Question 1

Review Marketing: Tutorial

Accepted Answer

NOTE: Currently Review Marketing must be configured by admin so contact support to provide credentials to connect desired services.

Review Marketing in DirectoryTestimonial enables you to post your most valued testimonials to a variety of social media channels. A scheduling feature allows you to choose the date and time that these are sent.

By using Review Marketing, you are able to extend the potential reach of your best testimonials and get them seen by your different social media audiences.

Quick Start

Click on Review Marketing in your DirectoryTestimonial dashboard sidebar to view the feature. https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/RftB9KeMum/resources/bF4K7SNxCP/Review-Marketing.png (Review-Marketing.png)

On this page, you will see four tabs; 'Queue', 'Setup', 'Social accounts' and 'Schedule'. Each tab opens a new section on the page.

Queue

Here you can see how many posts are currently queued, with each post shown in a list for each social media channel.

You also have two buttons, one that allows you to add existing approved testimonials and another clear the queue (and remove the posts).

Setup

This section enables you to choose the criteria for the testimonials that can be queued and scheduled, and to set the theme for the post. The settings operate in a similar way as for Widgets.

Social accounts

Here you can activate and log in to the social accounts you wish to use in Review Marketing. https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/RftB9KeMum/resources/ICakj9tJ0P/Connected%20Accounts.png (Connected Accounts.png)

Schedule

This enables you to choose a date and time for the testimonials to be posted to the selected social media channels. Each date and time selected is for posting one testimonial. The schedule will repeat each week until you adjust it, or deactivate the social media account(s).https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/RftB9KeMum/resources/GRnS67g2VL/Schedule.png (Schedule (1).png)

Overview

Using the right settings and criteria, you can automate the posting of your testimonials and put them in front of new audiences. This can significantly increase your social proof and help build confidence in your brand.

Step-by-step

A good setup of DirectoryTestimonial's Review Marketing will enable you to post your best testimonials to your most important social media channels. Based on the nature of social media pages and audience expectations, the key here in most cases is to put an on-going process in place, focused on quality over quantity.

Selecting your Best Testimonials: Setup

Aim: your best testimonials are ready to be queued and posted to your selected social media channels

Start by clicking the 'Setup' tab. You should see the 'Testimonials Settings' header.

*Testimonial Settings *

This part of the setup enables you to choose your criteria for which testimonials should be available to post to your social media channels.

*Minimum rating *

Select a rating between 1 and 5 to match the minimum testimonial rating you require. Any testimonials with a rating below this will not be added to the queue.

Maximum quote

characters Choose the maximum characters a testimonial can have to be accepted in the queue.

Show testimonial source (Facebook/Google etc)

The posted testimonial can show the original source. This can be useful to help build trust. You can turn it on or off.

Show DirectoryTestimonial branding

Select whether DirectoryTestimonial branding will show or not. The branding will show that your testimonials are verified by DirectoryTestimonial.

Show recency

Show the date on each posted testimonial when it was created or imported

Theme

Here you can decide on the overall look and format of your posted testimonials.

Select theme

Choose from a selection of testimonial themes designed by the DirectoryTestimonial team. As you view each theme, you will notice layout and font size differences, to enable you to find the best one for your social channels.

General

You can turn Card Layout on or off. When it is activated, it adds a card-style view including rounded corners and shadow.

Colors

In this area, you can select different colors for each part of the testimonial view.

Choosing the right social channels: Social Accounts

Aim: select, log in and give your testimonials access to your chosen social media channels.

This section enables you select your preferred social media channels. There is also the option to connect to Zapier (coming soon), opening up the options beyond those provided by DirectoryTestimonial.

Connected Accounts

Activate each social channel by turning on the toggle on the right-hand side

LinkedIn

When activated, to select this channel click 'Continue with LinkedIn'. This will open an external window or tab that logs in directly to LinkedIn, giving access to DirectoryTestimonial to post your testimonials.

Twitter

Once activated, to select this channel click 'Continue with Twitter'. This will open an external window or tab that logs in directly to Twitter, giving access to DirectoryTestimonial.

Facebook

After activated, clicking 'Continue with Facebook' will open a popup box. In this box, if not already logged in to Facebook, you will be asked to log in.

You will then have the option to 'Continue as ...'. To ensure Facebook has the correct access: - click 'Continue as ...'

select the page or pages you want to use
click 'Next'
ensure all permissions are set to 'Yes'
click 'Done'

Instagram (coming soon)

When activated, you will be able to log in to Instagram and post your selected testimonials there. This feature is coming soon.

Zapier (coming soon)

When activated, you will be able to log in to your Zapier account and link to other services through Zapier. This feature is coming soon.

Note: Once you have completed the above steps to activate and give DirectoryTestimonial access to your selected social channels, click 'Update Setup' at the bottom of the page.

Choosing the days and times for your posts: Schedule

In this section you can use DirectoryTestimonial's powerful scheduling to pick your preferred time(s) and day(s) for when DirectoryTestimonial will post to your activated social media channels.

Publishing Schedule

This is divided into timezone selection and a weekly scheduling tool.

Select your timezone

Ensure that the correct timezone is selected so the times selected match expectations.

Set your schedule

Here you have the real power of the scheduling side of Review Marketing. You can choose the day and time of day for the posting of your testimonials. You can make more than one selection.

Some things to consider:

at each time selected, one testimonial is posted to the activated social media channels
once the schedules are in place, the process is automated and the week repeats
only approved testimonials that are queued will be posted by the scheduler

Summary

DirectoryTestimonial's Review Marketing feature is a powerful tool to expand the reach of your highest rated testimonials. When combined with the other features DirectoryTestimonial provides, you can ensure your testimonials have maximum impact on your website and social channels.

Question 2

AutoRequests - How do I send people requests to complete a testimonial

Accepted Answer

Newsflash! Your customers aren't sitting around waiting to leave your business a review! While DirectoryTestimonial makes it easy to capture the testimonial, you still need to get them to your form. You of course can always create an email template inside your directory or site to send out when the time is right. But what if you could automate those requests inside DirectoryTestimonial?

Now you can! Automatically generate new testimonials on any platform by sending your customers review requests at the right time, and in the right way.

With DirectoryTestimonial you can generate testimonials on autopilot by sending automated review requests via email & SMS. Choose from our high converting, niche-based email & SMS templates or create your own.

PROCESS OVERVIEW

1. Import Your Contacts

Bring your customers into DirectoryTestimonial and manage them with our lightweight CRM. You can Import via CSV upload or integrations. Add custom attributes to track dynamic properties or events and sync with your other CRM or marketing software.

2. Edit Your Message Using Our Full-featured email & SMS message editor

Choose from a range of high-converting, niche-based message templates or build your own. Our powerful editor enables you to customize messages to your brand and insert dynamic customer data.

3. Monitor your campaign performance and test alternatives

AutoRequests includes a simple dashboard for viewing campaign data, including open & click rates and new reviews. Keep an eye on high-performing campaigns and tweak messaging to see what works best.

STEP BY STEP GUIDE

** Note - Pre-Start Requirement** - Later on in the AutoRequest Setup you will be selecting a form you have already setup, so be sure you have done that first HERE.

1. Add Settings - From the main menu find AutoRequests in the Collect section. Click here to openhttps://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/RftB9KeMum/resources/pqS9YvuVii/AutoRequests%20MEnu.png (AutoRequests MEnu (1).png)

Begin by selecting the "Setup" button to open the settings menu.https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/RftB9KeMum/resources/oTgxlRygUj/AutoRequests%20Setup.png (AutoRequests Setup (1).png)

Contact Settings - The Contact Settings allow you to set the timing for when you request a testimonial from each contact by setting the frequency to once a month, once every 3 months, once every 6 months, or once every year. Most will set this as once a year. This means that once a contact leaves a campaign, they won't be contacted within another campaign for at least 365 days. You of course can manually adding them to a campaign and if you do, this setting will be overridden at that point.
Property Settings - Enter the Sender (From) name and email address (Reply-to address) you want for your emails.
Custom Email - You have the ability to send from your own domain vs the standard send address. To set this up, click the "Use a custom email address" checkbox, add your email, and click the save and verify address button. You will be sent an email to the designated email from Amazon Web Services with the subject "Email Address Verification Request in region US East (N. Virginia)". Please click the link in that email to verify your address for sending. While not required, in order to ensure the best deliverability, we also recommend you setup the DKIM/SPF records in your domain DNS settings. You will be provided with 3 CNAME and 1 txt record to add to your DNS settings. You can click the easy copy button for each item. Setup for these items are included in the script install service if that was purchased. You can also purchase separately if required HERE. Once your DNS records have been updated you can click refresh to see the current verification status. Once updated the items will show green as active.

2. Configure your campaigns

Add New Campaign - From the main Auto Requests page click the "Campaigns" button and then click "+ Add Campaign" on the far right.
Choose Your Objective - For now the only Objective Option is for Collecting business testimonials or reviews. These are campaigns designed to collect business testimonials within DirectoryTestimonial or reviews on external platforms such as Google, Facebook and more. So for now just click the next button. Soon you will be able to have a new objective for Collecting product reviews. These will be campaigns and review forms designed specifically for e-commerce product reviews.
Add Campaign Name - This can be anything from a list you are using, a tag category, or sending month, whatever you want based on your campaign settings. Don't worry you can come back and edit this later, so feel free to be generic at first till you get a system setup.
Choose Request Type - You have three options for making your testimonial requests. You can select email, SMS or a combination of both.
Select Form and Tag Responses - Select a review form to send your contacts to. You will have a list from all of your forms, so pick one for this campaign. (You can View the form to verify in case you did not name them good enough to determine the right one.) You can also add tags to the responses from this campaign to differentiate or filter the testimonials later on. You can use Month, Group, Event, etc.
Set Your Sending Schedule - Unless you are a fireman, no one like random alarm bells in the middle of the night, so we allow fine tuning your email and SMS messaging time lines. We allow you to pick:
- During Office Hours
- Daytimes including weekends
- Anytime or
- A Custom Schedule

If you Choose a custom schedule you will be able to select a per day time schedule when you want the requests to go out. And of course, this all would all be lost if we assumed you were on the East Coast of the US so we allow you to pick your time zone to make the times applicable to you. Or by narrowing the time lines you can make it applicable to multiple zones.

Add Campaign Contacts - DirectoryTesimonial allows you to an almost limitless fine tuning of your contacts to send a campaign to. You can add AND as well as OR prameters to filter out your contacts to send the campaign. The system will dynamically let you know how many will enter the campaign. You can see an example below that looks for contacts that have the name of Ryan that have been with you more than 30 days or anyone who have not left a comment in the last year. You can see there are 0 in my list who meet that filter set so will want to choose alternate options. If you do not add any rules it will automatically add everyone in your contact list.
Select a message sequence template - While you can certainly add your own content from scratch, we also provide a complete set of message and SMS templates for some of the most common testimonials needs including
- General Testimonials
- General Reviews
- Guided Testimonials
- Local Business Reviews
- Local Tradesperson Reviews
- Restaurant Reviews
- And more Coming Soon
Edit Messages - After selecting the desired message chain, the messages will be populated which will then allow you to edit, duplicate, remove or add additional messages.
Add Follow-ups - Soon you can set automated messages that can be triggered once a testimonial is received. Example use cases:
- Sending a thank you message to customers.
- Asking customers to share their review to external platforms (Google, Facebook etc), based on your review form settings.
- Sending a reward to customers for their review (independent of their rating).
Save and Go Live - Once you are all set or ready to save your work, click Save or Go Live.
Status Check- Status Can be checked back on the main AutoRequest page. Any Campaigns saved but not live will say draft. If they are active it will say live. To Go Live or pause campaigns, simply click the campaign name and edit the status at the bottom of the page.

Question 3

What is DirectoryTestimonial?

Accepted Answer

DirectoryTestimonial is a customer testimonial automation platform. It allows you to automatically collect and display reviews from customers as well as publish customer feedback to other platforms.

Question 4

What is a Review Form?

Accepted Answer

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/RftB9KeMum/resources/FEWNCneM11/Forms.png (Forms.png)

SmartAvatars

Publish to other platforms

Incentivized requests

Live previews

Question 5

What are DirectoryTestimonial widgets?

Accepted Answer

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/RftB9KeMum/resources/i94swgpudx/embed.png (embed.png)

Widgets are used to display testimonials and reviews collected in DirectoryTestimonial on your website(s).

They can be fully customized to suit your brand and are easily added to any site with a single line of code.