally, they clearly sent the email sometime after the customer purchased one of their products. They add the name of the product, the order ID, and a call-to-action that instantly directs the reader toward writing a review.

Even the writing style is simplistic. It’s short and to the point, just like most review request emails should be.

Alkaline Water Plus

Alkaline Water Plus is a water ionizer company offering products from the low 50s to 1000s of dollars. They’re a bit flashier than VOLT Lightning, but the foundation is still the same.

Their emails are relatively simplistic, with the intention stated several times throughout. They also add a direct link to the review page. However, they should have added a button to make it stand out more than a plain text URL.

Finally, Alkaline Water Plus gives a special discount code for those who leave reviews. It’s a common strategy that pushes people to write reviews; however, some websites are against the practice, so any benefits should be considered carefully.

TradeGecko

TradeGecko is a SaaS company that focuses on inventory and order management. As we can see, TradeGecko goes for a completely different approach.

While the email is still somewhat concise, it’s far from the likes of VOLT Lightning and others. It’s catchier and much more lighthearted, with bright images and a warm welcome.

They also make reference to users without TradeGecko as being “stuck in spreadsheet hell”. So, TradeGecko goes for a much more tongue-in-cheek approach than nearly every other company.

Such an approach can work, but it has to be carefully crafted, and the tone should be consistent. Additionally, one should evaluate the target audience. Some audiences will not appreciate such a tone.

Mountain Hardware

Mountain Hardware is a clothing company dedicated to climbing enthusiasts and professionals. They mix up parts of the emails we’ve seen previously into one mix.

It’s a bit flashier than some of the emails as it has a lot more color within it, part of which is the company branding. They also sent the email after the user purchased some of their products and provided direct links for writing reviews.

Yet, the email remains short and sweet. There’s not much text to it outside of the generic approach of politely asking for reviews and giving a reason.

Moment

Moment is a company that produces a photo editing application called Grain. Since they launched, they got impressive results regarding download counts and overall support. So, it was natural for them to send a review request email.

Notice that they did something entirely different. They added a link to a creation someone made using Grain. While, in one sense, it adds an unnecessary link that can make users click out, it also shows gratitude and closeness to the community, which can work as a way to make the email more enticing.

They also added a short product update to the email. This might not have been the best decision as there’s no indication in the title of the email so it might get lost in the mix. 

Finally, the email ends with the opportunity to both leave a review and  send a reply to get in touch with their team. All in all, it’s a great email that’s focused on building trust with the community and attempts to get a review through that.

How To Ask for a Review From a Customer?

As you may have seen, excellent review request emails have one thing in common - they’re usually short and sweet. There are no extensive updates or huge promotions included in them. If there’s anything additional, it’s mostly focused on enticing the reader to leave a review. So, there are a few rules of thumb when drafting such an email:

1. Keep it brief. Don’t go overboard with the content and images. Focus on asking the customer to leave a review.
2. Be polite. Remember, it’s a request, and you’re asking for the customer’s time. Make sure the tone is perfect.
3. Reinforce your brand. Stay true to your branding. If you’re a hip and hype company, put that into the email. Don’t suddenly switch to a somber and serious tone.

Things get a little more complicated when considering the strategy as a whole. There are numerous touchpoints that have to be considered separately.

Determine the best time to send the review request emails

There are numerous points in the buyer’s journey when sending a review request email makes sense. The rule of thumb is to send it a few weeks after the user makes a purchase. However, not all businesses will be the same.

SaaS companies might use account managers who constantly ping the customer throughout their journey. Additionally, you can always package several products into one and request a review for each.

There’s a lot of flexibility, but ensure enough time for the customer to test out the product.

Choose a method that works well for you at scale

You won’t be able to send each email manually. It would take an enormous amount of time and waste a lot of resources. That’s why you should pick a good email marketing solution that will let you automate and scale review requests.

It will also help if the email marketing provider has templates and an image library. Both of these will let you build review request emails much faster, freeing up resources for other work.

Personalize the review request

Good email marketing providers will let you build some customer data that you can use to refer to the person. Be sure to use these features to include the name, add the order ID and purchased item, and many other things that make the email seem less automated.

Automation is a blessing, but it raises suspicions from customers if it’s too obvious. Personalize emails, and you’ll get a better open, reply, and review rate.

Leverage customer satisfaction moments

Customers are more likely to respond positively if they’ve recently had a good experience with your company. While measuring these through digital businesses can be quite difficult, there are opportunities where you might find them.

Forego other timings then, leverage the customer satisfaction moment and send them the email. You’re much more likely to get a review written that way.

Start with an open-ended question

Most review request emails ask how the person has liked the product or company. These have a good reason, as they essentially ask the customer to do a review in their head before engaging in writing.

It’s much easier for customers to write a review if they already have an answer formed in their heads. So, always add an open-ended question either in the title or somewhere early in the review request email.

Let the customers know how long the review will take

Most people don’t have much time, and review writing isn’t their first course of action whenever there’s a free moment. Make sure to include that the review will only take a couple of minutes to reduce the anxiety of taking time out of one’s busy schedule.

Review Request Emails Are Important

These review request email templates and examples should serve as your foundation. Use them to write a customized review request email for your own business to make them more effective at getting what you want.

Have any other great examples or templates? Share the post with your answers and help the world write better review request emails.