In case you’ve wondered what’s the meaning of reviews for your company’s growth, tune in, because we’ve finally found the answer. Trustmary’s co-founder Arttu Haho was a speaker at the Twin Cities Startup Week in September 2022 in Minneapolis. He presented some real-life results that growth companies have reached by using reviews in their marketing. This article summarizes the main points of the presentation, but you can also view the full version below.
Who is Arttu Haho?
Arttu Haho is one of the co-founders of Trustmary. Trustmary is a mar-tech company that enables all companies to get and use reviews that matter.
Haho is originally from Finland and lived in Minneapolis with his family for a few years. They recently relocated back to Finland.
In his current role as the Chief Growth Officer at Trustmary, Haho is responsible for Trustmary’s growth in general, and more specifically for sales-assisted trial to paid customer acquisition.
Haho starts off his presentation by sharing his most recent 5-star review-worthy experience.
– I’m an ice cream guy and I’ve never had ice cream on an airplane before. To my surprise, we were served salted caramel ice cream during our most recent flight. At that very moment, I was sold and ready to leave a five-star review for Delta, Haho says.
To top the experience off, they even gave Haho and his wife an extra serving for some reason.
– But do these reviews actually matter for businesses, he asks the audience.
Let’s find out!
Reviews Drive Growth – Case Studies Introduced
Before people book a restaurant or a hotel, they always look at the reviews that the place in question has got. It’s natural, as we humans rely a lot on social proof while making decisions.
However, reviews are important for all businesses that have a website.
– Today, I’ll introduce three case stories from different industries, where adding customer reviews to the marketing mix has made a significant impact on either getting more leads from the website or direct sales, Haho explains.
– In each of these cases, we AB tested either using reviews against not using them at all or different review types against one another, Haho continues.
Meal Kit E-Commerce Business – Text vs Video Reviews
This business sells meal kits on its website. These kits will be delivered to the customer’s doorstep weekly. In other words, it’s a subscription-based business for meal kits where each customer’s lifetime value can potentially be greater than a one-off purchase.
– Together, we tested the significance of showing a text review or a video review to website visitors, Haho tells.
In practice, 50% of the website visitors were shown text reviews while the other 50% were shown video reviews. The AB test ran for a couple of months and the results were great in both groups.
– Using text reviews generated plenty of registrations to the service, but using video reviews resulted in a further 8% increase in registrations, Haho explains excitedly.
These results alone were great and prove the value of having reviews.
– We wanted to dig deeper into the matter and AB test showing reviews against not showing them at all, he continues.
Meal Kit E-Commerce Business – Exit Intent Popup (B2C)
The next AB test was set to the check-out page. 50% of visitors about to leave the page were shown an exit intent popup with a review on it and 50% weren’t shown anything.
The test ran for a few months and the results were clear: Showing reviews to someone about to leave the page with an exit intent popup resulted in 37% more purchases.
– I think those are pretty significant results with such a minimal change. Having 37% more purchases over months and years will have a significant impact on any business, Haho says.
You can read the full case study here.
Roofing Business – Exit Intent Popup (B2B)
It’s important to remember that reviews don’t only work for B2C companies, but they’re equally important for B2B businesses as well.
– We tested the importance of reviews on getting contact requests on a B2B roofing company to test if we’d see similar results than showing an exit-intent popup to consumers, Haho explains the background.
50% of website visitors were shown an exit-intent popup with a review while 50% weren’t shown anything. This popup was set to be triggered only if the visitor was already on a service-specific page because the goal was to generate high-quality leads from the website.
– As a result, the company got 62,5% more leads to their sales team directly from their website, when they showed reviews to customers, Haho underlines.
The test ran for a few months, but the company now shows the exit intent popup to all visitors due to the great impact it had on the number of leads generated.
You can access the whole case study here.
Kitchen Cabinetry Business – Short vs. Long Reviews
Elega sells kitchens to consumers and also provide them with the option of getting them installed.
– With Elega, we wanted to test something different. Our goal was to find out if the length of the review makes a difference, Haho starts.
Again, the website visitors were divided into two groups: One half was shown short reviews and the other half saw long text reviews. During the two-month test period, Elega was able to get 14% more leads with the long reviews.
– So it’s not only that you need to show reviews to customers, but you also need to pay attention to their overall quality and length, he underlines the importance of these results.
Reviews Really Matter
Even though there are many differences between industries and how reviews are currently used to generate revenue, one thing is already clear: Reviews matter.
– No matter if you run a B2B or B2C business, your potential customers are already looking for reviews on you. It’s only wise to add reviews to your website, Haho says.
In summary, more testing needs to be done to answer the question of whether reviews are the most important growth driver for all companies. Based on the case studies Trustmary has already done, it’s safe to say that it’s increasingly important to collect reviews and embed them on your website.
Other Themes Discussed:
- Incentivising reviews: Is it ethical
- How many percentages of responders leave a negative review
- At which stage of the company’s life-cycle reviews matter the most
- Showing bad reviews vs. having a 5-star rating
You can watch Haho’s full presentation here.
Customer-Led Growth by Trustmary
Here are the summaries of previous social proof podcasts done in English:
