Automating Off-Site Review Thank You Emails with FluentCRM

TLDR;

Following in the footsteps of using a plugin for Abandoned Cart follow-up, reviews (originating from off-site platforms) and testimonials (obtained on-site) are another instance where you can bypass complicated automations with a simple plugin.

Essentially, Social Ninja Pro integrates with off-site review platforms, scrapes your reviews and publishes them on a page that you specify. It also integrates with Fluent Forms to publish testimonials that you capture via an on-site form. And of course, everything is automated.

The tricky part is following up with a contact who has left a review on an off-site platform. Because for a myriad of tech reasons, these goliath platforms don’t “talk” to insignificant self-hosted websites like ours.

This post covers the easiest way I know for automating off-site review thank you emails and initiating meaningful contact with them (ie. thanking them and perhaps adding them to follow-up email campaigns).

The catch is that it involves 1% manual intervention. But since it’s something that you already do, adding it to your marketing automation is a walk in the park (best 200 movie minutes you’ll spend).

What’s The Difference Between Reviews And Testimonials?

REVIEWS are scraped from 3rd-party platforms like, TripAdvisor, TrustPilot, Yelp, or Google, and displayed somewhere prominent on your website, whereas TESTIMONIALS are typically obtained by asking people to fill out a form on your website. (I differentiate them to set the wheels in motion for how you’ll go about obtaining either. And because, on-site AND off-site reviews both matter, for different reasons.)

Off-Site Review Platforms vs On-Site Review Forms

Asking someone to leave a review on a 3rd-party review site may seem counter-productive but it’s important that you build a strong presence in these spaces so why not use them to your advantage? Send customers to post THERE then copy that same review to your own website. Two reviews for the price of one!

Of course, the best quick and dirty way to capture testimonials (or reviews) is with an on-site form where the only click involved is a Submit button.

HOWEVER, know that sometimes it’s just easier to email links to specific products on a review site (and having Social Ninja copy them over) versus creating a dedicated form for each product on your website.

Why Bother With Displaying Reviews and Testimonials

It goes without saying that the whole point of offering online reviews and testimonials is to give other shoppers a way to,

1. Vet brands
2. Gauge value, and
3. Anticipate a common experience (preferably positive)

Beyond this, keeping track of reviews and testimonials also creates an opportunity to segment contacts for the purpose of following up with them further about the very thing they’ve demonstrated interest in, and in some cases, have spent disposable income on. Marketing 101.

Where Do I Get Reviews and Testimonials For My Website

There are other options, but I use Social Ninja Pro to display both.

1. Curate REVIEWS from multiple off-site sources to automatically copy and display on my website. (Thanking people requires 1% manual intervention.)
2. Collect TESTIMONIALS from an on-site form (via Fluent Forms) that automatically displays them and simultaneously assigns a tag to the contact … which triggers a FluentCRM automation to thank people (100% hands-free).

This is the perfect example of using ubiquitous WordPress addons from the same developer (WPManageNinja). Seamless functionality. Naught incompatibility. Zen.

How to Ask for Reviews and Testimonials

Never be afraid to ask for a review/testimonial/feedback, but know that there’s a bit of a science to it. (You can’t go wrong with Andrew Davis’ advice on how to get the best reviews.)

Asking can be as simple as:

“Thank you for choosing [your business/product name]! We’d love to know how you feel about your experience with us by leaving a review on our Google Business profile, [link to that]”.

CXL suggests asking open-ended questions along with incentivizing your ask.

TIP: Thank everyone afterward (regardless of the number of stars).

TIP: In the rare event that you want to avoid an automated email request going out to specific contacts, manually add a tag to those contacts (eg. “no reviews”) and add a condition for it in your review automation. 

When to Ask for Reviews and Testimonials

Often, the first place to invite people to leave a review is in the initial transactional email.

Otherwise, try to frame your favor by presenting it in a way that suggests that they’re part of a community and their opinion matters. (image by reallygoodemails.com)

There’s also no reason why you can’t ask for reviews in the middle of an automation that already thanks customers for their purchase. That process would look something like this:

1. The Successful Purchase ThankU Email (100% automated)

Most automations typically begin with a thank you (or welcome) email for whatever was purchased. Asking for a subsequent testimonial or review is as easy as adding another email series to the same automation.

2. Ask For a Review (100% automated)

It takes a healthy dose of chutzpah to pitch an upsell in the initial stages of engagement with a new contact. (A single purchase isn’t an indicator that someone wants more of the same so, my advice is don’t do that.)

Instead, let them know you care about their opinion on what they bought, their experience, or both. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable with your reason for asking – you care about your reputation, their experience helps others make an educated buying decision, etc. Be unabashedly transparent about it.

3. Wait. During this time, you’ll also be waiting to be notified from the review platform that you sent your buyer to, that you have a review and have confirmed that it came from your contact. This is where you’ll be manually intervening (up next).

4. Thank them for their review (98% automated)

This step requires a little extra attention on your part. Here’s why…

Apart from installing and configuring additional middleware (which likely involves another plugin, creating an account somewhere, and a bit of a learning curve involving API integration), off-site review platforms don’t offer any way of “talking” to independent self-hosted websites like ours. And why would they? (The effort that goes into that is complicated.) FluentCRM is no exception.

The only obligation that a 3rd-party review platform has, is to their million+ account holders by emailing them when someone leaves a review, with a link to view and/or reply to it. Job done.

The only way you’ll know when an off-site review is made is when you receive that email.

It then falls to you to confirm the review, identify the reviewer in FluentCRM as the contact that you sent there (remember, you sent them an email to ask for the review in the first place, so they already exist as a contact in your database), and manually tag them.  Job done.

The addition of this tag will immediately trigger your ThankU email.

So yes, you have to manually do something to help this process along but you’re already going to read the review anyway (and see who it’s from). Looking for that same contact in your FluentCRM database and clicking a button to add a tag from a dropdown list, is nothing.

In the greater scheme of things, 1% manual intervention is a small price to pay for creating a trigger that will resume the automation that governs how you follow-up with contacts who leave you a review. The alternative (not thanking people) isn’t an option.

5. Display the review on your website (100% automated)

Displaying reviews on your website is the easy part. (Social Ninja Pro’s settings are straightforward so we’re not tackling that here).

Independent of any FluentCRM automation, Social Ninja quietly publishes all reviews and testimonials to your website according to the options you chose during setup. You don’t have to do anything else.

Step-4 is the “heavy” lifting part of this whole exercise: building out the automation – “heavy” being a relative term.

Speaking of Step-4, let’s dissect how we thank our reviewers.

How Manual Input Affects FluentCRM Automations

Automations are governed by instructions. Once they start, they don’t stop until their instructions tell them to.

Let’s be clear about how automations move contacts through the step-wise progression of instructions:

Once an automation is triggered, it won’t change/update contacts
EXCEPT when you use a “GOAL” (vs an action).

Seems a tad counterintuitive BUT, this is how we’re able to use a manual action (adding a tag) to eliminate the use of multiple conditions that also check for a manual tag.

To be clear, you can either use multiple conditions to test for the same manual tag (resulting in a very lengthy automation) OR eliminate conditions altogether by using a single goal.

The goal settings are what cause an automation to pause when a specific parameter is not met. In this case, our automation needs to identify a contact by a tag that we select (and yes, I actually called this tag, “manual tag added”).

Likewise, the second that a specific parameter is met, that automation resumes. And in this case, after we manually add a tag to a contact, the automation immediately recognizes this and is immediately un-paused, advancing the contact through the remaining instructions.

The reason this works is because we check: Essential Point as the Benchmark type, allowing contacts to entire directly at this point in the automation, skipping all preceding instructions.

Automating Off-Site Review Thank You Emails

Note two things:

1. The following steps can be added to any automation OR be the only steps in a single-purpose automation
2. You can achieve the same result by replacing the GOAL with multiple CONDITIONS

For context, I’m interjecting a GOAL into an automation that thanks a customer for buying something. It would make sense to add a nurturing campaign AFTER the goal but we’re not covering that here.

When someone buys a product, the sale triggers a Thank You (or Welcome) automation.

1. Apply tag, “purchased [product]”

2. Send email – welcome/congratulate customer on their purchase/registration. This is a transactional email

3. OPTIONAL Conditions: I hesitate to show these conditions here at all since the point of this post is to replace this step with Step #4, Adding a GOAL. The following conditions simply show what you would have to use if not a goal (don’t do this).

Condition #1: Check for tags: “no review” or “purchased [product]” – we don’t want to ask these contacts for a review.

• If positive, exit the automation
• If negative
• Wait 2 days – gives a customer time to access the product
• Send email #1, requesting a review
• Apply tag: “requested review” – if they don’t leave one, this tag identifies them as having been asked but didn’t comply
• Wait 3 Days

Condition #2: Check for tag: “manual tag added” – By now, a contact has had 3 days to leave a review. If they did, it’s because we manually added the tag.

• If positive,
• Remove the tag, “requested review [ product]”
• Add the tag, “reviewed [product]”
• Send a ThankU email
• End the automation
• If negative
• Send email #2 requesting a product review
• Wait another 3 days

Condition #3: Check for tag: “manual tag added” – By now, a contact has had 6 days to leave a review.

• If positive,
• Remove the tag, “requested review [ product]”
• Add the tag, “reviewed [product]”
• Send a ThankU email
• End the automation
• If negative
• Send email #3 requesting a product review
• Wait another 3 days

Condition #4 (9 days later): Repeat the same steps as previous conditions.

4. GOAL: The only purpose for this goal is to check for a contact with a specific tag (that you’ll be manually adding)

• You MUST select “Essential Point” as the Benchmark type. If a Goal is optional, everyone progresses through the automation regardless of whether or not they received a manual tag (the “goal”). We don’t want this.
• You MUST also select “Contacts can enter directly…” which requires ALL contacts to entire the automation at this very stage – skipping all of the preceding instructions.
• If a tag is NOT added (because they haven’t left a review) the goal prohibits the contact from advancing through the automation. In other words, they sit there in perpetuity until the goal is met, they unsubscribe, or you end the automation after a pre-defined wait time
• If positive,
  • Email – Thank them for their review (maybe: reward them with a coupon)
  • Remove tag, “requested review”
  • Add tag, “reviewed [product]”
  • End the automation (or add them to a nurturing email series)
• If negative,
  • Do nothing. This is where you can add a Wait period of 20 years (or more realistically, 30 days) before ending the automation.

The Upside of FluentCRM Automation Goals

If building a presence on off-site review platforms is important to your brand (as it is to many), continue to send people there. Because Social Ninja can copy-and-publish that exact same review to your website.

More than that, you now know how to automatically thank those people. And your gratitude won’t go unnoticed (because sadly, few people do this).

Sometimes, it takes a little creative thinking to work out how to use a FluentCRM automation to do what you want it to do. They don’t accommodate every scenario but in this case, goals are a nice way to manipulate a contact to artificially “update” an automation and bring it out of a paused state. The fact that it requires manual intervention to update the contact is a minor detail.

A Few Automation Tips

1. A rule of thumb for sending emails is no more than 2 reminder emails (says PowerReviews), preferably no more than 2 days apart from each other.
2. If you sell a single product, use the tag, “customer,” otherwise, add the product name to keep track of specific product reviews.
3. Build lists from reviews to personalize product recommendations to customers.
4. Consider creating a dedicated campaign for people who don’t leave a review. Send emails in 1-week intervals – ask for a review + how they’ve been using it + invite them to reply to you because you’re genuinely interested in their feedback. This is as “nurturing” as it gets.

And THAT is how you thank off-site reviewers.