And Now, a Word from Our Customer
Lately more and more marketing emails seem to be referencing their top-rated and best-reviewed items in their subject lines and headlines. “Our Customers Speak Out—Shop Top-Rated Toscano Favorites!” is the subject line of a recent message from home decor cataloger Design Toscano. “Want to know what customers like you like best at Orvis?” is a somewhat clunky subject line from outdoor gear cataloger/retailer Orvis. “Protect your investment! 15% off top-rated outdoor furniture covers” teases country-living mailer Plow & Hearth.
Some of the emails include snippets from customer reviews in the messages. Cookware merchant Williams-Sonoma excels at this, including very specific, benefit-oriented customer quotes (“love how the handle moves”) and bright red stars to indicate the average rating. Wind & Weather, which specializes in weather-related gadgets and decor, in one recent email linked to a special section on its Website devoted to its top-rated products.
The influx of emails citing customer reviews seems especially sudden to me, given that less than two months ago I’d written in a blog post that “few marketers have figured out how to effectively integrate user-generated content such as reviews into their marketing emails.” The two emails I referred to in that post, from decor cataloger Wisteria and cosmetics retailer Sephora, really differentiated themselves by tipping their metaphorical hats to their customers in that way.
Catalogers, of course, have long promoted their most popular products via square-inch analysis: determining which items in the catalogs reaped the greatest sales per each square inch allotted them in an edition, and then devoting even more, and more prominent, catalog real estate in subsequent issues to the winners. This was all done behind the curtain, however. You wouldn’t see a callout declaring, “Because this widget performed so well in our last book, we’re giving it the top right corner of the opening spread in this edition.”
Now quotes from customer reviews and icons indicating top-rated products pepper print catalogs as well as Websites and, increasingly, enewsletters. Which is great, for shoppers and shops alike. Reading input from other customers, satisfied or otherwise, makes consumers less resistant to buying remotely. The customers’ often-detailed feedback helps compensate for our inability to touch, see, smell, taste, and hear the items ourselves.
Being an eternal pessimist, though, I can’t help but wonder how long it will be until inclusion of customer reviews in emails will reach saturation point and no longer provide what I’m assuming is a bump in response. Obviously marketers are going to feature only their five-star products in their emails. But after a while, will recipients become immune to the fawning user-generated copy in the same way they have become immune to fawning seller-generated copy? In other words, will customer ratings and reviews, like so many other promotional tools, become a victim of their own success?
