Set up the review request emails
At a glance
- What you get
- Request emails go out when you want, and you know what your customers receive.
- Time
- 10 minutes
- Plan
- All plans (reminder on Grow and Unlimited)
Before you start
- The app is installed and your catalogue is synced. See Installation.
- Your store has an email address in Shopify: that’s where customers’ replies and the test email arrive.
How it works, in short
- An order is shipped (fulfilled) in Shopify.
- The app creates a request for every product in the order.
- After the days you chose, at the time you chose, the customer receives an email in your store’s name with five stars to tap.
- The customer picks the stars, writes the review and sends it. The review arrives as Waiting on the Reviews page.
Starting values: requests off, 7 days after shipping, at 10:00 in your store’s time zone.
Warning: no email goes out until you switch requests on. Once you do, the emails go to real customers: look at the preview and send yourself the test email first, as explained below.
Choose when to ask
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Open Shopify Admin › Apps › IFG Reviews › Requests.
What you’ll see: the Review requests page with the When to ask section. If you’ve never saved, it says “You have not chosen yet: these defaults apply.”
- Tick Ask for a review after every shipped order when you want the emails to go out. Until it’s ticked, no email is sent. You can also switch it on from the Activation step of the guided setup.
- Open the How long to wait after shipping menu and pick a value: from After 3 days to After 30 days. Allow for the time the parcel takes to arrive, plus a few days to try the product.
- If you want to change the time, open Advanced options and pick a time in the At what time menu (from 08:00 to 18:00).
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Press Save at the top of the page.
What you’ll see: the page reloads with the values you chose. The sentence about the defaults is gone.
Warning: if you untick the box and save, no new requests are created and the ones already scheduled are cancelled, together with any reminders still waiting. If you switch back on later, the cancelled requests don’t restart: only orders shipped after that get one.
The reminder (Grow and Unlimited)
On the Grow and Unlimited plans the app sends one reminder, 7 days after the first email, to customers who haven’t answered yet. The link in the first email keeps working.
- In the When to ask section, look at the Send a reminder box. It’s ticked to begin with.
- Untick it if you don’t want reminders, then press Save.
On the Free plan the box is greyed out and there’s a See plans button below it.
See the email before your customers do
On the same page, the Email preview section shows the real email, built the same way as the one that goes out. The links in the preview don’t work, on purpose.
- In the Customer language menu, choose a language. The customer’s email follows the language of their order.
- In the Type menu, choose First request or Reminder.
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Press Phone or Desktop to see the email at both sizes.
What you’ll see: the email’s subject next to Subject: and, below it, the email with your store’s name, a sample product and the five stars.
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Press Send me a test email.
What you’ll see: “Test email sent to …” with your store’s address. The email has “[TEST]” in the subject.
Note: the test doesn’t count against your plan’s requests. You can send at most 5 a day.
Follow how it’s going
Still on Requests:
- Where things stand counts the requests by status: scheduled, sent, reviewed, cancelled, expired, blocked, undelivered, failed.
- Latest requests lists the most recent ones, with the product, the planned date and the status (for example Scheduled, Sent, Reviewed).
What the main statuses mean:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Scheduled | It will go out on the date shown |
| Sent | The email went out, the customer hasn’t answered yet |
| Reviewed | The customer wrote the review |
| Cancelled | The order was cancelled or refunded, or the product no longer exists |
| Expired | The customer didn’t answer in time, or the order was too old |
| Blocked | The customer asked not to receive any more emails |
| Undelivered | The customer’s address rejected the email |
The rules that protect your customers
The app applies them on its own; you don’t have to do anything:
- One email a week per person. If the same customer has another request within 7 days, it waits.
- No emails for old orders. A shipment from more than 30 days ago sends nothing.
- Cancelled orders and refunds. Waiting requests for that order, or for those lines, are cancelled.
- People who unsubscribe get nothing more from your store. Every email has the link to do so.
- A request stops waiting 45 days after the date it was planned for.
All the details are in Collecting reviews.
If something goes wrong
No email goes out. In Settings › Diagnostics, check the E-mail sending row: if it says “To fix”, that’s on our side, write to us. Then check that you have recently shipped orders: an order that’s paid but not fulfilled doesn’t send anything.
This month’s requests have run out. Your plan has a number of requests per month. New ones wait for the next month, or go out straight away if you move to a higher plan. See Plans and billing.
The page says “This shop has no contact address on Shopify”. Without an address, a customer’s reply reaches nobody and the test can’t go out. Add your store’s email address in your store settings in Shopify.
The test email doesn’t arrive. Wait a few minutes and look in spam. If you’ve already sent 5 tests today, try again tomorrow.