Send both, in an order. Text first if you hold a mobile number, because the review gets written on the phone the message arrived on, then email three to five days later for the people who did not act. Which one leads is decided by how the customer booked: a salon that takes a mobile at the counter should text, and an accountant whose relationship with a client runs through an inbox should email.

Open rates do not settle whether SMS or email is better for a review request. Look at what the message does, what it costs and whether you are allowed to send it. The wording lives in our review request templates, which carry the SMS version of every email.

Which channel should you use for review requests?

Start with the contact detail you hold.

• You took a mobile number at booking or on the docket. Text.
• The relationship runs by email already. Quotes, invoices and confirmations arrive in an inbox, so the review request should too. It will not look out of place, which matters more than any channel's average performance.
• You hold both. Text first, email as the single follow-up. That order is the point of this page.
• You hold neither, because it was a walk-in. Neither channel can help. That customer is reachable by a QR code on the counter or the docket, and by nothing else.

That last case is bigger than owners expect: in hospitality and retail, most of the people who came in today left no contact detail.

What a text does well

It lands on the device the review will be written on. That is the whole argument, and it is mechanical rather than statistical. A Google review gets written in a phone browser, signed into an account already signed in on that phone. A text puts the link one tap away. An email opened on a laptop puts a sign-in or a device switch in the way.

A text is also short enough that it cannot do anything except ask. No header image, no footer, no second call to action. Much of the advice about keeping a review request short is really advice to make an email behave like a text.

What a text is bad at: it costs money per message, and the consent rules are stricter than most people expect.

What an email does well

It has room for the context that makes the ask specific. The date, the job, the person who did the work, the invoice number. "Your appointment on Tuesday with Priya" gets a more useful review than "your recent visit", and there is only so much of that a text holds before it splits in two.

It also behaves like a receipt. It sits in a searchable inbox and survives the week, so the customer who meant to review you and got interrupted can find it again on Sunday. A text is below the fold of a message list by lunchtime.

What an email is bad at: filters and tabs decide whether it is seen.

The open rates you have seen are not a comparison

Almost every page on this topic sets "98% of texts are read" beside "20% of emails are opened" and calls that a result. The two figures do not measure the same thing, and one of them is not a measurement at all.

SMS has no open event. There is no pixel in a text message, no read receipt available to the sender, and nothing in the protocol that reports a human looked at it. Whatever a page tells you about text open rates, nobody observed your messages being opened.

Email opens are measured with a tracking pixel, and Apple has broken that pixel for a large part of your list. Mail Privacy Protection, in Apple's own words, "hides your IP address" and "prevents senders from seeing if you've opened the email message they sent you". Whatever number your sending tool reports, it is no longer a count of people who read the email.

Compare what both channels genuinely report: clicks on the review link, and reviews that arrive. If a vendor quotes you a channel open rate, ask what measured it.

What each channel costs

Email costs effectively nothing per send. The real cost is your sending domain's reputation, which you spend by mailing people who did not want to hear from you.

SMS is billed per segment, not per send. A message that runs past the segment boundary is two messages on your bill even though the customer sees one, and a single curly apostrophe pasted out of a word processor drops the ceiling from 160 characters to 70. The character counts are in the review request templates post. So the honest budget is your provider's per-segment rate, times segments, times the customers you will actually ask. Check what sender registration that provider requires in each market before you commit to a number.

The rules, per channel

The compliance gap between these two channels is what the comparison posts leave out, and it is the part that can cost you money. What follows is what the regulators publish, not legal advice.

Texting customers in the United States

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act governs this, and the FCC's guidance on robocalls and robotexts is direct. FCC rules "ban text messages sent to a mobile phone using an autodialer unless the phone owner previously gave consent to receive the message or the message is sent for emergency purposes", and "commercial texts require written consent; for informational texts, your consent may be oral".

The opt-out rule is the one that catches software. In the FCC's words, a person "may opt out of any robocall or robotext at any time and in any reasonable manner, even if you previously gave consent for such calls". Any reasonable manner. Somebody who replies "stop texting me" has opted out as surely as somebody who replies STOP, and a system that only recognises the keyword keeps messaging a person who has told it to stop.

Texting and emailing customers in Australia

The Spam Act 2003 covers email and SMS together, which is tidier. The ACMA's guidance sets three obligations: get consent, identify yourself as the sender, and make it easy to unsubscribe.

Consent is where service businesses get caught. ACMA separates express consent, given by "filling in a form, ticking a box on a website, over the phone, face to face", from inferred consent, which needs "a provable, ongoing relationship with your business". Then comes the line worth reading twice: inferred consent "does not cover sending messages after someone has just bought something from your business". One transaction is not consent to market to somebody in Australia. Your unsubscribe option must also honour "a request to unsubscribe within 5 working days" and must not require the person to "log in to, or create, an account".

Emailing customers in the United States

CAN-SPAM applies, and the FTC's compliance guide is short enough to read in full. Do not assume a review request is exempt because the person already bought from you: the FTC reads the transactional categories narrowly and says "you shouldn't assume that any message you send to recipients who have an ongoing commercial relationship with you ... are transactional or relationship messages".

The parts that shape a review request: your "From", "To", "Reply-To" and routing information "must be accurate", "the subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message", "your message must include your valid physical postal address", and you "must honor a recipient's opt-out request within 10 business days". Penalties are assessed against "each separate email in violation", not per campaign, which is what makes a careless send expensive.

When to send each one

Both channels share a trigger and differ on the clock. The trigger is the job being finished, not the payment being taken.

A text should land the day after the job, mid-morning or early evening, inside waking hours in the customer's timezone. The FCC's guidance says telemarketing calls to a home are prohibited before 8 a.m. and after 9 p.m. That is written for calls, not texts, but it is a sensible fence around your sending hours. Email is looser, because it waits: the day after the job, mid-week rather than Monday. There is a fuller timing table by business type in how to get more Google reviews, and the trade where the order matters most is covered in reviews for home services.

Text first, email second, then stop

1. Text the day after the job. One sentence, your business name in the first few words, one link.
2. Wait three to five days. Not one. A customer who is going to act often acts on day two or three, and a chase on day one spends the second message for nothing.
3. Email once, shorter than the text was long. Refer back to the ask rather than repeating it, give the link again, and say that it is fine to ignore.
4. Stop. Two messages is the whole programme for this job. Ask again after their next visit.

In practice that means Harbourline Dental marks an appointment complete at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, texts at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, and emails on Monday morning if nothing has happened by Saturday.

Changing channel makes the second message read as a reminder rather than a chase. If the text failed because the number was wrong, the email is a real second attempt rather than a repeat.

Flip the order when the email relationship came first. A client of a firm like Standen & Co, who has only ever had emails from them, gets the email first and a text second, if a text goes at all.

What a repeat customer should experience

Somebody who comes to you four times a year is one customer, not four review requests. Ask once, and if they book again before replying, move the ask rather than adding one. Skip anyone who has just reviewed you, because asking for a thing somebody has already done reads as though nobody was paying attention. Anyone who opted out never reappears on either channel, and when the review lands the follow-up stops.

Keeping one contact history across both channels is where the admin gets messy. Cloutly's review campaigns treat a repeat customer as one contact asked once rather than one ask per transaction, so a second booking moves the ask instead of adding one. They skip anyone who reviewed you in the last 90 days, never re-enrol a contact who has opted out, and stop the follow-up the moment the review lands.

What not to do, on either channel

No incentive, in the text or the email. Google's prohibited and restricted content policy bars merchants from offering incentives "in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review", and names payment, discounts and free goods or services as the examples. A prize draw entry counts, and so does a free coffee.

No rating question before the review link. Asking a customer to rate you privately and showing only the happy ones the review link is review gating. The same policy bars merchants from "discourag[ing] or prohibit[ing] negative reviews, or selectively solicit[ing] positive reviews". There is more in review gating. Cloutly has not gated since 2021.

No asking for particular words. Google says merchants should not "request that specific content be included", and names a review that identifies a staff member as its example. Give each person their own review link so the credit follows the link, rather than scripting the customer.

No suggesting a number of stars, in a subject line, a text or a counter card. More on what a request may say is in five-star Google review requests.

No sending to a list you did not collect. The consent obligations above follow every address and number you use, including the ones that came with the business.

SMS vs email review requests, side by side

Frequently asked questions

Is SMS or email better for review requests?

Text, where you hold a mobile number and consent, because it reaches the customer on the device the review gets written on and removes a sign-in step email cannot. Email is the better first channel where the relationship already runs by email.

Should I send both a text and an email?

Yes, but not at the same time and not more than twice in total. Text the day after the job, then email once, three to five days later. A third message reads as pressure.

Is it legal to text customers asking for a review?

It depends on consent. In the United States, FCC rules ban autodialled texts to a mobile without the owner's prior consent, and commercial texts require written consent. In Australia, ACMA states that inferred consent does not cover messaging somebody just because they bought something from you.

Do texts really have a 98% open rate?

Nobody can measure the open rate of a text message. There is no read receipt available to the sender and no pixel to fire, so a figure of that kind is not an observation of your messages. Measure link clicks and reviews instead.

What if I only have an email address?

Send the email, write it like a text, and put a QR code where those customers physically are. Collecting a mobile number at booking is worth doing, but it fixes next quarter rather than this one. Meanwhile the subject line does most of the work, and there are ones that hold up in email subject lines for review requests.

A review request email subject line gets opened when it names something the customer remembers. The visit, the day, the job, the person who did it. Keep it under about forty characters so it survives a phone lock screen, write it the way you would text a regular, and leave out anything that sounds like a promotion, because the inbox will file it as one.

Below are thirty subject lines, grouped by the moment you send them rather than by tone. They are written for service businesses asking for a Google review after an appointment, a job or a visit, and they come from different trades on purpose: a physio does not sound like a sparky and should not have to borrow their wording. Most lists like this one are written for ecommerce product reviews, and most of them still suggest offering a discount. Google prohibits that outright, and in the United States it can put you inside a rule that carries civil penalties. There is a section on both below.

What makes a review request subject line get opened

Four things, and none of them is cleverness.

It names the visit rather than the relationship. "Your appointment on Thursday" beats "We value your feedback" because the first is a fact the reader can check and the second is a category of email they already delete.

It comes from a person. The sender name does at least as much work as the subject and it sits in the same row on a phone. "Emma at Coastline Physio" is a different email from "Coastline Physio Marketing" before anyone has read a word of the subject, and "no-reply" is a different one again.

It is short enough to survive a lock screen. A phone shows the sender, then part of the subject, then part of the preview text, and how much of each depends on the device, the app and the reader's text size. Put the meaning in the first three or four words and treat the rest as a bonus.

And it promises nothing. No discount, no draw, no "exclusive". Those are the words a promotions filter is built to catch, and they are the words that turn a legitimate ask into an incentivised review.

30 review request email subject lines

Merge fields are in square brackets: [First name], [Business], [Name] for whoever is signing, [day], [job type], [item]. Replace the brackets and nothing else. Bear in mind that a line grows once the fields fill in, so read the bracketed ones back with your longest business name in them before you save. These are subject lines only. The bodies that go under them are on the review request email templates page.

After an appointment or a visit

1. How did we do, [First name]?
2. One question about yesterday
3. Your appointment on [day]
4. [First name], how's it feeling today?
5. How's it sitting after the first wash?
6. Getting on all right with the new glasses?

After a job at the customer's place

7. Your [job type] on [day]
8. [First name], is the [item] behaving?
9. Still running quietly?
10. Invoice settled, and thanks for the work

After a first visit

11. Your first visit to [Business]
12. First time in. What did you notice?
13. [First name], you're new to us

A first-timer notices the things your regulars stopped seeing about a year ago, which is why number 12 is worth sending even though it never uses the word review.

For a long-standing customer

14. [First name], after all this time
15. Three years of appointments, one ask
16. I've never asked you for this
17. A favour, and then I'll stop

After you sorted out a complaint

18. Glad we got that sorted
19. [First name], did the repair hold?
20. About the problem you had last [day]

Send one of these only once the customer has told you they are happy. A review request that lands while a complaint is still open is not a request, it is a prompt.

The follow-up, the second send

21. Re: How did we do, [First name]?
22. The link again, in case it got buried
23. Last email about this, [First name]
24. No rush and no pressure
25. Missed my last one?

Send the second one three to five days after the first, keep it shorter than the first, and let the reader off the hook inside the subject itself. The first ask often lands while somebody is at work, which is the whole reason the second one is worth sending. Two messages is the programme. A third is nagging, and the customer who was going to review you will get to it on their own day regardless.

From the person who did the work

26. It's [Name] from [Business]
27. [Name] here. I did your [job type] on [day]

Send it from the person by all means. Do not ask the customer to write that person's name into the review. Google's rating manipulation policy tells merchants not to "request that specific content be included", and the example it gives is content identifying a staff member. If you want your team recognised, give each of them their own review link and let the arrival do the crediting.

Under 30 characters

28. Two minutes, [First name]?
29. Were we any good?
30. One line about us?

Those last three exist because a phone gives you very little room, and the reader decides on what fits. There is no truncation point that holds everywhere, but thirty characters is a fair worst case on a narrow phone with the text size turned up. Here is what survives it.

Subject line, preview text and sender name

The subject is one of three fields the phone shows, and the other two are usually sitting on their defaults.

Preview text is the second. Clients pull it from the first lines of copy in the email unless you set it, which is why so many review requests show "View this email in your browser" next to the subject. Litmus recommends keeping preview text under 90 characters, and notes that depending on the reader's client and settings it can run to about five lines, roughly 278 characters, or show nothing at all. Write the first line of the email as though it is the second half of the subject, because that is what it is doing.

The sender name is the third, and it is the field most businesses never touch. Use a first name with the business name, sent from an address somebody reads. Part of what comes back will not be reviews at all. It will be the thing the customer was never going to put in public, and a no-reply address throws it away.

None of this carries over to a text message. There is no subject line in SMS, so the first six or seven words of the message are doing this job instead, and the business name has to be inside them. Which channel to use, and what a text costs you once it runs past a single message, is on the review request email templates page.

Subject lines to never send

Four kinds. Two of them break Google's policy. The other two just do not work.

Anything that promises a reward. "Get 10% off for a review", "Review us and go in the draw", "Tell us you loved it and get a free coffee". Google is explicit: "Offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews is considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited" (Google Business Profile help).

The American position is narrower, and worth getting right, because half the pages ranking for this search recommend the opposite of it. The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect on 21 October 2024. It does not ban incentives. What section 465.4 bans is compensation conditioned on the review expressing a particular sentiment, and the FTC's worked example of crossing that line is a business writing "Tell us how much you loved your visit to John's Steakhouse and get a $5 coupon". Courts can impose civil penalties for a knowing violation.

Put the two rules next to each other. Google will not have a paid review at any price. The FTC will not have a bought opinion. Google is where you want the reviews to land, so no subject line you send mentions a discount, a draw or a free anything.

Anything that asks for a rating. "Rate us 5 stars", "How was your 5-star experience?", or five star emoji in the subject. Google permits you to solicit reviews "without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review". Naming the number you want is an attempt to influence the rating. It is also the top of the slope into review gating, which breaches the same policy in its own right.

Anything that reads like a survey. "Customer satisfaction survey", "Help us improve", "Your feedback matters", "2-minute questionnaire". These get filed with the airline questionnaires, and the reader who does open one is expecting radio buttons rather than a link to Google. A review is a public thing a customer writes in their own words. Say that instead.

Fake urgency and broken personalisation. "Action required", "Final reminder", "URGENT: your review". Nothing about a review request is urgent, the reader knows it, and the word only buys you the next email being ignored too. The other one is a merge field with no data behind it, which is how "Hi , how was your visit to ?" reaches a customer at nine on a Monday morning.

One clarification, because the lesson usually gets taken too far. "Quick favour?" on its own is the cliché, not the word favour. The problem is a subject line that says nothing except that you want something. Number 15 uses the same idea and works, because it says how long the person has been a customer before it asks.

What to test, and how to read the result

Most service businesses do not have the volume for a split test to mean anything: at forty review requests a week you will be reading noise for months, and you are better off picking a sensible line and leaving it alone. Measure reviews landed rather than opens: a vague, curiosity-driven subject can lift the open rate and lower the review count, because the reader opens it, sees that it is a review request, and closes it.

If you do have the volume, start with the sender name. A person's name against the business name is a bigger change than any rewording of the subject. After that, test naming the event against naming the feeling: number 3 against number 1. Both work, and which one wins depends on how routine the visit is for your customers. Test the first name in and out as well, because personalisation is not automatically better here. For a business somebody uses every week, their own name in the subject can read as a mailing list rather than a message.

Then test the send day and the hour, which has nothing to do with the wording and can move more than the wording does. Change one thing at a time and run it long enough that a public holiday cannot explain the result. What usually comes out of testing this properly is not a better subject line. It is the discovery that the timing and the follow-up were doing the work.

What goes in the email body

Short version: the name, the job, one sentence of ask, one link, signed off by a person. If it runs past six lines, something in it is competing with the link.

The full templates, each with its text-message version and a note on when to send it, are on the review request email templates page. Who to ask and how often is in how to get more Google reviews, and five-star Google review requests covers what volume does to an average and why naming the number you want backfires.

Decide who does not get the email before you write it. Cloutly's review campaigns work off the contact rather than the transaction: a second booking moves the ask instead of adding one, anyone who reviewed you in the last 90 days is skipped, a contact who has opted out is never re-enrolled, and the follow-up runs on the day spacing you set and stops once the review lands.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good subject line for a review request?

One that names the visit and comes from a person. "Your appointment on Thursday", "How did we do, Emma?" and "It's Sam from Coastline Physio" all work, because each one is a fact the reader can place. Keep it under about forty characters, and leave out anything that promises a reward, names a star rating, or reads like a survey.

How long should a review request subject line be?

Under about forty characters, with the meaning in the first three or four words. There is no fixed cut-off: the sender name shares the same row on a phone, and the truncation point moves with the device, the app and the reader's text size. Write it so it still makes sense once the tail is gone.

Should you use the customer's name in the subject line?

Usually, for a business somebody visits every few months. For one they visit weekly, a first name can read as a mailing list rather than a message from you, so try a version without it. Never send it with an empty merge field: "Hi , how was your visit?" costs you more than the personalisation gains.

Can you offer a discount for a review?

Not for a Google review. Google treats an incentive offered in exchange for a review as fake and misleading content, and removes the review. American businesses have a second problem on top: section 465.4 of the FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, in force since 21 October 2024, bans compensation conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment, and courts can impose civil penalties for a knowing violation.

How many times should you follow up?

Twice in total. The first ask, then one reminder three to five days later, ideally by text if the first went by email. Keep the second shorter than the first and say in the subject that it is the last one. If that gets nothing, leave it there and ask again after their next appointment.

Should you put the word "review" in the subject line?

Not every time. It is honest and it works in a first ask. A business that puts it in every subject teaches its regulars which email to skip, so alternate between naming the review and naming the visit.

A review request email should use the customer's first name, name the job you actually did, ask in one sentence, and give one link that opens the review page. Four lines is enough. Anything longer starts competing with itself, and anything sent at the moment you take payment arrives before the customer has an opinion worth writing down.

Here are ten review request templates for service businesses. Each one is plain text you can copy, has the text-message version beside it, and says when to send it. After the templates: how long a text can run before it costs you two messages, when the ask should land, and how to follow up once. The final sections cover who to leave off the list and the rules that can get your reviews deleted.

For the wider programme rather than the wording, start with how to get more Google reviews. This article focuses on the copy.

What a review request email has to do

These are the five things a request needs. Miss the fourth or the fifth, and you get complaints instead of reviews.

1. Name the person and the job. "Hi Emma, thanks for coming in on Tuesday" beats "Dear valued customer" by a distance, and it costs you one merge field and one date.
2. Ask once, in one sentence. The reader should not have to work out what you want. "Would you leave us a Google review?" is the whole ask.
3. Give one link, and make it the only thing to click. No social icons, no newsletter footer, no "while you're here". A review link opens the review box directly. If you do not have yours yet, the Google review link and QR code take about two minutes to set up.
4. Come from a person. A first name in the sign-off and a reply-to address a human reads. People answer these emails, often with the feedback they were going to put in the review, and if that lands in a no-reply inbox you have thrown it away.
5. Give a way out. An unsubscribe link in the email, "Reply STOP to opt out" in the text. In the US the CAN-SPAM Act requires "a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out", honoured within ten business days, and most other markets have their own version. It also keeps your list clean, which is the selfish reason to do it properly.

10 review request email templates you can copy

Every template uses [First name], [Business], [Name] for whoever signs it, and [link] for your review link. Replace the square brackets and nothing else. The text versions fit one message. There is a section on that below.

1. After a haircut or a colour

Send this when: the appointment was yesterday and the client left happy.

Subject: How's the colour sitting, [First name]?

Morning [First name],

Thanks for coming in yesterday. I hope it's still sitting the way
you wanted it after you've washed it yourself once.

If you've got a minute, would you leave [Business] a Google review?
It's the main way new clients find us.

Thanks,
[Name]

[link]

Morning [First name], it's [Name] at [Business]. Hope the colour's behaving. If you've got a minute, a Google review would make my week: [link]

2. After a service call at someone's home

Send this when: the job is finished and has held overnight. Not from the van on the way out.

Subject: Your [job type] on [day]

[First name],

[Name] here from [Business]. Thanks for having us out on [day].
Everything should be running properly now. Call us if it isn't.

If you were happy with the job, a Google review would help us out.

[link]

Cheers,
[Name]

[First name], [Name] from [Business]. Glad we got the leak sorted. If the fix is holding, a Google review helps us more than any ad does: [link]

3. After an appointment at a clinic or a practice

Send this when: the day after the appointment. Never at the reception desk while the person is paying.

Subject: One question about yesterday

Hi [First name],

Thanks for coming in to see us yesterday. I hope you're feeling
better for it, and if anything has flared up since, call the clinic
rather than waiting for the next appointment.

If [Business] was helpful, would you write us a short Google review?
People choosing a clinic read them closely, and a few sentences from
a patient are worth more than anything we can say about ourselves.

[link]

Thanks,
[Name]

Hi [First name], thanks for coming in yesterday. If the session helped, would you leave [Business] a review? [link] Reply STOP to opt out.

4. After an invoice is paid

Send this when: the payment clears. For trades and professional work, where the invoice is the end of the job.

Subject: Invoice received, and thank you

Thanks for settling that, [First name], and thanks for the work.

If you were happy with how it went, a Google review would help us
more than you'd think. It's the first thing people look at when
they're deciding who to call.

[link]

Appreciate it,
[Name]
[Business]

Thanks for settling the invoice, [First name]. One ask: a Google review for [Business]? [link] [Name]

5. After a delivery or an install

Send this when: two or three days after, once the thing has actually been used.

Subject: How's the [item] going?

Hi [First name],

Just checking the [item] we put in on [day] is doing what you wanted
it to do. If it isn't, reply to this and I'll come back out.

If it is, would you leave [Business] a Google review? A line about
how the install went is plenty.

[link]

Thanks,
[Name]

[Name] from [Business] here. Is the unit behaving itself, [First name]? If so, a Google review helps us out: [link]. If not, call [phone].

6. A first-time customer

Send this when: someone new has been in once and it went well. They are the ones who notice the things your regulars stopped seeing.

Subject: How did we do, [First name]?

[First name],

You came to [Business] for the first time this week, so I'd like to
know how we did.

If it was good, a Google review helps other people find us. If it
wasn't, reply to this and tell me. I read every one of these.

[link]

Thanks,
[Name]

[First name], you came to [Business] for the first time this week. How did we do? A Google review tells us, and tells everyone else: [link]

7. A long-standing customer

Send this when: someone has been coming for a year or more and has never been asked. Ask once, and say out loud that you know it is overdue.

Subject: A favour, after all this time

Hi [First name],

You've been coming to [Business] for a couple of years now, which I
don't take for granted.

I've never asked you for a review, so I'm asking once. A few
sentences about what keeps you coming back would mean a lot, and I
won't ask again.

[link]

Thanks,
[Name]

[First name], you've been coming to [Business] for years and I've never once asked you for a review. Asking now, just the once: [link] [Name]

8. After you fixed a problem

Send this when: a complaint is closed and the customer has told you they are happy. Never while it is still open.

Subject: Glad we got that sorted

[First name],

Thanks for being patient while we got that sorted, and thanks for
telling us in the first place. We'd rather hear it than not.

No obligation at all, but if you're happy with how it ended up, a
review saying so would help us. Plenty of people are more convinced
by a business that fixed something than by one that never had a
problem.

[link]

Thanks,
[Name]

Glad we got that sorted in the end, [First name]. No obligation at all, but if you'd say so publicly it would help us a lot: [link]

9. The follow-up

Send this when: three to five days after the first ask, and only once. Shorter than the first one, and it has to give the person permission to ignore it.

Subject: Re: How did we do, [First name]?

Hi [First name],

In case my last email got buried, here's the link again:

[link]

If now isn't the time, no problem at all. I won't chase it.

[Name]

[First name], link again in case it got buried: [link] Last message about it, promise. [Name]

10. From the person who did the work

Send this when: the person who did the job can send it themselves. It does not read like a system because it isn't one.

Note what this template does not say. It does not ask the customer to name the sender in the review. Google's policy treats asking for specific content, including content that identifies a staff member, as rating manipulation. Send the ask from the person and give that person their own review link, and the credit follows the link instead of the wording.

Subject: It's [Name] from [Business]

[First name],

It's [Name]. I [did the job] on [day].

If you were happy with how it turned out, would you leave [Business]
a review? It takes a minute and it genuinely helps.

[link]

Thanks,
[Name]

Hi [First name], it's [Name], I did the install at your place on Tuesday. If you were happy with it, would you leave [Business] a review? [link]

Subject lines that get the email opened

Here are six for service businesses, kept short so they do not truncate on a phone. There is a longer list, including the ones to avoid, in the best email subject lines for review requests.

Do not write anything that sounds like a promotion, because it will be filed as one. Do not put the word "review" in every subject line you ever send either, because your regulars will learn to skip it.

How long a text can be before you pay for two

This is where SMS templates from other blogs quietly cost you money. Texts are billed per segment, not per send, and the boundary is not where people expect it.

Those are properties of the SMS standard rather than of any one provider, and they are set out in Twilio's character limit reference. The second row is the one that catches people. A single emoji, an accented name, or a curly apostrophe pasted out of a word processor drops the whole message to a 70-character limit, so a 150-character text becomes three segments instead of one.

Every text above fits a single segment with a business name of about 16 characters and a shortened link of about 24. Templates 1, 2, 5 and 10 sit within a handful of characters of the line, so a longer business name will tip those into two. Nine of the ten leave the opt-out line off because most sending platforms append it for you; if yours does not, add "Reply STOP to opt out" and budget the 22 characters. Type any template into your sending tool and read the segment counter before you save it, especially if the list you are sending to has ten thousand people on it.

Put the business name in the first few words. On a locked phone, that is all the customer sees before deciding whether to open it.

Segment count is a cost question. Whether you are allowed to send the text at all, and what has to be in it, is a different one: consent, sender ID, the STOP keyword and quiet hours differ by country, and the rules are in SMS compliance for review requests.

When to send it

The most common mistake is sending at the moment of payment. The customer is standing at a counter, or holding a card, or waving the tradesperson off. They have not used the thing yet and they have nothing to say. The ask that works lands the next day, when the haircut has survived a shower and the heater has run a night.

Send on a day the customer is likely to have a spare minute, which for most service businesses means mid-week rather than Saturday morning. Be consistent. A business that asks every customer once, every week, will out-collect a business that runs a clever push twice a year, and it will not be close.

How to send a review request email

Use this checklist before you send it.

1. Send from a person, never from "no-reply". A named sender at your own domain, replying to a mailbox somebody opens.
2. Send plain text, or something close to it. A heavily designed HTML template with a header image and a footer looks like a newsletter, and it gets treated like one by the reader and by the spam filter. Text with one link reads like a message from a person, because it is.
3. Use the link once. Repeating it three times does not raise the response rate. It makes the email look automated.
4. Personalise with the first name and the job. Both are already sitting in your booking or payment system.
5. Never send to a list you did not collect. Those people did not buy from you, cannot write a genuine review of you, and can report you.
6. Send the text to mobile numbers and the email to inboxes. They are different messages, not one message in two formats, which is why every template above has both.

Read what comes back and reply to it. That follow-through is where most businesses fall short. The templates are in our review response examples.

The follow-up: one, spaced

Send one follow-up, three to five days after the first ask. Keep it shorter than the first, ideally on the other channel, and end by telling the person it is fine to ignore.

Stop there. A second and third chase converts almost nobody and irritates the people who were going to review you anyway, on whatever day they got around to it. If somebody has not acted after two messages, the answer is no. Ask them again after their next job rather than keep pushing this one.

Whatever tool you use, the follow-up has to stop when the review lands. Chasing a customer for a review they have already written is the fastest way to get that review edited.

Who not to ask

This is the part missing from every template list on the internet, and it matters more than the wording does. Before a send goes out, take these people off it.

• Anyone who has opted out. Once, ever. An opt-out is not a preference to revisit next quarter.
• Anyone who reviewed you in the last 90 days. They have already done the thing you are asking for, and asking again reads as though nobody was paying attention.
• Anyone with an open complaint. If there is an unresolved issue sitting in the inbox, a review request is not a request, it is a prompt. Fix it first, then use template 8.
• Anyone whose job is not finished yet. Part-delivered orders, or work waiting on a part.
• Anyone already in a live campaign. A repeat customer should be one contact asked once, not one ask per transaction. Two bookings in a fortnight is not two review requests.
• Anyone whose details you did not collect yourself. Purchased lists, or the spreadsheet that came with the business.

Keeping that list by hand across a customer file is where most review programmes fall over, which is what the software is for. Cloutly's review campaigns treat a repeat customer as one contact asked once rather than one ask per transaction, skip anyone who reviewed you in the last 90 days, never re-enrol a contact who has opted out, and run the follow-up on the day spacing you set.

What not to put in the template

Five things, and they are not stylistic preferences. Google enforces four of them, and two of them carry a civil penalty in the United States.

No incentive. Google is explicit: "Offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews is considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited" (Google Business Profile help). The US position is narrower and worth knowing precisely, because most articles on this topic get it wrong in one direction or the other.

The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, 16 CFR Part 465, went into effect on 21 October 2024, and it does not ban incentives outright. In the FTC's own words, "the rule does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews, as long as there isn't an express or implied requirement that the reviews have to express a particular sentiment". Its example of crossing that line is "Tell us how much you loved your visit to John's Steakhouse and get a $5 coupon". So the honest summary: the FTC forbids paying for a sentiment, Google forbids paying at all, and since Google is where you want the reviews, the answer inside a template is no discount and no entry into a draw.

No asking for five stars. Not in the subject line, not on the counter card. Google allows you to solicit reviews "without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review", and a request for five stars is an attempt to influence the rating. Ask for a review and let the customer choose the number.

No asking for particular content. This one surprises people, because half the template galleries online suggest it. Google's policy says merchants should not "request that specific content be included", and gives asking for reviews that identify a staff member as an example. Wanting your team recognised is fair. The way to do it is to give each person their own review link so the credit follows the link, not to script the customer.

No gating. Google's policy bars merchants from "discourag[ing] or prohibit[ing] negative reviews, or selectively solicit[ing] positive reviews from customers". That is the survey-first pattern, where a customer is asked to rate you privately and only the happy ones are then shown the review link. Several vendors still sell it. It is a breach, and there is more on why in review gating and in Google's review policy explained.

No buying. Bought reviews are what the FTC rule was written for, and the penalties are assessed per violation.

Frequently asked questions

What should a review request email say?

Name the customer, name the job, ask for a review in one sentence, and give one link. Sign it with a person's name. Four to six lines in total. Anything longer than that lowers the response rate rather than raising it.

When should I send a review request email?

The day after the job, in most service businesses. Not at the point of payment, when the customer has not used what they bought, and not a fortnight later, when they have forgotten the detail that would have made the review worth reading.

How many times should I follow up?

Once, three to five days after the first ask, ideally on a different channel. Then stop.

Can I offer a discount for a review?

Not for a Google review. Google prohibits offering incentives in exchange for reviews outright. In the US, the FTC rule separately bans any compensation conditioned on the review expressing a particular sentiment, which catches "tell us how much you loved it" wording even where the incentive itself would be allowed.

Should I send a text or an email?

Send on the channel where you have a working contact detail and consent, and write it as a text if it is a text. A text is read within minutes and has to fit 160 characters. An email can carry a little more context and is easier to ignore. If you have both, most service businesses get the better response from the text and use the email as the follow-up. See SMS vs email review requests for what each channel costs and what the FCC, the FTC and ACMA require.

How many reviews will this actually get me?

It depends far more on how many customers you ask than on what the message says. A clinic seeing 200 patients a month that asks every one of them will out-collect a clinic seeing 2,000 that asks nobody. There is more on what volume does to a rating in five-star Google review requests.