Sending Review Generation Invitations | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• How to send a single review generation invite
• How to send review generation invites in bulk
• Other ways to generate reviews

Sending Invites through the Yext platform

When sending invitations to request reviews through the Yext platform, you have the option to send one at a time for specific one-off requests, or you can send multiple invites at once by uploading a spreadsheet. If you wish to use an API you can also use the Review Invitations: Create API endpoint.

To send invites from the Yext platform, navigate to Reviews > Generation and click on Send Invites in the navigation bar.

Note: You must provide a privacy policy in order to send review invitations. Please fill out your privacy policy in Review Generation Account Settings.

Send Invites in Bulk

Upload a spreadsheet containing the contact info of your recipients and the Entity ID of the entity to be reviewed. You can send invites via email and text message in the same upload.

For help formatting the spreadsheet properly, refer to the links at the bottom of the page. Click Read more about how to build your upload file for a help article , or click Download Template to download a sample review generation upload template.

In the spreadsheet, the following columns are required:

• entityID
• firstName (customer’s first name)
• lastName (customer’s last name)
• contact (the customer’s phone number or email address)

You will also have optional settings based on the type of invitation you are sending (email or text message):

• templateId or distributionId: Enter the template ID for the desired email/SMS layout, or leave this blank to use your default template.
• image: This only applies to text message invites. Type the letter Y to include the business logo in the text message. Otherwise, leave this column blank. Note: Brand Images are only supported in the US.
• labelIds: The ID for any labels you would like to automatically apply to the generated review.
• transactionId: Include this column if you would like to associate a Transaction ID to a review generated by this invitation.
• titleName: Include this column if you would like to address a recipient by a title (e.g., Ms., Mr., Dr., etc.)
• language: The language of the review generation invite in ISO 639-1 Code format . If left blank, this will default to English (en).

Once your file is ready, click Choose File to upload the file, then click Continue, and click Send Invites to send the review requests.

Note: Yext limits the number of invites (email or text) that can get sent from an account per day. If you go over the limit, we will hold the invite until the following day. You will learn more about the Review Generation settings in the next unit.

Sending Invites via API

Many brands choose to leverage Yext review generation by integrating with another system, such as a Point-of-Sale system which tracks the contact info of customers. In this scenario, some time after a customer transacts with a business, the business wants to automatically send a review invitation. Rather than exporting the customer data and uploading it through the Yext UI, the business could send a request to the Review Invitations: Create endpoint, which will trigger an invitation to be sent.

Other Ways to Generate Reviews

Send a Single Invite

1. At the bottom of the Send Invites page, click Send Single Invite.
2. Select the entity you would like to generate a review for.
3. Enter the recipient’s name.
4. Enter the recipient’s contact information (email address or phone number).
5. If you are sending a text, select or deselect the checkbox to indicate whether you would like to include a photo with the text message. Note that including a photo will use an additional two text message units from your quota. (More details on this in the Review Generation Settings unit).
6. Select the desired email or SMS template from the drop-down.
7. If applicable, select the language of the review invite. Click Send Invite.

Review Generation URL

Another way to generate reviews is through the Review Generation URL, which is a shortened version of the URL for the First Party Review Page. Each entity that is configured to generate reviews has a unique Review Generation URL that customers can visit to leave a review.

The First Party Review Page URL and the Review Generation URL are found on your entities in the Knowledge Graph under the First Party Review Page and Review Generation URL fields, respectively. You can view these URLs in Entity Edit directly, pull it via the API, or export from the Knowledge Graph using Entity Export.

You can also export the Review Generation URL for a specific set of reviews from Reviews > Generation. Click View Invites in the navigation bar, then click the More Actions dropdown and select Export Review Generation URLs.

The Review Generation URL is normally distributed through our built-in email and text messaging system in Review Generation, but we encourage you to share this URL with customers in more ways in order to generate even more reviews. For example, this link can be used in other email communications, on receipts, etc.

App Directory
To view our partner apps in the App Directory that may be helpful with Review Generation, click Apps > Directory in the navigation bar, and choose Review Generation as the Use Case in the filter bar.