OnBoard's Road to 1,000 Reviews

When Dylan Caraker, Customer Marketing Manager at OnBoard, was tasked with generating 1,000 reviews, he knew it would be an uphill battle.

Launched in March 2019 and running through the end of December, Caraker had less than a year to complete its journey to 1,000 reviews, across all review sites. He was starting from scratch and had never conducted an evaluation campaign, let alone with such a lofty goal.

OnBoard is board management software that empowers boards and management teams to make better decisions by creating unified and secure communications. They make board meetings more collaborative, productive and efficient.

We spoke with Caraker to discuss his perspective and strategy on collecting reviews and the metrics he used to measure the success of his initiative.

From high to low

Caraker was lucky that its CEO, Paroon Chadha, was completely won over by the critics. So much so that this review generation was a company-wide initiative.

Cross-functional work was essential, and Caraker's plan involved demand generation, marketing, and customer experience (CX). Caraker stresses the importance of having executive and company buy-in and has advice if your company isn't completely sold on the reviews. Ask: "What can reviews do for our business?"

Reviews aren't just about advertising badges on social media — they can have a positive impact on any service. In addition to building brand awareness and credibility, reviews can help the talent department attract top candidates, allow sales to show company value, and provide greater SEO coverage on search results. .

Americans read reviews, 85% of them discover new products every month through reviews.

Source: Peekage

As a strategy, he also suggests looking at other companies that have had successful review campaigns. By showcasing the other company's campaign and wins to management, you can demonstrate the impact reviews can have on a company. Best of all, their tactics can be replicated.

Search, search, search

Before Caraker could get started, he had to learn all the basics (OnBoard only had two G2 reviews!) and take a crash course in review, albeit with a bit of hesitation.

"It boiled down to: It's your life now, so embrace it and understand every thing about these review sites - every thing. Because if it's not and you don't don't have the answer, so how the hell are you going to get 1,000 reviews?"

Dylan CarakerCustomer Marketing Manager at OnBoard

With this mindset, the hesitation didn't last long and he took action, with Google becoming his best friend.

"What are the top ten online review sites for SaaS companies?" "How to get reviews for SaaS companies" "How to increase reviews"

Taking on his social media channels, Caraker reached out to the authors of blogs and articles he encountered and asked for 10 minutes of their time to get a feel for it. People from many top SaaS brands were eager to speak with him, and it allowed him to learn more about their review generation strategies.

He drew on these informal conversations to come up with his own tactics, and eventually came up with a comprehensive marketing plan.

A simple diet

With two months of preparation in place, Caraker was ready to put his plan into motion.

OnBoard's review generation strategy

Caraker's strategy was threefold:

Send targeted emails Select the right channels to solicit reviews Reimburse customers who left a review

Finding the right customers was the first step in the email part of his strategy. He compiled a list of all OnBoard customers and, with the help of CX, narrowed it down for awareness.

One of the factors in determining if someone was a good candidate was if they had written a review on another website. If so, he would ask CX to contact him and ask if he would be willing to leave a review on G2.

In addition, the channels he used contributed to the success of the campaign. These channels included: in production...