Local Club allows you to send review requests to all your customers right from the dashboard.
The big question is - 'How many review requests should you send out in one go?'
To answer this, let's take a look at how review sites like Google and Facebook behave when you get reviews from your customers.
- Get genuine Reviews: These sites want potential customers to see what existing customers think of a business before making a decision.
- Discourage Fake Reviews: These sites do not appreciate businesses trying to build up their reviews by adding fake reviews.
- Action on Fake Reviews: These sites have a spam detection algorithm that helps them determine if incoming reviews are real or fake.
There are several components of the algorithm the sites use. One of the most important ones is the 'number of reviews' you get in a certain time frame.
Review sites have historical data on when you started getting reviews and are constantly matching this with your current review count. Drastic shifts in the number of reviews may cause your account to be flagged and hard-earned reviews may be removed due to suspected spam.
For example, let's say your business was historically getting 2-3 reviews in a month and suddenly that number increases to 15-20 per month - most review sites will flag your account and suspect spam.
At Local Club, we have always believed that our customers should strive for a linear growth in review count. Consistency in incoming reviews not only helps maintain a clean image in front of review sites, but also allows you to create an impeccable first impression for your prospective customers.
To achieve this, avoid sending out review requests to all of your customers at once. If you attempt to send review requests to more than 100 contacts at once, you will receive a warning message that your reviews might get marked as spam, thereby reducing the effectiveness of your campaign.
Use our 'Campaign' feature to schedule your review request emails over a period of time. This allows you to send a fixed number of review requests each day, resulting in a steady influx of reviews month over month without sudden peaks or troughs.