Customer reviews are essential to a product’s rankings, but it’s not always easy to get the quantity of reviews you want. The the best way to get a large number of reviews is to create an email outreach campaign to automatically ask users for a review.

Without the automated campaign I have running to get people to review my products GMass and Wordzen, I probably would have only 5% of the reviews I actually do have.

Even more importantly, GMass is ranked higher than its competitors in both the Chrome Web Store and the Gmail Add-on Store than other products that do mail merge in Gmail–even though some competitors have a significantly larger number of users. Why do they have more users than GMass when GMass is clearly superior? That’s a story for another day, but mainly because they’re the Silicon-valley big-money venture-capital-funded TechCrunch-type of companies…and GMass is organically grown, in the midwest, and focuses solely on its product and not all that other fluff. But I digress.

The proof is in…the search results!

Let me prove what an obvious difference this makes. GMass is available in two places: The Chrome Web Store and the GMail Add-on Store. First, let’s examine the Chrome Web Store and see how GMass ranks for the search term “mail merge”:

Notice that GMass ranks #1, and it has 1,133 reviews, and the #2 product, M*xmax, has only 523 reviews. The effect of reviews is even more impressive when you consider how many users each of the two extensions has:

Wow! Even though M*xmax has almost 50% more users than GMass, GMass is ranked higher because it has more than twice the number of reviews, and better ones to boot.

Now let’s apply the same analysis to the Gmail Add-on Store (aka the G Suite Marketplace). The Marketplace offers about 60 apps. Where is GMass on that list? Let’s take a look at the first page:

GMass is doing decently well at #13 out of 60. In fact, GMass is ahead of many apps that have more users. Let’s zoom into the row where GMass appears:

Notice that GMass, with 49,182 users, ranks above SignRequest, with 156,757 users, and even BasicOps, with 189,625 users–both more than three times as many users as GMass! But, of course, look again at the number of reviews: GMass leads with 271 reviews, whereas SignRequest only has 136–and BasicOps only 45! Reviews boost rankings.

Better rankings means more visibility for any application, not just GMass. In the same way, your product will be more or less visible based on the number of reviews it has in whatever marketplace it competes, whether it be Yelp, the iPhone App Store, or the Google Play Store.

So, today I am going to show you how to set up a review request email campaign, and how you can apply it to promote your business.

How the outreach campaign works

Here is the basic process:

1. Get the names and email addresses of people who are using your product into a Google Sheet. This should be a system that updates regularly, so new active users of your product are periodically automatically added to the Google Sheet. This can be done by Zapier, or any tool that can connect your CRM system to a Google Sheet.
2. Create a daily recurring campaign with at least one auto follow-up asking people to write a review.

Example 1: Reviews for your software product

A common use case for this type of campaign is for requesting reviews for your software product, whether that’s a web, mobile, or desktop app. In this example, we will use GMass itself as the example software product and look at how I use GMass to get reviews for GMass. How meta!

Start by creating your Google Sheet with the names and email addresses of people who are using your software. For this tutorial, I’m going to assume you know a way to do that, either by exporting data from your internal CRM system into a Google Sheet, or by using Zapier or a similar product.

Note: GMass uses Microsoft SQL Server as its backend and has written a proprietary tool to take data from SQL Server and dump it to a Google Sheet, something we plan on eventually making publicly available so that anyone who uses SQL Server as their back-end can easily get their active customers into a Google Sheet.

Here is a screenshot of an example Google Sheet:

Now you’re ready to reach out to your customers, asking them for a review.

1. Click the GMass Spreadsheet button at the top of your Gmail page to connect to a spreadsheet.

   

2. Choose the spreadsheet you are using with this product review invitation campaign and click “Connect to Spreadsheet”.

   

3. In the Gmail Compose window that is then launched, create a new email with your invitation to review your product–in my case, GMass.
   

   

   Bonus: Notice how we can use GMass’s personalization feature (“{FirstName|there}”) here? This way, if there is a FirstName column with information, GMass will address the email recipient by his or her first name (such as, “Hi, Bob”).

4. Now let’s schedule this email sequence. Click the GMass Settings button.

   

   The Settings window will be displayed. Click the plus next to Schedule. 

   

5. Click the “repeat” checkbox, and choose daily or hourly in the dropdown. You can also set a few other settings, such as not sending on weekends.IMPORTANT: Keep in mind, this scheduling doesn’t mean you are going to be pestering the same people daily or hourly, asking them repeatedly if they will write a review of your product. It means that this campaign will check the Google Sheet daily or hourly to see if there are new people on the list who have not yet been contacted, and only email the new people.

   

   Note: If, and only if, you have launched a Gmail compose window through the Spreadsheet button (Step 2 in this section), the Settings will include an option for scheduling repeated sends of this email. It will not show this if you compose an individual email without using the Spreadsheet button.

6. Let’s also set up one reminder email. The reality is, people need to be reminded to write reviews, even if they are willing. Fortunately, GMass has a great feature for this (one that I’ve blogged about before). In the Settings box, click on the blue plus mark to the right of “Auto Follow-Up” to expand it. Here you will have options to set an auto follow-up email that will be sent to each recipient based on the rules you specify. In this case, I have set the follow-up email to occur a day after the initial email, but only if the recipient hasn’t replied to my first email.
   
   Bonus: You can even send up to seven more reminder emails, at some pacing you choose, using the various “stages” shown in the image below.

   

   That reminder, by the way, will look like this when they get it the next day:

   

   Reminders are essential in getting people to reply, because often it is only after someone has been reminded of something once–or even twice–that they will take action. In this case, that will often make the difference between another review or not getting one.

7. Finally, click the red GMass button to start this automated email sequence. The first email addresses on the Google Sheet will be sent emails immediately, and then as new rows are added to the spreadsheet, GMass will send out this same email to those new people in an automated fashion. GMass is smart enough to avoid sending the previously emailed recipients the same email again.

That’s it! Now people will be invited to write a review of GMass, and each will get one (or more, if you prefer) follow-up email to remind them. Furthermore, new addresses added to the spreadsheet will automatically get the same email sequence.

Example 2: Reviews for your brick-and-mortar business

Remember, customer reviews aren’t only beneficial to software products like GMass. They are vitally important for getting the good word out about your shop, restaurant, or any other “brick and mortar” business in your community.

In this tutorial, I’m going to use Ted’s Tadpole Tanks as an example of a brick and mortar establishment, but it could easily be any sort of local establishment.

The steps here are the same as the first example, but with a different outgoing email that makes sense for a brick-and-mortar business. In that case, asking for reviews on Yelp.com might be the way to go. Here is the outgoing email:

The rest of the process is the same as shown in the previous example.

Other uses:

The world of public opinion about products and services runs on reviews. They can make or break not just businesses, but any creative or public effort that requires people to make decisions in your favor. So consider using GMass for any of the following ways to automatically request reviews for your:

• band’s new music album.
• new book (such as on Amazon or Goodreads, for your new book).
• new indie movie (such as on IMDB).
• restaurant (Yelp, Trip Advisor, the Happy Cow, and others).
• coffee shop
• yoga, dance, or martial arts center
• boutique
• record store
• doctor’s or dentist’s offices
• law office
• funeral home (that may seem strange, but having a trusted place to go when it is a family’s time to need this service is actually very important. You may wish to only request reviews after an appropriate amount of time has passed, of course.).
• non-profit community center
• auto mechanic’s shop
• massage therapy business
• photography service
• in-home tutoring business

What if you have a lot of customers?

Sometimes you have a runaway hit on your hands and have tons of customers. That doesn’t mean your company should rest on its laurels–reviews can drive even further growth. In that case, however, you will have a lot of emails to send!

If so, you might need to connect GMass to an SMTP account like Sendgrid. This allows you to send a large volume of emails without bumping up against Gmail’s limits while still using the familiar Gmail interface to do all your work.

Ajay Goel

Ajay is the founder of GMass and has been developing email sending software for 20 years.

twitter.com/PartTimeSnob

In this post, I will walk you through setting up a system where anyone who emails you can be automatically added to a GMass campaign with the option of sending a sequence of follow up emails automatically. (As a bonus, I include a little bit of spreadsheet formula magic to make it easier to later personalize your GMass-sent emails!)

For example, you may have a “mailto” link on your web page stating, “send us an email if you’d like more information.” Or a potential customer may just email you directly. In either case, when an email is then received, the sender is automatically subscribed to an email automation sequence.

How it Works

Here’s an overview of the process :

1. Someone sends an email to your Gmail address.
2. A Zapier “zap” you have previously set up detects that new email and automatically copies the sender’s email address and other information you specify into a Google Sheets spreadsheet.
3. GMass reads the Google Sheet every day or hour (your choice), detects all the new rows in the spreadsheet and sends an email to each new email address.
4. The automatic follow-up email feature in GMass then will send the rest of the email sequence (up to 8 follow-ups) until the recipient replies, opens, or clicks the email.

Have your Google Sheets spreadsheet ready

Make sure you have a Google Sheet created to hold your mailing list. For the purposes of this tutorial, the format I will use has just four columns: Name, FirstName, LastName, and email. To follow along, set your spreadsheet up in this way. I also have 2 rows of sample data in it already.

Creating Your Zap

It will just take about ten minutes to set up your “zap” in the following steps.

1. Zapier is a web service for connecting other web services, and can be quite handy. Signing up and basic features are free. First, sign up with Zapier. Then, to set up your “zap”, go to this template page on Zapier and click “Create this Zap”.
   

   

2. At the next window, alerting you that you are setting up this Gmail Trigger in Zapier, click “Continue”.

   

3. Zapier will then ask you to connect a Gmail account. This should be the account that, if someone emails you there, that person will be automatically assigned to your automatic email sequence. Click “Connect an Account” [not shown] and choose which account from the list (you have to be logged into an account in Gmail for it to be populated in this list), and then you will be shown this window:

   

   Allow Zapier this permission by clicking “ALLOW”.

4. On the next screen, click “Save and Continue”.

   

   Note: You probably will only have one email account that you are using with Zapier, but if you happen to have done this before, you might have more than one shown. If you happen to have more than one, make sure only the one you want for this zap is selected with the radio button.

5. Click “Continue” on next page [not shown]. (We’re ignoring the advanced options).
6. Click “Continue” on next page. [not shown]. (Also ignoring the small “new small improvements” page from Zapier).
7. Zapier will now test this Gmail account. As it instructs, make sure there is at least 1 recent email in the Inbox of that Gmail account. Click “Fetch and Continue”.

   

8. Zapier will take a moment to attempt to fetch a recent email, and should come up as successful. If so, you will see this:

   

   Click “Continue”

9. It will then ask you to create a spreadsheet row.

   

   Click “Continue”. 

10. You now need to connect a Google Sheet.

    

    Click “Connect an Account”.

11. Zapier will ask you to choose a Google Sheets account and then give it access to that account, as you did in Step 4 for access to Gmail. So, repeat the process of granting permission.
12. You will see a similar screen as was shown in Step 5. Click “Save and Continue”.
13. You will be brought to a screen where you must set up your Google Sheets spreadsheet row.
    Keep in mind, in order for this to work, you must have a Google Sheets spreadsheet with the right formatting. This is critical. Zapier has a useful help page about this. Make sure to follow their guidelines. The spreadsheet I am using for this tutorial was shown in the section above, “Have your Google Sheets spreadsheet ready”.
    Note: You should be logged in as the Google account that goes with this sheet.
    In Zapier, I have selected a Google Sheets spreadsheet (“Emails for Ted’s Tadpoles”) as well as a worksheet, which happens to be the default name, Sheet1. So, select your own spreadsheet and worksheet. (Don’t hit “Continue” just yet, though.)

    

    You also have to choose which data gets extracted from each email and placed into the spreadsheet’s next row. For this example, I am going to extract the the sender’s name and the sender’s email–which we will need for the automatic email sequence.  

14. For the sender’s name, click on the icon to the right of the “Name” field (the word “Name” is from your spreadsheet this zap is connected to), and from the dropdown list, select “From Name”.
    

    

    

    Then, do the same thing for the email field, but select the From Email field from the dropdown [not shown].

15. Now comes the bit of spreadsheet magic I mentioned above.
    For personalizing your emails when using a spreadsheet, GMass needs to have a spreadsheet column with the first names and last names of your contacts, so it would be good if we can attempt to get that through this zap. There is no first name field provided in Gmail data, so we can do it with a Google Sheets formula built right into our zap. First, make sure your spreadsheet is set up like mine is, with the exact same columns in that order. Then copy the following:
    =IF(ISBLANK(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),COLUMN()-1))),””,(INDEX(SPLIT(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),COLUMN()-1)), ” “), 0,1)))
    and paste it into the FirstName field. It will look like this:

    

16. Let’s do the same thing for LastName. It’s the same idea, but a slightly different spreadsheet formula:
    =IF(ISBLANK(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),COLUMN()-2))),””,    (IFERROR(INDEX(SPLIT(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),COLUMN()-2)), ” “), 0,2)) )      )
    

    

17. Double check that Name, FirstName, LastName, and Email are all filled out, then Click “Continue”.
    Note:  For this tutorial, I have kept things very simple, with just these four spreadsheet columns. But you could have as many as you want and extract other data from the emails, such as Subject or Date. 
    
18. You will be brought to the test page. I prefer to skip this and test it directly from one of my emails. So you can just click Skip Test.
19. Click Finish. You should see the following screen:

    

20. You did it! So, let’s test it out! Send an email to the email address you used for this zap. We will have Jack Lovich, our customer, send an email.
21. Wait more than 5 minutes. Zapier runs on a 5 minute interval schedule, so when you send the email you have to wait about 5 minutes for anything to happen.
22. After 5 minutes are over, let’s check our spreadsheet again and notice that your last email, from Jack Lovich, has caused Zapier to add a new row (row 4) to your Google Sheets spreadsheet! 
    And, because of our spreadsheet formula, it’s also put his first and last name on the spreadsheet. Note: in cases, in which the person or entity that emails you has just one word as the “From name”, the LastName column will just be left blank.

    

    That’s it! You’ve set up your zap!

Back to GMass: Creating the Email Automation Sequence

The hardest part is done! Once you have set up your zap, you’re ready to create your email automation sequence.

1. Click the GMass Spreadsheet button at the top of your Gmail page to connect to a spreadsheet.

   

2. Choose the spreadsheet you are using with this zap and click “Connect to Spreadsheet”.

   

3. In the Gmail Compose window that is then launched, create a new email with your marketing message.
   

   

   Bonus: Notice how we can use GMass’s personalization feature (“{FirstName|Tadpole Enthusiast}”) here, since we have created a FirstName field in our spreadsheet, one that is automatically extracted by the zap we created.

4. Now let’s schedule this email sequence. Click the GMass Settings button.

   

   The Settings window will be displayed. Click the plus next to Schedule. 

   

5. Click the “repeat” checkbox, and choose daily or hourly in the dropdown. You can also set a few other settings, such as not sending on weekends.

   

   Note: If–and only if–you have launched a Gmail compose window through the Spreadsheet button (Step 2 in this section), the Settings will include an option for scheduling repeated sends of this email. It will not show this if you compose an individual email without using the Spreadsheet button.
   While in the Settings window, set the options for follow-up emails, which will result in your “automated email sequence”. Those options are founded under Auto Follow-up, and are basically self-explanatory, but see the link above for a more thorough treatment of this option.

6. Finally, click the red GMass button to start this automated email sequence. The first email addresses names on the Google Sheet will sent emails immediately, and then as new rows are added to the sheet by our zap (when people email the email address specified in our zap), GMass will send out this same email to those people as well.
   Of course, GMass is smart enough to know not to send the previously emailed recipients the same email again).

That’s it! You now have a powerful email automation system up and running.

If you want to take it to the next level and send a very large number of emails, you should connect GMass to an SMTP account like Sendgrid. This allows you to send a  very large volume of emails without bumping up against Gmail’s limits and prevents your Gmail account from being flagged for sending spam.

Ajay Goel

Ajay is the founder of GMass and has been developing email sending software for 20 years.

twitter.com/PartTimeSnob