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Email Invites and Succors Customer Dialog

We had a good debate yesterday about whether email could be helpful in a website customer-review strategy. Three guesses as to where my votes were: squarely with email as a powerful tool for both invitation, dissemination and recommendation.

Customer reviews on websites are hot—because they work. A recent survey by Bazaarvoice and Vizu Corp. shows that three out of four shoppers say that it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase, and they prefer peer reviews over expert reviews by a 6-to-1 margin.

(Note for our U.K. readers: Ratings and reviews by U.K. consumers were important for over 50% of online shoppers. In contrast to U.S. shoppers, privacy and security information took center stage when making a purchase by over one-third of U.K. shoppers rating this as the most important site feature.)

Email is the perfect medium for attracting and distributing this important content. Consider these opportunities for your own program:

- Use email to solicit customer reviews from recent customers. Trigger a feedback survey after select purchases, along with an appropriate upsell offer. For multiple-purchase buyers—who we assume are more loyal and engaged—make the request for a review more explicit.

- Use the content from customer reviews to convert prospects to buyers. Prospects are in greater need of validation for making a purchase, and if the Bazaarvoice survey has any sway, prospects prefer customer reviews six times over company promotions or marketing. Feature customer reviews in your welcome message as well as throughout the first five to six email touchpoints.

- Feature customer reviews in newsletters as a current and dynamic source of testimonials. Many marketers struggle to come up with relevant content (outside of pure promotions) for newsletters. Customer reviews are relevant, engaging and can be extremely good ways to provide product recommendations that don’t feel like sales pitches. These are also a great way to continuously solicit more reviews. Everyone likes to see their name in “lights”—even if it’s HTML.

- Highlight customer reviews as a secondary promotion in promotional emails. Make it a regular feature (monthly or quarterly) to highlight top selling items. Reviews promote your products without feeling like a promotion. Perfect balance for sales messages.

- Use customer reviews as a trigger for lapsed buyers. Send a special email with customer reviews of targeted products. This new approach to the same promotional messages may break through the lethargy.

—Stephanie Miller

Posted on August 2, 2007 9:44 AM | Permalink

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Comments (1)

Chad White:

That's all great advice, Stephanie. Retailers are definitely starting to make better use of product reviews. I've seen many emails themed around the best reviewed products, but the coolest use of product reviews that I've seen is from Backcountry.com. In their monthly newsletter-style emails (they send out more frequent emails as well) they highlight a "Review of the Month." You can see it here: http://retailemail.blogspot.com/2007/07/am-inbox-animation-is-proxy-for-web-20.html. It included the name of the product, a picture and a quote from the person's review--however, it didn't include the reviewer's name, which would have been nice and made it seem more authentic. That's a creative use of product reviews that I haven't seen another major retailer try.

I've also seen a few retailers use email to help kickstart new product review programs by offering incentives to subscribers to participate. Your email subscribers are among your most loyal and engaged customers, so hitting them up for product reviews to get your program going is a smart strategy.

There's certainly room for retailers to make even more use of their product reviews in their email campaigns.

Posted by Chad White | August 3, 2007 3:33 PM

Posted on August 3, 2007 15:33

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Jordan Ayan is the chairman of Create-It!, a technology consulting organization, as well as the CEO of SubscriberMail, one of the leading email marketing companies. A two-time book author, a patent holder and a frequent speaker, Jordan has more than 20 years of experience in direct and database marketing. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing (CMM) and an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is communications director at email service provider Lyris. He has 20 years of experience from enterprise, SMB, agency and start-up marketing, communications and innovation roles at companies including Habeas, Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Philips Electronics and two of his own start-ups. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experience Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Kevin Senne is the Strategic Deliverability Director for Premiere Global Services. Kevin has been heavily involved in all facets of email marketing for more than a decade and he previously managed Email Operations for Travelocity.com. Kevin specializes in deliverability, strategy, and social media integratio and he focuses on helping marketers become permission-based one-to-one marketers. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

Kara Trivunovic currently serves as the senior director of strategic services for StrongMail Systems, where she is responsible for helping marketers optimize their email marketing programs for greater returns. Most recently Kara was founder and principal of The Email Advisor, a respected email marketing consultancy. Prior to launching The Email Advisor, Kara led strategic services for the email division of Premiere Global Services. Kara brings a unique perspective to the space having worked on the client, agency and provider side for 10 years.

Chris Wheeler is the director of deliverability at Bronto Software. He is leading the charge for ensuring both Bronto's customers and staff are well informed about email marketing practices and technology as well as being the face of Bronto deliverability externally. Previously, Chris created the internal deliverability program at Amazon.com alongside program managing the operations of the email team and was at an ESP leading a team of deliverability consultants. Besides being a frequent contributor on Deliverability.com, Chris is a part of many email industry forums, both business and technical. Read more.

Chad White is the research director at Smith-Harmon, an email marketing strategy and creative services agency. He is the founder of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.