Episode 7: G2 Reviews

w/ Katlin Hess

Hi! 👋 Welcome to the next episode of The CMA Newsletter where 270+ marketers get better at building Customer Marketing programs and strengthening relationships with their customers in less than 5 minutes.

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This is a special episode because I have my very first guest, Katlin Hess from G2!

I’ve been wanting to talk about all things reviews and who better to co-pilot than the Director of Customer Marketing at G2.

Before we start, we feel like we have to address the elephant in the room – this episode is going to be a guide for generating reviews – but not just 5-star reviews – we’re talking real life, full honesty, authentic reviews.

Customer reviews have transformed the purchasing process over the last decade. A recent study by G2 found that 86% of buyers across all segments use peer review sites when buying software. 

Today, customer reviews allow companies to hear firsthand from other professionals in similar companies or industries just how a particular software worked (or didn’t work) for them. As customer marketers and advocacy managers, we are tasked with shedding light on the best parts of our platform.

For customers to write reviews, we have to understand why any customer would take time out of their own day to provide their real thoughts on the experience they had with a platform or service. Once you figure this out, it will be easier to craft a compelling email.

For most customers, there are three reasons:

1. They like sharing their success

2. They want their feedback to be heard

3. They enjoy incentives

In this episode, we will unpack:

When to ask for the review

How to ask for the review

Example Campaigns

Understanding G2

What to do with content from reviews

Strategy for multiple review sites

When to ask for the review

Katlin: I think generally the best time to ask for a review is when a customer is actively engaged with you or at a milestone. Some of the most common times I see G2 customers ask for a review are at key moments in the customer lifecycle like: 

• Contract renewal or anniversary 

• Onboarding or implementation completion

• QBRs or in-person meetings 

• After completing a support ticket

• Post-NPS/CSAT Feedback

• After completing a certification or training
   

I’ve also recently been talking to more and more of our customers who are not only asking for reviews at milestones, but also in always-on places like their system login pages or in their email signatures and having major success! (we’ll talk about this more in the next section!) 

Leslie: Here are my results from asking after a recent NPS survey and the key to my success

We received a ton of positive customer feedback, so I wanted to keep the happy train rolling by asking our customers to write a G2 review if they gave us a score of 8,9, or 10.

Keep in mind my audience and potentially yours have been hit with the same request for G2 reviews from other platforms they use as well. So how would my ask stand out, and what would motivate them to complete a Sendoso review that day?

Let’s start with the subject line:

Sendoso needs your expertise! $30 eGift Inside

Knowing what I know about my customer base, I knew this would move the needle. Our SuperSenders are a community of marketers who all want to help each other out when they love a platform and are eager to shout it from the rooftops.

But they are also swamped. So what is the motivation? Most people are used to seeing a $25 Amazon eGift card to complete the review. Which is great, but everyone gets that email. You’ll also notice I increased the incentive by just $5, which was different enough to get their interest.

Inside my email, I offered them four different $30 eGift card options through Sendoso Choice. (Sendoso Choice allows you to curate personalized bundles of 2–4 eGifts from various categories, including charity donation choices, and let your recipients choose their favorite.)

Here was my email below:

Seeing four different eGift options made them act fast, as though I would run out of the one they wanted!

Ok, let’s get into the results:

• 90 net new G2 reviews

• 17% of the Quarterly ARR cited reviews as a key deciding factor

• $450k influenced from review campaign stemmed from NPS

So how did I find out those fantastic numbers? Our Product Marketing team created a Closed Won survey that triggers an email once a contract is signed.

I made them insert the question “Which of the following did you rely on to make your decision?” One of the options is “G2 Reviews.” With SurveyMonkey, you can see the percentage of respondents for each option in a given time frame.

Overall, I spent $2,700 on the eGift cards to drive more customer reviews and a quarter later, influenced $450k in closed-won business.

How to ask for the review

Katlin: In previous customer marketing roles G2 email campaigns were a huge part of our review strategy. Each quarter we would partner with G2 to run an incentivized campaign to customers who had hit milestones with us asking them to leave a review in exchange for a gift card or a donation to charity. In these instances, G2 managed the campaign for us, sending a series of 3 emails asking that group to leave us a review. We saw great results from these campaigns, but they were only giving us new reviews once per quarter.

Now working at G2, I’ve seen so many of our customers have success combining the traditional email ask campaigns with always on asks into their regular customer interactions (like on a login page or in email signatures). G2 also has a bunch of integrations that make it easy to automate review asks. My favorite is our Pendo integration which serves up a review form directly inside your product (one customer I work with generated 5x their number of reviews in 6 months just by turning on the integration.)

Some other ideas for getting reviews include: 

• G2 booths at events 

• 1:1 outreach from their Customer Success team (and running internal competitions)

• Email signatures 

• Customer newsletters 

• Customer portal/sign-in page

• In-app messaging 

• Blog posts

• Social channels

Things to look out for (understanding G2) 

Decay algorithm

Katlin: While I don’t know all of G2’s insider secrets just yet, I do know that the algorithm looks at more than just who has the most 5-star reviews. With the G2 algorithm star rating is of course one of the things that gets factored in, but we also look for recency and volume of reviews. That’s why it’s important to make sure you have a holistic ongoing review collection strategy. 

Leslie: I run a Refresh campaign once a year that asks customers to update their review.

The subject line kills it 👇

Fresh Cookies to Freshen up your Review 

In August of 2021, we sent the email to 169 people. We got 44 reviews that month and 26 claimed the cookies! As you can see we offered an egift at the bottom of the email and only 2 people opted in for that. Sooo… the takeaway, people like cookies!

Respond to negative comments

Katlin: We all strive for 5-star reviews, but let’s be honest, when I’m shopping and see only 5-stars I immediately get suspicious. Your customers are the same way. They’re probably thinking “Is that company paying for reviews? “Are they only asking their best customers for reviews?,” “Are they asking their customers to write 5-star reviews specifically?” (please don’t do any of these things). 

Negative reviews can be hard to read, but they’re also a great opportunity. Reviews are basically free market research, and a negative review could help shape your product or services offerings. I heard a story from one of our customers that a 3-star review mentioned that they had a support ticket that had been sitting for 3 weeks with no response. The customer marketer flagged the review for their head of support who realized there was an issue with an internal workflow that meant the ticket wasn’t assigned properly. The head of support was able to fix the workflow, and replied directly to the customer on G2, thanking them for their feedback.

Of course, a missed support ticket is not a great experience for that customer, but by reading and responding to that review that company was not only saved from a bigger problem of more missed support tickets, but think about what that public response says to their prospects about how they accept and act on customer feedback. 

What to do with content from reviews

Leslie: This could almost be its own episode, but I think the best way to think about the content you get from G2 reviews is as customer testimonials at scale. Some of my favorite ways to use G2 content are: 

• QUOTES! Let’s face it, lots of team members are coming to you for all things customer stories, quotes, approvals, etc. Give them a library of quotes for them to go choose from. Anonymous quotes are useful too. Here’s one slide example of a sexy anonymous quote 🤣

  

• Mini Case Study - Now this is a stretch because they never give you this much info BUT I have seen success in asking for a quick follow up call after the review to get a few more nuggets of info to create a mini story. Try it!

• On your website – it’s an easy way to incorporate the voice of your customer across your product pages or on a customer’s page.

  

• I have my very own G2 page→ https://sendoso.com/g2/

• In social campaigns. I love showing all the badges and the grid of course!

  

• In prospect or customer facing slide decks 

Strategy to incorporate all review sites

Now we know what you are thinking “But I have Trust Radius, Gartner, Capterra, as well.”

Katlin: While I am obviously most well versed on G2, in prior roles I was also managing review collection for Capterra and Gartner as well. My advice for balancing them all? Segment your audience and stagger your asks. 

Be intentional with who you’re making what asks of – Gartner Peer Insights Reviews tend to take longer to complete than G2 reviews, so consider asking your most engaged customers to leave reviews there and incentivize them differently. 

You can also incorporate multiple review sites into your refresh campaigns. If you know someone already left you a review on G2, chances are if you ask a few months later, they’d be willing to also share a review on a different site as well.  

To sum it all up, I would say the key to successful review campaigns is incorporating review asks into your customer journey, diversifying your outreach strategy, and then using your customer feedback both internally and externally to feed that review flywheel! 

Leslie: What she said  ^ 🤣

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I’ll end with an image. This picture will never get old to me. Sendoso was named #5 Best Software Products in 2022. You bet your ass I’m going for that #1 spot in 2023! A former CMO of mine once told me “You need to have a level of obsession for G2". 🙄 I scoffed at him at the time but I totally get it now and advice I would even pass on to you all.

Hope you enjoyed this episode. Katlin & I would love it if you shared on LinkedIn. Thanks so much! See you next Saturday!