How to insert a review in your emails and increase sales

One of the most effective elements to convince a user to buy your products is to show them how good and appreciated they are through the experience of other customers. That's why including reviews in your emails is a great strategy to increase conversions.

Have you ever heard of social proof? It is one of the best known and most exploited cognitive biases by companies in their marketing strategies and it is the psychological mechanism that instinctively leads man to seek confirmation of his actions in the choices of his fellow humans.

How is this psychological mechanism applied in Email Marketing? Simple, with the reviews.

Reviews are one of the most powerful weapons for convincing potential customers to finalize a purchase: in fact, there is nothing more effective than a series of positive testimonials from other users to persuade a user of the validity and convenience of a product.

If the recipient who reads your emails with product showcases sees positive votes and comments from other customers right from the message, they will be much more enticed to click on the CTA and complete the conversion.

So what are you waiting for? Read all our tips on how to add reviews to your emails and take inspiration from some practical examples that we have selected for you.

Types of reviews

Product Reviews

These are the reviews par excellence, those left by users as a comment on the quality and reliability of a purchased and tested product. Therefore, these are comments aimed at what your company sells and not at the value of your brand. However, while not directly addressing your brand, these comments directly influence the trust that the public places in you, and, therefore, your own sales.

Customer experience

This type of review is instead more generic and relates to the quality of your work at 360 degrees: from the structure of your ecommerce (which can facilitate or hinder a user's shopping experience), to your customer support team, from the organization of your warehouses to your delivery speeds, from your promptness of response to the quality of what you sell.

These are, therefore, the reviews that directly affect your reputation as a company and the relationship of trust with your customers and leads.

Comments and mentions on social media

Another type of reviews are the mentions that your community and customers who have bought from your company can publish on their or on your social channels, to recommend your brand or your products or, conversely, to advise against them. It is a very powerful type of review, both positively and negatively, because it has a high public resonance that is difficult to control. The advice in this case is to keep monitoring the mentions of your brand on social networks and, if negative, intervene promptly with a moderate, kind language open to dialogue and understanding of the reasons that have disappointed the user.

Now let's see how to insert reviews in the various types of emails.

Welcome email

Welcome emails are intended to introduce you to the newly registered user and show them what your Unique Selling Propositions, your brand values and flagship products are.

Including reviews as a related email topic (without taking away from your brand presentation) is a great way to:

• show new subscribers that your products/services are appreciated and effective
• prove that the trust that new users have placed in you by signing up is well placed , through the example of other user experiences
• increase your brand reputation , demonstrating guarantee and trust in what you sell

Cart recovery email

Abandoned cart recovery emails are born with the aim of inviting the user who has already expressed an interest to make it concrete by finalizing the purchase. Inserting the reviews of users who have purchased the product of interest in the message is an extremely effective tool for stimulating the recipient and facilitating the purchase.

Seeing that other users liked that product will in fact help your potential customer complete the conversion. In fact, it's hard to resist the urge to buy when everyone is recommending exactly what you want.

Product or service launch

If you are launching a new product, service, program or initiative, inserting testimonials from your community can help you increase the sense of trust and quality of your brand and present your news more effectively.

In this case, remember to use reviews as an accessory element, preventing them from stealing space and attention from the main element of the message, i.e. your new launch. This example from Duolingo can help you understand how to best place reviews in this type of email:

Use the review as the title

In this example, Everlane decides, with an extra touch of creativity, to replace the title above the fold with a review. A strategy that catalyzes all the recipient's visual attention right on the comment with which the message begins.

This ploy is not used by chance: the message is intended to present one of the brand's flagship products, as well as one of the brand's bestsellers, and adding a review as a product presentation title is coherent, effective and original.

Product showcase

Another type of message that lends itself well to adding reviews to increase sales is the classic showcase of the brand's products and services.

Instead of simply presenting the latter with a carousel of images and the relative prices, you can opt for a more original declination, presenting them with the relative reviews or with the scores obtained from the evaluations of the customers who bought them, as in this case:

This will help not only increase your sales potential, but will also serve to introduce your recipient to the range of products and services that your company offers, by advertising content that they may not have been aware of.

Offer suggestions

Another way to include reviews in your campaigns is to rely on previous purchases by the customer to suggest similar products or services that may be of interest to them. Combining these suggestions with a review can serve to make your suggestion even more persuasive and to convince the user that that suggestion is actually valid.

This is a great way to cross-sell and direct the user to your other products, by combining the analysis of their shopping preferences with the reviews left by your community, as this example shows well:

Don't forget to ask for feedback

We address this aspect as a conclusion to the article, but in reality, chronologically, sending an email to ask for a review of the purchase is the starting point for collecting all the comments that will allow you to send the examples just described later.

How do I send an email to request a review? The secret is:

– choose the right timing . Sending such an email too soon is of no use, because the user has not had the time to test your product. While, on the contrary, sending the message leaving several months to pass risks making the user forget his purchase. Choose a proportionate time, first doing tests to estimate the most suitable timing.

– use effective leverage to convince the user to review your product. Whether it's a discount code on your next purchase, a phrase like "your experience is important to us" or "your opinion can be of help to other users" or, again, a promotion that you will introduce after collecting a certain number of feedback, the important thing is to find a way to convince your customer to provide a comment or a vote.

Last tip: make the review process simple, linear and fast , to prevent users from getting tired of waiting and being tempted to leave a comment in the future as well.