Creating a Review-Generating Automated Email Campaign

Amazon sellers at all levels of experience understand the importance of product reviews. Customers are more comfortable than ever purchasing private label products on Amazon, and that comfort comes from two main factor’s; Amazon’s excellent return policy and product reviews.

Shoppers on Amazon know that they can return their product safely and easily for a full refund if they don’t like it, so many aren’t hesitant to give a product or brand they haven’t heard of a try. But which new product should they buy? A good price can offer incentive to buy, but real confidence in a purchase comes from product reviews. Seeing that other people have purchased and enjoyed an item makes a potential buyer feel safer in choosing it. And the more product reviews a listing has, the more reliable the information appears to be.

While the value of product reviews is evident, many Amazon sellers make the mistake of failing to be proactive in their attempts to acquire product reviews. Creating, designing and automating an effective email campaign is the key to turning your customer’s purchases into new reviews on your products.

Designing an Email Campaign That Makes Sense for Your Product

Say that Company A sells a product line of toys for babies and toddlers and Company B sells USB flash drives. Both of these companies need product reviews to help boost their brand’s reputations and sales, and both should use an email campaign to procure these reviews. But given how different the products and likely demographics of the customer bases are, different email types might be more effective.

For instance, Company A might want its emails to be light-hearted and silly to illustrate that the brand is built around fun. Conversely, Company B might want its emails to be more serious and professional as its brand must represent reliability. In the coming sections, we’ll go over some general rules on building an email campaign and give some examples on how both Company A and Company B might approach these steps.

Regardless of the direction you want to take your email designs in, FeedbackWhiz has you covered. The software allows users the opportunity to customize their email templates with GIFs and images, including image links that can turn a boring blue link into an attractive call to action button. And with variable tags designed to automatically populate important information into your emails, once you’ve built a successful template it can keep being used again and again.

Use the First Email to Create a Bond

Variable tags allow you to have unique information populated into each of your emails so that you don’t have to write this information in yourself. For example, the tag [[Customer_First_Name]] will populate the customer’s first name into that location, so “Hello [[Customer_First_Name]]” turns into “Hello Steven” in the email.

With this in mind, you can set up different templates for different situations, such as one that will go out when a specific product is sold or one that will go to a returning customer. FeedbackWhiz automates this entire process by allowing you to select the template you want sent out when specific criteria are met.

So, let’s return to our hypothetical Company A and Company B, who both have their first email scheduled to go out as soon as the order has been placed. Both want to use this first email to reach out to their customer and thank them for their purchase, but they might go about it in different ways.

Company A has sold a baby rattle toy and wants to keep things light and fun.

Hello [[Customer First Name]],

Thank you for your purchase of [[Item Title]]!

(Inserted Dancing Baby GIF)

Your product is on its way! You can keep track of its progress here: [[Link Shipment Tracking]].

(Inserted Toddler Driving GIF)

My name is [[Seller Name]], and I’m here for you if you have any questions about your order or any of our products. You can reach me at [[Contact Seller Link]].

Thanks again!

Company B has sold a USB flash drive and wants to be professional.

Hello [[Customer First Name]],

Your purchase of [[Item Title]] is on its way! You can use the following link to track its progress: [[Link Shipment Tracking]].

We here at [[Company Name]] are dedicated to making sure that our customers receive the highest quality products and customer care. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions about your order or product. [[Contact Seller Link]]

Thank you,

[[Seller Name]]

While each of these emails have different styles and makeups, both accomplish the goal of thanking the customer for their purchase and letting them know the seller is there to assist them.

Future Emails Will Include Calls to Action

Once you have given the customer enough time to have a chance to try out their product, you can follow up with another email. In the case of a baby rattle or USB flash drive, this second email can be sent out within a week as these products won’t take too long for a customer to form an opinion on. Something like a workout DVD will probably need at least a couple of weeks before your customer can form early impressions. FeedbackWhiz’s email scheduling software allows you to decide when you want this second email to go out and can be set at different time intervals for different products.

The goal of the second email is to ask the customer to leave a review on your product. Amazon’s buyer-seller messaging guidelines prohibit sellers from explicitly asking for positive feedback, offering incentives for positive feedback or using “if/then” statements like “if you are unhappy send us a message, if you are happy then leave a review”. So instead of trying to force the buyer to leave a positive review, you should just ask for an honest review.

Here’s how our hypothetical companies might craft this second email.

Company A:

Hey [[Customer First Name]],

(Inserted Friendly Waving GIF)

It’s [[Seller Name]] again! We saw that you’ve had [[Item Title]] for about a week and we just wanted to make sure that you were enjoying it!

(Inserted Laughing Baby GIF)

We know how hard it can be to find the time, but we’d greatly appreciate it if you could leave a product review. It’s feedback from valuable customers like you that let other folks know what to expect from their purchase! [[Item Review Link]]

(Inserted Thank You GIF)

And if you have any questions about your product or order, please contact us at [[Contact Seller Link]]!

Company B:

Hello [[Customer First Name]],

Our records indicate that your product [[Item Title]] was delivered about a week ago. We hope that you’ve had a chance to try it out and are enjoying it so far!

Your feedback is extremely valuable in helping us to make sure that we are meeting our customer’s needs. It is also helpful to other Amazon buyers as it can help them in their decision making process. Please consider leaving us a product review, it would be greatly appreciated! [[Item Review Link]]

If you are having any issues with your product or have any questions for us, please contact us at [[Contact Seller Link]].

Thank you,

[[Seller Name]]

In the event that this email does not generate a product review, sellers can choose to send another follow up formatted in a similar way a week or two later, checking in on the customer’s satisfaction while also suggesting they leave a review.

Customize to Your Heart’s Content

As illustrated in the examples above, there are many different ways to accomplish the same goal of asking for product reviews. FeedbackWhiz offers a number of tools to help you make sure that your campaign is working to your advantage as well including updates when a customer leaves a review on your product and A/B testing to test different titles and get statistics on the open rates of each one.

For creative types, the sky is the limit when building templates. But FeedbackWhiz also has plenty of ready-made templates to choose from for those less excited about customization. Regardless of what you sell and what your brand’s voice is like, you can find the right email campaign for you to drive up both product reviews and product sales.