Anyone have a postcard that requests reviews?

I've done 2 but I can't show them because I always give NDA's to the clients (they rarely ask but its a great sales point - "I won't ever be touting your work to your competitors").

But here's "outlines" of what I did (as a copywriter I HAVE to say the words are far more important than the graphics).

First one

Artwork - Smiling face

Copy - (along the lines off) - Please write a review, email and tell us and get nice discount off your next order. You get the discount anyway because you're a great customer. But we would really appreciate a review.

Note - I'm not sure of its entirely legal, moral or politically correct to offer a "bribe." But in fairness we weren't specifically asking for "good" reviews. Although that was the hope.


Second one

Artwork - Smiling face/ Angry Face

Copy - (along the lines off) Please write a review. But, before you write it, for goodness sake if you are unhappy with anything we've done - please call us - so we can put it right.

Note - The last thing on earth clients want are "bad" reviews so we tried to avoid them from ever happening.


Steve


P.S. I once read that it's 16 times more likely that an "unhappy" customer will write a review venting their fury than a "happy" one who doesn't bother singing your praises.

I also read that people are increasingly making their buying decisions based on reviews.

So, obviously rave reviews are very, very important.

I've stopped doing campaigns like this with my clients after the latest results. Basically, we were successful in getting a bunch (25+) of reviews over a period of a few months. Which is great.

The two clients I tried this with do great work and have good relationships with their clients/customers, so the customers were happy to do it.

BUT many of these folks had never used Yelp before... or since. They created an account, posted a review and that was it.

Yelp sees all, I mean 100% of these reviews as "Not currently recommended." Precisely because the people who did these reviews aren't active on the site. And I promise these are not bought or bribed posts. I don't think Yelp is saying that either... they just suppress these reviews and keep them out of the factors to the overall score.

Yelp recommends not soliciting for reviews at all. They want people to be inspired to leave you a good, or bad review, naturally.

Of course your mileage may vary, and I am not saying it's unethical to do what you're saying, just that you may run into the same thing I have.

Good luck.