With busy lifestyles, bold headlines, and near-constant connectivity, the competition to engage consumers is fierce. But, by putting the customer in control with our latest feature TextBack, you can benefit from their connectivity.

GatherUp has long offered outbound SMS requests to request reviews from known customers, those that have phone numbers in their customer profiles, but TextBack is different. TextBack is an inbound SMS channel with instant review access for your customers right from their phone.

TextBack is an invitation to your customer to provide user-activated feedback and reviews via text. It’s simple, quick, and gives customers access to your business in-the-moment so you know exactly when what happens.

TextBack Gives Customers What They Want

Consumers want to be able to communicate via text and SMS from their phone. A ZipWhip study that’s no longer available showed 71% of 30- to 44-year-olds and 65% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they would text a business more frequently if they had the opportunity.

TextBack offers a customer real-time entry into the review process from their mobile phone using a keyword and phone number provided by your business location.

A customer sees this invitation (signage, receipt, flyer, etc) and takes action by sending a keyword text (our default is “feedback”, but you can add a custom one) to your TextBack number. Then, GatherUp auto-replies with a text message giving your customer easy access to the feedback and review process.

Depending on the Request Mode you are using in GatherUp, TextBack will help you capture Net Promoter Score (NPS), Survey questions, 1st-party reviews and 3rd-party reviews on sites like Google, Trip Advisor, and Facebook.

Why Text Works For Customer Feedback & Review Participation

You can increase participation in your feedback and review request process by inviting customers to do something they already do a lot… use their phone. The average consumer checks their phone every 12 minutes and puts in a total of 4+ hours of screen time every day.

When you offer TextBack you can utilize a consumers own device, and habitual phone use, to give them instant access to your review and feedback process.

Where Other Solutions Fail, TextBack Succeeds

No email? No phone number? No problem. TextBack offers a way for your business to connect with unknown customers when you don’t have their digits or email. It turns marketing, transactions, and environments into review request opportunities for your business. Invite your customers to contact you by displaying your TextBack number and keyword in a variety of channels.

Signage

Think about what your customers see at your business location… and know that they likely have their phone handy. Displaying your TextBack number in the line of sight of your customers can help you reach those you couldn’t otherwise, and serves as a convenient entry point for all customers to give feedback.

• Billboards
• Signage in waiting areas
• Table signage
• Floor signage
• Point of purchase signage

Receipts

Purchases create a transaction. Transactions create a receipt. Receipts create an opportunity to deliver a TextBack invitation to your customer. Add your TextBack number and keyword to receipts generated by your current systems to fast track customers into the feedback and review process.

• Paper receipts
• Email confirmations and receipts

Flyers

There are many uses for flyers in business. With a quick design update or sticker, turn your business flyers into an invitation to your customers to give feedback and reviews using TextBack.

• Programs
• Inserts
• Coupons

On-Site Staff

Turn real-time conversations into feedback and online reviews by providing staff with small cards that list your TextBack number and keyword to invite customers to provide feedback. For increased attention, add TextBack to materials that include other useful information.

• Appointment Reminders
• Coupons
• Business Cards
• Product Specification Documents
• Samples

TextBack Helps Capture Customer Emails And Mobile Numbers, Not Just Reviews

Use TextBack to capture contact information (name, phone, and email) to build your customer list and enable future communication. TextBack is perfect for industries where capturing a customer’s email or phone number is difficult or not part of the normal process. Get creative displaying your TextBack number across different channels and in different ways to drive your customers to take action.

Get Started With TextBack

It’s easy to get started with TextBack. If you are not yet a GatherUp customer, sign-up on our Pro Plan or higher to start capturing inbound SMS feedback and reviews.

But on Twitter the concern arose whether this auto-deletion process applied to reviews and whether it might lead to older reviews being deleted.

Reviews Are Public

In fact just the opposite has occurred. Google has not only excluded reviews from this policy but they have rolled out a new highly visible, automatic notification that shows up when you first start to write a review that indicates that reviews are in fact pubic.

The notification is so visible that it blocks the users ability to see or leave the star rating for the review until they make an additional click.

Reviews Are Very Public

They go on to say in their help documentation that “if you do not want to share your experience … please do not publish it using this service”. Your reviews, along with your profile name and photo, will appear not just on Google but “may also appear within third-party sites that use Google embeddable widgets or the Google Maps Platform API”.

There is no expectation of privacy when you leave a review at Google and a review will not come down unless the original author explicitly removes it or Google determines that it is spam.

Our line-up won’t disappoint as our Mike Blumenthal hosts Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, Darren Shaw of Whitespark and Aaron Weiche of GatherUp for an hour-long webinar covering local search and digital marketing with an AMA (ask me anything) format.

Local Search Topics

We’ll work to cover as much ground as possible in the webinar with information for SEO professionals, agency owners and in-house teams. Each speaker will bring you 3 of their top moves right now as well as the AMA format. We’ll cover:

• Google My Business and listings
• COVID-19 adaptation and local digital marketing
• Reputation Management
• Agency tips and ideas

Ask Your Questions Now

Use the form below to ask your question for the webinar now.  We will be taking both submitted questions (below) and LIVE questions via Zoom during the webinar.

The line-up will be rock solid with our Mike Blumenthal hosting Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, Krystal Taing of Rio SEO and Aaron Weiche of GatherUp for an hour-long webinar covering local SEO, Google My Business and digital marketing.

Local Search Tips & More

You can count on a lot of great strategy and tactical tips in the webinar with information for SEO professionals, agency owners and in-house teams. Each speaker will bring you 3 of their top local digital marketing moves right now as well as the AMA format to ask your questions. We’ll cover:

• Google My Business and listings
• Local SEO and digital marketing (search and social)
• Reputation management
• Agency tips and ideas

Ask Your Questions Now

Use the form below to ask your question for the webinar now.  We will be taking both submitted questions (below) and LIVE questions via Zoom during the webinar.

My answer, which they chose not to use, is as follows:

I think that it is important to not miss the sales conversion forest for the minutiae of the GMB trees. The thing I see missed the most about Google My Business is an understanding that it’s a tool that exists within a search result that helps a business tell their brand story.

Certainly, it is important to provide details for most of the features in GMB including products, services, Q&A answers, and Posts as well as a raft of others. But it is most important to view the output of the GMB in the context of your brand reputation and brand image as presented in the search results. 

Build Brand Impact Via Google My Business

The brand result at Google (your business name + city) summarizes all the important aspects of your business, from both GMB and the web at large in a single, emphatic search result page. 

While a good GMB profile is 50% of the page and is a huge visual draw, it is the full page with its story of reputation and meta information, that tells the whole story. And it is important that this Brand Story is consistent and compelling across all elements of the page.

When Google released their Reviews from the Web feature that will show up to three additional, non-Google review sites in your Google My Business Profile (aka the Knowledge Panel) they also “bumped” up any website in the search results that included reputation information.

An example of reputation information in search results includes pages that display rich snippet stars and a rating as seen below. This can be accomplished if you post your own 1st-party reviews to your site marked up with schema.

Reputation information can also come from rich snippet stars from the likes of Yelp, Facebook, the Better Business Bureau and the many industry-specific sites that capture reviews. 

So not only do consumers need to see a stellar GMB business profile including great photos (from a range of topical areas), answers to their questions via menu tabs and Q&A, and news via Posts, they need to “see” this brand story extend across the many sites that Google displays in your branded search results. 

The specific results that searchers see on your branded search are a summary of the most important results that consumers will see across the web wherever they may search for you. And the content Google finds there will intimately inform the results that users see within all of Google’s many Local and Map results. 

Extend Your Brand Story Across Google Search

So, what are the things that can help your business stand out in search beyond the basics of the GMB? Here’s your checklist:

• Optimize your website’s title and meta description tags so that they are compelling.
• Get your own reviews and mark them up on your website.
• Get reviews at not just Google but at a range of major AND minor third party sites so that you get three additional review mentions in the Business Profile via Reviews from the web feature. 
• Be sure that you have great images for these various third party sites to be able to show as thumbnails on mobile.
• In the new results, even being sure that your favicon looks great should not escape your attention. 

Your GMB listing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It resides within both local and branded Google search results and it is often where consumers ultimately decide between you and your competitors. In fact, many business conversions are occurring while the user is still within the search result and they may never even visit your business.

Businesses need to take every opportunity to highlight their excellence. To help assist you in benchmarking your brand search results the folks at Local U have built a tool to score your Google brand page. 

Google truly has become your new home page and you should treat every aspect of it with the same great attention and care that you do the home page of your website.   

Last week, I attended MozCon 2019. As an event partner (and first-time attendee), it was exciting to arrive at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle… even if I had to show multiple forms of ID, original paperwork, and provide a DNA sample to access the venue. I’m only slightly joking. Those WSCC security volunteers mean business. After finally arriving at my destination, I had the pleasure of working with, and meeting, many of the Moz team to kick off a truly remarkable event.

GatherUp Demos Packs Them In

The demo hub was jammed with curious minds ready to learn more about customer experience, reviews, and reputation management. Some were drawn to the new Insights Report displayed in high def above the crowds. Seeing review content be turned into visual business insights in real-time was a big crowd-pleaser.

Shout-Outs from the MozCon 2019 Stage

Other attendees came to visit on orders from presenters Mary Bowling and Joy Hawkins. With over 1,300 people hanging on their every word, both presenters recommended GatherUp from the live stage. Because our founding team’s roots run deep in SEO and Local SEO, it’s no surprise the SEO community is our community.

Their honest and affectionate praise of our platform and team may have stirred up a few tears in us, however, we did manage to pull ourselves together and regroup… on a boat.

IRL Wisdom Beats Reading Thousands of Articles

I was observing a conversation between Mike Blumenthal and an attendee about review management and the impact reviews can have on SEO when I witnessed a pause. Then came a lightbulb. The attendee realized, mid-sentence, exactly who it was they were talking to.

Mike has published thousands of local SEO articles over the years and any true local SEO has read between 1 to 1,000 of them. After all, he is Professor Maps. When the attendee’s eyes grew and lit up with recognition it was a priceless moment to take in that got even better when the blush of being a little starstruck followed.

Even Petra stopped by for a chat and a photo! She was our MozCon free ticket winner and came to Seattle all the way from Austria.

We’re Proud To Serve The SEO Community

When you bring together the best, the brightest, the beginners, and the passionate in marketing and SEO, a discipline is turned into a community that comes to life. A community that makes connections and sings karaoke. (Is it care-e-o-kee or ka-row-kee?) A community that we are proud to be a part of and even prouder to serve.

Chris Walker, Agency Account Executive, is our agency specialist and expert t-shirt roller. Tara Jenkins, Sr. National Account Executive, nailed her first day at GatherUp jumping in to do demos at MozCon. Aaron Weiche, CEO, does get emotional seeing the talents of this team make listening a business superpower for others. Liezen Van Loh, Product and Content Marketer, loves to talk schema and astutely observes all crosswalk signals. And last but not least, Mike Blumenthal is the talent that leaves them enlightened, challenged, and maybe a little starstruck.

Until next time MozCon!

This headline may seem like a riddle but it’s not meant to be. A review is more than a review… when there is more than one.

Most businesses think of that last review in the singular. That it adds one more to the count. That it’s a compliment or a criticism. That it feels a certain way. It. It. It. All in the singular.

Reviews In Aggregate Take On More Value

There is no denying that getting a new review is important in the singular but I would contend that for all the value of the single review, the value of the body of reviews is greater by several orders of magnitude. 

Google has long understood this. These are the Google uses of reviews that we know about (and they are probably doing much more with reviews that we have not yet identified).

• They use reviews to answer questions 
• They use reviews to rank a business
• They use reviews to compare businesses quality to others in their cohort
• They analyze reviews to understand the many things a business does 
• They parse reviews to help consumers dig into specific areas of a business

Reviews in aggregate take on so much more value for a business that it is time to expand our thinking and start seeing the value of a body of reviews and not just of the review itself.

Aggregate Review Content In Action

Many businesses and agencies have developed tactical variations of using review content to create a business impact with success. 

• Wil Reynolds wrote a great piece about how you can do a statistical analysis of your reviews and your competitor reviews to create great content and to start to understand why your customers love you (or not). 
• Angie Shotmueller has often explored the idea of how social proof impacts conversions.
• Phil Rozek recently wrote a great article on using reviews for keyword research.
• And many have written about using schema to highlight your reviews in the search results.

Those are all good tactics that we have embraced in our product (and automated) so that you too can get these benefits, while still getting on with the business of business.

A More Strategic Role for Reviews

We have long held the conviction that reviews could play a more strategic role for every business. In the praise, the complaints, and the details, reviews contain the information needed to help you build a better business. 

Businesses need to get to the point where they understand their customer’s experience so intimately through active listening that they can not only attend to what’s happening today but anticipate what needs to happen tomorrow. Because of this operational and experiential excellence, customers will be delighted. Delighted customers don’t just leave a review… they leave an endorsement.

That is what it will take to compete going forward and gathering a corpus of 1st- and 3rd-party reviews can provide the intelligence to help you do just that including:

• Turn Passives into Promoters
  What if you could look at your 3- and 4-star reviews and parse out what it would it was specifically that those folks both liked and disliked about your business? Knowing that information, you could develop specific plans to take those users from passive customers to true promoters of your business.
  
• Understand Strengths That Set You Apart
  What if you could look at all of your reviews and understand, in the customer’s voice, what specific products, people, and services stood out for them? You could work to embrace those strengths and highlight those things in your communications.
  
• Be Alerted to Action Earlier
  What if, for example, you were a multi-location restaurant and wanted to get an early warning across multiple locations that folks were experiencing digestive distress? You could avoid the Chipotle problem. 

From Tactical to Strategic with GatherUp

You can do all those things! And we can help.

If you need a bigger body of review content to inform insights, use GatherUp to request reviews via email or SMS. Offer customer-activated reviews using TextBack, Feedback Locator, and the Feedback URL. With these features in motion, 1st- and 3rd-party reviews for your business will grow.

Using sentiment analysis, the Insights Report processes your body of reviews (both 1st- and 3rd-party) to help surface not just what is right with your business but also the impact of persistent issues that keep your business from greatness. 

For example, a customer can give a 1-star rating that includes positive sentiment in the review content.

The customer’s sentiment of “long line” is negative and reflected in the star-rating, however, “cold press coffee” is discovered to have a positive sentiment. Understanding your body of reviews beyond the star-rating helps you understand what’s working and what’s not so that you can better prioritize action.

Using Auto-Tagging along with Insights report allows sentiments to be used to ferret out the potential business reputation threats lurking around the corner that might just do you in.

You can then bake this mission-critical information into daily reports that you can get every morning to be sure you are NOT the next Chipotle. 

With our schema-based Review Widget, Conversion Pop-up and tagging capabilities for building out page-specific content you can have ever-changing rich snippet content on your site and visual social proof using your most recent reviews… All done automatically. 

These tactics all take reviews out of the singular view of their utility into activities that utilize the whole body of reviews at scale for uses well beyond their solitary value.

Reviews Help Build A Better Business

Reviews can provide the grist for the mill of your continued improvement. One review is useful but having many and then understanding what they are telling you is gold. 

If complaints are the building blocks of a business then understanding your customers are like the plumbing, electricity, heating, and air. 

When is a review more than a review? When there is more than one… And you use them to help you build a better business.

Automating & Offering A Better Customer Exit Survey

Our client Nekter Juice Bar, which operates over 50 locations in the western U.S. serving juices, smoothies and Acai bowls wanted to trigger GatherUp customer feedback requests automatically from their online orders via Olo to learn more on their customer’s experiences.

“Nekter is always looking for ways to use technology to customize, simplify, and improve the customer experience. Because of this, getting timely feedback from our customers is vitally important to us, and GatherUp has allowed us to automate and improve upon the standard exit survey.” shared Jon Asher, Nekter’s Director of Digital Marketing.

At GatherUp, we are constantly working on any way possible to allow a customer to enter the feedback process.  Olo is a digital and mobile ordering leader serving restaurant brands like Which Wich, 5 Guys, Chipotle and Cold Stone Creamery.  Adding Webhooks allows us to “listen” to an online ordering platform like Olo and automate the customer being created and sent a feedback request in our platform.

We’ve also recently added the ability to connect directly to 3rd party applications like Mailchimp, Salesforce, HubSpot, Quickbooks and Constant Contact. A business can connect hundreds of other apps to GatherUp using Zapier. 

Feedback Just Waiting To Be Tapped

For many businesses they have customers wanting to express their feedback, but can’t find an easy way to make that happen.  GatherUp provides numerous proactive and passive routes to make this happen and once enabled, feedback often flows instantly.

“Being able to understand and address our customer’s comments and concerns is extremely important to us. GatherUp was able to seamlessly integrate into our online ordering experience and started getting us reviews within hours of flipping the switch.” noted Asher. 

We’ve even seen feedback coming in with emoji hearts in the comments, now that’s true love.

A Better Customer Experience, Are You Next?

If you are a restaurant, cafe or franchise using Olo, we can help integrate a valuable customer feedback and online review solution with almost instant results. Nekter Juice Bar did and is off and running.

If you have a CRM, POS or other platform that you want to integrate with GatherUp, check out our API, Zapier offering, Webhooks or contact us and let’s talk!

*Staff photo via Yelp, Nekter Juice photo from 30th & Weldon

Reputation, Reviews and NPS Reporting Made Easy

Frequently requested by marketers that use both GatherUp and Agency Analytics (AA), users can leverage a wide range of reputation, review and Net Promoter Score (NPS) data. Agency Analytics offers marketers a streamlined and centralized way to report on data from SEO, social media, email, PPC and reputation/reviews. The addition of GatherUp is a big win for our agency customers using Agency Analytics.

We are also excited to have an integration in the works for Cyfe, another popular all-in-one reporting and dashboard service used by digital marketers and Local SEOs.

These integrations with reporting solutions allows for even great data collaboration and sharing on top of the ten robust and rich reports that GatherUp offers in our platform including our Success Report and Insights Report powered by IBM Watson.

Reputation Reporting Options

The Agency Analytics integration will allow you to create reports in AA from GatherUp that visualize and share:

• Review average rating
• Review count
• Reviews by rating
• Reviews by source
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• NPS breakdown

Depending on the data you are wanting to share, AA allows you to choose from a wide variety of visual chart types including line charts, bar charts, pie charts, gauge charts, sparkline charts, tables, and stat displays.

Getting Started With GatherUp and Agency Analytics

To get started, go to your Agency Analytics account, then select integrations. Find GatherUp under “All” on the integrations page or under “Local”.

Once you have selected GatherUp, then click “Connect New Account”. The next screen (below) will prompt you for your GatherUp account ClientID and API Key. This information is in your account by selecting the client you are authorizing from the Agency Dashboard, then select “Client Details” from the upper right user account menu.

You will need to “show” the API key to copy and paste it over as the “***************” format will not work for this.

Once this is completed, select GatherUp on the next screen and then the location(s) to report on and you are ready to add data to Agency Analytics! When you add metrics to the “Dashboard” you will locate GatherUp under “Local” for data sources.

We’re excited to expand our integrations by being part of Agency Analytics and Cyfe (coming soon) to give our agencies as many options as possible. We’d love to hear about your experiences using these dashboard tools along with your GatherUp reports to share reputation and NPS data with your clients.