4 ways to incorporate reviews into your product recommendations

Customer reviews are among the very best tools in your marketing tool bag. Reviews do a couple of great things; they highlight how much people love your stuff, and they are a great way to let other potential customers see that too.

So, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that more marketers want to add customer reviews, and other types of user-generated content, to emails. Customer reviews, in particular, are great examples of social proof. Reviews help other consumers see what people who are just like them think about a product.

Not to mention, more often than not, those reviews matter to other consumers, making them more likely to buy. Research has shown consumers give reviews and testimonials from other customers a lot more weight than the marketing a brand does.

Now, you know customer reviews are important, so the next step is getting more of them in your emails. Here, we’re going to highlight a few ways you can incorporate reviews into your product recommendation emails.

Personalize

The benefit of having data at your fingertips means you have all sorts of information on your customer’s past behavior. Through your customer relationship management tool (CRM) and your e-commerce data, you can see what they’ve bought and browsed on your site, as well as, the emails they are more likely to respond to.

Use that information to create segmented emails with specific products tied to what they’ve already bought or have left in their cart. You can add in more in-depth reviews for these products, too, since you might only need to feature 2-3 closely related products to what your customer has bought.

Consumers love getting content personalized to them. When you send emails that feature product recommendations based on their interests and needs, that can make them more likely to buy.

Keep it simple

Something else important to remember is you don’t have to get fancy with your reviews. A lot of simple customer reviews are just as effective as some that are more in-depth.

Check out this email from Adidas.

At the top of the email was a promotion for Stan Smith sneakers, but they offered a few more recommended products as you scroll down. First, the slides, but then a whole series of products with their star reviews.

Using just good images and stars is a simple yet effective way to highlight product reviews. Your customer can see what other people just like them think about these products in a quick glance.

Plus, Adidas adds another level of personalization by highlighting other products that tie into the main featured recommendation.

Social proof

Remember how we mentioned user-generated content as a valuable tool at the start of this post? Here’s where that comes into play. User-generated content is a marketer’s dream, and you should use it more in all your emails, but especially for product recommendations.

If you look all over social media, from Instagram to TikTok, you’ll find customers singing your praises. So why not highlight some of those product reviews in your emails?

You can even take it a step further and create a contest or campaign that encourages your readers to create reviews and other fun stuff.

West Elm used a hashtag campaign on Instagram and then tied it into featured products. This sort of thing can give you a ton of content to work with and share across all your marketing channels, especially your emails.

Dedicated testimonials

Another way to use reviews with product recommendations is to get super specific about one product. Even better if you can tie this into something your customer has already been interested in buying.

Say your customer has left a sweater in their shopping cart. You can send an abandoned cart email campaign and do two very important things. First, remind your customer about the sweater, and second, add some customer testimonials about that particular product.

This type of email gets targeted and personalized at the same time. You’re reminding customers about something in their cart, and you’re also showing them all sorts of other people just like them who love the product. Those very specific reviews can help push your customer over the edge and get them to buy.

Are you starting to see how you can incorporate reviews into your product recommendation emails? Good, now go forth and give it a try!