How to get more Google reviews
Encouraging customers to post Google reviews is both an art and a science. While LoyaltyLoop Promoter plan will automatically encourage your surveyed customers to post their Google review, here are a few other tactics and suggestions that may help you get more reviews.
Before trying any other tactic to get more reviews, let's make sure you can easily track the progress of your Google reviews. Make sure your LoyaltyLoop is connected to your Google Business Profile. This feature allows you to track your Google review progress right on your Reviews tab in LoyaltyLoop. To connect your account, click the Reviews tab, then click Connect. Then use your Google Business Profile credentials to connect your account. You can also set up an Google Review alert in LoyaltyLoop so you, or anyone on your team, can be alerted when a new Google review is received. Our Support Team is here to help if you cannot connect your account.
To generate more Google reviews, here are 4 suggestions to consider:
1) Do your customers know this is important to you?
Make sure your customers know how much you (as the owner) value Google reviews, and remind them of that in your normal customer communications. This can be as simple as having staff/managers let the customer know you value Google reviews, and set the customer's expectation that they'll be receiving a survey where they can provide feedback and post a Google review. Make sure your team encourages the customer to give honest feedback - do not steer the customer to give only good feedback. In addition, consider adding a reminder about Google reviews to other materials provided to customers such as printed or e-invoices.
2) Are you engaging all active customer contacts?
Ensure LoyaltyLoop is receiving all your customer contacts to survey, and not just a 'primary' or 'billing' contact. This is the single biggest issue we see that limits your opportunity to get reviews. Whether your contacts are in your back-office billing system, CRM, or email contact database, LoyaltyLoop can accept that data. Getting Google reviews is somewhat of a 'numbers game'. Not every person or company is comfortable posting a public review on Google. All the more reasons to ensure LoyaltyLoop has all the contacts to maximize your opportunity to get reviews.
NOTE: The greater the number of customers surveyed, the greater the potential for reviews.
3) Try running a manual review campaign
Consider running a manual Google review campaign in LoyaltyLoop, to compliment the automatic review request LoyaltyLoop already does. You can configure and send a mass email campaign to any customer who responded to your survey. There is an email template in your account already that you can use called "Request Google Review" in your Settings/Email Templates. Start with that template and then personalize it as you see fit. You can run these manual follow-up campaigns any time you wish.
4) Encourage reviews from respondent types
Consider allowing LoyaltyLoop to encourage Google reviews from your Passive customers too (and possibly Detractor customers). This will give you additional opportunities to get a review. Of course the reviews might not be all 5-stars, but that's perfectly fine because none of us are perfect. Again, this is a numbers game. If you have very low numbers of Passive or Detractor customers, this may not provide a sizable opportunity to increase the chances of more reviews. However, if you have many Passive customers, this could be a good option.
5) Concentrate review traffic
If LoyaltyLoop is set to encourage reviews on multiple sites like Google and Facebook, try focusing all your review traffic on just Google for a while. Since all review platforms require the customer to sign-in to that platform to post their review, and since many people leave their Facebook account open all day, it's easier to post to Facebook for these customers. Disable Facebook or other review sites in your account, and concentrate all review traffic on Google.
NOTE: If you were to concentrate on 1 social media site, we'd recommend Google. As the world's largest search engine, Google reviews help improve your local search rankings and your SEO.
6) Update the subject line in your 48-hour review follow-up email
If your reviews configuration has the 48-hour reminder email enabled, 48-hours after the customer submits their survey response they will receive an email reminding them to post a review, if they haven't done so already. This auto reminder email is important because the "thank you" page where customers are encouraged to post a review is a web page, and when the customer closes their browser, the page is gone. The 48-hour reminder email has a longer 'shelf-life' as it lives in the customer's email inbox. Make sure your subject line is a specific action-oriented statement like, "Please review us on Google". We can update this for you, or you can do it yourself from within LoyaltyLoop.
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