It is no coincidence that vendors who consistently and proactively source Gartner Peer Insights reviews from their customer base throughout the year are in a better position for their customers, competitive edge, and Gartner research documents that leverage Gartner Peer Insights review data and insights. Creating a holistic sourcing program ensures vendors always have up-to-date and relevant reviews available for potential customers to leverage during their buying journey. We recommend a two-pronged approach to review sourcing:

1. Embed your outreach into organizational processes that are already in place

Instead of duplicating efforts or inundating your clients with excessive emails, simply embed your campaign sourcing links as part of your customer touchpoints you already have in place. Where in your customer journey are you engaging with your customers? Evaluate if any of those customers touchpoints that are already in place can include a “write a Peer Insights review” request.

 

arrow_downwardView Embedded Strategies

2. Targeted outreaches to a subset of your customers

Once you have your consistent sourcing efforts in place, you can supplement with targeted outreaches for reviews. These strategies can be used to source for reviews in a short period of time. For example, if you need fresh reviews for sales prospecting or potential research inclusion!

 

arrow_downwardView Targeted Strategies

Our most successful vendors execute multiple review sourcing strategies simultaneously to support year-round sourcing efforts. If one strategy does not work well for your organization, don’t be discouraged! Try out another strategy or connect with your Program Manager to debrief and plan your next review sourcing campaign. With all review sourcing strategies, make sure you are creating review sourcing links to track your areas of success and areas for improvement. Email templates are available for many of these sourcing strategies in our Template Library.  

Embed outreach in your organizational processes

These strategies will result in a constant flow of reviews submitted throughout the year!

• At implementation
• Every implementation
• Post-implementation surveys sent after 4-8 weeks
• 12 months post-implementation
• At every renewal or upgrade: Getting your account executives involved is a great way to drive reviews. Have them incorporate it into renewal or upgrade discussions.

 

• At the close of every support ticket: When you close a ticket, you send an email to the user. Include a request for feedback in that email.

 

• With NPS survey or other internal satisfaction survey

 

• Within talk track for cadence call with customer success manager

 

• Embed the ask for a review within email signatures of customer-facing associates using Gartner Peer Insights approved template

 

• Alerts in CRM/sales system after certain key milestones in the relationship are hit

 

• Pop-ups or alerts in your customer portal after a customer logs in X number of times or other specific actions taken: Send out a request for reviews through your customer portal. This is a low-effort, high-reward approach. (Chat Function).

Targeted outreaches to a subset of customers

These strategies can be used to source for reviews during a short amount of time!

• Segmented email campaigns to customers
  • Personal request from CEO
  • Targeted language to a subset of customers: Segmentation can be done by role, industry, company size, product they are using, date of implementation complete, or even for power users (users who leveraged platform/tool X number of times in a month) etc.
  • Themed outreach around general events, sporting events, holidays, etc.

 

• 1:1 personal outreach from sales or customer service: This is an efficient method that can generate a high volume of reviews, but it may also result in a small percentage of publishable reviews if the reviewers don’t meet eligibility criteria.

 

• Sales “competition” with internal teams. Read more about how you can drive your sales team to ‘get more reviews’.

 

• Digital Outreach: This is a great way to reach your broader client base.
  • Social Media: Play on people’s competitive spirit. Share someone’s opinion with them and ask if they agree. People just want their voices heard.

 

• Sourcing booths at user events or digital events: People will already be in the mindset to share their feedback, so this is a great place to collect reviews. We can work with you on strategy and best practices. Gartner/Peer Insights is not able to staff booths on your behalf.
  • Pre-event
  • Post-event

 

• Customer Communications
  • During and post-webinars or virtual customer events
  • Customer Advocacy Board outreach
  • Blog posts to your wider customer base
  • Inclusion in customer newsletters: Integrating with existing customer outreach is quick, scalable and ongoing. However, the response rate may be low due to lack of personalization, and some recipients may not be eligible to write reviews.
  • “Challenges” in community platforms: Active customer support community members have already shown a willingness to share their opinions and knowledge of your product.
  • Community points for writing a review

Read more about success stories of review sourcing by other vendors