Be honest.

Would you work with a brand that has zero reviews to its name?

Maybe if you knew the owner personally.

But, in almost every case, the answer is gonna be NO.

Especially, when there are dozens of other options with stellar customer reviews.

Reviews are one of the most important levers you can pull when it comes to sales and conversion.

There’s a ton of data to back it up. 

For example, 91% of millennials (the largest customer group) trust online reviews as much as they would a personal recommendation. While another study found that 93% of consumers say that online reviews sway their buying decisions.

These aren’t simply stats, they’re calls to action. Now more than ever, you need an efficient review collection machine behind your business.

Luckily, we’ll show you how we were able to boost our reviews by 125% in just 30 days. You’ll also learn why reviews are so important within the HubSpot ecosystem and how you can more effectively collect reviews and scale review collection with Salesmsg and HubSpot working together.

Why Reviews Matter in the HubSpot Ecosystem

Customer reviews aren’t another vanity metric, they’re a potent tool for driving growth and molding the reputation of your business. 

Having a strong online review presence goes beyond boosting credibility – it can fuel customer engagement, shape buying decisions, and help you close more deals faster.

As of writing this, there are 7,128 agencies listed in the HubSpot ecosystem. When viewing your agency profile page, what’s at the very top?

Your star ratings and the number of reviews. 

Companies with a higher number of reviews have served a higher volume of clients, in general. But, even if you’re not there yet, you can still maximize the number of reviews you collect from past and current clients and customers.

The same thing goes for integrations listed in the HubSpot ecosystem. Now, HubSpot displays the number of installs over the number of reviews. However, your integration or app pages showcase your customer reviews in-depth.

And these reviews will influence whether or not a customer trusts you enough to use your solution or click over one of your competitors.

Think about it, when a potential client or customer is checking out your agency or app page they’re trying to see if you’re the right fit. They want to pull the trigger and your customer reviews are going to sway them in one direction, or the other. 

Plus, the number of good reviews you get also influences your rankings within the agency and app ecosystems. Now, just like Google’s ranking algorithm, it’s shrouded in secrecy. But, you can find out what works by studying patterns.

In this case, agencies and apps with a higher number of five-star reviews tend to rank towards the top. Just take a look at the category page for SMS tools.

All of this holds true across other review sites too, like G2, Capterra, Software Advice, and other platforms that are relevant to your business. We’ve seen our total reviews double on G2 in the last 9 months, completely automated, and it’s only been growing as a source of leads.

The Art of Using Salesmsg and HubSpot for Review Collection

Reviews are important. But, remembering to follow up with past customers and clients can be a hassle and it’s easy to forget.

That’s why integrating Salesmsg with your existing HubSpot workflows can be so valuable. Once you set it up, you’ll literally start collecting reviews on autopilot.

For the uninitiated, Salesmsg is a two-way business texting app that lets you send, receive, and manage all your SMS conversations with customers and clients. You have full control over your SMS campaigns, so you can reduce no-shows, generate more revenue, and improve your customer relationships.

Okay, back to it…

If review collection is something you have to think about, then it isn’t going to get done.

By integrating Salesmsg and HubSpot you make review collection virtually automatic. Not only can you ask customers for reviews via email, but you can do it with text too.

Combining these two lets you reach your customers where they’re at, using the communication channel they prefer. Sometimes, a simple nudge is all it takes.

Salesmsg and HubSpot aren't just about automating your review collection process; they're about transforming your approach to customer communication. 

Here are a few helpful tips for boosting your agency's review numbers:

1. Personalize the message. Connect to them personally by using their name and referencing what product or service they used.
2. Incentivize reviews. Make the review worth their while. Offering incentives like discounts or free credits can significantly bump up response rates.
3. Offer multiple review platforms. Empower customers to leave reviews on platforms they're comfortable with. Having a presence across multiple platforms maximizes your chances of obtaining reviews.

You’ll see how we reference our G2 reviews on our HubSpot page. This works well to help build even more social proof.

Following these practices won't just up your review count, but also enhance their quality.

Choosing the Best Channels for Review Collection

There are tons of ways you can ask your customers to leave reviews, but not all are created equal. The real winners? Email and text messaging. 

HubSpot's robust email capabilities let you send out personalized review requests at the perfect time. Combine this with Salesmsg's ability to reach out to customers directly via text messages, and you have a winning combo. 

By connecting with customers on their most-used devices and inboxes, you'll effectively gather reviews across your entire customer base.

Case Study: How We Got a 125% Surge in Reviews

Collecting customer reviews wasn’t something we thought would move the needle as much as it did. It was part of our existing workflows, but it was never a huge focus. But, after seeing the results it’s brought, it’s too good not to share.

So, now we’re drinking our Kool-Aid and doubling-down on review generation.

What we did was pretty straightforward. We simply added customer review requests to our existing Hubspot and Salesmsg workflow. 

But, instead of targeting everyone, we first focused on customers with the highest NPS. This meant we were getting great reviews from our happiest and most satisfied customers. This is a really important point. 

You can expand to other segments in time, but getting these reviews first can be a great momentum builder. Plus, these customers are much more likely to say yes.

And, you can do this directly within your existing HubSpot workflow, and craft different messages based on their response. Here’s a quick look at what it could look like:

Here’s an overview of how we did it:

1. We used NPS data to send review messages to our highest NPS customers (if you don’t have this data, you can use Salemsg to send a quick NPS survey).
2. We sent text messages using customer data stored in HubSpot asking for a review.
3. We offered an incentive for customers to leave a review.

The outcome? An impressive 125% increase on our total review count.

If you don’t have everything set up yet, or any idea of what to send,that’s perfectly okay. Here’s a simple 2-SMS sequence you can add to the end of your existing workflows.

Note: If you want to use these for email instead, just make them a bit longer and load them up into HubSpot. We recommend sending the emails and texts together, that way you double the chances of your customer remembering to leave a review.

Here they are:

• Message one: On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), how would you rate our service?

If the customer responds with an 8 through 10, then send them the following message. 

• Message two: We’re glad you had such an awesome experience! Would you mind taking 10 seconds to leave us a review about your experience here: (link)? 

If you want to make your customer fall in love, then you can send them an unannounced bonus at this point. This could be free credits on their account, a coupon for a future discount, or something else surprising.

We opted for offering a customer an incentive with our review messages (as you’ll learn below). But, it’s up to you! Experiment with both options and see what your customers respond to the most.

Lessons Learned From A/B Testing

We tested out a lot of different review messages and here’s what worked best for us:

1. Customers really responded to offering an incentive. They still left reviews without it, but the numbers really went up with a simple discount.
2. Customers responded to simple, straightforward review requests. Straightforward asks worked better than messages with clever GIFs, language, and other images.
3. Simplifying the collection process led to reduced drop-off rates, and more completed reviews. If you’re sharing a link try to link directly to the review collection page. 

To achieve these results we brought our marketing and sales teams together in the “marketing lab” at Salesmsg.

We wanted to A/B test four different sets of emails and SMS messages over 4 weeks, so we could see which messages performed best. 

These are the emails and texts we would send once we receive an NPS score of 8, 9, or 10. To measure success the key metrics we looked at were open rates and click-through rates.

For the first test, we got a little cute with the subject line, and as you can see from the results, there was one clear winner.

As you can see, B was much simpler and focused more on what the user would get (a free gift card). Plus, it adds a bit of scarcity up front, by mentioning we’re only giving out 10 of these gift cards. The subject line was also more clear and straightforward. 

Then, we waited 7 days for users to open and leave reviews for the first email. After the 7 days were up, we sent out a second batch of emails to the same list, but excluded customers who already left us a review. 

After that first test, we wanted to see if we could improve our results even more. For this A/B test, we changed up our preview text to see if this moved the needle. The results for this one were pretty shocking!

Here are the two emails we sent out:

Version A hit it out of the park! We shortened the text for the email, brought up the time-sensitive gift card again, then reinforced how little time it would take on their end to leave a review. You’ll notice the click-through rate is also higher, even though the link is moved to the second paragraph. 

We also didn’t include any preview text for Version A. In this case, adding preview text actually hurt open rates. It’s always worth testing this across campaigns you run. 

Finally, we continued this process for the 3rd and 4th emails we sent out. 

We also tested the timing of our text messages by sending them 1 minute after emails 3 and 4 went out. Here, it wasn’t surprising to see that response rates were much higher when asking for reviews via text over email.

By moving through this process and choosing a winner at each step we’ve been seeing unreal open and click rates. Now, this workflow is running on its own and getting us reviews on autopilot. 

And this doesn’t only apply to HubSpot reviews. Any non-HubSpot users are getting hit with the same sequence, but instead of sending them to HubSpot, we send them over to our G2 page. 

Here’s a look at the overall performance of our two competing workflows:

Scaling Review Collection Within the HubSpot Ecosystem

After you’ve determined your winners, you can now build your workflow using HubSpot and Salesmsg.

Here’s our template. We build our workflows based on maximizing touches while being cautious not to overwhelm our contacts in a short amount of time. We build our workflows using the following criteria

1. Who - Our target persona. (We have four specifically! 🙂).
2. Attempts - The total number of touch points we plan on making.
3. Duration - The time between the first and last attempt. (We typically try to keep this under 90 days).
4. Spacing - The time gap between contact attempts. (We like to increase or decrease the spacing on engagement of the content).
5. Channel - This is the type of communication channel we use. Email, Text, Phone, Voicemail, or LinkedIn are viable options.

Our trigger criteria is a list in HubSpot that is populated when a customer provides us a score of 10, 9 or 8 for our NPS. Once the trigger is fired, then the magic happens with the following:

• If the customer is a HubSpot User, then they get the Emails & Texts specific to providing us a review on our HubSpot listing!
• If not, then we send those customers to provide us a different online review like G2, Capterra or something of that nature.

Here’s our Playbook for both scenarios or tracks:

Again you can mix and match the days, duration, and channels. A/B test what works best and what creates the most engagement with your customers!

Supercharging Review Collection with Salesmsg and HubSpot

In the dynamic HubSpot ecosystem, you need to do whatever you can to outshine your competition. 

Remember, customer reviews are more than just testimonials - they’re valuable tools that bring more customers into your world and help you stand out not only on HubSpot but on other popular review platforms too. 

By unlocking the power of Salesmsg and Hubspot you can make review collection automatic. Watch your reviews pile up as you work on delivering awesome results for your clients and customers. 

With customer segmentation, a personalized outreach, a little incentive, and a simplified review process, you can start scaling your reviews. It's time to embrace the power of Salesmsg and HubSpot to accelerate your review acquisition journey!