Human beings simply need to be reminded to do things from time to time. I need to remind my kids daily to brush their teeth for example. And I have to leave a note on my door to make sure I closed the garage.
The reasons why vary. Our brains may deem the task as having low importance in a given context? Perhaps we have consumed too much aspartame in our diet sodas, which in turn blocks some brain receptors? Maybe we are thinking about too many other things? Do we have chaotic surroundings or clutter affecting our minds?
Whatever the reason we sometimes forget, computers are very good at reminding us to do stuff. And we can quite easily set up a WooCommerce review reminder to automate this important call-to-action. So, let’s dig into how.
Table of Contents:
- Guiding Customers Through the Review Process
- Explicit vs Implicit Permission for Sending Review Reminder Emails
- Activating WooCommerce Review Reminder Emails
- Incentivize the WooCommerce Review Reminder
Guiding Customers Through the Review Process
Laying out the reasons to get reviews isn’t needed here. If you’re like me, you yourself have been influenced by reviews in making purchases in the past. So, regardless of all the studies and metrics, you already know it’s important. What is key now is getting them and then putting them in front of people.
I talked already about it last week in regards to getting the reviews in front of more people in Google Shopping. Today let’s talk about how to automate the process of asking customers for these valuable reviews.
More than this being a reminder for people to leave reviews, it may also serve to let them know that they even can. This is also our opportunity to inform users as to where we would like them to leave their opinions.
Explicit vs Implicit Permission for Sending Review Reminder Emails
While it can vary on how many days after a purchase a reminder should be sent, the Customer Reviews plugin has a reasonable default of 5 days. There are some configurable settings also on how the message should be sent, how it’s formatted, and which products get the review invite.
An important step first though is getting consent. With the usual “not a lawyer” disclaimer here, from what I understand there are two types of consent. Implicit and explicit. What method is required may depend on your customer’s location. I personally feel that getting explicit permission always is a safer and more respectful choice.
Within the settings of the customer review plugin, you have the option to turn on explicit permission to send a review reminder email. If selected, you can indicate the text the user sees. By default, they will see:
Check here to receive an invitation from CusRev (an independent third-party organization) to review your order.
Note: Why independent third-party organization is important here is because reviews managed by shops themselves can be perceived as being biased or fake. Plus, leaving email sender reputation (a big topic) in someone else’s hands can be freeing.
Activating WooCommerce Review Reminder Emails
Both the free and paid versions of the Customer Reviews plugin have the feature to send reminder emails to customers.
The first screen after clicking Reviews >> Settings will reveal the options for you. The checkbox at the top says Enable the service of automatic follow-up emails with an invitation to submit a review. Selecting that also says that you have updated terms and conditions on your website to inform customers about review invitations.
From there, you can configure more options including:
- making sure that no more than one review reminder is sent for each order
- enabling customer consent, as described above
- excluding specific categories of products (or free products) from getting review invite emails
- setting up the email and review form templates with custom wording and branding
There are other settings in this config screen worth reviewing.
After being setup you can almost just leave it on auto-pilot. If you chose to moderate reviews though, naturally there is more work to be done.
Incentivize the WooCommerce Review Reminder
That’s really all there is to it. To bring this all a bit further though, you could also encourage reviews (positive or negative) using the Customer Reviews plugin by offering a discount coupon as an incentive. This may be helpful for those who might otherwise ignore the review reminder emails.
