Showcasing customer photo reviews on your website drives more sales than you’d think. It uses authentic, visual cues to build trust. You can use chat marketing to easily automate gathering photo reviews for your business.
Social proof of the quality of your products and services helps convince customers to buy from you. That part is easy. Convincing previous customers to leave photo reviews can be a challenge.
Automating a chat conversation to gather reviews for you on autopilot will make your life a lot easier. But first, let’s have a look at why you need photo reviews in the first place.
Why photo reviews provide the best social proof
There are several reasons why photo reviews are the best kind of social proof your business can benefit from. To name just a few:
- Customers are more informed about your products
- Visual proof boosts consumer confidence
- Most consumers say that the product or service they purchase after reading reviews meet expectations
A good product review usually consists of one or more of these elements:
- Rating of the product
- Written review
- A photo of the product
Yes, you could choose to just rely on the overall star rating. But if you only display the rating on your product pages, you ignore the fact that 73% of customers say the
content within a review is more valuable. And nothing’s more eye-catching and thumb-stopping than visual content.
How to incentivize customers to leave photo reviews
You have to realize that leaving a product review isn’t guaranteed with every purchase. It’s a favor you’re asking your customers. You need to convince them, and nothing’s more convincing than a proper incentive. These can include:
- Discounts for next purchases
- Credits/points (if you run loyalty programs)
- Charity donations from your business to a charity of choice
If you show customers that leaving a review has value for them, they’re more likely to do so. Try personalizing these incentives: if people purchased sneakers in your online store, offer a chance to win another pair of sneakers in exchange for a review.
Personalizing these incentives is going to get you a whole lot of
user-generated content for your online photo walls. Which means more sales snowballing into more opportunities to get additional photo reviews.
What type of tools can you use to gather photo reviews?
First, let’s take a look at the steps necessary to setting up a successful photo review campaign. You need to take care of the following:
- Gather product photo reviews 2. Export them to your CMS 3. Showcase them on your website
You can collect photo reviews in a variety of ways. Email marketing is standard practice, of course. Here’s an email I received after buying a pair of sneakers recently. It’s in Dutch, but the CTA translates to “Write a review”
The CTA leads to an online form with a few questions: how did I rate the product, could I write a short review, and give that review a title. Tools like Loox, Reviews.io, or Fera.ai are also very easy to use, especially if you run a Shopify store.
We're going to show you how you can use a chat conversation instead of an online form, using a chat marketing platform called
POP. This will create more engagement and increase conversions. It will also let you grow your audience and include capturing photos for your reviews.
Here’s an outline of how you can use three simple tools to create a complete photo review campaign:
- POP to set up the chat marketing campaign
- Zapier to export the files and testimonials automatically
- Fera.ai to add the social proof content to your store
But first, let’s answer the question:
What are the benefits of using chat marketing tools?
First of all, here are some stats from Zendesk’s
The State of Messaging 2020 that show why chat marketing tools can be beneficial to your business:
- 42% of people on the planet have a smartphone
- 87% of smartphone owners use messaging apps
- People spend more time messaging than nearly any other activity online
There’s a big chance that people will buy your product on a mobile device. The same goes for opening the email asking them to leave a review.
Instead of having to trudge through a difficult form on their phone, you can ask them to leave a review in a
conversational form. In a messaging app they already use, like
Facebook Messenger.
Not only does this open up a direct channel for customer support. You can also use the audience you build in Messenger for future retargeting campaigns. To sum it up:
- Customers can leave reviews in chat apps they already use
- You start direct conversations with customers for support
- You build an audience of customers for future campaigns
A step-by-step guide to using chat to gather photo reviews
The way chat marketing works is that you automate a chat conversation. You include the questions you would otherwise ask in an online form. And you ask people to upload a photo of the product, too - Messenger allows you to upload photos natively in its app.
If you want to get started quickly, you can use a photo review template, but here are the basic steps you need to follow:
- Create a Messenger flow that saves photos and testimonials and offers a discount code
- Add a link to this flow to your checkout page, confirmation/follow-up emails or...
- Add a Send to Messenger widget to your checkout page
- Handle incoming support queries in your inbox
Creating a Messenger flow shouldn’t prove too much of a problem, but you can read more on
how to set this up here.
Zapier is your go-to solution to automating the export of your photo, review, and rating data from
POP to your CMS of choice. Zapier is a tool that allows you to connect different apps and automate workflows. Basically, it’s a massive time-saving device.
Once you’ve got your reviews in, you can use Fera.ai, an easy-to-use app that you can add to your BigCommerce or Shopify store to craft and showcase beautiful social proof to enhance your customers’ experience.
It offers a bunch of additional
social proof features, like social proof pop-ups, visitor and product viewer counters and many more.
Conclusion: simplify photo reviews processes with chat and build an audience for future campaigns
Using photo reviews informs potential customers and boosts confidence in your brand. This means you’ll get more sales and grow your business.
Using a conversational interface like chat to collect photo reviews will lead to better conversions. It also provides a seamless customer experience, since you reach people on the messaging apps they already use.
You can expect the following benefits when setting up your photo review campaign:
- Automatically collect photo reviews
- Get more sales and recurring customers
- Provide a seamless customer experience
- Open a direct channel for customer support
- Build an audience for retargeting campaigns
Make sure you showcase your photo reviews on an eye-catching photo wall or personalize which reviews customers see, depending on which products they are browsing.
Jonas van de Poel works as Customer Success and Content Marketing at POP. Based in Amsterdam, he loves all things copywriting, marketing, and wears shades at night. Find him on LinkedIn.
