Before:
The business used an automated email system to request guest reviews after their checkout. They offered guests an incentive in exchange for their review.
- 1% engagement resulting in only 30 reviews over a couple of years.
After:
To be honest, this process was a bit of a journey.
- We started by writing personalized manual review requests for each guest. We were amazed by a 7+ percent engagement rate, but this method was not sustainable at 8+ minutes per email.
- We then experimented with using AI tools to automate the personalized email. This significantly reduced our writing time, but engagement dropped to 3%.
- We realized, being genuine and authentic was very important and so we created a dynamic email template with various sections for different guest scenarios (like first-time visitors, anniversaries, birthdays, family trips). We then would then personalize the template to the guest. This method increased our review rate to 6% and cut down the time for each guest review request to approximately 45 seconds.
- We increased the engagement rate from 1% to 6%.
- The number of reviews grew from 30 to over 120 in less than six months.
- Guests appreciated our custom follow-up and left detailed, quality reviews.
- The guest rapport was significantly enhanced.