Review Invite - Import Contact List

[consultant]

Businesses I've worked with have had few enough locations, or low enough customer volume, that it's been easy for them to just email a link to their Google review form. I've got one that their number of locations and customers has grown to make that a bit unwieldy to manage. They are a startup on a shoestring budget. Looking for the cheapest service that will:

(a) import all their GMB locations in order to automatically generate the invite emails with the appropriate review links
(b) import all their new customers since they last asked customers for reviews (import name, email, and maybe address)

Here would be a nice to have feature that's a bit tricky. Instead of having to manually select which business location to send the review invite for, if you can import the customer's address, automatically default to the nearest location. Does any service even attempt to do this?

One snag though is some customers, the service was performed in another city clear across the country from the customer's contact location. So ideally they would import a completed jobs list that would have the customer name, email, and job address then select the GMB location based on proximity to the completed job address and at the same time of course not allow you to send an invite to the same contact for the same location twice.

I have 30-years background in software development (doing Local SEO only more recently) and this would all be very easy for me to code. But sometimes it's surprising how poorly thought out some of these services are and thereby limited in their "smart features." Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised rather than the usual disappointment as I dig deeper.

 

[Digitaldar]

Rather than sending them to the reviews page of a specific location, you could send them to a Google query for their city/neighbourhood - then there is the bonus of having the customer search for the brand in google, which is beneficial to increased visibility.

For example - send them on a search for Home Depot Nepean Reviews - up would come several options for leaving a review (unfortunately a Google Review is the most challenging) - but there is Yelp, Homestars, etc.

 

[Garrett Sussman]

Businesses I've worked with have had few enough locations, or low enough customer volume, that it's been easy for them to just email a link to their Google review form. I've got one that their number of locations and customers has grown to make that a bit unwieldy to manage. They are a startup on a shoestring budget. Looking for the cheapest service that will:

(a) import all their GMB locations in order to automatically generate the invite emails with the appropriate review links
(b) import all their new customers since they last asked customers for reviews (import name, email, and maybe address)

Here would be a nice to have feature that's a bit tricky. Instead of having to manually select which business location to send the review invite for, if you can import the customer's address, automatically default to the nearest location. Does any service even attempt to do this?

One snag though is some customers, the service was performed in another city clear across the country from the customer's contact location. So ideally they would import a completed jobs list that would have the customer name, email, and job address then select the GMB location based on proximity to the completed job address and at the same time of course not allow you to send an invite to the same contact for the same location twice.

I have 30-years background in software development (doing Local SEO only more recently) and this would all be very easy for me to code. But sometimes it's surprising how poorly thought out some of these services are and thereby limited in their "smart features." Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised rather than the usual disappointment as I dig deeper.

Hey there,

Garrett from Grade.us here. So this definitely is an interesting challenge! I love the idea of utilizing proximity features to direct the customer to the nearest location, but I think you highlight the issue with some customers who might have used a location that wasn't the nearest to their address.

It sounds like you want to automate the process with a list upload. GU allows the customer to pick which location they went to with the appropriate review links in that funnel, but that wouldn't be as automated and as much as a 'smart feature' as what you're looking for.

I'm not sure which other service have the level of automation and sophistication of what your specific use case requires, but it makes a ton of sense when looking to further automate the process. I wonder if there's another independent service out there that at least can identify the nearest location if you have the customer's address. Something like this could possibly be configured: About our mapping features and use cases | BatchGeo

Good question! I wish we had a better solution, but I'll throw it to our product team and see what they think about it.

 

[consultant]

This client is B2B so Yelp Listing is just for SEO but has virtually no value as far as lead generation. What little reviews we can get, they are most valuable all around if placed on Google.

We want to control which location they leave a review for based on to try to more evenly distribute the reviews. Many times the customer will be working out of a head office in once city but ordering services for another. In that case we send them a link to the city with the least reviews between their location and the job site location. So letting them pick isn't optimal.

 

[Garrett Sussman]

Yeah, that's definitely a challenge since most services like ours will try to help facilitate genuine reviews from customers that have had an experience at a specific location.

A lot of times, customers will be reviewing based on customer service, so the specific location matters. But I definitely understand the desire for an even distribution across locations!

 

[mblumenthal]

Hi

Mike from GatherUp

(a) import all their GMB locations in order to automatically generate the invite emails with the appropriate review links
(b) import all their new customers since they last asked customers for reviews (import name, email, and maybe address)
(c) Upload a single spreadsheet that automatically picks the nearest location

A- Gatherup can do. It is a back end feature so you just need to upload the list of business locations and we can figure the rest out.

B- Not a problem... we can have a number of settings to be able to tell if a user has been asked before and to determine if you want to ask them again.

C- We have a feature where you can upload a list of customers across multiple locatins but currently we need the business ID or your name for that business in the spreadsheet to assign the customers to the location,

Let me know mike@gatherup.com if you want more information.