Review Request Email Templates That Actually Get Clicks: 7 Proven Examples

A review request email has one job: get a willing customer from their inbox to your review form in under a minute. Every template below follows the same rules, because they are the rules that get clicks: under 80 words, one link, a named moment, a time estimate, and a human signature. Copy them, swap the tokens, and wire them to a trigger instead of a calendar.

A note on the tokens: {{ first_name }}, {{ company }}, {{ milestone }}, and {{ sender_name }} are placeholders your email tool fills in. If you cannot fill one reliably, delete it. A visible merge-tag failure costs more trust than personalization earns.

1. Post-purchase

Send timing: 10 to 14 days after purchase for products with instant value; wait for first meaningful use if setup takes longer. Too early and they have no story to tell.

2. Post-onboarding

Send timing: within 48 hours of the first real result, not the account creation. Trigger on the event, not the date.

3. Milestone or anniversary

Send timing: on the anniversary or a usage milestone ("your 10,000th request"). These produce the most detailed, most credible reviews you will ever collect.

4. Post-support

Send timing: same day the ticket closes, and only when the satisfaction score is positive. Never send it while an issue is still open.

5. Closed-won B2B

Send timing: one to two weeks after go-live, addressed to your champion. Their internal pitch is still rehearsed; you are just asking them to say it once more, in public.

6. Win-back (recovered or returning customer)

Send timing: two to three weeks after they reactivate, once the return has proven itself. A "we came back for a reason" review is the most persuasive kind on the page.

7. The gentle follow-up

Send timing: 4 to 7 days after the original, replying in the same thread so the context is one scroll away. This is the only follow-up. Most responses to a sequence come from this email, and a third message adds unsubscribes, not reviews.

Subject lines: what to A/B test first

Test subject lines before you test anything in the body, because the body cannot work on an unopened email. Ground rules from what consistently performs:

• Question vs. statement: test "How is {{ company }} working out?" against "A quick favor, {{ first_name }}". Questions usually edge ahead for first sends; the plain favor framing often wins the follow-up.
• Name the moment: "You're live" or "One year in" beats generic "We'd love your feedback" almost everywhere. Specificity signals this is not a blast.
• Keep it under 6 words where you can. Mobile clients truncate the rest anyway.
• Skip the word "review" in the subject for cold-ish segments and keep it for engaged ones. Test which side your list is on.
• One variable at a time, minimum a few hundred sends per variant, or the winner is noise.

What is a good subject line for a review request?

A good review request subject line names a specific moment and stays under about six words, because mobile clients truncate the rest and a vague line reads as a mass send. "You're live" and "One year in" outperform "We'd love your feedback" almost everywhere. The strongest ones sound like a single person wrote them to a single customer.

Here are twenty to start from, grouped by the moment they belong to. Treat them as A/B starting points rather than a list to send in order, and change the wording so it sounds like your company rather than ours.

• Post-purchase: "How did we do?" · "Quick question about your order" · "Did it arrive alright?" · "Worth 30 seconds?" · "Your thoughts on {{ product }}"
• Post-onboarding: "You're live" · "How's setup going?" · "First week thoughts?" · "Made it through setup" · "Anything we got wrong?"
• Milestone: "One year in" · "100 invoices later" · "Six months with {{ company }}" · "Your {{ year }} numbers" · "An anniversary, sort of"
• Post-support: "Did {{ agent_name }} sort it?" · "Ticket closed, one question" · "Was that fixed properly?"
• Follow-up: "A quick favor, {{ first_name }}" · "Bumping this once"

Two things to avoid regardless of segment. Do not put a star rating or an emoji in the subject line of a first send, because it reads as promotional and some filters treat it that way. And do not promise the email is short unless it genuinely is, since the gap between "30 seconds" and a five field form is the fastest way to train people to ignore you.

When is the best time to send a review request email?

Send when the customer has just experienced the value, not when it suits your reporting cycle. For ecommerce that is a few days after delivery rather than after dispatch, so the product is actually in their hands. For software it is after the customer reaches a first real result, often two to four weeks in. For B2B contracts it is later still, usually 60 to 180 days, once there is an outcome worth describing.

Day and time matter far less than the trigger, which is where most programs lose their returns. An email that fires the morning after a support ticket closes will beat a beautifully timed Tuesday send to everyone who bought last quarter, every time.

Can I offer a discount or incentive for a review?

No, not for a review on Google or most other platforms. Google's policy states that offering incentives in exchange for customers posting reviews is considered fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited. The FTC rule at 16 CFR 465.4 separately bans compensation conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment, with penalties reported at $51,744 per violation.

Asking is allowed and always has been. What is not allowed is paying for the answer, or filtering who gets asked based on how happy they seem. That second one is worth reading up on properly, because plenty of software still ships it as a feature: we covered where the line actually sits in our piece on review gating.

How many follow-ups should a review request have?

One. Send the request, then a single short follow-up three to five days later if there was no response, and stop. The second email typically recovers a meaningful share of the total responses, and the third recovers very little while measurably increasing unsubscribes and spam complaints.

The follow-up should be shorter than the original and should not repeat it. Two sentences and the same link is enough. If someone ignored a polite ask twice, the useful conclusion is that this customer is not a reviewer, not that they need a third email.

Make it a system, not a campaign

Templates get you the words; triggers get you the results. Wire each template to its moment with automated review requests so the post-support email actually goes out the day the ticket closes, and the anniversary email never depends on someone's calendar reminder. Sending, tracking and replying all live in one place in review management software, which is what stops a template library from turning back into a quarterly manual push. And once the reviews start arriving, make sure the rest of your collection engine is in shape: our guide on how to get more Google reviews covers the review link setup, the timing data, and the policy mistakes to avoid. Then put what you collect to work: a review widget keeps the newest replies visible on the pages where buyers decide.