Reviews Request settings

How to ask your customers for a review

Good reviews rarely arrive on their own. Review Request asks for them: you add a customer, and GLocal emails them a link to leave a review — once, or as a short run of polite follow-ups spaced over several days, stopping the moment they answer.
The section has five tabs:

• Overview — how your requests are performing, and what happened to each one
• Customer List — who receives requests
• Email Sequence — what the emails say and how far apart they go
• Review Filtration — sorting feedback before it reaches Google
• Automation Settings — which email account they are sent from, and how many a day

GLocal never sends review requests from its own address — they go out through your Google account or your own mail server, so they arrive from an address your customers recognise.
Until that is set up, a yellow banner sits at the top of every Review Request tab: Email Sending Not Configured — Please complete the Email Sending Options first in Automation Settings. The last two words are a link — click them and you are on the right tab.

The order to set up the review request

The tabs are listed below in the order the app shows them, but the order to work through them is different. Do it once, in this order, and the rest is maintenance:

1. Automation Settings — connect the account the emails come from.
2. Email Sequence — check the emails and their timing, and switch the sequence Active.
3. Review Filtration — optional, and worth reading the risk notice before you enable it.
4. Customer List — add the people who should be asked.
5. Overview — come back here to see how it is going.

Everything here applies to the profile you have selected
All five tabs work on the business profile currently selected. Switch profile and you are looking at a different customer list, a different sequence and different figures.

1. Review Request → Overview

Overview is the first tab. It reports on the review requests sent for the business you have selected: how many went out, how many people opened and clicked them, and where each individual request has reached. Nothing is configured here. It is a reading screen — the settings live on the other four tabs.

The date range

Four choices (Pin 1​) sit at the top of the tab, and the range you choose applies to the cards, the chart and the activity list together. Change it and the whole page changes with it.

• Last 30 Days — the default.
• Last 3 Months
• Last Year
• Custom Range — opens a date field to the right of the buttons, reading 08/10/2026 - 09/09/2026, where you set the start and end dates yourself. The chart's subtitle and the Recent Activity heading both switch to those dates.

Overall stats

Below the date range sit two views of the same period, chosen with a toggle (Pin 2​): Overall stats and By sequence step. Overall stats is the one shown first, and it has four cards:

• Requests sent (Pin 3​) — how many review request emails went out in the period.
• Open rate (Pin 4​) — the share of those emails that were opened.
• Click rate (Pin 5​) — the share that led to a click on the review link.
• Reviews captured (Pin 6​) — how many reviews came from those requests.

Two kinds of badge, and they do not mean the same thing
Each card carries a comparison against the previous period of the same length.
On Requests sent, which is a count, the badge is a percentage change — +344% means roughly four and a half times as many as last period.
On Open rate and Click rate, which are already percentages, the badge is in points — +8 pts means the rate went from, say, 12% to 20%, not that it rose by 8% of itself. A red badge is a fall: -7 pts.
On Reviews captured the badge is a plain count of the previous period, not a change at all.
Where there is no previous period to compare against — a new profile, or one that has never sent anything — the badge reads — or 0 pts rather than a number.

By sequence step

The second view breaks the same period down by where each email sat in the sequence, rather than treating every send alike.

• Step 1 open rate — how often the first email of the sequence was opened.
• Step 2 incremental opens — how the second email compares with the first. The badge reads lift vs Step 1, and the figure can be negative.
• Step 5 click rate — the click rate of the final email.
• Sequence to review — the share of sequences that ended in a review, with the counts behind it, for example 0 of 42.

Which steps are named depends on how many steps your sequence has.

Activity over time

Activity over time plots the period day by day, with two series named in the legend beneath it: Sent and Reviews captured. Its subtitle repeats the range being shown.
The chart is the same on both views — switching between Overall stats and By sequence step changes the cards above it, not the chart.

Recent Activity

Further down the tab, Recent Activity lists individual requests, newest first, one card each. Two controls sit above the list: Search (Pin 1​), by customer name or email, and a Ddropdown filter (Pin 2​), which narrows the list to one kind of activity.

Every card shows:

1. The customer's name and email address
2. What happened, in words — Review request scheduled, Review request sent
3. A step badge (Pin 3​) — either how far through the sequence it is, such as Step 4 of 5, or Sequence completed
4. Status icons (Pin 4​) — shows the status of individual emails from the sequence
5. How long ago it happened

Status icons breakdown:

• A blue clock — means the request is scheduled.
• A green arrow — the request was sent.
• A red cross — the send failed. The card reads Failed to send review request and carries a red Retry button, which picks the sequence up at the step that failed.
• A yellow slash — the request was cancelled.

Only a scheduled request can be cancelled
A card showing only the blue clock has not been sent yet. It says Review request scheduled, gives the date and time it is due, and carries a Cancel Request button (Pin 5​).
Once the green arrow appears the email has left, and the button is gone with it. There is nothing to cancel — the customer already has it.

2. Customer List

The Customer List holds everyone who receives review requests for this business. Adding someone here is what puts them into the system and review request sequence.

Finding a customer

A row of controls sits above the list:

• Search (Pin 1​) — by name or email address.
• Service (Pin 2​) — narrows to one service or product.
• Status (Pin 3​) — narrows by what the customer did about the request: All, Google review, Filtered review or No review. It is the quickest way to see who still owes you a review.
• Unsubscribed (Pin 4​) — separates the people who have opted out from those who have not.
• Add Customer (Pin 5​) — to the right, followed by two icon buttons with no labels: Import CSV (Pin 6​) and Export CSV (Pin 7​).

What each row shows

• Customer — name, email address and phone number.
• Services/Products — what they bought, shown as a tag.
• Date Added — when they entered the system.
• Last Request — when a review request last went to them.
• Status — a dash while nothing needs saying, or Unsubscribed once they have opted out.
• Actions — the three controls covered below.

Action buttons:

1. Add to sequence — enrols everyone selected in one go.
2. Delete — removes them.
3. More — drops the selection with View Timeline, Edit, Unsubscribe actions, where you can view, pause and resume the individual timeline sequence, edit the customer and unsubscribe.

A checkbox sits at the head of the list and on every row.
Tick any of them to select multiple customers at once to quickly add them to the sequence or delete from the list.
Ticking the box in the header selects the twenty rows currently shown on page, not the whole list.

Adding customers one at a time

Add Customer opens a dialog headed Add New Customer to the Email Sequence — which is exactly what saving does. The customer is enrolled, and their sequence begins on its own schedule.

• Name * — required.
• Email * — required. This is where the request goes.
• Phone — marked (optional), and it is.
• Service/Product * — required. The label says *used in email macros like {{services}}*, so whatever you put here is read back to the customer in the email.
• Add Customer saves them; Cancel closes without saving.

Adding customers by spreadsheet

Import CSV takes a list in one go. The file needs these columns:

Unsubscribe keeps them, Delete does not
An unsubscribed customer stays in the list, marked Unsubscribed, so you keep the record of who they were and what they bought.
Delete removes them from the database altogether — the person and their history both go.

3. Email Sequence setup

The Email Sequence is the run of a series of emails to a customer with review requests, a customer enrolls automatically after being added if the email sequence is acitve.
This tab is where you decide how many emails there are, how far apart they sit, and what makes them stop early.

The sequence header

The bar at the top of the tab is the whole sequence in one line (Pin 1​): how many steps it has, how many days it spans end to end, and whether it is scheduling new customers.
The Active toggle (Pin 2​) on the right turns the whole sequence on and off. With it off, customers can still be added — they simply are not scheduled for anything.

Stop conditions

Stop conditions decide when to halt the sequence for one customer, so the follow-ups stop reaching someone who has already answered.

• Stop if a Google review is detected (Pin 3​) — when GLocal sees a new review on your profile from that customer, the rest of their emails are cancelled. Detection runs after every Google reviews polling cycle, so it follows GLocal's own review checks rather than happening the instant they post.
• Stop if customer says they already reviewed (Pin 4​) — every email in the sequence carries an I already left a review link in its footer. If the customer clicks it, their sequence stops. Switching this off keeps the emails coming even after they click.
• Stop if customer unsubscribes (Pin 5​) — an unsubscribe always ends the sequence.

The third toggle is not a setting
The unsubscribe toggle looks switched off, and it cannot be switched on. That is deliberate: unsubscribes are honoured whatever it shows, because they are required by law in most places.
It is there to tell you the rule exists, not to let you change it.

Email flow

Email flow is the sequence itself, one card per step, in the order they are sent. Above the list, a line names what starts it: Customer added · Manual entry, CSV import, or API webhook.
Each card shows its position (Pin 6), its name (Pin 7), and its timing and send time (Pin8).

The first step is timed differently from the rest
Step 1 is measured from the moment the customer was added. Every step after it is measured from the previous step.
So a two-step sequence set to 1 day, then 2 days, lands on day 1 and day 3 — which is the header's spans ~3.0 days end-to-end. Add four more steps three days apart and the same reading gives days 6, 9, 12 and 15.

Four controls sit on every card:

• Up and down arrows (Pin 9) — move the step earlier or later in the run.
• Pencil (Pin 10​) — edit the step: its name, its timing and its email.
• Bin (Pin 11​) — remove the step from the sequence.
• Add step (Pin 12​) at the foot of the list adds another email. The number of steps is yours to choose — there is nothing fixed about five.

Below the last card, Sequence complete marks the end of the run.

Changes apply to everyone, including customers already in the run
Editing a step, changing a delay, reordering the flow or deleting a step does not only affect people added from now on. It re-plans the sequence for every customer currently in it.
So someone who is three steps into the old schedule will finish on the new one. Worth knowing before you shorten a delay while forty people are mid-run.

Editing a step

The pencil on a step, and Add step, open the same editor. It fills the screen: the step's settings down the left, the email itself on the right.

• Step name (Pin 1​) — what the step is called in the flow and in a customer's timeline.
• Send timing (Pin 2​) — a number and a unit, with a line beneath saying what it counts from: after previous step, or after the customer was added, for the first step.
• Send at (local time) (Pin 3​) — the time of day this email goes out.
• Timezone (Pin 4​) — which local time that is.
• Subject line (Pin 5​) — with a note beneath listing the variables it accepts.

Send time and timezone belong to the step
They are set here, on each step, not once for the whole sequence. Two steps can send at different times, or in different timezones.
That is why the flow list prints the timezone against every card — it is telling you which one that particular step is using, and a single step set to a different one is easy to miss. A sequence can quite legitimately run five steps on Atlantic/Canary and a sixth on America/New_York; it is worth reading down the column when a step sends at an hour you did not expect.

The right-hand side is the email as the customer will receive it, edited in place.

• Business logo (Pin 6​) — OFF, the GBP Logo taken from your Google Business Profile, or a Custom URL.
• Reset to default (Pin 7​) — puts the email back to the one GLocal ships.
• Edit and HTML (Pin 8​) — write in the visual editor, or work on the underlying HTML.
• Desktop and Mobile (Pin 9​) — preview the email at either width.

The formatting bar below carries bold, italic and underline, a text style menu, text colour, bulleted and numbered lists, alignment, a link tool, and a button to clear formatting.
Insert variable (Pin 10​) drops a placeholder at the cursor, filled in for each customer when the email goes out:

Customer journey

The panel down the right side, Customer journey, is the same sequence read as time rather than as settings — what every new customer experiences after being added. It runs top to bottom:

• Customer added (Pin 1​) — in one of this ways: manual, CSV or API.
• A wait (Pin 2​), in days — period of time after first email from sequence will be sent.
• Day marker and the email due on it (Pin 3​), with its send time.
• END — Sequence complete (Pin 4​), where the customer is marked done.

At the foot of the panel, a summary (Pin 5​): the total span, the number of emails, and which stop conditions are switched on.

Read the journey before you change a delay
The panel turns the delays into actual days, so it is the quickest way to see what a change does to the customer's calendar without working it out yourself. Shortening one delay moves every step after it.

4. Review Request → Review Filtration

Normally a review request sends the customer straight to Google. Review Filtration puts a page of your own in between.

The customer is asked how their experience was. A positive answer sends them on to Google to leave the review publicly. A less positive one keeps them on your page, where they are asked what went wrong — and that feedback comes to your email instead of appearing on your profile.

GLocal states this plainly on the tab itself: review filtering can conflict with Google's review policies, and by switching it on you accept full responsibility for any consequences.
Read that before enabling it, not afterwards.

Switching it on

Enable Review Filtration (Pin 1​) at the top of the tab turns the feature on, and the risk notice sits inside the same card. With it off, the rest of the tab does not apply and your review requests link straight to Google.

Your review link

Once enabled, GLocal gives you a review link (Pin 2​) — the short address that opens your filtration page. It looks like r.gorate.biz/yourbusiness.

• The pencil (Pin 3​) changes the short name at the end of it.
• The copy icon (Pin 4​) puts the link on your clipboard.

This is the link to give customers whenever you ask for a review — in an email, on a receipt, on a card by the till.

While filtration is on, the {{review\\\\\\_link}} variable in your Email Sequence resolves to this address rather than to Google. You do not have to paste it into the emails yourself.

Below the link, the settings are split in two by a pair of tabs (Pin 5​): Branding Settings, which is how the page looks, and Form Settings, which is what it asks. Only one is on screen at a time, so anything you cannot find is on the other one. A live phone preview sits to the right of both and updates as you change either.

Branding Settings

Four rows, each with its own toggle. Switch a row off and that element disappears from the page.

• Business name (Pin 1​) — the name at the top of the page. It is a text field, so it does not have to match your Google listing exactly.
• Show Logo (Pin 2​) — the image above the name. Replace logo uploads a different one.
• Tagline (Pin 3​) — a line under the name.
• Google review button (Pin 4​) — the wording on the button that takes a happy customer to Google.

Watch the preview (Pin 5​) as you edit — it is the page the customer will open.

Form Settings

Rating style (Pin 1​) decides how customers rate their experience before being routed. Two choices:

• Emoji — three faces, labelled Bad / OK / Great by default. The labels are editable text under Negative, Neutral and Positive, so you can word them how you like.
• Stars — the familiar one to five.

The routing follows the position, not the words
With Emoji, the positive face sends the customer to Google and the negative and neutral ones keep them on your page. That holds whatever you rename the labels to.
With Stars, you set the boundary yourself.

Below it, the form itself. The app numbers the three questions and marks the closing screen with a green tick:

1. 1 Rating question (Pin 2​) — what the customer is asked first, for example How would you rate your experience?
2. 2 Feedback request (Pin 4​) — two fields, a title and a subtitle, shown to a customer whose rating routed them to private feedback.
3. Email request — a title and a subtitle asking the customer how to reach them, shown as We'll get back to you! and Please, leave your email so we can get in touch with you.
4. Green tick circle — a message shown after the customer submits, or a URL to send them to instead. Leave it as a message and they stay on your page; paste a URL and they land wherever you choose.

Where the feedback goes
A customer who rates you positively is sent to Google and leaves an ordinary public review, which appears in Reviews like any other.
A customer who does not is kept on your page. What they write does not reach Google — it lands in Reviews → Filtered Reviews, and is emailed to you.

5. Automation Settings

Automation Settings answers two questions: where do the emails come from, and how many go out in a day.

This tab is set per business profile
The sender name, the sending method and the daily cap all belong to the profile you have selected — they are not account-wide. One profile can send through a Google account while another sends through its own mail server, with different Names and different Daily limits.
So every profile you want review requests from needs its own connection here.
The tab saves itself. There is no Save button. A change is stored as you make it, and a Saved message appears in the corner to confirm it.

From Name

Both settings live in a card headed Email Sending Options.
From Name (Pin 1​) is the sender your customers see in their inbox. It is a plain text field and it applies to every review request email.

Google Account

Two methods sit side by side, and the labels say which is in use: Active or Inactive (Pin 2​).
Google Account sends through your Google account, using Gmail's infrastructure.

Only one method can be active, and the switch is instant
Choosing one method makes the other Inactive straight away. There is no confirmation step and no Save button — the change is stored the moment you click.
So a stray click on the card you are not using will turn off the one you are. If it was your Custom Mail Server, its settings are kept and it becomes active again when you switch back; but until you do, nothing sends, and the yellow banner returns at the top of every Review Request tab.
If review requests stop going out for no obvious reason, this tab is the first place to look.

Custom Mail Server

If your email is not with Google, Custom Mail Server sends through your own SMTP server instead. Until it is set up the card is red — Use Custom Mail Server · Configure your own SMTP server for sending emails — with Configure Custom Mail Server (Pin 1​) on the right.
That button opens a dialog. The four fields marked * are required:

• SMTP Host * and Port * — your provider gives you both.
• Username * and Password * — the mailbox the emails are sent from.
• Encryption — a dropdown, TLS or SSL.

At the foot, three buttons: Close leaves without saving, Test (Pin 2​) checks the details before you commit them, and Save Settings (Pin 3​) stores them.

The dialog says so itself, under a Security Note: Your SMTP credentials are encrypted before being stored. We recommend using an app-specific password if your email provider supports it.
Worth following. An app-specific password can be revoked on its own, without changing the password to your mailbox.

Sending limits

Send up to a specific numbers of emails per day to keep control over your email usage.
The selector allows you to set up the most review requests GLocal will send in twenty-four hours. Anything above that number waits its turn and goes out the following day.

The number on this tab is a daily cap you choose. Your plan includes a number of review request emails per month, and every request draws on it — automated and one-off alike. More can be bought as an add-on from the billing section.

Waiting is not the same as failing.
Hitting the daily cap is harmless. The request simply goes out tomorrow, and you need do nothing.

You're all set

Set up in order — an email account on Automation Settings, the emails and their timing on Email Sequence, then the people on the Customer List — and review requests go out on their own from then on. The two habits worth keeping: add customers while the job is fresh in their mind, and check Overview now and then to see which step of the sequence is doing the work.

Updated on: 21/09/2026