Customised Timing of Feefo Requests

[johngwms]

The Feefo option in Actinic is great and the independence of the feedback control is definitely in the interests of shoppers ( and quality sellers).

I only have one major gripe - Orders are sent to Feefo whenever new orders are downloaded (in my case, first thing in the morning each day (plus later in the day of course)).

This means that my customers get sent their Feefo feedback requests first thing in the morning.

The consequence of this (as any email marketing person will tell you) is that they are likely to get binned!

I would like Actinic to add an option where the day and time of order being sent to Feefo can be user settable, so that feedback requests can be sent at their most productive time (eg late morning Tuesday to Thursday) when my customers have already junked their Spam and are more receptive.

[Duncan Rounding]

I'll second that - very good point.

[brucet]

Unfortunately the timing of the emails is handled by Feefo and is not something that Actinic has any control over. I have raised this issue with them, but it has not been raised by any of their other customers, and ATM they are not convinced of its importance. However I will continue to follow this up and see if we can get any movement.

[johngwms]

Unfortunately the timing of the emails is handled by Feefo and is not something that Actinic has any control over. I have raised this issue with them, but it has not been raised by any of their other customers, and ATM they are not convinced of its importance. However I will continue to follow this up and see if we can get any movement.

Bruce

Given that Feefo are not interested does surprise me.

The problem can be tackled by Actinic. The user can specify a date/time that orders are sent to Feefo. I assume that Feefo will respond fairly quickly to orders being received?

There is a mass of Emarketing evidence on the web that states how important timing of such emails is.

I have done some analysis myself of the Feefo take up rate and it is definitely very poor first thing in the morning and at weekends. The best time if late morning Tuesday to Thurday. Unfortunately I need to process orders first thing in the morning otherwise I don't get enough time to get them packed for dispatch before the courier arrives.

[brucet]

Feefo are going to do some testing to find out how time of sending affects the response rate.

I don't pretend to be an expert on email communications, but I do know that the response patterns for emails relating to customer purchases are not the same as for marketing emails. I would not be happy proposing changes based purely on research into email marketing. Statistics can really lead you astray if you don't take account of the context.

[johngwms]

Feefo are going to do some testing to find out how time of sending affects the response rate.

I don't pretend to be an expert on email communications, but I do know that the response patterns for emails relating to customer purchases are not the same as for marketing emails. I would not be happy proposing changes based purely on research into email marketing. Statistics can really lead you astray if you don't take account of the context.

Thank you Bruce.

I hope the testing is thorough.

The key thing here is the psychology of the customer. You may be right that marketing emails may be viewed differently to purchasing follow up emails. What I do know is that the rate of response to my Feefo follow up emails is poor. Anything that can be done to improve this will increase my chances of cointining to use the service. At the moment the jury is out for me but I need to make a decision really soon.

Common sense says that a customer needs to be in the right frame of mind to spend the time on this altruistic activity. Asking a customer to respond to such non essential, non urgent requests is not best done when he is hassled (perhaps because he is angry about having to spend time removing masses of spam from his Inbox) or because on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon some people may not be in the mood for doing work.

Lets see that the results of the testing are. I really cannot see a vast difference from the customer's point of view from receiving a marketing email and a purchasing follow up.

I do know myself that I sometimes get frustrated and annoyed receiving purchasing feedback emails from Ebay, Amazon and the like. I know myself that I would be more predisposed to answering such emails during a relatively quiet time that when I am hassled and have more time to help out the seller.

There needs to be some incentive to provide the feedback but that does not seem to be built into Feefo (another one for the wish list!).

[Mike Hughes]

There needs to be some incentive to provide the feedback but that does not seem to be built into Feefo (another one for the wish list!).

Presumably it would make sense to offer your own incentive to reviewers. A free draw for a techie widget* each month / quarter would make a nice 'thank you' for taking the time to complete the review.

Mike

* alter as appropriate to your customer base.

[johngwms]

Presumably it would make sense to offer your own incentive to reviewers. A free draw for a techie widget* each month / quarter would make a nice 'thank you' for taking the time to complete the review.

Mike

* alter as appropriate to your customer base.

Absolutely.

Ther key issue here is to maximise the take up rate of feefo requests.