Up Fuel 
I’ve covered selling on Amazon in the past (here and elsewhere), but I haven’t shared on my blog what I’ve been working on for a large part of 2015 – Salesbacker. Salesbacker is designed to help Amazon sellers get more product reviews (and seller feedback).
How To Get More Amazon Product Reviews:
The vast majority of my product reviews have come from emailing my Amazon customers to ask for a product review.
You can do this manually one by one (if you value your time at below minimum wage) or you can use software to automate this process which is precisely what we’ve done with the creation of Salesbacker (free trial link).
There were other tools on the market that were designed more for seller feedback, but I wanted something that was built for sellers that care about product reviews so I partnered up with a long time friend of mine and veteran startup developer to create this service.
How It Works In 3 Minutes:
We created Salesbacker to help sellers get more Amazon reviews and here’s how it does that:
What Should You Send To Your Customers?
I was invited onto my friend Scott’s podcast to discuss strategies to get more seller feedback and product reviews which you can listen to here, but here is the email sequence that I’ve used in the past.
I’m a big fan of incorporating humor into my emails ala $22 million dollar CD Baby style
Note: The mergetags listed below (e.g. *[product-name]*) will replace the relevant information from your products and customers automatically. You can get access to use this email campaign yourself when you sign up for Salesbacker via this free trial link.
Email 1: Sent after an order is placed:
Subject: Thank you for your *[product-name]* purchase!
Body: Hello *[buyer-first-name]*,
Thank you for purchasing your *[product-name]*. This is the first of three emails you will receive to ensure proper delivery and satisfaction.
*[order-link:Your order can be viewed on Amazon.com here]*
We value your complete satisfaction and strive to offer a high quality product and service. We will personally follow up with Amazon to make sure your brand new product is delivered in a timely manner.
If for whatever reason you have any issues receiving your product, don�t worry, we have you covered. Reply to this email or contact Amazon customer service right away at:
*[amazon-customer-service-link]*
While you wait for your item to be delivered, please find a stranger to high five. It will make their day and you�ll enjoy it too.
Thank you again for your purchase.
Sincerely,
Name
Customer Service
Email 2: Sent 5 days after an order is shipped:
Subject: How is your *[product-name]* working for you?
Body: Hello *[buyer-first-name]*,
This is the second of three emails you will receive from us. By now Amazon should have delivered your brand new *[product-name]*. Remember, if you have any issues whatsoever, please reply to this email or contact Amazon Customer Service (they are very helpful and speedy) at:
*[amazon-customer-service-link]*
We are a growing company and appreciate every purchase. We strive to ensure that all of our customers are completely satisfied, and it is our hope that you truly are.
2 Minute Favor To Ask
If the product has met or exceeded your expectations we would love to hear about it. Please spread the word by leaving a review (it will only take 2 minutes and it is very much appreciated).
Feel free to comment on how the product is working for you, and our customer service. Your feedback helps ensure we keep doing things right. You can create your review here:
*[product-review-link:Write your review here]*
(We will thank you profusely and even find a homeless kitten to hug on your behalf)
Again, if there are any issues with the product, please reply to this email or contact Amazon Customer Service before leaving a review, so we can take care of any issues first:
*[amazon-customer-service-link]*
Sincerely,
Name
Customer Service
Email 3: Sent 10 days after an order is shipped:
Subject: [Last Email] Dedicated To Your Experience!
Body: Hello *[buyer-first-name]*,
This will be our final email to you regarding your brand new *[product-name]*. If you have not already left a review on our product we�d really appreciate you doing that. We take all reviews seriously and want to ensure orders are processed promptly and shipments arrive as promised.
We strive for a high quality product and customer experience. If you have just 2 minutes to spare and are enjoying your product please do leave us a review here:
*[product-review-link:Write your review here]*
(For each review we receive we will find a public place to spontaneously dance in your honor)
Lastly, if there are any issues with the product, please reply to this email directly or contact Amazon Customer Service before leaving a review so we can take care of any issues first:
*[amazon-customer-service-link]*
Thank you and please have a fantastically glorious day. Again, this is the last email you will receive from us so we really do hope you�re enjoying your purchase.
Sincerely,
Name
Customer Service
Overall
I’ve been spending a lot of my time on Salesbacker.com with helping users, working with my co-founder on taking user feedback and incorporating into the product and more.
This is a relatively new company, but we’re growing quickly (much faster than I expected) and it’s been a lot of fun.
If you sign up for Salesbacker let me know what you think and likewise be sure to listen to the podcast episode I recorded with Scott which goes more in depth into strategies to get more seller feedback and product reviews on Amazon.
I will have a lot more to share on the Amazon selling front soon…
There is no Email 3 – you’ve accidentally written Email 2 twice, once for Email 2 and again for Email 3.
Whoops – fixed it thanks. I was copying it from within Salesbacker 🙂
Hi Chris,
have you ever gotten somebody to reply and remark this approach to be a bit too “spammy” by sending them three different emails? I’m just wondering.
Also, I have purchased dozens of products on amazon. But very few, especially larger companies, actually follow up with an email sequence like this. Is it because they don’t know about it, have their own system in place?
What’s the advantage of getting seller feedback (which you can’t see on amazon product pages anyway if I’m correct) instead of getting reviews. Does this improve your ranking?
I have seen some people attaching invoices/payment proof documents to the first or second email. Is there a software by amazon for amazon seller companies to create invoices/sale proof documents automatically? How would this work with your email sequence?
Thanks!
Hey Phil, with thousands of orders – no.
I got one person one time said “don’t email me” and I just click the unsubscribe link.
The benefits outweigh any potential downside.
Seller feedback helps with rankings for all of your products (it’s one of the factors in the algorithm)
There is no reason to attach invoices or proof of sale – Amazon send those.
All you use this for is to add value (here’s a free eBook with 7 of my best BBQ recipes) and ask for feedback / reviews.
Chris
You’re so awesome Chris,
Always coming up with something cool and helpful. I really like you for your creativity.
Getting customer feedback/reviews is really very essential to any marketer because this is how people will be able to know that what you’re selling is actually working and that is when majority of the reviews are positive.
Salesbacker seems to be a very handy tool for that and I’m sure Amazon sellers will find it really interesting. Will check it out when i start selling on Amazon.
Thanls for sharing Chris and more strength to your elbows.
Thanks
Thanks Chris for creating Salebacker. I think it’s a great idea to help get more reviews. Sometimes, a person may not think about how much more you can get from customers that have purchased products to help them to even further engage with you by providing their feedback.
Thanks 🙂
Hi Chris,
I just wanted to confirm if I can change the content of the follow-up emails accordingly as I want. Or is the above format of email fixed for all of the customers?
Can I change the content of the emails everytime for my different products?
Regards,
Proloy
You can completely customize the emails you send and what you put in the emails you send as well.
Hey Chris, Love the Salesbacker product and have subscribed a couple of weeks ago. I also really like the podcast.
Can you share any benchmark percentages for conversions that we should be striving for? Also, how many sales would you let run through the system before an adequate sample size has been aggregated for fairly accurate analysis? I want to test, but don’t know the point at which I should change the emails.
Thanks for any guidance you can offer.
Jamie
Hey Jamie,
Sorry for delayed comment reply. The vast majority of my time for the last few years has been focused on growing businesses and sometimes my blog takes a bit of a back seat so I missed this one.
In any case, the range completely varies depending on your category and frankly there isn’t a lot I can say (because we don’t really have the data). If you’d prefer to share more info privately email me and I’ll further elaborate chris at salesbacker
Wow Chris…that’s all I have to say. You’re really intelligent. How did you start or think of this?..Building your site and all that?. Give me some wisdom.
Hey Chris,
I think it’s important to understand your customers when setting up your customized messages. We are selling to a very professional group so we stay away from silly humor, but we may try to a/b test some different scripts and we might slip some humor in to test.
We are currently on a different platform and sending about 3,000 messages a month. Like you said, only a handful of people have unsubscribed.
When we get seller feedback I like to send them a message asking them to take a minute and write us a review. I think you and Scott discussed this and the customers are more likely to write you a review.
I can’t speak for sales backer(I’m sure it is good) but since we started using our system, reviews have been about 5-10x than before and sales and rankings have followed.
This service is a must have for Amazon sellers.
We are on track to almost double out sales this year (we were already a six figure brand) and we attribute some of the success to auto email campaigns.
Cheers,
Tony
Hey Tony, yah it really depends on the brand you’re trying to build. Of course humor won’t work in all situations.
But if you’re on another platform… come on over. Salesbacker is built for private label sellers. We’re going to have some features that our competitors don’t and they’ll have some that we don’t have yet. Likewise we’re less expensive than some competitors as well.
The UI itself is also very product specific / easy to use.
Congrats on the six figure brand and goal to double 🙂
Hey Chris,
Scott recommends emailing the customer for a review only after they have successfully written a positive seller feedback. Is there a way to setup salesbacker to accomplish this task? Also, why don’t the two of you agree on your post sales email progression? I’m thinking of making mine a balance of the two of yours. Thoughts? Thanks in advance. I’ve listened to your podcast with Scott several times at this point and have just signed up and setup my sequence on salesbacker.
Hey Jason, we don’t have this feature. I personally suggest just asking for reviews because you’re more likely to get someone to do one favor for you and not two favors. Sure you may get a few more negative reviews but in total you’ll get more reviews. I’ve read a few studies that show having only positive reviews makes people think the reviews are fake.
Hey Chris,
Acording to the Amazon policy ,we can’t ask our customer to write any good reviews.possible?
Can we send the email through amazon?
You can ask for an honest review just don’t say “please leave us only a 5 star review”
hi Chris,
Thanks for your kind work.
There are two questions need your help:
1) In the email campaign, if the clients leave review after 2nd email, did the 3rd email will also send ?
2) I test the email campaign, the sent name shown as : “Salesbacker” ? can’t this sender name showns as the seller name?
Thanks for your kind reply!
1. Yes. Amazon doesn’t tie reviewers to their email addresses so there isn’t a way for Salesbacker to shut off an email campaign. If someone replies and says “thanks I left a review” just use the one click unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email and they’ll stop receiving emails.
2. This is just a test email that’s why it says Salesbacker. The real emails will be sent using the customer service name you have within Seller Central.
Hope to see you join soon 🙂
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your kind reply to that 2 questions.
But i just want to know what is generally conversion rate about this email campaign? can you advice a rought number that got in your selling performance ?
In addition, i just saw at some other places said that 3 emails maybe more for clients, they said 2 emails maybe ok, so i just want to know waht is your feedback from your clients about this 3 emails? And did they feel interrupted about 3 emails ?
Thanks
Can dramatically vary. We’ve seen people report anything from 0.5% on up to 10%+ but it really just depends a lot on what you’re selling and of course what you say in your emails. If you have mid range single digit percentage conversion that’s great.
Hello, i was wondering if this is even allowed according to amazon policy’s. I have been doing some research on amazon sellers forums and they have suggested that i do not do it because amazon will suspend your account. If you can please clarify, i would greatly appreciate it. My company is looking for a system to send out emails to customers after they order, i just dont want to get suspended from selling with amazon.
Any advice will help! Thanks!
Yes. You just can’t get “incentivized” reviews anymore. When you email your every day customers using Salesbacker those are regular organic buyers.
Hi Chris:
I have setup using salesbacker for a few weeks, love it.
I have a question for you, since we have two marketplaces, one is in US, and another one is in Canada, how can we setup salesbacker for using two separate markets?
Thanks,
We have limited support for Amazon Canada – email our support team for details. Also I’m sure you already did this sorry I don’t get to my blog comments that regularly (whoops).
Doesn’t seem to work in the UK? 🙁
On our list will keep you posted.