According to a Zendesk survey, 90% of participants claimed that positive online reviews influenced their buying decision. 86% said their decision was influenced by negative reviews.

Considering the importance of the customer reviews, we want to know how we can obtain more product reviews for our customers. Below, I will present two methods (both for retailers and brands) which will help you grow your review base.

1 Ask your customers

Asking customers by email is one of the basic methods to get reviews.

For retailers

If you are a retailer you can automatically send emails after a user buys a product. Many retailers send these emails with a direct link to a review section of every product bought by customer. The review mails are scheduled like:

1. Send mail #1 on the shipping day
2. Send mail #2 after a week, if is necessary.

For brands

If you are a brand this does not apply because often you don’t know the email of your customers. Even in this situation you can take several actions:

1. Request account activation (appropriate for electronics, gadgets, wearables)
2. Make promotional campaigns for your customers (contest draw for users who leave reviews on your website). I will approach this in the following lines.

2 Customer engagement campaigns

You can make a special campaign for user engagement following the next steps:

1. Establish a campaign goal (grow the number of product reviews)
2. Establish an incentive (here you can use a reward to encourage users to give reviews)
3. Establish the campaign duration
4. Communicate (you can send emails to customers who already bought the product). You can also communicate this on social media on your Facebook page, twitter account, places from where your customers can read the news from you.
5. Track results, how many new reviews you obtained and how good they are. For performance tracking you can use a tool like FeedCheck.co

I hope that these tips are useful for growing your customer community. I wish you happy customers!

Image source: http://www.atlantatribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CustomerEngagement-800×415.png