Creating a Review Request

Goals and Outcomes

Review request emails are the main channel you use to collect reviews from your customers. Yotpo lets you build a customized review request flow, including follow-up emails, site review requests, and more. You can schedule these emails to be sent to your customers automatically after purchase.

In this article, you’ll learn how to set up and send a review request to your customers.

Customizing Your Review Request

To customize your review request email:

1. From your Yotpo Reviews main menu, go to Emails > Email Setup.

2. Under Review request email:

   1. Click Set up email if this is the first time you’re using the review request feature.

   2. Click Edit to modify an existing review request flow.

Schedule the Email Timing

By default, we will send review request emails 14 days after the order is processed. You can adjust the delivery timing to account for variables such as shipping time. This ensures that customers get the review request after they have received their order and have had sufficient time to form an opinion about the product and services.

To adjust the timing, enter the number of days after purchase when the review request email should be sent.

Important

• Once the number of days is updated, the change will only apply to new orders going forward and will not take effect retroactively on existing orders in the queue.

• It is not possible to send automatic review requests for orders that are older than 6 months.

Send Review Requests Based on Order Delivery (Shopify Only)

For Shopify users on the Starter plan and above, you can schedule review request emails based on the delivery date instead of the purchase date. This can be particularly useful if your delivery times vary greatly between individual orders.

To enable delivery-based timing for your review requests:

1. Change the timing dropdown from fulfillment to delivery.

2. Enter the number of days after fulfillment that you want to send the email. This will be used as a fallback in case we don’t get confirmation that the product was delivered.

How Yotpo tracks the order delivery status:

• If you are using USPS, UPS, FedEx, Canada Post, and/or Sendle, you can add the tracking number to your Shopify orders, and the delivery status will be updated directly by the carrier.

• For other carriers, you’ll need to use a third-party shipping app to sync delivery statuses with Shopify. Your third-party shipping app must be able to send delivery statuses directly to Shopify.

Edit the Email Design and Content

To edit the design and content of your emails:

1. In your Yotpo Reviews main menu, go to Emails > Email Setup.

2. Click to open the Review request email card.

3. Click Edit email content or Customize email to access the email editor.

   The “Customize Email” option is only available for Starter, Pro, Premium, and Enterprise Plans.

4. Use the email editor to:

   1. Drag and drop different elements, and

   2. Customize the text to align with your brand.

      Note

      If you switch to a new template, your customizations won’t carry over. You’ll need to reapply them to the new template.

5. Once you’re done editing, click the Save & Close button at the top right corner of the editor.

Test Your Review Request Email

Before sending emails to customers, we recommend sending a test email first.

To send a test:

1. Go to your Yotpo Reviews admin.

2. Navigate to Emails > Email Setup.

3. On the Review request email, click Edit.

4. In the upper right corner, select Send test email.

5. Enter your email address.

6. Click Send.

Please allow a few minutes for the email to arrive. If it doesn’t show up in your inbox, be sure to check your spam or junk folders.

Note

Keep in mind that merge tags, such as {{profile.first_name}}, will appear as-is in test emails. They are only populated with the relevant values in actual customer emails.

Personalization tags

Personalization tags let you customize your emails for each customer. These tags will dynamically populate content that is relevant to your store and shoppers.

Below is the full list of tags you can add to your email template: 

Important

Automatic Review Request emails will only be sent out once you activate the feature. As long as the status is set to Inactive, no emails will be sent. To set the status to Inactive, click on the ellipsis icon and choose Deactivate.

Create a Follow-up Email

You can send a reminder email to customers who haven’t submitted a review yet:

1. Click the toggle next to Send a follow-up email to enable it (if it’s not already enabled).

2. In the box, enter the number of days after the initial request to send the reminder.

3. Customize the follow-up email content.

4. Click Save Changes.

You can preview your changes live in the panel on the right.

Important

Follow-up emails apply only to review requests generated after the feature is enabled. Requests created before activation will not retroactively receive follow-ups.

Want to follow up with past customers?

If you’d like to send review request reminders to shoppers who made a purchase before you enabled the follow-up email, you can send a Targeted Product Review Request. Learn more about creating targeted product review requests.

Optimizing Your Review Request

You can optimize your review requests with the following options:

• Site review: Ask your customers to leave you a site review as well as a product review. Site reviews highlight the service side of your business and help you meet the criteria for Google seller ratings. 

• Custom questions: Add questions to review forms and automatic review request emails to gain deeper insights and improve the overall quality of your product reviews. Learn more about Adding Custom Questions to Your Review Emails.

• Promoted Products: Include Promoted Products in your emails to increase customer retention and boost the lifetime value (LTV) of your buyers. To learn more, see Adding Promoted Products to Your Review Emails.

Activating Your Review Request

To start sending automatic review requests to your customers after purchase:

1. In your Yotpo Reviews main menu, go to Emails > Email Setup.

2. Under Review request email, click Set up email or Edit.

3. Click Activate in the top right corner.

Tip

We recommend previewing your review request before activating it. You can do that from the right-hand pane of the review request email settings page. Use the desktop and mobile icons to toggle between views and see how the email will appear on different devices.

First-Time Activation

When activating the review request feature for the first time, you’ll see a one-time setup screen. By default, Yotpo will start sending emails for new orders only.

If you'd like to also send review requests for past orders:

1. Check the box labeled Past orders.

2. Use the date picker to select the starting date for past orders you want to include.

3. Click Activate.

Once activated:

• Eligible past orders will be marked as Scheduled on the Email Status page.

• Ineligible orders will be marked as Canceled.

Important

The option to automatically send review requests for past orders only appears during your first-time activation. After that, you can still send review requests for past orders manually or in bulk from the Email Status dashboard.

Reactivation

If the review request flow has been previously deactivated, and you want to turn it back on:

1. Click Activate in the upper right corner of the Review Request Email page.

2. A confirmation screen will appear. Click Activate to confirm your choice.

Once reactivated, Yotpo will resume sending review request emails, including for any orders placed while the feature was inactive.

Deactivating Your Review Request

To stop sending review requests, follow these steps:

1. In your Yotpo Reviews main menu, go to Emails > Email Setup.

2. Under Review request email, click Edit.

3. In the top right corner click Settings > Deactivate.

Next Steps

Collect Reviews via SMS

Yotpo SMS & Email and Reviews make it easy to collect even more customer reviews, photos, and videos by engaging shoppers where they are - on their phones. Once integrated, shoppers will get a text message along with a Yotpo-generated review request email, helping you collect even more customer content. To learn more, see Collecting Reviews via SMS.

Offer a Discount for Writing or Sharing a Review

Discounts can encourage your customers to write and share product reviews and become repeat shoppers at your store. This is a great way to help drive more traffic to your store. See Offering a Discount for Writing or Sharing a Review to learn more.

Analyze Your Review Request Emails

Now that your emails are being sent, you can monitor their performance through the Email Status page. To learn more about it, see Using the Email Status Dashboard.

You can also track deliverability through the Emails Dashboard, which shows the percentage of emails that failed to deliver (under Failed).

If you notice delivery issues, try the following troubleshooting tips:

• Check the Email Status: Make sure the customer’s email address isn’t on your suppression list.

• Email Settings: Verify that review request emails are enabled in your Yotpo settings.

• Ask Customers to Check Spam/Junk Folders: Sometimes emails land there, especially if the sender's address isn’t recognized.

• Check Email Logs: Review the email logs in Yotpo to see if the email was sent and delivered.

Learn more in our guide on review request deliverability best practices.