Send product review invitations by uploading a file with customer data

Invitations to write product reviews will be sent in connection with a service review invitation. By default, customers will be asked to leave a product review right after they've written a service review. You can enable separate product review invitations in the Time and delivery section of your Invitation Settings.

Who should I send review invitations to?

It's important to invite a random sampling of your previous customers from the last year to leave a review because being open to all feedback, even when it's critical, is a fundamental part of building trust. Where we have detected, or have reason to believe, that a business isn’t collecting reviews in a fair, neutral, or unbiased way, we’ll take action to stop this. You can read more about this here, and don’t forget to follow our Guidelines for Businesses to maintain best practices.

Considerations before you get started

You’ll have access to manual invitations for 90 days from the first file upload, with your monthly invitation limit based on your plan. Once you reach your limit or the 90-day period ends, all invitations—including any unsent invitation reminders—will stop. Since around 20% of Trustpilot reviews come from these reminders, they’re an essential tool for getting customer feedback. After the 90-day period, you’ll need to switch to one of our automatic invitation methods to keep collecting reviews.

To maintain better control over your invitation limit, we recommend spacing out your invitations by uploading multiple files over the 90-day period.

Create your customer data file

First, you'll need to create a spreadsheet with your customer data in a program like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.

Using Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a free, online spreadsheet tool that makes it easy to create a file compatible with Trustpilot.

1. Open a new, blank worksheet in Google Sheets.
2. Enter customer data exactly in this order: 
   • Customer email
   • Customer name
   • Reference number (the customer’s internal reference number)
   • SKU
   • Product name
   • Product URL
   • Image URL (this one is optional)

Your Product URL and Image URL must contain an http:// or https://

Do not include a title row. If you’ve added one to organize your spreadsheet, make sure to delete it before saving it.

3. Save the file in CSV format. From the File menu, go to Download, and select Comma Separated Values (.csv).

If the Reference number and the Customer email address match, all product reviews will be combined in one invitation email.

Using Microsoft Excel

If you’re using Excel, the steps for creating the spreadsheet are the same, but you’ll need to make sure that you’re saving your file using UTF-8 format.

Not all versions of Excel support the necessary CSV UTF-8 format, so we recommend using Google Sheets if possible.

Import your CSV file

Now you've prepared your CSV file and it’s ready to go. You can open it in a simple text editor like Notepad and it should look like this:

Upload the CSV file to your Trustpilot Business account

It’s a good idea to review both your email settings and your time & delivery settings for your review invitations before uploading your CSV file, otherwise they’ll be sent with the default settings.

1. In Trustpilot Business, go to the Invite for service and product reviews page. If this link doesn't work, then you don't have access to this invitation method.
2. Click Select file and upload your CSV file. The columns in the CSV file should include the following data in this exact order:

   • Customer email
   • Customer name
   • Reference number
   • SKU
   • Product name
   • Product URL
   • Image URL

   If the Reference number and the Customer email address match, all product reviews will be combined in one invitation email.

3. Check your customer data to make sure it's correct, then click Next.
4. In the Sender name field, enter your sender information. Then select the Reply-to email address you would like the invitation to be sent from in the drop-down menu. You can also select the option to Add another Reply-to Email.
5. Choose if you'd like to send from a generic no reply email, or from your own email domain. Click Next.
6. In Select template, choose the template you'd like to use from the Select template for the product review invitations menu. You can browse the options and make your selection by clicking Change. You can also choose the language for your invitation.
7. In the Invitations landing page to send customers to: drop-down menu, select the local Trustpilot website that you want to send your customers to when they write their review. Click Next.
8. Review your data. If you're satisfied, click Send Invitations.

Troubleshooting common issues

The file you chose does not contain any valid lines.

If you get this error message, then our system has detected something wrong with your file. You can click Download invalid lines in a new file to get more information about how to fix it. Update your file and upload it again.

My csv file won’t load correctly.

This issue often occurs when using a CSV file from Excel. If you're experiencing this, we recommend using Google Sheets instead.

I can’t find anywhere to upload my csv file.

If you can’t find or access the page to upload your file, you’ve likely lost access to this invitation method. Learn more about that here.

If you need further assistance, contact our Support Team for help.